Notices by KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Friday, 13-Sep-2019 02:13:02 UTC 
KFist
The single smartest decision borne out of the Meiji Restoration was to reintegrate pro-Imperial forces into the new regime by making them part of the nominal nobility and giving them bureaucratic sinecures that could become real positions of power.
Rather than giving those lords that were on the losing side shitty domains, force-suicided sons, or purposely shitty places in the new regime like the Tokugawa Shogunate did, the Meiji regime simply reintegrated those willing to work towards a new Japan and outright killed everyone who didn't agree.
Even people like Enomoto Takeaki, who founded an entire breakaway republic outright refuting the Emperor's dominion were given cushy and influential positions. Only really headstrong people like Saigo Takamori were irredeemable and mostly because they fought to the death or killed themselves.
It's a really interesting juxtaposition. Saigo was instrumental in kick-starting and leading the Meiji Restoration but ultimately found himself at odds to it, before dying at the Battle of Shiroyama ten years later. Meanwhile Enomoto Takeaki prolonged the end of the war and was the last hold-out before becoming rehabilitated and fully integrated into the Meiji regime, becoming a vice-admiral and foreign minister by the end of the century. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Saturday, 07-Sep-2019 15:01:25 UTC
KFist
@codewiz I'm talking the good high-quality konbini umbrellas. I bought one at a 7-eleven that had a solid metal core but was still lightweight. It was absolutely fantastic against Kyoto rain as a typhoon just kissed the Kansai area, and it was also great as a parasol which came in handy in Atami as I climbed up hundreds of steps to the Izusan shrine. That umbrella was solid and robust enough to use as a weapon and I'm surprised I got to carry it aboard an airplane. Second time around I couldn't afford to have it confiscated by zealous airport security so I got a collapsible 1200 yen umbrella at a Family Mart that's also fuckin' solid. It has no problem in thunderstorms.
Getting a black/opaque umbrella is important too. You lose out the ability to use it was a see-through gale shield but you gain the ability to use it as a parasol, which is important in Japanese summers. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Saturday, 07-Sep-2019 05:33:25 UTC
KFist
I love Japanese train nerds. They can somehow figure out when and where a trainset was created and upgraded, down to the day. I spent no more than a handful of minutes on a cute KiHa-261 from Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to Hakodate and now I know the train's birthday. It's on October 26! -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 21:30:01 UTC
KFist
Best FF girl.
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Friday, 21-Jun-2019 02:14:22 UTC
KFist
Writing about cycling adventures in Hirosaki, featuring the absolute worst bike I have ever had the displeasure of riding. The seat was too low even at its highest setting, the handlebars were wonky, the brakes were squeaky and underpowered, the balance was way too front-heavy, and it only had one gear. That one gear was too low for fast speeds and straight-aways, and too high for low speeds and hillclimbs.
But goddamnit I did a hillclimb and biked in the rain and wind and didn't let that fucking bicycle beat me. I channeled my spite for this awful bicycle and in the end I actually enjoyed myself.
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2019 16:19:52 UTC
KFist
I cannot say this enough, but the FOSS attitude of responding to criticism and suggestions with a shrug and a "if you don't like it then learn to code and make a pull request yourself" is utterly cancerous. I can only surmise that such an attitude stems from, at best, deeply-seated autism, and at worst, actively self-defeating malice. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Monday, 11-Feb-2019 04:43:01 UTC
KFist
I'm not sure what it is, but LibreOffice Writer's text rendering is bothering me. It feels as if the kerning is inconsistent when actively rendering a page. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 04:18:55 UTC
KFist
padoruuuu.mp4 -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Sunday, 02-Dec-2018 13:43:35 UTC
KFist
It's amazing how quickly people mourn the death of a corrupt war criminal simply because they must hold the concept of ORANGE MAN BAD as inviolate in their minds. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Nov-2018 02:32:19 UTC
KFist
I find it really interesting to see how Patreon vampires operate. Let's say they start out their shitty "content creator" business at X videos per month. Then they start to get big and break through the usual 100K subscriber milestone on Youtube and start making paypig dosh. They start making donation goals for their Patreon subscribers, that requires extra effort, and so they end up going one of three ways. Usually by now they reach a stable Patreon monthly income, but one that doesn't increase to ludicrous levels. It always remains relatively constant regardless of subscribers and donators, and that's within the lower-middle-class incoming of $40k/yr to $80k/yr. For a single unmarried uninvolved male living in a city, $80k/yr is basically the pinnacle of what they dream to achieve. But in any case, they go one of those three ways.
