AverageBear
Liberal NPC
No bio...
User ID: 2549
3/ Alt-right movement
Why nobody heard about these people before?
Because it's convenient? There are two groups, the Goyim Defense League and the Blood Tribe.
The Goyim Defense League has made national news before, most prominently for hanging the "Kanye Was Right About The Jews" banner over an LA Overpass last year.
Polhaus, leader of the Blood Tribe has been an activist for years under various different group names, including the "Hammer" brand since at least early 2021 when his telegram channel had ~6k members. where he apparently also sold white nationalist branded merch.
Why they walk away scot free, no matter how many crimes they do?
They don't. Kent Ryan McLellan who claims he went and fought in Ukraine at the behest of the CIA has been arrested and jailed several times according to FL court records.
Where they get money for their stunts?
Judging from the court documents, selling meth.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
Good read! Speaking of Godot, they capitalized by announcing their new gofundme today. Good bit of PR.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
In the same boat as you. Former amateur game dev, mostly in the traditional roguelike genre. Unity is that perfect mix of "I can do 75% of what I want to do really quickly. But the last 25% is going to be wild."
At the risk of pissing off many other developers, it gives me Python vibes in that respect.
Some of the more successful games use parts of Unity then circumvent it for stuff like the actual game engine. Rimworld for example.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
Yamamoto was an active general flying in a military transport with a fighter escort.
This is not really the same.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
7mo ago
I like your contributions despite normally disagreeing, but I think you're off-base here and being (perhaps unintentionally) rude to OP.
The OP provided helpful background information, stated and backed up his position, and provides a good jumping off point for further discussion.
Doing this adds length to the post, yes. But adding an engine to a car and adding a steel block is materially different despite them both increasing the weight.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
Research is inconclusive, but it doesn't really matter because conservatives equally believe this "fever-dream".
Whether a state adopts strict voter ID laws correlates to number of Republican legislators, but this correlation is much-stronger in competitive states.
MIT Election Labs has some good analysis on various election topics, including voter identification. Both liberals and conservatives largely support voter ID laws in theory.
From their analysis, most states that actually adopt strict voter ID laws share the following:
- A Republican takeover of the state government after years of Democratic control,
- Being a “battleground state” (i.e., a state hotly contested by the political parties), and
- Being racially heterogeneous.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
7mo ago
Small point, but I wouldn't say New York is going after Trump for "wanting to be president".
Just "wanting to make him suffer" is more accurate. Had he announced he wouldn't be seeking re-election after 2020, I'm fairly confident these cases would have proceeded regardless.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
Yeah, the critique felt a little weak. Specifically because the primary critique is noted in the study itself:
These findings are based on exploratory analyses in a modestly sized sample that represents a high-functioning subset (e.g., 31% screen-in rate) of the total homeless population in Vancouver. Thus, our results may not extend to people who are chronically homeless or experience higher severity of substance use, alcohol use, or psychiatric symptoms.
What would have been a more convincing approach would be instead focusing on this statement found in both the news story and press release, but missing from the study itself:
The study did not include participants with severe levels of substance use, alcohol use or mental health symptoms, but Dr. Zhao pointed out that most homeless people do not fit these common stereotypes. Rather, they are largely invisible. They sleep in cars or on friends’ couches, and do not abuse substances or alcohol.
This statement does a lot of work in justifying the policy implications of cash infusions because if 31% of the homeless passed their entrance requirements, and it's a representative sample, then 31% or more of the homeless at-large could be conceivably impacted.
I have no idea if his assertion is true or not, but that seems the most potentially dubious framing.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
The point of war isn’t to win quickly. The point of war is to achieve a political objective, and speed is just one factor to consider.
Would bombing civilian infrastructure, looting and raping the populace, and obliterating their people speed up a war? Possibly.
Would this also alienate your allies, impact your own people’s perception of your armed forces, leave you with psychologically damaged soldiers, and ultimately risk other countries deciding that if you’re willing to do that, you’re willing to do that to them and they should get involved more actively? Possibly.
There’s also that most people generally don’t like to think of themselves as monsters, even towards their enemies. It would be a lot faster to put death-row inmates in a pit and shoot them - the end result is the same - but we don’t do that because of how it makes us as the killers feel.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
9mo ago
I'd love to see an effort post on this.
I had never heard of drill before - but even if you're not a rap fan I think there's something to appreciate here.
The concept of neighborhood beefs escalating due to YouTube fame, and the soundtrack of this becoming internationally famous feels amazingly cyberpunk.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
7mo ago
I like Lee and wouldn't have been upset if she was picked, but the incumbent advantage is real and Newsom not tipping the scales in the next election seems like a prudent move.
I do hope she wins in the next cycle though.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
10mo ago
Could you provide some supporting evidence for why you believe this movie's criticism is due to separate conspiracies by Disney, the State Department, and the CIA?
How does Disney benefit from attacking a movie that, at the time of the rolling stones article, had earned 25% of what Indiana Jones had done at the domestic box office?
