JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
10mo ago
Within 2-4 months all domestic restrictions were gone and within 8 months even the pantomime of international restrictions didn't exist, Canada had fewer covid restrictions than the US.
I admit I don't follow Canadian politics too closely, but I remember the protests happened in early 2022. The ever helpful Wikipedia confirms it was end of January 2022. 8 months from that is October 2022. Nobody had restrictions in October 2022. It's not some heroic achievement. It's like claiming you punched your enemy and he died, 80 years later, in the age of 103. Whatever happened, he didn't die from your punch, that much we could be sure of. In fact, 4 months is June 2022. California lifted its general indoor mask mandate in March 2022 and for schools, prisons and other dangerous spaces in April 2022. Israel (which reacted to covid with very severe restrictions) scrapped their Green Pass system in February 2022 and its mask mandates in April. Removing restrictions in June 2022 is not something that can be seriously taken as a big win of the protest movement.
The aftermath is: Trudeau put Canada under effectively dictatorship for 9 days, and suffered no noticeable consequences. The commission they tasked with whitewashing the ordeal after the fact successfully whitewashed it and confirmed the dictatorship was the appropriate measure to take (which means, in similar circumstances, the Canadian government won't hesitate to do it again). Note also that this is the only use of the Emergency Act ever - thus confirming that this is exactly what it is for, suppressing dissent. The weapon of asset confiscation have been successfully deployed against political enemies, and again, no consequences to speak of, and again, fully confirmed as appropriate and in fact, "unavoidable". Absolutely nothing was "overthrown", or, in fact, changed and absolutely no power was moved from one hands to other. Some victory.
You remind me of Russian liberals in early 2020s (before the war), where they would assemble a protest, get brutally crushed and beaten up, then parade on social media proclaiming "Putin is afraid! We showed him we are the power!" and invent a new form of "creative protesting" - white strips, flashlights, flashmobs, whatever. It ended up with their head person - Navalny - miraculously escaping the murder attempt and ending up in prison, likely for as long as Putin is alive (if he's not murdered by an "unfortunate accident" or "commits suicide"). And all their movement and their goals achieving squat, short of landing the more brave (or less smart, if you will) ones in prison and more smart (or less brave, if you will) ones in exile, where they can continue babbling about how Putin is deathly afraid of them. I'm sure Trudeau is "afraid" of the truckers in the same way.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
That means that despite the nearly $8B businesses typically spend each year on D&I training, nearly half of the employees still don’t feel like they belong.
Despite daily beatings, the morale has not improved yet! A mystery shrouded in enigma!
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Been reading an article about the child "transgender" story and something really caught my attention. The quote first:
Casey expressed no discomfort with his sex as a child, but when he turned 13, he said, he discovered through friends and online that “transgenderism was a thing.” He started researching this and felt, “Holy crap! You can do that?” Soon he declared he was “gender fluid.” Casey explains, “This means that my gender changed based on the day. Then it got to the point where I was never feeling masculine or like a boy.” After about six months of being gender fluid, Casey says, “I decided that I was a fully transgender girl. Like I wanted to present as a girl and I wanted people to see me as a girl. So, I started to socially transition. I was going by a different name and using she/her pronouns.”
That lasted for a few more months until, he says, “I started to lean more kind of in-between. I didn't identify as a girl as much. But I did not see myself as a boy, so I identified as non-binary, which is what I am today.” He explains being non-binary means he is neither sex, and to go along with this he changed his name again—to something as gender neutral as “Casey”—and began using they/them pronouns.
So there I realized even though I am very far from woke, the propaganda has warped my understanding of the issue too. I was thinking what happens in such cases is some child suddenly starts very strongly feeling that they are the opposite gender, and then the system gets involved and "affirms" them in their delusion. But what is happening here is nothing of the sort. It's more like childish fascination with the unknown and unexplored and cool, which gets turned into much bigger thing that it should be by both the parents who are completely unable to provide the child the necessary structure ("just be what you are", wtf is that, that's not a kind of help the confused child lost in a confusing world needs) and the system which actively problematizes and medicalizes any case it can get the hold on.
