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1yr ago
What exactly makes them a freak?
Also, why would you say that went out of their way to hire Brinton? They have dual masters' degrees in nuclear engineering from MIT & plenty of relevent work experience. I'd say they earned their position. Is that not enough for the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy?
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1yr ago
how is it not his fault that he makes his "puppy play" fetish part of his public persona?
This 'public persona' is a part of their private life that has now been made public by the media. A lot of people do a lot of interesting shit - I'm sure if we followed other mid-tier government officials closely we'd find some interesting shit too. But it's not like they're doing anything illegal here either.
Why can't he keep his kinks and fetishes inside the bedroom?
Because they don't have to? I keep my sexual life private as most people do. But I don't do that because it's against the law. I do it because I choose to do so. If someone else has a different approach, good for them. This isn't exclusive to the LGBT community either - plenty of straight people engage in similar things and get half as much flack for it. Our decision on how we conduct our private lives is up to us assuming we don't break any laws. Just because we find something weird to us doesn't mean that it is or that we should immediately disapprove of such behavior.
At the end of the day, we're talking about a mid-tier official. Their personal lives are irrelevant as long as a) they're qualified for the job b) perform the job well and c) aren't a threat to national security. Brinton (assuming he's innocent lol) meets these criteria.
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1yr ago
fetish for pretend bestiality while giving interviews about their appointments to the department of energy.
Can you link this interview? I'm not familiar with it and I wasn't able to find it
The whole kink lifestyle is weird enough, you don’t have to go on TV talking about it.
What kink lifestyle are you referring to? Is it in the same interview as above?
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1yr ago
Thank you. So what is your point with this? People are freaks if they talk about their kinks to an audience who wants to hear about it? Are you saying that the government shouldn't hire people who talk about their personal life?
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1yr ago
Conditional on being right about 2), no. If I’m wrong and Mx. Brinton was unable to control perverted urges...yeah, I guess.
Let's assume the worst: They stole the bag for sexual reasons.
Given that this single person's actions moves the needle for how you'll trust, hire, or promote other members of Brinton's group:
Does a story of a man repeatedly abusing and eventually murdering their young child move the needle for how you'll trust, hire, or promote other men?
Does the story of Sandy Hook move the needle for how you'll trust, hire, or promote other white men?
Does the story of Pittsburg Synagogue shooting move the needle for how you'll trust, hire, or promote other people with right ring beliefs?
Considering that all of these stories are far worse than the worst thing Brinton might have done, I'd hope that you'd have the same response.
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1yr ago
While registering, I indicated I was male. I was immediately shown what I can only describe as "anti-feminist" videos
I've had the exact same experience across all platforms (Tik tok, youtube, & instagram mainly). I used to be right wing but have solidly been on the left more several years now. Whenever I start any new account or social media I'm always bombarded with classic man-oriented 'right wing-ish' content (Peterson debunking feminists, gym bro complaining about girls, Shapiro clips, etc). Even now, after having these accounts for years, I'll still get random suggestions for this content.
What's even funnier is that if I watch a man-adjacent video (non-political workout vids or a video about guns) my algorithms get fucked up for weeks. I really do have to wonder if the right-wing influencers have a crazy high budget in comparison to the left. At this point they have to know my stats well enough to know that I'm not interested in those videos but they keep pushing. I admire the effort.
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1yr ago
That's what grinds my gears; the smug assumption that the only reason anyone could possibly object to such race-swapping is because they're a horrible racist.
People assume that there's some sort of racial issue behind the Ariel situation because: A) the scenario is so inconsequential and B) the arguments against it are either weak or slippery-slope assumptions. This doesn't mean that anyone who is anti Ariel is racist, but it does leave the door open to wonder why anyone would be so vehemently against this move.
And would your Facebook friend who is so eager to change things up for the sake of diversity be happy to recast Mulan so that a Black woman could get the lead role? And if that's different, how is it different?
Most Disney princesses are white, including Ariel. Mulan isn't. Disney is (openly) pro-diversity, so it makes sense that Disney would want an Asian princess too.
If they're going to recast Ariel, then every cast member should be Black for internal consistency and coherence.
There aren't any rules or reasons as to why the recasting of one character should lead to the recasting of all characters.
Can your Facebook friend explain to me why new Black Ariel is still a redhead, and not having her own ordinary beautiful natural hair?
Why does Ariel's hair have anything to do with race of the character? Moreover, Ariel's red hair was one of the characters' defining features in comparison to the other princesses of the time.
