Open Thread

Open Thread #168

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37 thoughts on “Open Thread #168

    1. This article is worth reading. The elites have been working on destroying the global supply chain, and this article goes into quite some detail of the chaos on the ground.

    2. @Sleazy’s Wife
      There are other issues as well that many people are not aware of. California as essentially killed the trucking industry over the years especially for those that are independent contractors. Now a days, very few drivers are independent contractors. Part of it is DOT (department of transportation). They have implemented so many negative policies from the amount of time you’re able to drive behind the wheel, mandatory breaks etc. Commercial’s drivers can easily lose their license and have it revoked. Insurance and vehicle registration is extremely expensive in California. Some companies and independent contractors have their fleet register in other states because the fees here in California are outrages. In addition, drivers are held to a high standard of driving. If there’s one common denominator among commercial drivers is that they all hate CHP (California Highway Patrol) which oversees a lot of commercial vehicles and transportation. They can stop a commercial vehicle and inspect it to make sure the load is not too heavy and the list goes on. In the end, there’s really no incentives for truckers now a days. I have family members that are in the trucking industry and some acquaintances as well.

      I found this link about the ports as well. I would like to add that China has also bought a few ports in Mexico. Its just a matter of time before China owns Mexico.

  1. The Chinese are getting better at retro-style video games as well. Here is Tencent’s take on the NeoGeo classic Metal Slug:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJTCntNlwck
    The 3D style is quite appealing, looking far better than what many Western studios pump out. The game, unfortunately, has gambling/gacha mechanics and is mobile-only at this point. If this came to Steam, with the free-to-play elements removed, I would probably check it out. Note that this game is only available in China thus far, but it is scheduled for a Western release next year.

  2. I was looking for manga recommendations online earlier today, and for giggles I compared DDG with Google. For some reason, when I searched for “hot manga” or “seedy manga”, Google pointed me towards the “boy love” sub-genre, which I did not know it even exists. I am sure it is a complete coincidence that Google pointed me towards faggot mangas, which must be an incredibly small niche, whereas DDG returned long lists full of promising cis-hetero-normative misogynist harem mangas instead.

    1. I highly recommend the works of Boichi, who is a true master of the manga craft. A good place to start is “Wallman” which is one of his shorter series, it’s an action story about assassins.
      Another short series is “Origin” which is a sci-fi story about androids battling for supremacy while seeking an identity of their own.
      “Sun Ken Rock” is a longer Boichi series which is also finished and well liked by fans, though perhaps more for the action and fan service than for the plot. It’s about a penniless young man rising to the position of mob boss to impress a girl he loves.

      Almost all of Boichi’s solo work features masculine warrior protagonists and super hot chicks as side characters. The fanservice sometimes goes so far as to include explicit sex scenes. Recently he’s been drawing “Dr Stone” which is written by the Death Note guy, but that’s for kids so the violence and hot chicks are unfortunately toned down.

      Another manga I’d recommend which is definitely for adults is “Shinjuku Swan” by Ken Wakui. It’s about a guy who becomes a talent scout in Tokyo’s adult entertainment business. The protagonist is a naive kid with white knight tendencies who is trying to establish himself in a field full of black pilled grifters, manipulators, pimps, gangsters and addicts. The series has a lot of drama and offers a look into the seedy underbelly of Tokyo’s nightlife. It’s pretty funny at times too.

    2. Thanks for those recommendations! I have not yet heard of Boichi, but I recall coming across Sun Ken Rock before, without checking it out. The style of the drawings certainly appeal to me, so I will give it a shot. The others also seem interesting.

    3. Also, how did you come across Ken Wakui? For me, discovery is a big issue as I do not follow this scene closely. MyAnimeList has a section for mangas that lists user recommendations for every manga in their database. I found this to be of limited use. If you know of any online curators then please let me know. I like masculine topics, and I do not mind eye candy at all. Also, I do not necessarily only read for escapism. One of the most fascinating mangas I have come across is Goodnight Punpun. I cannot say that I enjoyed reading it, but it is thought-provoking and I am grateful that this manga exists.

    4. I mostly read manga on aggregate sites like Mangadex, Mangafreak and Mangareader. Such sites often show a few “recommendations of similar series” when you browse the summary page of a manga. Like if you’re reading Berserk you may be recommended Claymore and Goblin Slayer. This is my main method of discovering new series to check out. I will give a series a chance and read a few chapters if it has good art and the synopsis sounds promising. I do end up sifting through a bit of gravel to find the nuggets of gold.

