LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
I saw some news articles online about this in Australia earlier today.
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best 'older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion). There was also no mention that I can recall of the perpetrator being tackled and restrained by a member of the public, and certainly not that he was Brazilian. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the crime was committed by an Irish native.
Except, of course, the second half of all these articles all quote a bunch of Irish politicians and other public figures condemning the riot as the actions of a hateful, far-right mob, or similar words to that effect. Which kind of gives the game away. Do they think by merely mentioning the background of the stabbing perpetrator they will give credance to the 'hateful far-right riot', like invoking a spirit?
It's one of many cases where the news media (at least here in Australia), technically report the story factually accurately, but but omits some details and is framed in such a way to only lead you to one conclusion. They can avoid claims of editorialising by claiming they are merely quoting and reporting on statements made by politicians, which is also true.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
It's almost always framed in how it's bad for women though, typically 'college graduated women can't find husbands (because they will never marry down).'
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
I would like to bring attention to a small but significant culture war kerfuffle that occurred on Monday, during the Australian Parliament Senate Estimates.
For those of you who are not aware, Senate Estimates is a series of hearings held by the Senate standing committees originally meant to scrutinise the budget and spending of the executive government and its agencies (budget estimates), but in practice is used to scrutinise all activities of the executive government, not just budget and financing.
The exchange I want to discuss occurred on Monday 22 May earlier this week, when the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (it's a weird combination I know) was being question by the Rural, Regional Affairs and Transport Committee.
In the exchange, Senator McKenzie and Senator Canavan (both Nationals) question Mr Jim Betts, the Secretary of the Department (i.e. the most senior (non-ministerial/partisan) public servant and head of the Department). The Senators question Mr Betts over an alleged event where Mr Betts wore a Black Power t-shirt during an official address to departmental staff. The exchange is too lengthy to quote the whole thing here, so I recommend everyone read the Hansard (transcript) of the exchange.
To summarise the exchange briefly, Mr Betts is questioned on whether he wore a Black Power t-shirt during an official department briefing, Mr Betts is evasive with his answers before it is revealed that the t-shirt in question contained an Aboriginal flag in clenched fist, he claims that the symbol is merely a symbol of "solidarity" with Aboriginal staff and that it has no relevance to Black Power, and continues to be evasive when pressed by the Senators on whether this constitutes a political statement breaching the standards of impartiality of the Australian Public Service. The exchange ends with Mr Betts essentially challenging the Senators to report him to the Australian Public Service Commission for breaching the code of conduct.
It's also difficult to convey the tone of the conversation (unfortunately, I don't believe the video recording of the hearing is yet online), but I have to point out that Mr Betts is dressed in a very casual short sleeve shirt and not a business suit (as would be appropriate for this event, as is sarcastically mentioned by Senator McKenzie), and is wearing a rainbow lanyard (as he will mention). Mr Betts talks in a very condescending but hushed and rushed tone, showing no respect for the Senators, and the Senators, for their part, talked in a generally aggressive, and particularly in Senator McKenzie's case, sarcastic tone.
The reason I wanted to highlight this exchange is because it highlights the woke institutional capture of Australian government institutions, though I suspect this is representative of countries in the Anglosphere. To make it abundantly clear, the clenched fist in Australia is absolutely a symbol of Black Power imported into Australia from America, and used by the "Black/Indigenous sovereignty" movement within Australia. Mr Betts would absolutely know this, and I feel fairly confident in saying he is outright lying here. In fact, the fist was prominently used last year when Senator Lidia Thorpe (radical left Indigenous activist) made the fist and called the Queen a coloniser during her swearing in ceremony, an event I discussed back on the old subreddit.
So the head of a major Australian Government Department (who is allegedly an anarcho-communist, an allegation he doesn't explicitly deny but merely sidesteps) wears t-shirt with a radically left-wing/woke symbol while addressing staff, and he feels reasonably confident that he is going to suffer no consequences for it. If this does not represent a capturing of an institution by woke ideology, I don't know what does. What I also find really interesting is how Mr Betts attempts to argue his way out the questioning by equating his black power t-shirt with his rainbow LGBT lanyard as just symbols of support and solidarity - a false equivalency because the black power symbol remains far more explicitly political in the way LGBT rainbow is not - but this attempted defence does seem to have some strength. But the conservative Nationals Senators were unable or unwilling to make the affirmative case that yes, LGBT lanyards and flags also do constitute a political statement. Even they had to dance around this issue. They have become so normalised and part of the 'new sensibility' that LGBT flags hanging in government offices is perfectly fine, and desirable even, it's simply about promoting a safe and inclusive culture and it is in no way political! (unless you oppose it then you're the one being political).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
I guess moving theMotte off Reddit has proven itself more and more to be a good decision
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
These kinds of leaks just reinforce my postion that woke corporations aren't just acting woke to 'respond to the market' or to cover their own asses from regulation (i.e. that corporations are only acting woke for sound, economically rational reasons), but that corporations have been subjected to entryism much the same as any other insitution and that market forces and competition aren't some impenetrable bulwark against woke entryism.