Way the first: They set up a token Discord channel, token monthly updates for Patreon subs, and continue their usual video/month quota, although at a substantially and notably stagnant and uninterested level. They start phoning it in and begin a long slow decline.
Way the second: They start spamming their video output with substantially lower quality and leave their higher-quality videos for their Patreon subscribers. This leads to an overall decline in quality and stagnation. They eventually start phoning it in.
Way the third: They substantially decrease their video frequency, usually at the same level of effort as before, but begin hiding a lot of their content behind the Patreon paywall usually in addition to creating a (hue) dedicated Reddit board alongside a donator-only Discord channel. The e-begger is thus surrounded by only the types of people who would throw money at him like a whore at a strip club, and begin to separate themselves from the overwhelming majority of their fans/subscribers in order to appease the Patreon paypigs. Quality suffers, and they begin a long decline.
In all three ways, the quality of the content declines substantially over time, and it all comes down to greed and the amazingly misguided idea that you can make a full-time career out of dancing for Youtube money. How long is Youtube going to last? Another few years? It's never made a profit and Google is just about to keel over and drop dead with the tech crash. Then what will their resumes look like? Knows how to use a video editor and beg for money (201x to 2019)? Hence why the Sargoy the Applebees Waiter meme took off so well.
The main issue here is always starting to accept money for what was once a hobby or work of love. Never do this. To accept money ultimately makes one beholden to the donator in some way or another. Thus you turn the labor of your spare time into an actual job, except that now your hobbies have become your job, and that's to an exceedingly fickle and idiotic set of anonymous agents not bound by employment law.
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Monday, 19-Nov-2018 16:54:59 UTC
KFist
@awg @karolat Copypasta time. This one was from 2002 by a journalist of some sort back when journalism still had a sliver of credibility.
When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (it's precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared to the way life, and death, are regarded in Africa. Let me try to quantify this statement.
In Africa, life is cheap. There are so many ways to die in Africa that death is far more commonplace than in the West. You can die from so many things–snakebite, insect bite, wild animal attack, disease, starvation, food poisoning… the list goes on and on. At one time, crocodiles accounted for more deaths in sub-Saharan Africa than gunfire, for example. Now add the usual human tragedy (murder, assault, warfare and the rest), and you can begin to understand why the life expectancy for an African is low–in fact, horrifyingly low, if you remove White Africans from the statistics (they tend to be more urbanized, and more Western in behavior and outlook). Finally, if you add the horrifying spread of AIDS into the equation, anyone born in sub-Saharan Africa this century will be lucky to reach age forty.
I lived in Africa for over thirty years. Growing up there, I was infused with several African traits–traits which are not common in Western civilization. The almost-casual attitude towards death was one. (Another is a morbid fear of snakes.)
So because of my African background, I am seldom moved at the sight of death, unless it's accidental, or it affects someone close to me. (Death which strikes at strangers, of course, is mostly ignored.) Of my circle of about eighteen or so friends with whom I grew up, and whom I would consider "close", only about ten survive today–and not one of the survivors is over the age of fifty.
Two friends died from stepping on landmines while on Army duty in Namibia. Three died in horrific car accidents (and lest one thinks that this is not confined to Africa, one was caused by a kudu flying through a windshield and impaling the guy through the chest with its hoof–not your everyday traffic accident in, say, Florida). One was bitten by a snake, and died from heart failure. Another also died of heart failure, but he was a hopeless drunkard. Two were shot by muggers. The last went out on his surfboard one day and was never seen again (did I mention that sharks are plentiful off the African coasts and in the major rivers?). My situation is not uncommon in South Africa–and north of the Limpopo River (the border with Zimbabwe), I suspect that others would show worse statistics.