      I don’t remember exactly what I was reading when I found Ken Wakui’s work in the recommended section, but it may have been “Boys on the Run” by Kengo Hanazawa.

      Occassionally I will check an image board like 4chan and stumble on something interesting since manga are posted on almost every board there if relevant to the discussion topic. That’s how I came across the titles “Downfall” by Inio Asano, “Jagaaan” and “Ride-on King”.

      On the topic of “Boy’s Love” manga, these are made entirely for a female audience by female artists and writers. Characters in BL manga are androgynous and often have an effeminate psyche and attitude to love and sex. It is theorized by some that sexually inexperienced Japanese women prefer to project their sexuality on male-male couples rather than to face the reality of a male-female coupling where the woman is painfully deflowered and potentially impregnated.
      Actual Japanese gay men are reportedly more into “Bara” manga which feature rough, hairy muscular dudes who think and talk like men.

    5. Thanks for your thorough reply, Burt! I really appreciate it as my exposure to manga and anime is at a much more superficial level. Some of the most interesting work I discovered via a “recommendation chart” someone posted on Reddit, which led me to Goodnight Punpun and Claymore. I was not even aware of the aggregator sites you mentioned. I bookmarked MangaHub a few years ago and skim it every once in a while.

    6. As a quick follow-up: Would you consider Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure a “Bara” manga? I have not read it but whenever I see someone post an image from it, I think that it is probably the gayest global media franchise there is. Seeing how warmly embraced it is in the West, it probably promotes some rather rotten morals.

    7. I would not consider Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure to be a Bara manga. Bara manga is overtly made as explicit gay pornography for homosexual adults. Jojo’s Bizarre adventure is intended as entertainment for ages 12 and up, the homosexual themes in it are more insidious. The characters are officially straight but they often display the behavior and aesthetic of out-of-the-closet gay men.

      From the beginning of JJBA in 1986 the character designs were inspired by bodybuilding, but as the years went by the primary source inspiration became fashion magazines. The story of the manga is divided into several arcs (8 so far) with different protagonists who are all related. The first Jojo had a body like a male fitness model and a jawline like Gigachad at age 12. This trend continued with the 2nd and 3rd Jojo, but the 4th had a slim twink body and an effeminate face with a weak chin. This softboy aesthetic continued with the 5th, 7th and 8th Jojo. The 6th one is actually a real girl.

      Meanwhile the clothes the protagonists wore gradually changed from regular 19th century men’s attire to increasingly outrageous, flaming high fashion looks. It is well known that men in the fashion industry tend to be gay.
      To the uninitiated it may appear that JJBA’s visuals have transitioned from straight masculinity to femininity/queerness. But the truth is that bodybuilding is also fundamentally a gay subculture.
      “Magazine covers and websites’ representations of men in bodybuilding are often homoerotic. Additionally, for bodybuilders in need of money in the very competitive industry, “hustling” – or same sex sexual favors in exchange for money – or participation in gay pornography are viable options to make a quick buck (Klein, 1989).” – https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultures-and-scenes/bodybuilders/

      Arnold Schwarzenegger also discusses this in his first autobiography “Education of a Bodybuilder” first published in 1977. Arnold himself is straight, but he found himself approached by gay men willing to sponsor his bodybuiding career in exchange for intimitate favors.

      So JJBA changed from one type of gayness to another over time. Besides the increasingly queer costumes Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is also famous for having characters do flamboyant and dynamic poses. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jojos-pose

      Such poses can be found in both of the manga’s aesthetic inspirations, fashion magazines and bodybuilding. These are two cultural expressions that are all about vanity and desperate attention seeking. In summary, your gut feeling that JJBA is a gay manga is essentially correct as it normalizes queerness and foppish attention seeking as opposed to modesty and stoic, understated masculinity.

    8. Thanks for sharing all those insights! You seem to be a real expert on manga.

      To add one note on bodybuilding culture: people used to joke that guys take roids in order to impress other men, which is not that much of a joke. In fact, you limit your chances with success with women with roiding as only a small subset of women will find the exaggerated physique attractive, just like only some men will, in real life, find the plastic look of women who had extensive cosmetic surgery done on them appealing. In real life, such women look freakish, in my opinion, and it looks worse the older they get. Anybody working in a big office pre-Covid probably has had a few female co-workers who went for that look.