Nobody is objecting to "let's do a new movie about a black mermaid" if they can write a good story and hey, maybe there are even folk tales and legends about black mermaids, who knows? But this isn't about 'let's give little Black girls a character they can identify with, so they can dress up as Ariel for Hallowe'en', it's about wringing every last penny out of their property by re-tooling it to get another extension of marketability.
The functional difference between "let's do a new movie about a black mermaid" and "let's do a remake about a black mermaid" are quite inconsequential. Both versions exist, and given that we're talking about a children's character, both characters existing has no real ramifications for practical life.
Look, I hate the shameless antics of Disney as much as anyone, but is that really what this discussion is about? What does Ariel's red hair have to do with Disney's endless greed? And did this penny-wringing really start with Ariel? More importantly, if the Ariel was white, would this still be an example of Disney's greed?
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1yr ago
Can you name a single other government employee who has voluntarily talked to the media about their fetishes in comparable detail?
Can you name a straight government employee that was even asked about something like this? It's not a fair comparison because different groups get treated differently.
What passes for you as an example of a straight person doing something similar?
There's plenty of BDSM conventions, fetish clubs, and other things that straight people engage in all the time. Most of us don't talk about it too much because that's not the norm. Even if we did talk about, we don't get labelled as a sexual deviant. However, there are definitely exceptions to this rule as there is in the LGBT community.
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1yr ago
Take down the n-word under the untenable pretense that it's a direct incitement to violence, and then just don't make that same mischaracterization with respect to misgendering or deadnaming or whatever.
So you're arguing that a company should be intentionally dishonest and use their biases to explicitly allow one type of hate speech while banning the other?
First of all, how is that any better than how Twitter used to be? Isn't that the sort of thing that you'd want to avoid?
Second, I'd argue that your system is far worse than Twitter's old system. At least the old system had written rules and warnings instead of letting intentionally dishonest 'personal opinions' to be the determining factor.
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1yr ago
It's quite a long story (and I can go into more detail if you want). Overall, I realized that certain beliefs I held weren't as supported as I was led to believe by conservatives. I attended a conservative Christian college but had two left-leaning professors in particular & a few new left-leaning friends who broke me out of my conservative bubble and challenged my previous beliefs. Growing up I was taught that issues like racism & sexism were issues of the past (and totally blown out of proportion by virtue signaling woke libtards). This new group of people gave me a different story via personal anecdotes (from my new friends) & substantial research (from my professors). Over the course of four years and lots of debating, I came to the conclusion that the biggest pillar of my ring-wing belief (namely the idea of merit, aka 'you can do anything as long as you work hard' & the inverse "If you're struggling it's primarily your fault") wasn't as absolute as I thought it was.
Trust me, I was not looking to turn to the left in the slightest. I mean, who wants to be associated with woke feminists (or worse, liberals)? Of course, I don't agree with everything the woke crowd believes nor do I have many positive things to say about Biden & other libs. But overall I'm now firmly planted somewhere on the left because the right just didn't have sufficient support for the biggest issues. Feel free to ask any other questions but that's the basic story for me.
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1yr ago
I used to think like you so I know that I'm not going to convince you in a comment.
This kind of thing reminds me of the kid in my class who used to make stuff up for attention constantly.
But this is still very interesting to me - one of the reasons I changed my mind on this is because I saw people in my own life (real people) come out and it made me question this reasoning. These were people that I knew for decades, people who didn't need attention, and often people who came out at a great expense (their families kicked them out, etc). I knew them well enough to know that they weren't just totally bullshitting me.
I think it's naive to think that people will go to a conversion camp for two years all for.... attention? It doesn't really follow that older LGBT people in their fifties are still doing it for the attention either. So why do you think that this is primarily attention related? If it was simply a personal choice you could turn off and on, why risk getting kicked out of your home or being discriminated against in a job interview?
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1yr ago
I'm not so sure this info becoming public was exactly voluntary but I digress. I guess I'm the type who doesn't think that one should make negative inferences without having good reasons. So I'd ask myself what exactly I dislike about them and if it is something that I should find to be morally bad.
Without that, anyone that looks or does anything differently than you just automatically becomes a freak. Seems like a reductive way to live but to each their own.
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1yr ago
Right, but I find it frustrating that people are just now realizing this. People on the left have been saying the same thing forever - It's not that we don't support free speech (we do), but, like Musk & nearly everyone else, we think that there should be some limits placed speech when it comes to the internet.