The death toll wasn't just confined to my friends. When I was still living in Johannesburg, the newspaper carried daily stories of people mauled by lions, or attacked by rival tribesmen, or dying from some unspeakable disease (and this was pre-AIDS Africa too) and in general, succumbing to some of Africa's many answers to the population explosion. Add to that the normal death toll from rampant crime, illness, poverty, flood, famine, traffic, and the police, and you'll begin to get the idea.
My favorite African story actually happened after I left the country. An American executive took a job over there, and on his very first day, the newspaper headlines read: "Three Headless Bodies Found".
The next day: "Three Heads Found".
The third day: "Heads Don't Match Bodies".
You can't make this stuff up.
As a result, death is treated more casually by Africans than by Westerners. I, and I suspect most Africans, am completely inured to reports of African suffering, for whatever cause. Drought causes crops to fail, thousands face starvation? Yup, that happened many times while I was growing up. Inter-tribal rivalry and warfare causes wholesale slaughter? Yep, been happening there for millennia, long before Whitey got there. Governments becoming rich and corrupt while their populations starved? Not more than nine or ten of those. In my lifetime, the following tragedies have occurred, causing untold millions of deaths: famine in Biafra, genocide in Rwanda, civil war in Angola, floods in South Africa, famine in Somalia, civil war in Sudan, famine in Ethiopia, floods in Mozambique, wholesale slaughter in Uganda, and tribal warfare in every single country. There are others, but you get the point.
Yes, all this was also true in Europe–maybe a thousand years ago. But not any more. And Europe doesn't teem with crocodiles, ultra-venomous snakes and so on.
The Dutch controlled the floods. All of Europe controls famine–it's non-existent now. Apart from a couple of examples of massive, state-sponsored slaughter (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia), Europe since 1700 doesn't even begin to compare to Africa today. Casual slaughter is another thing altogether–rare in Europe, common in Africa.
More to the point, the West has evolved into a society with a stable system of government, which follows the rule of law, and has respect for the rights and life of the individual–none of which is true in Africa.
Among old Africa hands, we have a saying, usually accompanied by a shrug: "Africa wins again." This is usually said after an incident such as:
a beloved missionary is butchered by his congregation, for no apparent reason
a tribal chief prefers to let his tribe starve to death rather than accepting food from the Red Cross (would mean he wasn't all-powerful, you see)
an entire nation starves to death, while its ruler accumulates wealth in foreign banks
a new government comes into power, promising democracy, free elections etc., provided that the freedom doesn't extend to the other tribe
the other tribe comes to power in a bloody coup, then promptly sets about slaughtering the first tribe
etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
The prognosis is bleak, because none of this mayhem shows any sign of ending. The conclusions are equally bleak, because, quite frankly, there is no answer to Africa's problems, no solution that hasn't been tried before, and failed.
Just go to the CIA World Fact Book, pick any of the African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi etc.), and compare the statistics to any Western country (eg. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland). The disparities are appalling–and it's going to get worse, not better. It has certainly got worse since 1960, when most African countries achieved independence. We, and by this I mean the West, have tried many ways to help Africa. All such attempts have failed.
1. Charity is no answer. Money simply gets appropriated by the first, or second, or third person to touch it (17 countries saw a decline in real per capita GNP between 1970 and 1999, despite receiving well over $100 billion in World Bank assistance).
2. Food isn't distributed. This happens either because there is no transportation infrastructure (bad), or the local leader deliberately withholds the supplies to starve people into submission (worse).
3. Materiel is broken, stolen or sold off for a fraction of its worth. The result of decades of "foreign aid" has resulted in a continental infrastructure which, if one excludes South Africa, couldn't support Pittsburgh.