The result is predictable - the system deploys the tactical nuke of "if you won't transition now, you child will surely kill himself and it'll be your fault", the parents fold like wet paper, child gets put on puberty blockers, develops severe mental problems, has to take five medications at the same time, becomes suicidal, the system reacts "see, we told you! if we didn't rescue them in time, them'd be dead already!" and refuses to budge. The parents finally see what a huge fuckup they did and start running around, screaming and writing articles.
The article worth a full read, but this was the part that struck me the most. It was how easy it was to get from a childish curiosity about "you can do that weird thing? really? let me try it on!" to being pulled into the machine and turned into a case and somebody whose life would forever be dependent on the medical system (and, of course, forever "oppressed"). I thought it's more like "X has a severe problem and it's hard to solve it and looks like the system doesn't always do the right thing the right way" but it's more of "X has been playing and waded too far into the woods, and the ideological ogres captured him and made his life into a problem with which he'll now have to live forever". Which is quite infuriating to me in its pure evilness.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Welcome to early Ingsoc. As more content goes digital, there won't even be any (legal) way to possess content that is deemed oldthinking and thoughtcriminal. The books would be edited right in your electronic device, and they would always have been like that.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
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Right-wing politicians, journalists and public personas suspended, banned and shadow-banned for years - "It's a private company, just don't be an asshole!"
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Left-wing journos suspended for one day for doxing Musk - "It's fascism! Regulators, come and save us! It's free speech apocalypse!"
It is utterly fascinating how there's not a shred of even trying to apply fair standards here. Everything is completely motivated reasoning all the way down.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
I think the university should be a hothouse of strange and controversial ideas.
That would be nice, but that's not how it worked now for decades. Instead, how it works is that it is a hothouse of ideas that are strange and controversial to an ordinary man on the street, but all these ideas are completely mainstream and mandatory inside the hothouse. You're getting whole institutions where there's no single professor or administrator to the right of Bernie Sanders, and if one, by some strange accident, shows up and starts stirring controversy, they are silenced - and usually, expelled from the hothouse - very quickly. Some may tolerate one or two tokens, held around to show - here we have freedom, we keep this whole one moderately-right-wing professor out of 250! So what we actually have is a monocultural hothouse, which looks strange from the outside, but does not allow any substantial dissent on the inside. Academic freedom is a nice concept, except it hasn't functionally existed on most of the American campuses for a long time - you are free to only lean to the left, as far as you want, but never to the right.
Even worse, they are still trading on the image of "intellectual powerhouse" and pretend that this monoculture is the result of superiority of their ideas to any others, and unfortunately this still carries a large cultural and political merit. Something like "a study from Big University has shown that" can make or bury a law, a social program and sometimes even a career of a politician, despite it being known that Big University has not had a single non-Marxist professor in relevant field since 1960s and multiple examples of studies from the same University being shoddily made, non-reproducible and ultimately completely debunked on every replication attempt.
So, do you have to wonder why the Right politicians finally make their first timid steps to take control of this political and cultural weapons platform that has been used by the Left for decades now to completely devastate the opposition?
I still think it's important that we have at least one institution that acts as a countervailing force to utilitarian profit-maximizing techbroism
There are many institutions that can act as such. But, you may consider that most of the utilitarian profit-maximizing techbros are actually products of the very system you present as an alternative to them. How comes?
But if the choice is between the university we have now, or nothing, I'll stick with the university.
It's never nothing. If we won't have the current Marxist indoctrination camps plus spectator sports empires plus adult daycare for chatterati class younglings, we'll have something else. And maybe even better, who knows.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
it can't be positive to grow up watching superhero movies and none of them look like you.
This is assuming Arnold Schwarzenegger "looks like me" because his skin has a hue close to mine (if you really squint) and thus I can imagine myself being him, despite having nothing else at all in common, but if my skin were a couple of hues different, now I can't. That doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean for a racist, where everything you need to know about a person is their race and it defines everything - sure does, but for someone who didn't grow up in a race-obsessed culture, it just sounds extremely bizarre.
Also, billions and billions of people grew up without watching any "superhero movies" at all, and they came up just fine - or at least not worse that those that did see the magic pictures.