Musk isn't doing anything new or different here. It's what's always been done. Twitter has always moderated content that they believe to be harmful. Musk is doing the same exact thing but he just has a different definition of what 'harm' constitutes. If you agree with his new definition of harm, great. But you should at least realize that this is still a highly circumstantial process and is fully susceptible to bias as it's always been.
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1yr ago
No one is arguing that Jews don't have an outsized influence in some cases. It's the narrative that forms from that statement. The issue is people taking that statement and assuming that Jews must be using this outsized influence for evil, bad reasons. One statement is true, the other is baseless conspiracy.
It's like pointing out that white men have had an outsized influence on US power because most US presidents were white men. This is a true statement. Saying that white men are engaged in a conspiracy to maliciously keep and wield their power over everyone else is an unfounded conspiracy.
Lastly, one of these 'facts' has led to a deadly historical event and the other hasn't. We can't forget about context when talking about this.
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1yr ago
As someone who has done a lot of "red" hobbies both past and present, I find plenty of politics in these groups. It's especially prevalent in activities that are current political issues (e.g. guns/shooting). obviously your mileage may vary but that's my experience and it's only gotten worse in the current political climate.
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1yr ago
Just to be clear - the entire contents of the bag are worth over $2K while the suitcase is only worth $295 brand new. It would really shock me that someone in this position would a) risk a government job for petty theft B) steal a non-collectible, relatively inexpensive suitcase. What's the max you could even resell a used $300 suitcase for?
Obviously this story is really weird. But life is crazy enough that something like this could happen and at this point it was likely a mistake.
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1yr ago
Yes, he is a sexual deviant.
Just to be clear, this is just your opinion. I'd like to hear more about why you think they're a sexual deviant with more reasons than 'I disagree'.
And I’m totally comfortable saying the government shouldn’t hire people who talk about how awesome it is to have sex with animals.
I'm not familiar with them ever advocating for sex with actual animals, rather just some sort of creative role-playing. Otherwise we'd be in jail when girls call us daddy in bed. Regardless, I'm still interested to hear exactly why you think this sort of role play is so bad as to justify the government knowing about it.
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1yr ago
For sure, but I'm advocating for consistency. Your 'social norms' are probably very different than mine. I don't even think criticizing someone for breaking social norms is really acceptable either - Why is this specific action 'bad'? Should we cast judgement on someone because they do things differently? etc.
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1yr ago
You're arguing the over representation of Jews in some cases led to a deadly historical event?
No, I'm arguing that the line of reasoning that starts with 'jews have an outsized influenced' has resulted in pretty heinous outcomes.
Noticing the outsized influence of Jews in some cases when they tend to represent a very small minority of the population, and noticing 'white' men have been most of the presidents during periods where people of European ancestry represented significant portions of the population is fundamentally different.
I think men is also a key term here - why hasn't there ever been a woman president in hundreds of years while making up 50% of the population? We know the answer to that question. So what about the Jews? We also know the answer to that question too. There's a ton of history that explains why some industries have a higher percentage of jews. The real history is very different than any mainstream conspiracy explanation.
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1yr ago
What an odd conflation of highly identifiable niche/deviant behavior and uselessly broad identity categories.
Can you clarify why you don't think these examples are relatable? Specifically with men and sexual abuse - men are significantly more likely to commit sexual crimes and a large amount of them do so. We're talking men of all shapes and sizes. If this rare incident changes your perception of an entire group than surely the rather commonplace sexual crime committed by men should do the same?
I think it's reasonable to suspect that the coworker is simply trying to deflect from the swastika tattoos, yes?
This hypothetical isn't relevant. Swastika tatoos are historically and contextually related to violence and a highly specific type of person. It's impossible to compare that sort of history and baggage with something like a subset of the LGBT community.
To reiterate, these sorts of events are not as common as you think they are. These stories do get happily promoted by the media when they do happen because that's the society we live in. We aren't writing headline stories about yet another father molesting his daughter.
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1yr ago
I think there's a little more nuance than that. While I can't speak for every case, most of the warnings I saw were placed on tweets whose sources were fully or partially unknown. Now, the government certainly isn't all-knowing, but in terms of getting the most reliable data, it's hard to argue that numbers from hospitals submitted to the government were as questionable as random unverified sources. (Note: this is all dependent on wether or not you think the government intentionally and maliciously doctored the numbers to manipulate people. If that's what you think I don't think we'll be able to see eye to eye).