Why would the CIA be particularly troubled by this movie showing the cartels involved in human trafficking, but not others?
Why would the State Department's main lever of shutting a movie down to be releasing negative critical reviews after release, as opposed to a myriad of powers it could presumably exercise for a movie by a former DHS employee that was partially filmed in California?
There was also that whole opening an impeachment inquiry without a house vote, which he claimed he wouldn't do shortly before doing it.
And when that failed to win him the support he needed, after relying on Democrat votes to pass the CR, said the next day the Dems "tried to do everything they could to not let it pass". The latter was apparently played to Democrats in the meeting where they decided to vote against him.
Still, who knows if this works out for them aside from making the Republicans look chaotic for a bit.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
I read this, felt immense respect for them upholding the ideals of The Motte in a way I probably couldn't, then realized I was also blocked by them
That's a roller coaster of emotion.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
6mo ago
Tide of public opinion" was creation of mass media that decided in Feb 2022 to play up this war as much as possible
Alternatively, "major historical enemy catastrophically fails to invade tiny neighbor" doesn't require a conspiracy to be a captivating news story.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
6mo ago
I'm skeptical about this. I did some brief searching and most research seems to have pretty clear definitions for what constitutes political violence.
Those concessions were systematically undermined and ignored for decades
By other states - not the federal government. As recently as 1859 the year before Lincoln's election, the supreme court ruled in Ableman v Booth that state "personal liberty" laws didn't supercede the Fugitive Slave Act.
The irony is that framing the civil war as a matter of states rights isn't wrong...but it was over northern states asserting their rights to reject constitutional but morally unjust laws.
For an extra dose of irony, South Carolina nearly seceded during the 1830's...because they felt that states should have the right to nullify federal laws they found unconstitutional. And when the federal government capitulated, but reasserted that they could use military force to make states comply, South Carolina symbolically nullified that!
The secessionist states wanted a federal government that would force states to follow laws they found morally abhorrent - yet only for specific laws that would benefit the South.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
6mo ago
the Civil War was more about Federal control over the states than it was about slavery.
I don't buy it. The only reason the southern states feared federal control was because they feared it would be used to end slavery.
basis of this refusal was of course slavery, but it could have been something else.
Could I ask what that something else could possibly be? It would have to be an extreme wedge issue that the seceding states considered an existential risk to their continued way of life.
In an alternate timeline where the southern states remained in the union but abolished slavery, the only thing I could think of would be the enfranchisement of former slaves.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
7mo ago
Can anyone explain the (apparently) imminent government shut down? It looks like it's driven by disagreement about spending cuts between different Republican factions in the house, but I haven't found a good breakdown.
I briefly read through the ruling so I might have missed it, but how are you certain the over-valuation of these properties didn't affect the terms or availability of any loan/insurance/financial agreement?
The bank doesn’t care I exaggerated.
The bank absolutely does care about your debt-to-asset ratio for a multitude of reasons, but more importantly they care if you're a liar.
A $10 million loan to someone with $1-2b in assets is likely a low risk for default. A $10 million loan to someone who lies on their financial statements is a reputational and financial risk.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
9mo ago
The Sengoku Jidai was a huge breakdown of central authority, civil war, and constant factional warfare.
The closest modern equivalent would probably be a narco-state like Brazil or Colombia. I'm not sure you would call these societies well-functioning.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
9mo ago
He motivated "Democrat" voters so much, they sometimes voted multiple times in different states!
This is a specific claim I haven't seen yet. Could you link the evidence?
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
8mo ago
This protest had 15 people between two aligned groups. I'm not convinced you need to be a master statesmen to gather these kinds of numbers.
I did another brief search and found Polhaus fundraising as of 2020.. I'm sure he has been around for awhile.
AverageBear
Liberal NPC
9mo ago
left wing people are more narcissistic
This is examining left-wing authoritarianism. The study mentions similar studies on right-wing authoritarianism finding similar results.
Fresh controversial gaming news.
If you're not familiar with Unity, it's one of the more popular game engines in use today, especially for Indy developers. It's frequently recommended for it's relative ease of use, and up until now, generous licensing. Even if you're a very casual gamer, you've probably played some games built on this platform like Pokemon Go, Beat Saber, or Monument Valley.
Today, Unity has announced some significant pricing changes. Most controversial seems to be that beyond a certain revenue and install threshold, developers will be paying Unity per install of their game. As in, if you uninstall and reinstall the game, the dev gets charged twice.
This has managed to piss off the usual suspects of game developers, games journalists, and gamers. Many an angry comment written by Dorito stained keyboards are flooding messageboards and twitter about how this is the death of gaming. (Tongue-in-cheek by the way, as a non-game developer I find the pricing model half-baked.)
But what's really interesting is the potential for misuse that I predict will occur for the next controversial game. While Unity has said they'll try to limit malicious behavior, they're providing gamers with the ability to charge developers money by essentially clicking the uninstall/reinstall button.
Any predictions for how quickly we see the first weaponization of this tool?
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