Add to this, as I mentioned above, the endless cycle of Nature's little bag of tricks–persistent drought followed by violent flooding, a plethora of animals, reptiles and insects so dangerous that life is already cheap before Man starts playing his little reindeer games with his fellow Man–and what you are left with is: catastrophe.
The inescapable conclusion is simply one of resignation. This goes against the grain of our humanity–we are accustomed to ridding the world of this or that problem (smallpox, polio, whatever), and accepting failure is anathema to us. But, to give a classic African scenario, a polio vaccine won't work if the kids are prevented from getting the vaccine by a venal overlord, or a frightened chieftain, or a lack of roads, or by criminals who steal the vaccine and sell it to someone else. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, and offered to every African nation free of charge, the growth of the disease would scarcely be checked, let alone reversed. Basically, you'd have to try to inoculate as many two-year old children as possible, and write off the two older generations.
So that is the only one response, and it's a brutal one: accept that we are powerless to change Africa, and leave them to sink or swim, by themselves.
It sounds dreadful to say it, but if the entire African continent dissolves into a seething maelstrom of disease, famine and brutality, that's just too damn bad. We have better things to do–sometimes, you just have to say, "Can't do anything about it."
The viciousness, the cruelty, the corruption, the duplicity, the savagery, and the incompetence is endemic to the entire continent, and is so much of an anathema to any right-thinking person that the civilized imagination simply stalls when faced with its ubiquity, and with the enormity of trying to fix it. The Western media shouldn't even bother reporting on it. All that does is arouse our feelings of horror, and the instinctive need to do something, anything–but everything has been tried before, and failed. Everything, of course, except self-reliance.
All we should do is make sure that none of Africa gets transplanted over to the U.S., because the danger to our society is dire if it does. I note that several U.S. churches are attempting to bring groups of African refugees over to the United States, European churches the same for Europe. Mistake. Mark my words, this misplaced charity will turn around and bite us, big time.
Even worse would be to think that the simplicity of Africa holds some kind of answers for Western society: remember "It Takes A Village"? Trust me on this: there is not one thing that Africa can give the West which hasn't been tried before and failed, not one thing that isn't a step backwards, and not one thing which is worse than, or that contradicts, what we have already.
So here's my solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.
Inevitably, some Kissingerian realpolitiker is going to argue in favor of intervention, because in the vacuum of Western aid, perhaps the Communist Chinese would step in and increase their influence in the area. There are two reasons why this isn't going to happen.
Firstly, the PRC doesn't have that kind of money to throw around; and secondly, the result of any communist assistance will be precisely the same as if it were Western assistance. For the record, Mozambique and Angola are both communist countries–and both are economic disaster areas. The prognosis for both countries is disastrous–and would be the same for any other African country.
Africa has to heal itself. The West can't help it. Nor should we. The record speaks for itself. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Nov-2018 00:21:41 UTC
KFist
@nepfag @astheroth You heard it here first, Nepfag requires a daily sausage injection in order to live. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Thursday, 18-Oct-2018 16:26:22 UTC
KFist
Spotted this morning on the normalfag side of the internet:
Some slut complaining that the HPV vaccine will cost her $600 because she's an adult now, instead of "free" as a child in school. This raises a few questions she should have asked herself, but didn't because she was incapable of self-reflection and utterly fixated on the word "free"
1. "Free" doesn't mean free, it had to be paid for out of the pocket of the school district, which ostensibly is entirely funded by taxes, in which case it's just a roundabout deferred cost to the people, likely inflated in cost, and likely actually paid by continued loans.
2. So now that we conclude that these vaccines aren't actually free, what's the cost and benefit of all these kids getting vaccinated? Ostensibly it costs $12,000 per class per year, or the yearly taxes coming from this one outraged starbucks barista. Surely she'd be happy to find a class' worth of vaccinations, being so virtuous?