JarJarJedi
8mo ago
Looks like another one of the many, many golden boys who had success and decided that 1) all problems have solutions and 2) they know how to figure them out. I predict he wouldn't even do well enough to be crushed by Trump. Though maybe he'll attract some of "like Trump, but not a boomer, because boomers are so passé" audience. I don't expect this audience to be huge.
a campaign centered on truth and national revival
Oh, that's a relief. I was thinking for a minute he's going to run a campaign based on lies and destruction of the nation, as all other candidates always do, but looks like he found the golden recipe here. It's a pity nobody ever tried to run a campaign based on that before, but now I'm sure his success is assured.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Basically 2nd said it's OK for the government to condition prosecution on "correct" partisan-based behavior - i.e. "either you close accounts of all Republicans or we are going to audit your bank until the angels sound their trumpets and hound your mercilessly for every tiny paperwork violation like you're Al Capone". I can't really find words beyond "welcome to the Banana Republic of America" to react to this.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Most people denouncing "absolutism" do it with the same goal as the infamous Holmes' "fire in the theater" quote - to justify infringement of freedoms going far, far beyond the corner case example they are using to demonstrate the un-viability of absolutism. They are not attacking "100%" to preserve "99%" - they are attacking "100%" to get it as close to 0% as they can. Holmes used it to ban people from speaking against forcibly sending people to war. Would we agree with that? Would we say "if Elon Musk values his privacy that much, then banning criticizing the government is ok too!"? I hope not. Thus, fighting "absolutism" is useless - and in many cases, under this guise what actually happens is the fight to take your rights.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
In a more serious country, "insurrection" is made with guns and explosives, not a bunch of demonstrators with placards and megaphones, who are polite enough to stay between the plush ropes while ostensibly overthrowing the constitutional order. Of course, the correct explanation of this that there was no any "insurrection" and any talk about "insurrection" is a partisan talking point which is not to be taken seriously by anybody who wants to approach the matter with a minimal amount of critical thinking instead of just parroting the party propaganda.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
I think most of the narrative for "Musk is ruining Twitter" is actually "Musk is allowing people that we hate back on Twitter". For some people - especially in the Blue Tribe - Twitter used to feel like a "safe space", run by friendly tribesmen and allowing them to get the respect they deserve (blue checks, etc.). Now Musk came and he's not their tribesman, the space is no longer safe, the blue checks are available to all kinds of plebeians and in short, the whole thing is ruined. I personally can't really sympathize and don't have an opinion on whether there's a kernel of truth in it or not - I have deleted my twitter account years ago once I figured out it doesn't allow to do anything I want to do, and using it just pisses me off.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
I think the academia has been preparing for this for years, moving from "objective metrics with AA bias on top" (like SAT scores, but the passing score is different for different races) to "plausible deniable 'holistic' judgements" - where one can't really prove any bias at all. Yes, if you measure by any objective merit criteria, the bias is apparent, but you see, we're not using these criteria, we are using "holistic view", which does not explicitly name race as a factor, good luck proving in court we're using it heavily. They'll just start being more careful about that and develop a newspeak that ensures discrimination is called something else. If academia is consistently good at anything it is at producing impenetrable jargon.
JarJarJedi
10mo ago
I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.
The Left committed early to the "bat soup" theory and declared anybody who doubts it racist, and instituted a censorship blockade of any opposition (or even critical discussion) to this. While they were forced to roll it back a little because dissent went high and wide enough in scientific circles that it wasn't possible any more to block, the initial commitment still weights heavily on the topic, and was not acknowledged as wrong even at "mistakes were made" level, and this colors every critique of this position as attacking the Party Line.
JarJarJedi
11mo ago
I think it's neither. Bud Light was a special case where significant percentage of consumers were in the anti-audience for the message, and the alternatives were readily available. For most products, either the first (like the movies, for example) or the second (like the sports - you can't just switch to another NBA on the next shelf really) is not true. So, it kinda was a perfect situation for a successful strike, but this kind of situation wouldn't present itself too often, and so far most of other woke megacorps are as woke as ever. So it's a tactical win in a skirmish with favorable conditions, which says little about the outcome of the war. It's surely nice to get a win once in a while, but don't order the champagne just yet.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Soviet Union used to have only three TV channels. So, one day it is announced that the forth channel is now available. So, this guy comes home and turns on the TV, and on the first channel it's Leonid Illych Brezhnev reading one of his magnificent speeches. So he switches to the second one, and it's the same. He goes to the third channel - same. So he thinks - no problem, there's now a fourth one! - and switches to that. And sees a KGB colonel who looks at him sternly and says "This channel switching, comrade, will get you in trouble one day!"