If, charitably and by the literal wording, the point of the Pope's document is to say 'you can bless the individual(s) in a same-sex union, but you are not blessing the union itself', this isn't really anything new and is at best just a clarification on existing practices.
But if this is supposedly not a new postition then why even make such a clarification, when in practice everyone knows it is going to lead to more confusion and misrepresentation. Unless the point is to deliberately introduce ambiguity under the guise of clarification, of course.
Regardless, if living in a same-sex union is a mortal sin, then priests shouldn't be blessing individuals actively, knowingly, publicly and persistently living in mortal sin anyway.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
Easter is the most important Christian holiday. The secular perception that Christmas is more important than Easter is an artifact of secular society widely celebrating (a secular and commericalised version of) Christmas.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
(Perhaps I'm being rather rose-tinted about journalistic standards in the past and this is all one big "always has been" meme.)
This video essay makes a pretty compelling argument that, yes, in fact the news was (more) unbiased and higher quality in the past and it's not just nostalgia.
Some of the examples are mindblowing. The example of the reporting on the Soviet Union's political affairs is remarkably unbiased and uneditorialised despite it being the literal height of the Cold War.
Civilian casualty figures for the invasion of Gaza are on par with other urban assaults by western militaries. You can contrast this with the battles in the Ukraine war, which are a lot a lot worse, and Assad’s reconquests of major Syrian cities, which are also way way worse.
This is not true. The civilian casualities in Gaza are significantly higher than that in Ukraine, the invasion of which by Russia people have been rushing to call genocide, including many people here. For simplicity I will just takes about deaths specifically and not casualities.
As already posted below the OHCHR estimates 9,701 civilian deaths in Ukraine between 24 Feb 2022 and 24 September 2023.
Reliable estimates for Gaza are hard to find but OHCHR estimates the deaths to be over 11,000 between 7 October 2023 and 16 November 2023 (some of whom would not strictly speaking be Gazans as there are also casualities outside of Gaza). So Gaza has roughly the same number of deaths in a month than Ukraine had in a year and a half. More recent numbers from early January suggest this number could be over 22,000 for Gaza. This would put the percentage of Gazans killed somewhere around 1% of the total population.
Now, Gaza is more densely populated and urbanised where the fighting is taking place, but this is also offset by the fact that Ukraine has a much larger population than Gaza and the operations are larger scale.
Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the civilian casualties in Gaza are extremely high and people would not be hesitating to call it genocide if it were any other country.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
Many Islamic empires was overthrown this way. The (Egyptian) Mamluks, the Seljuks, Ghaznavids of the top of my head all orginally gain power as the "barbarian" slave armies of previous Islamic dynasties. Even the Ottoman Empire towards the end of its life was engaged in a power struggle with the Janissaries, which were made up of Slavs who were kidnapped as children.
There are probably other examples.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
You won't update; nobody ever does.
I don't know, I think my political views have changed somewhat in recent years. Less than a decade ago (I am relatively young) I would describe myself not dissimilar to OP, as a social democrat, albeit I never was 'woke'.
However, I find myself nowdays identifying far more with Catholic social teaching and political theory (e.g. Chesterton and distributionism, at least as ideals). I guess means I have become more conservative, though it's a very specific kind of conservative that's heterodox in modern political discourse.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Part of me wonders how much more stable the Middle East would have been if the UN had made Jerusalem an international zone/international city like was proposed back in 1947. The proposal had overwhelming support from the international community at the time.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
Do you really need a degree in 'library science' to achieve this?
It seems like the activities you're describing have little to do with the library themselves and could be performed by anyone with pedagogical experience (or any other 'social' type work with kids) and not necessarily a 'proper' librarian with a degree in 'library science' (this is your tiny school library, not the Library of Congress). Of course, modern pedagogy has also been overrun with woke ideology but that's a discussion for another time.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Bit of a false equivalence, because Danzig and Istanbul were specifically made international cities as a punitive post-war measure against Germany and Turkey respectively. A better analogy would be the various international and concession cities of the 19th century, which were generally pretty successful until the wave of anti-colonialism in the 20th century made them politically unpalatable. But even this is an imperfect analogy.