      Also, I know one guy who is not gay but heavily into bodybuilding. He no longer needs to work a 9-to-5 due to some trading luck and because he hit on a gold mine; he is an e-gigolo and makes money via video websites. The money seems to be good. Then there is a guy I met in real life a little over a decade ago who always wore very flamboyant clothes and seemed very effeminate, yet he basically jumped from one chick to another. I never fully grasped how he made a living, but I got plenty of hints via his Facebook page. Basically, he posted pictures of himself on big yachts and expensive hotels. It seems that this dude was a real-life gigolo, probably for gay men. I cannot quite wrap my head around putting on the twink persona, presumably playing the bottom part in those homosexual encounters, and picking up chicks.

    1. I f*cking love SCIENCE! and I am glad that we are spending millions on such bullshit. I can readily imagine a future in which regular condoms will be banned because they discriminate against “people without a penis”, so you will have to buy a less effective and much more expensive alternative like the one mentioned in this article.

  3. YouTube just recommended I watch the German propaganda movie “Fact vs. fake – why don’t we trust science any more?”, which is a product of Deutsche Welle. This is the German equivalent of RT or Al Jazeera. I do not even need to watch it to know that it will only smear people who criticize mainstream bullshit that is masquerading as “science”, calling them conspiracy theorists or possibly even domestic terrorists. Feel free to have a look yourself:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frCIYEyURV0

    Just read the first two paragraphs of the poorly written description:

    “Asbestos, climate change, 5G, coronavirus – the public is caught in a battle for the truth. Science is being manipulated and undermined to sway opinion and create doubt. What are the mechanisms behind it all?

    Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and widely shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged.”

    Well, faggots, if you actually followed science instead of “cancelling” anybody who asks how come that, for instance, the WHO redefines the term “pandemic” so that ZOG can push a global lockdown mandate due to a supposed virus that seems to be no threat at all, except for the sick and morbidly obese. Never have we quarantined the healthy, but if you question what the hell is going on, you are the problem because you no longer blindly accept science, as if science is nothing more than a religion. Well, “SCIENCE!” is a religion; science, in contrast, is not.

    1. Ironically, I believe the elites want to eradicate all the old and the sick. Essentially, anyone who isn’t fit enough to serve ZOG or needlessly uses up precious resources (my precious!). And it’s also nice that they can simultaneously whip everyone else into compliance since virus scary and bad. Just kidding, if you actually think this is part of some kind of global revolution set on total tyrannical domination of all cultures and peoples, then you’re obviously a serial killer who wants grandma to suffer before xhe dies.

    2. An interesting aspect here is that the elites seem oblivious to the limited efficacy of fear mongering. You can create an artificial panic about the ‘rona that lasts for maybe one or two months but eventually people realize that hardly anybody is dying. Yet, instead of adjusting to this, our moronic elite just keeps pushing the agenda, not realizing that it makes them look less and less trustworthy. For instance, if Covid is so dangerous then why am I still alive, two years in? Either I am doing something right, which means that I do not need the vaxx, or it means that this is all bullshit because nobody is really suffering from this, except the old and infirm, and all those poor souls who got into a traffic accident and subsequently died not of a smashed skull but due to Covid. It would also help if the establishment presented a coherent argument for why the vaxx only works if everybody is vaxxed, how it is possible that I can have a disease without any symptoms, and why a vaxx with an effectiveness that is rapidly dropping down to zero becomes more effective if I get indefinitely many boosters of the same concoction. Those would be some tough questions to answer, so it is much easier to shriek incoherent insults.

      When I skimmed the news yesterday, I learned that the climate summit in Europe is “humanity’s last chance” to save the planet. Yet, those f*cktards have been pushing climate panic for sixty years now. Seriously, how can you be so incredibly stupid to not realize that your message has lost all its power? A few generations ago, the young elites would have read Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” as kids, and learned something from it. Today, the young elites learn that there are six gorillion genders and if you question SCIENCE! you are a terrorist, and once you put those people in front of the levers of powers, you get Clown World.

    3. For instance, if Covid is so dangerous then why am I still alive, two years in?

      And most people will also say that after 2 years nobody personally knows someone who was seriously affected by it. Most of the time you can’t even find a person who knows a person who knows a person.

    1. Aaron,
      It is funny! For one thing, people’s ability to rationalize has dropped so much over the past year. I can’t recall which U.S. President said it, but he said, “people won’t believe anything you tell them unless they see in on television.” I’m just amazed how people perceive television to be an accurate source of information. This goes for Wikipedia as well. If we did a social experiment where Government banned all forms of social media and television networks, would this hypothetically increase peoples IQ by two points now since they have to start using their frontal cortex? Now, they have to observe and use basic deduction and induction in the real world?

  4. I recently found out that Charles Schwab bought out TD Ameritrade at some point, and I found this information online:

    “Schwab will be moving client accounts and assets from TD Ameritrade to Schwab’s platform in the second half of 2023.