In Russian, this joke sounds better because the last sentence can be expressed in a single word (well, two if you count "comrade").
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
I think it's a combination of her repeatedly protesting against national anthem at WNBA and then, basically, behaving in Russia like she did in America and getting 9 years for it. I don't think one should be gleeful for that - stupidity does not deserve punishment that hard - but I kinda can understand why some people feel that way. It's not about her fucking up per se - it's about her being oblivious to the fact how much better things are in America than in many other places, and her fuck up being a direct consequence of this. I think taking the level of freedoms we have in America for granted is wrong, but what has been done to Griner is much, much more wrong - so I think the glee is misplaced.
JarJarJedi
3mo ago
It is clear to me that the Feds/Deep State (pretty much the same thing by now) executed a brilliant (surprisingly brilliant, given their routine incompetence when it doesn't concern their survival) operation of surfacing, isolating and utterly destroying the passionate part of the right that was ready to fight against the left's long march through the institutions and against total alienation of power from any possibility of democratic control on the federal level. That operation was an overwhelming success, the right were easily provoked, totally unprepared and easily routed and utterly defeated, while the "mainstream" politicians either stayed away from the fray, or, like Pence, actively helped to destroy them. Was a specific person an employee of the Feds, an asset or just a fool easily manipulated by them - is not very important, though I do believe Epps had if not direct than at least once-removed contact with the Feds, and there were probably many provocateurs and instigators in the crowd beyond him. But again, the important part is not who they personally were, but the crushing defeat that the right suffered, from which they still did not recover and largely did not even realize what happened. This does not portent well for them for 2024 - even if Trump manages to gather enough votes to overcome the Dem machine efforts - which, given how actively he is promoted by Democrats, is not out of the realm of possible. That I can testify to myself - a year ago, I was very reluctant to the idea of voting for Trump, given his previous record and present behavior. Now, I am thinking I may not have any other choice. Not that my vote would mean anything, living in a deep red state. But the bad news is even if Trump is elected, his election would not be recognized by the left, and he will spend another 4 years fighting trench warfare against the Deep State, collecting more impeachments that any president ever lived, and achieving absolutely nothing. Maybe he'd appoint some good judges. Maybe.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
You use images of hot chicks, fast cars, sweeping vistas, and the fucking moon landings
Nope. You talk about one specific set of ads. But there are many more contexts than that. You do advertise luxury cars with hot chicks. But not cheap used family vans. Not mortgage brokers and realtor services. If you want to sell somebody a dream of laying hot chicks - you use hot chicks. If you want to sell somebody a dream of a happy family in a comfortable van and a cheap, but surprisingly decent looking McMansion - hot chicks won't help you there. Happy family pictures would however.
"why do you care so much?"
I can answer that (no, I am not under that pseudonym, I am completely different person) - because I am told everywhere all the time that I should. Every company has an equity statement, keeps racial statistics, and brags about representation. Did you try to apply for a job lately? Literally every single company would ask you for racial data (they say it wouldn't be used in hiring process, but I wonder why ask then?). Every sizable company constantly brags about these things, and pays people to deal with them and then promote their actions in public. I'd be super-happy to go to my happy pre-woke world where I could just ignore it, where I did, but it's kinda hard when you are surrounded by messages that claim that's extremely important 24/7. You start noticing things.
Why is your (and apparently so many other's) sense of self and feelings of validation so wrapped up in being represented on screen.
It's not. But I still notice things. It's a blessing and a curse.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
I'm not sure what's to justify there. Kaepernick has protested for Good Thing (TM), thus protest is good and exercise of freedom. Reimer has protested for Bad Thing (TM) thus protest is bad and should be suppressed. If you try to dig up any deeper principle behind this - there isn't any. If we're winning it's good, if they're winning, it's bad. Them's the rules and there are no others. All talk about same standards and one playing field and all that is racist anyway, I'm sure one could find a dozen of quotes from Berkley professors on that.
It's not the lack of self-awareness. They know how it looks - and they are fine with it. It's an exercise of power - yes, there are different rules for Good Thing and Bad Thing, and yes, we will claim diametrically opposing arguments to support those - what you're going to do? What you can do? Point out the hypocrisy and inconsistency? They don't care, it works for them just fine. Your next move?
