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boom boom boom posted:Lindy West is a crazy lady who think you can be morbidly obese and healthy, and "the government is waging a war on fate people", I'm not really happy about This American life giving her a platform Gotta say I'm not a huge fan of hers, no doubt, and she's got a bit of a martyr complex. However I hate the faceless #gamergate shitheads more because of how destructive they are. So I'm stuck between rolling my eyes and shaking my head and now I have vertigo.
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Jun 24, 2016 02:29
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life is a joke posted:ps - I think that Elnas convo w her boyfriend was weird, but tbh i think if i told my girlfriend that we were recording for a nationally syndicated program we'd be brainstorming ideas on how to make it compelling, including asking "the tough questions" that normally wouldnt come up. I wonder if TAL employees just record all kinds of poo poo in case it might be useful one day, and their families just get used to it.
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Jun 24, 2016 05:10
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boom boom boom posted:Lindy West is a crazy lady who think you can be morbidly obese and healthy, and "the government is waging a war on fat people", I'm not really happy about This American life giving her a platform I, too, hate when they let people other then myself voice their opinions. Listening to people who say things I consider wrong, why would I do that.
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Jun 24, 2016 11:30
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Yeah, TAL has always spoken to fringe lunatics and even actual criminals. I don't think they should be told not to give anybody "a platform". But I am disappointed that Ira didn't bring any of their usual common sense skepticism to that piece.
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Jun 24, 2016 13:23
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cebrail posted:I, too, hate when they let people other then myself voice their opinions. Listening to people who say things I consider wrong, why would I do that. This American Life isn't Coast to Coast AM. They're usually sympathetic but not completely unskeptical. Like the episode they did about anti-vaxxers.
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Jun 24, 2016 13:25
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VagueRant posted:The part where she talked about different ethnicities noticing her as she lost weight was legit hilarious though. I find it incredible that in the middle of an episode about how society judges and dehumanizes certain segments of the population based on physical appearance, and how these effects are amplified if you're part of different minority, they throw in some racist-rear end jokes.
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Jun 24, 2016 16:23
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X-Ray Pecs posted:I find it incredible that in the middle of an episode about how society judges and dehumanizes certain segments of the population based on physical appearance, and how these effects are amplified if you're part of different minority, they throw in some racist-rear end jokes. I did notice that too, but as a brown dude I am into chubby girls so welp
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Jun 24, 2016 16:30
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X-Ray Pecs posted:I find it incredible that in the middle of an episode about how society judges and dehumanizes certain segments of the population based on physical appearance, and how these effects are amplified if you're part of different minority, they throw in some racist-rear end jokes. it pretty much perfectly encapsulates that whole 'movement' well. There's plenty of people just making the valid point of 'hey maybe don't be lovely to people because of how they look. Like, maybe be an adult?' That's fine, that's cool, that's a good message. But when you get to 'Michelle Obama trying to help kids eat better is BASICALLY a war on fat people as an identity' as if you're an oppressed minority that's when poo poo hits crazy town.
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Jun 25, 2016 06:33
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I liked Lindy's point, it made a lot of sense. Like other people have argued, losing a lot of weight is extremely extremely difficult. It's just not gonna happen for a lot of people. So you can either be miserable your whole life, or find a way to accept it and be happy. Maybe she's not the paragon of health, but who the gently caress is?
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Jun 27, 2016 18:34
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It's very difficult to quit smoking. But I wouldn't be too happy about This American Life uncritically airing a story about a guy who had decided it's impossible to quit smoking, smoking is an immutable part of his identity, and now he wants everybody to stop giving him poo poo about smoking all the time, or saying that smoking is somehow "unhealthy", and also the warning labels on cigarette packs are the government waging war on Smoking Americans.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:11
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AngryBooch posted:I also didn't really believe that Lindy West "trained" herself to believe that being immensely overweight was beautiful by looking at tumblr blogs when later in the episode she's married to a normal weight dude who gets hit on by women in bars. She is huge into double standards and if she was a guy she would be called out on it. She "trained" herself to see overweight woman as beautiful but that only applied to women not males. If you notice she always talks about overweight woman and girls at-least Ira refers to overweight people.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:08
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All I could think is if you're big enough to break chairs and knock over things around you as you pass through a room, you're not fat, you're morbidly obese and holy hell no amount of tumblr brain washing will make people view you as ~*~beautiful~*~. The hell.  Now that I think about it, her other story about confronting her cyber bully was pure stdh.txt too.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:28
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I thought it was lovely of the one woman to start an argument with her new husband for no reason with the "it bothers me that you wouldn't have been attracted to me when I was fat". What is he supposed to say? That's a no-win conversation for him. I understand that insecurity, but who does it benefit to bring it out into the open like that?
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Jun 28, 2016 02:17
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General Dog posted:who does it benefit to bring it out into the open like that? The audience that they were apparently taping for? Do you not bust out a recorder whenever you have a very emotionally charged moment in life?
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Jun 28, 2016 02:24
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Malcolm gladwell is the real scourge, as this latest episode shows, so who cares about Lindy west.