3. Why is an HPV vaccine so utterly necessary to begin with? Yes, the benefits may include significantly reduced rates of cervical cancer due to HPV causing certain types of cervical cancer, but that's about it. Good enough, surely a vaccine against cancer sounds amazing, but you have to also realize that it's actually rare to get HPV. Transmission is basically limited to direct sexual transmission, neonatal from the infected mother, transmission from dirty/infected hands to the genitals, and through shared objects like razors and sex toys. That means that HPV transmission can effectively be stopped through both safe sex practices for the habitually promiscuous, or simply not being a promiscuous slut. For those who are habitually promiscuous, who fell in love with someone who has genital warts, or in a generally high-risk category, they can opt-in to the vaccine as adults.
But the first question will never be answered because it admits that free things ain't free, the second will never be answered because "stop being a child-hating science denier," and the third will never be considered because "stop being a closed-minded anti-science slut-shaming bigot." -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Sunday, 16-Sep-2018 15:04:53 UTC
KFist
So I tend to deep lurk on some normalfaggot sites, never ever posting but always keeping my ear to the ground in order to identify just what the hell is going on in the normalfag section of the world.
Aside from the hilarious reactions to that weather channel clip where the guy in the hurricane was faking how strong it was, followed by all the normalfags going "yeah so even the weather channel makes fake news for clicks and sensationalism but I still 100% believe everything negative about Trump."
Lately I've noticed an undercurrent of misanthropism that's inherently antithetical to their stated beliefs, yet completely congruous with the reality and science they claim to embrace.
For example, there's often comments like
>we need to have IQ tests/licensing in order to become a parent [or hold important societal roles]
At that point you can immediately induce crimestop by pointing out that you, too, would like to see the overwhelming majority of blacks, hispanics, and the mentally ill being forcibly prevented from reproducing or holding important roles in society. If you catch them completely off guard, you can even get them to say "wait no IQ don't real."
Or better yet, I've seen more than a hearty amount of normalfags repeatedly state that we should throw the 1% into work camps, meat grinders, extermination camps, etc. You can then induce crimestop by pointing out that you, too, would enjoy seeing most Jews being thrown into forced labor camps or gas chambers. Bonus points if you point out that everyone living in the West with an income above the median in their country is essentially in the global 1%, and that you, too, would enjoy seeing the deaths of 80 million people (including almost all Jews, if they still have their heartstrings tugged by the thought of being a good shabbos goy).
It really is fun to watch normalfags act like they're free, independent, rational actors until you show them the outlines of their (open) prison cell, at which point they mentally leap back from those boundaries and insist that their prison cell is there for their own protection lest other people get harmed. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Sep-2018 22:06:18 UTC
KFist
@moonman Better yet if they do acknowledge China it's always handwaved away by "it'll never happen here" handwaving, nevermind that the very corporations which designed and implemented China's Great Firewall are companies like Cisco which already control most of the world's internet infrastructure anyways.
But it's okay, that kind of censorship Will Never Happen Here because it's only applied to evil nasty hate speech that hurts feelings. -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Sep-2018 21:58:51 UTC
KFist
>EU introduces yet another law designed to take away freedom and sovereignty from the nations under its control and the people it rules
>every single time, yuros immediately cuck out and go "haha yeah this is pretty bad but do you have FREE HEALTH CARE haha checkmate americlaps" -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Monday, 20-Aug-2018 21:27:34 UTC
KFist
Move back to rural towns and live virtuous lives and raise cute daughters you hikkiNEET assholes
t. Shinzo Abe
[HorribleSubs] Flying Witch - 0… -
KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Sunday, 22-Jul-2018 21:20:06 UTC
KFist
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Saturday, 21-Jul-2018 15:07:10 UTC
KFist
It doesn't matter whether you like dogs or like cats or like snakes or crickets or gerbils or whatever.
What really matters is which 2hu u wud fug.
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KFist (kfist@pl.smuglo.li)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 22:52:07 UTC
KFist
"Well, in the first place, an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing."
"To institute licensing and restricting the distribution of firearms to the citizenry is folly. Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose."
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All Bobinas P4G content and data are available under the 
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