    The company will start communicating and getting the integration going from an advisor perspective in earnest in the second half of 2022.

    Advisors should expect a brief blackout on certain functions as the conversion gets closer, but not for trading and Move Money.”

    I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable investing money on a platform that is owned by some dickhead that wants you to ultimately own nothing and be happy about it. It would seem as if the elites are moving the chess pieces little by little.

    1. The “you own nothing and will be happy” line is probably a lot more sinister than is commonly acknowledged. In my view, it is a threat. I find it entirely possible that the idea is to pump people full of drugs in order to sedate them. Then, you strip them of their belongings and throw them in concentration camps (Australia is building these already) where they will eventually die. Pumping people full of happiness-creating drugs is a key element in Huxley’s Brave New World. This guy was one of the architects of the system the elites have been putting in place, so this book is closer to non-fiction than fiction. He also wrote “Brave New World Revisited” where he discusses the ideas he presents in his novel, and how they relate to contemporary society. That being said, I am sure this is all just a big coincidence. They elites would never pump us full of drugs, and highly potent opioids like fentanyl probably came into existence by mere happenstance, and not because some billionaires like the Jewish Sackler family pushed it onto Middle America as well as the underclass.

    2. No worries. Charles Schwab is part of the elite power structure, so it does not undermine your point.

  5. As is well known, Germany is a very attractive destination for African doctors and engineers due to the very generous welfare system. You get food, shelter, housing, and if you rape a local, you get a slap on the wrist, if you are unlucky. Now the mainstream has started to wonder if showering illegal immigrants with money incentivized illegal immigration:
    https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/plus234801892/Sozialleistungen-und-Asylzuwanderung-welchen-Zusammenhang-gibt-es.html
    They are still not quite sure but at least the aforementioned thesis is no longer dismissed outright as being completely outlandish. Effing clown world!

  6. Pfizer falsified vaxx trial data, but don’t worry, goy, the vaxx is safe regardless. Here are some highlights:

    – Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff
    – Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events
    – Protocol deviations not being reported
    – Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures
    – Mislabelled laboratory specimens, and
    – Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/falsified-data-pfizer-vaccine-trial-had-major-flaws-whistleblower-tells-peer-reviewed
    There is nothing to see here. You still need to get the vaxx and infinite boosters because the sniffles are much worse than getting the sniffles and blood clots, facial paralysis, or any of the many other coincidental side effects.

    1. What’s crazy is that all the data is out there but the average person is either purposefully pretending like they don’t see it or they know they made a stupid decision and want to take others down with them.

      At the end of the day, I don’t understand this extreme/ massive push to get everyone vaxxed. Some countries, like Canada, are almost at 80% fully vaxxed yet they keep pushing it. I though herd immunity was 70% of the population?

    2. The latest trick is no longer testing the vaxxed as well as constantly redefining what it means to be vaxxed. The outcome is that if you end up in hospital or die of vaxx side effects, you tend to die as an unvaxxed person. It is all so sickening.

    3. This surely is a total coincidence. I mean, it just does not make any sense that the FDA would approve blood thinners for kids given how safe and effective the vaxx is. Also, why would Big Pharma want to make many billions of dollars both on your monthly vaxx subscription and your blood thinners?

      The UK is spending big on blood thinners as well, surely for no discernible reason at all:
      https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/unprecedented-nhs-england-3-2-billion-tender-for-blood-clot-treatment/
      Note that Google seems to suppress this article, which is another strange coincidence. Surprisingly, for my search it was the first result on Bing.com, so I should probably give Microsoft a little bit of credit.

  7. There is yet another big Chinese game coming out, Honor of Kings: World:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XEL1N3WCu4
    The West has always lagged behind Japan in terms of gameplay, and now it seems that China is going to take the lead in graphics. Thankfully, we can keep relying on Western studios for pushing wokism because I would not know what I would do without ugly women and an infinite number of blacks in my vidya.

    1. This looks like a better-looking version of Monster Hunter with smoother gameplay. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Chinese citizens restricted in how much money and time they can spend playing video games? I can see these AAA types of games doing quite well worldwide, especially in the West where, as you mentioned, all our vidya has been ‘diversified.’

    2. From what I gather, the Chinese are restricting online gaming to a few hours a week for children. Adults have to work 9-9-6 (from nine a.m. to nine p.m six days a week), so vidya is probably not really on their mind. Restricting microtransactions is a good move. I wish we could do the same in the West as this would change the industry for the better.

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