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Jun 28, 2016 03:16
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It's beginning to look a lot like red-dit
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Jun 28, 2016 03:26
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GrandpaPants posted:The audience that they were apparently taping for? Do you not bust out a recorder whenever you have a very emotionally charged moment in life? I might if I was a producer of TAL working on a segment about that very topic. Anyway I think it was his "this is the real you" idea that bugged her more, considering she can only really maintain her current weight with amphetamines
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Jun 28, 2016 03:41
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God, that fat episode hit waaaaay too close to home. Especially the second part. Back when I was in high school, I weighed 310 lbs. , and this was when the obesity epidemic was just coming into force. . I've been morbidly obese since I was 3. I don't think Lindsey in the first segment is THAT far off her rocker. There are tons of people and imagery that reviles fat people, and actually coming to terms that you're NOT disgusting, or worthless, or unlovable because you are fat is HUGE psychological leap that most fat people don't make. The part about people fake caring is also a too true point. Dan Savage is a little cowardly scum bag. When he first went after fat people, he did the same way children in the elementary school yard flop their hands limp wristedly at the "pussy" kids and calling them fags. Attacking in ways he know will hurt, because he feels little to no empathy. When he finally gets called out on it, his response was like it was bcc'ed to the HR department. Such a little poo poo. The second episode is the one that really hurt, because it describes so elegantly what I went through in my college years. During my college years, I took up body building, and I took it pretty seriously. I went from about 280 to 185. This is what people don't understand. When you've always thought of yourself as fat, you still think of yourself as fat. You do not get an increase in self confidence in losing weight. You do become happier. You become happier because people treat you better. Strangers, some of your friends, especially the opposite sex, and even my parents. Elna said she had trouble trusting people. I just continued to turn my cynicism inward and tell myself that everyone was loving playing with me (this took me a loooong time to grow out of). Eventually, some bad crap in real life happened, and I fell out of dieting and body building. I lost quite a bit of muscle and gained a bunch of the weight back. It was like a real life Flowers for Algernon. Everyone who was happy to see me no longer cared again. All of my old friends who were so proud of me were no longer so proud, and everyone who thought I was so intelligent and well educated went back to thinking I was a blowhard know-it-all. I actually handled it pretty well, since I was still in the "everyone was always loving with me to begin with" phase. If you've always seen yourself as the fat guy, it doesn't really turn off. That was about 8 years ago. I'm back to trying to lose weight, but I'm pretty horrible at it. I've dropped 25 lbs since I started trying, but it's stopped fat from there, and I still am a borderline morbidly obese guy at 235 lbs. I've been considering getting a gastric bypass, but without severe consequences to prompt for the surgery, none of the Doctor's I've seen will recommend it. Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur posted:By the way, the one argument that might stand in favor of being able to rewire your thinking to find fat objectively beautiful was that point about blacks and then latinos finding Elna attractive. I have a feeling that the black dudes loving fat white women is actually a function of black dudes being undesired by white women and thus these two groups meet in the middle and so then that becomes what they like.
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Jun 28, 2016 05:08
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how hard is it to differentiate concern about the obesity epidemic and support for real preventive measures (which is fine and something you can do/have) and going up to individual obese people on the street and telling them they need to lose weight and are unhealthy (which you should not do).
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Jun 28, 2016 19:43
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A large part is the real preventative measures are really in our culture's grasp and not in the hands of any politician or special interest group. Have you seen what school lunches look like under the healthy lunches initiative of the Obama administation? A small piece of the most artificial tasting pizza in the world, some carrots, and maybe a dab of a side or a browning piece of fruit. Compare this to what the other lunches around the world look like. Same calories, better nutrition, and far more appealing. Like most things, Americans are willing to jump for the lowest bidder. The Obamas' "teach kids to eat healthy" campaign completely ignores the fact that the children don't prepare the meals at home or choose which foods they're surrounded by. It's like lamenting the lack of a gym class. Running a few laps then going out to be picked last for Basketball doesn't push them towards a healthier lifestyle as an adult. The Oesity epidemic isn't something we warn about in the future... it is something that WE WERE warned about, and is already here! The detrimental health affects for people aged 10-35 who are morbidly obese are actually pretty rare, and usually have a genetic disposition for them. It's beyond that age that the piper comes for his pay. The people who need to lose weight are the people who are 35+ and sporting a gut. They're the ones driving the health system to ruins. Try telling a fat 62 year old to lose weight. You'll never get anything from them. ninjoatse.cx fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 02:39
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UltraRed posted:A large part is the real preventative measures are really in our culture's grasp and not in the hands of any politician or special interest group. It's part of the "gently caress 'Em, Let's Make Money" mentality of America. Fat people? gently caress 'em, they got it coming and they make food companies scads of money now and the pharm/health industries later. And in the meantime, here's a magic weight loss device for sale. Kids need lunches? gently caress 'em, we ain't spending my tax money on food or food preparers. Kids need food, fitness, and health education? gently caress 'em, that's extracurricular nonsense, or gently caress schools, or gently caress anything that isn't STEM. Old person has health problems? gently caress 'em, they don't spend enough money on anything except drugs. It's about money and it's about not caring about others. If those aren't the same thing anyhow, they sure go hand in hand.