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"
This makes a lot of sense, but I know a number of residents of SF, Oakland and other places like that, who aren't in any way rich enough to avoid the effects of the luxury beliefs, and they still largely support the policies that led to them. I mean, they're certainly not happy about people pooping on the streets or open drug markets, not to mention unending car breakins and other criminality, but somehow they never make the conclusion the policies they support are responsible for it. They just think it's "wrong Socialism" and as soon as they figure out how to make "true Socialism, that has never been tried" - which is right around the corner, we only need to tweak a couple of things and spend a couple of billions more - and it all will be fixed.
The lockdowns were actually pretty great for me, personally - I could relocate to a much cheaper place while getting paid the same, without any pushback from the corporate overlords, because WFH became the norm. But I think the fact that this thing happened in America without any serious pushback is a horrible thing, and everybody complicit in it has my full personal disgust and hate.
JarJarJedi
11mo ago
These aren't "buy our insurance because it's 23.6% cheaper than the competition" kinds of ads. These are lifestyle type of ads. They are promoting certain style and outlook on life and associate it with the brand. If this style is offensive to people who previously associated themselves with the brand, then these people would feel negatively towards the brand from now on. And such kind of action is aimed at everybody, all the time - multi-national brand is not something you advertise in secret. And culture war is not something you join unwittingly - not that BL marketers didn't publish plenty of proclamations suggesting very clearly on whose side they are joining.
Let me give you an extreme example. Suppose some crazy marketer, after taking too much cocaine one night, decided that Nazis - I mean the real ones, the guys prancing around with swastikas and tiki torches - are an under-covered market, and his brand needs to have a campaign aimed at them. And suppose, by a series of freak accidents and misunderstandings, this plan gets approved, set in production and the resulting ad - featuring all a real Nazi loves and seeks in life, presented as a positive lifestyle associated with the brand - is posted on official Instagram channel.
After that happened, and the inevitable aftermath - do you think your explanation that people just don't understand that not all ads are aimed at them is going to play very well or convince somebody that it doesn't mean anything that they disliked the ad?
P.S. For the "trigger warning" part of the audience, hopefully minor, but ever vocal, explicit disclaimer - no, I am not comparing anybody to Nazis. Except for, you know, the actual Nazis.
JarJarJedi
11mo ago
Some data about how oppressed the struggling worker masses are (https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-inflation-minimums-1235564920/):
The current guild minimum for a TV writer-producer is $7,412 per week. On a network show, the median writer-producer works between 35-40 weeks, for a total of $259,420 to $296,480, if that writer is paid minimum. Most experienced writers can negotiate something above that through their agents — and for showrunners and executive producers, it’s well above that.
Schedules are shorter on streaming shows, which produce fewer episodes, according to data released earlier this month by the guild. The median writer-producer on those shows works 20-24 weeks, for a minimum salary range of $148,240 to $177,888.
Staff writers — the lowest-level writers — do not get script fees, and they also earn significantly lower weekly minimums. The median staff writer on a network show works 29 weeks for a wage of $131,834, while the median staff writer on a streaming show works 20 weeks for $90,920.
In other words, their minimum wages are about 1.5x to 3x country's median wages for essentially half-time work.
I don't think it is bad for anyone to earn a lot of money, but given that the number of decent quality shows has been extremely low for many years now, and most of those that had decent quality have been based on existing literary work, what it seems to be there is extremely overpaid bunch of people producing a very low-quality product. Still, I am sure eventually they'd get what they want - this time - because AIs aren't ready to produce scripts yet. But in 5-10 years. given the immense savings it promises? I can totally see it.
Let's vote for me giving $1000 to the charity to feed the poor and also you giving me all your money and gifting me your house and your car and all your future earnings. What?! You vote against it?! OK, very well, let me write it down "This person voted against a proposal to give $1000 to feed the poor. Even when the $1000 was given by somebody else! I never thought somebody could hate the poor that much!".
That's how it works. When a politician says "my enemies voted against (doing something that obviously should be done)", he's likely lying to you, and likely by means of omitting what else the actual bill they're talking about contained. These bills are designed like this on purpose - so that when you refuse to go along with the obviously bad part, they would pretend you refused the good part. Do not be deceived.
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