We also need to consider the unique nature of the pandemic - If people get bad info, they put themselves & others at serious risk. In that sort of scenario, it's hard for me to justify using bits and pieces of less verified data instead of government data (as we have in the past). I don't think it's an easy decision at all and I also can how bad it looks from the other side. But if you frame it as "Private company opts to promote verified data in attempt to save lives" it's not as bad.
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1yr ago
I of course agree that using tax dollars poorly is to be avoided. But I think the OP was making a bigger point: how can you possibly quantify value in this instance? What are the requirements for a school admin to be "fiscally efficient"? Who decides that? More importantly, if we could somehow determine this, would Harvard be the worst offender?
I think this is much more complicated than it appears.
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1yr ago
As someone who grew up in a quietly conservative area, I was still completely surrounded by politics. Like you said, political jeers somehow found its way into everything - even when we had a traditional thanksgiving dinner, there would inevitably be a few comments about how liberals viewed thanksgiving. I'm now on the left and find the same thing - people and politics are often inseparable. I think this is especially prevalent in America and I don't know if it's possible to avoid it entirely.
Here's how I make it work. I realized that I don't really care what people believe - I care about why people believe it. I'm firmly on the left but have always had an aversion to the hyper-woke crowd as many of us do. It was hard for me because I often partially supported their ideas but could just never fully get behind them or anything that they say. This was confusing because I knew plenty of lefties in my own life that expressed similar views (or sometime more extreme) yet I would agree or be ok with them. Finally, I realized that my primary aversion to the hyper-woke was their poor arguments and dogmatic attitude. This aversion also explains my dislike of other political groups that express similar characteristics.
Once I figured this out, I started to be more selective - If my parents (smart people but misinformed politically) make anti-left comments at thanksgiving dinner, I just ignore it because I know that they don't have great support for their beliefs anyway. Same goes for some of my more woke friends. I only engage, care, or listen to people who's beliefs I consider to be well supported. My friends are much more politically diverse now because even if I don't agree with their conclusions I can at least respect how they got there. Just my two cents.
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1yr ago
Fantastic question - I'm admittedly still undecided on exactly how to approach this issue. But here's my basic moral justification:
All people should have equality of opportunity
Discriminated groups have less opportunity
Privileged groups have more opportunity
Therefore, discriminated groups ought to have more opportunity so all people have equality of opportunity.
('Equality' in this case simply means 'as equal as is possible to realistically achieve')
As a simple hypothetical, I would support increased government funding to schools with predominately black student bodies. This would privilege the discriminated-against but is justified based on my value of equality of opportunity. (Edit: I would also support increased government funding for schools in poorer areas using this same logic as well).
I'm curious, what is your opinion/justification on the same issue?
If you care I'll offer the leftist perspective on this. Of course this story is bigger than usual due to Brinton's identity. But Brinton isn't to blame for their outsized persona. I think Brinton's personal life adequately sums up how they came to be the person they are today.
Backstory:
Brinton grew up with homophobic parents who sent him to a conversion camp for two years after he came out. These camps are notorious for being both ineffective (clearly lol) and inhumane. Brinton's experience was so bad that they contemplated suicide while at the camp. Once out of the camp, Brinton was motivated to prevent others from having their same experience and started a successful political campaign to end conversion camps nationwide. After, they earned graduate degrees at MIT and starting working for several liberal think-tanks. The Biden administration then offered them a position which Brinton accepted. Despite having high-value degrees & work experience, Brinton received criticism for being a diversity hire. Then the suitcase incident happened.
Here's how Brinton's life would have gone if we lived in a Leftist Utopia™️:
Brinton grew up with supportive parents. After graduating high school, Brinton earned graduate degrees in nuclear science from MIT. They then worked with liberal think-tanks until they were offered a mid-tier government job in the area of their degree & work experience. Then the suitcase incident happened
Looking at the two stories, it's clear that Brinton's real life story is heavily influenced by their identity. Their entire childhood and pre-college experience would have been very different if they were straight or if society accepted them as-is. I'm seeing a lot of people talk about how Brinton is at fault for the extra attention due to their appearance & persona. But that's not Brinton's fault (unless you believe that Brinton is just making it up). The attention that's been given to Brinton is mostly negative - people questioning their credentials, calling them a diversity grad, a freak, etc.
If any other mid tier government employee took the wrong bag from the airport and claimed it was an honest mistake, it would only make the news AFTER a guilty verdict was reached (if guilty). Instead, this has become a major story because of Brinton's identity.
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