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Jun 29, 2016 03:29
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Personally I found Malcolm Gladwell stretching out a five minute anecdote into a forty minute segment far more irritating than being asked to empathize with fat people.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:54
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This American Life is often terrible in different ways.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:56
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Radiolab this week is about a fuckup whose life is changed when he hears an episode of This American Life and decides that becoming a radio producer is his calling. I'm done with podcasts for a while.
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Jul 13, 2016 12:53
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sparksbloom posted:Malcolm Gladwell sparksbloom posted:stretching out a five minute anecdote into a forty minute segment turevidar posted:Radiolab this week is about a fuckup whose life is changed when he hears an episode of This American Life and decides that becoming a radio producer is his calling.
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Jul 14, 2016 03:57
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Scott Carrier is cool tho. The part I didn't like is that it was supposed to be this rock bottom to the top story, and the fact that the guy always had welcoming parents and privilege and the ability to always buy equipment to record his croatian backpacking party adventures killed it. It sucks that his friend died but the setup for the kick-me-while-im-down reveal didn't translate the way they wanted it to. I really feel like something special was there, but my man with his prestigious job after some typical listless mid-20's comfortable wandering wasn't the right vehicle for it. Also the Scott Carrier story that he cites as his inspiration doesn't end on a hopeful note, it's just desert burnouts with untreated mental problems trying to not get arrested. Radiolab storyteller mournfully points out that all his recordings w/ his buddy are all about him, and then in a retrospective perverts a depressing grinder of a production into an affirmation.
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Jul 14, 2016 05:08
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snucks posted:Halfway through Krulwich goes "is there a story here?" and then 30 minutes later the twist is no, not really. It was a bit self masturbatory, sure, but I thought it was an interesting introspective look into the industry. I mean, we were just talking about how annoying it must be to have a partner/spouse record every loving thing in hopes that it bears (audio) fruit. This guy tried, missed the "money shot" so to speak, and the result of the rest is just boring poo poo which had no better effect than to drastically affect his relationships and indeed, his own actions. Not a great episode by any means, but I can appreciate the subtext.
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Jul 15, 2016 14:54
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Business posted:Malcolm gladwell is the real scourge, as this latest episode shows, so who cares about Lindy west. I cited this godawful segment in a piece I just wrote. The entire "sports statistics are on the outside guys!!!!" thing is provably horseshit and only serves to obscure the potentially interesting thing about people's natural herding instincts. People have been trying to sell me on Gladwell's podcast and that segment's proof enough for me that it's poo poo.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:00
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I missed "The Informant" episode 15 years ago and it was nice to hear it for the first time. I thought it was a retread of the movie before they explained "someone made a movie of this, based on our episode". Neat!
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Jul 18, 2016 22:40
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I caught part of this week's episode on the air yesterday, and it was great. They sent a bunch of their reporters over to a refugee camp in Greece, where lots of people are living from places like Syria and Afghanistan. It's got politics, discrimination, convoluted bureaucracies, near-death escapes, melancholy family stories, a goony teenager building a sweet fort, grandmas getting blown up by explosives, arguments over cigarette smoking, a dude trying to make a skype call... it's like pure distilled TAL 
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Jul 31, 2016 20:45
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Part 2 this week. Act 4 is brutal. 
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Aug 8, 2016 22:29
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The Modern Leper posted:Part 2 this week. Act 4 is brutal. Wow what a cavalcade of dicks. The driver who couldn't wait two seconds, the husband who refused to use condoms even if it could prevent the death of his wife of eleven years, and the doctor who assumed no Muslim would have an abortion without bothering to ask. Also hope that, if the worst happens, the two year old doesn't grow up thinking she killed her mom with a temper tantrum.
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Aug 10, 2016 11:08
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The part where they laughed it off is what got to me. He doesn't like to use condoms! Hahaha!
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Aug 13, 2016 02:13
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Thanks to this week's episode for reminding me that listening to audio of an improv show is just about the worst genre of This American Life segments.
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Aug 17, 2016 05:48
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X-Ray Pecs posted:Thanks to this week's episode for reminding me that listening to audio of an improv show is just about the worst genre of This American Life segments. That's segment is why people make fun of improv
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Aug 17, 2016 08:17
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Yeah, I would have preferred just leaving the stories as cute anecdotes, rather than comedians improvising the jokes that were already in the stories. And there was so much of it, goddamn.
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Aug 17, 2016 14:59
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Yeah, I had to skip it. Goddamn that was poo poo.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:15
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I tried to bounce back and forth to catch the stories, but the "jokes" started to bleed into the stories and I had to stop. It's a shame, because I actually like a couple of the comedians. Still and all... ugh.
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Aug 17, 2016 20:42
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The one joke that totally landed was that Michael Jackson glove joke. It was near the beginning and I had high hopes but it was all downhill from there
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Aug 18, 2016 08:49
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The PI story was amazing
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Aug 23, 2016 15:25
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