A mildly interesting competing hypothesis in itself compared to "smartphones and instagram wreck teen girls' psyches".
Why is this a competing hypothesis? I would imagine they're interrelated. It seems obvious to me that conservative parents would have greater restrictions on, or at least greater oversight of their children's social media usage and technology use. And the other way, it is likely a child who hasn't been 'influenced' by social media drivel is more responsive to conservative parenting and a better relationship with (conservative) parents.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
Very similar to the situation in academia.
Academia ultimately is the root cause though, at least from a practical perspective and not counting abstract social forces.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
K-pop is apparently popular enough that K-pop groups like BTS were doing ads and promo deals with McDonalds that made it onto primetime TV.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
6mo ago
Probably just because of that F1 Netflix documentary/reality show that was really popular. Played to typical reality show elements.
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.
Judges 21:25
The final verse of the book of Judges, the majority of Judges describing the people of Israel committing horrible atrocities.
Those people work with a very loose definition of genocide.
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in the question of whether Israel's actions meet the 'definition' of genocide, formal or otherwise. I get why it is important (least of all for the ICC and other international law proceedings) but at some level it just becomes a semantic question. I do think those who claim Russia is committing genocide against Ukraine but refuse to make or support the claim that that Israel is committing genocide against Palestine have a huge double standard.
My perspective is that, at best, Israel has displayed a overwhelming level of disregard and negligence to the Palestinian people that amounts to criminality, both recently and historically. At worst, I have to take at face value the multiple statements, both recently and historically, of senior Israeli officials that they want to utterly destroy Gaza and/or the Palestinian people. I both these things to be horribily immoral and should be rebuked. Whether they meet the formal definition of genocide I don't particularly care to argue.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
To talk about the plagarism allegation specifically:
Such an allegation is a bit rich when Hbomberguy is close friends with Hasan Piker, is who is the king of freebooting and stealing content. But I guess it's okay because in the video Hbomberguy makes one, tiny joke about Hasan where he doesn't even mention him by name and he got permission from Hasan to make the joke beforehand. So I guess that's fair and Hbomberguy is principled in criticising everyone, right.
The whole of "BreadTube" rife with plagarism and stealing content - it's just selective outrage against IH because he's an ideological enemy. At the very least, IH did cite the article and substantially valued added even if he could have done more.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.
This seems like a bit of circular reasoning. The US support Israel because it has the best army in the region. Why does US need to support Israel? Because the Arabs (generally) hate the US and the US need geopolitical support in the region. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Because the US supports Israel.
Additionally, the US actually gets very little from Israel. Israel fragrantly acts against US interests and ignores US calls all the time. Even the most milquetoast request from the US to Israel to maybe tone it down just a bit is just blatantly ignored. Israel demands the US intervene on its behalf all the time but rarely reciprocates. Prior to post-WW2, the Americans were actually seen very favorably by the Arabs.
I agree with your theory that articles like this reflect a subconscious realisation of the traditonal masculinity/traditional sex roles were a social good that has now been destroyed.
I disagree with your assessment that the concern is some strict Sharia oppressive regime will rise up on women in response (Islam is often an unfair wipping boy for "bad" sexual relations but that's a topic for another time). Feminists will may say this but they are only framing the problem (incorrectly) in a way that appeals to their ideology - that women are perpetual victims at the hands of an ever present creeping patriarchy. I think you've just uncritically bought into the feminist framing. (As a side note, a "brutal patriarchy that keeps women barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen" has never existed and will never exist except in the minds of fetishists and feminists who totally don't also fetishise it)
I think the actual (subconcious) concern is that women are slowly realising that a sexual libertine society isn't all what it was cracked up to be and the feminist promises of liberation were essentially a lie. That women actually prefer more traditional sexual norms including traditional masculinity (who'da thunk?). Not that that it's simply a less bad option, but there's genuine reasons to like traditional norms. So these it's essentially trying to backpeddle and recognise Chesterton's fence subconsciously as you say, they just can't articulate it because it would require going against feminist ideology, hence these really terrible feminist articles where they try and make it fit together and fail.
Edit: I read @Tanista's comment below after posting, his comment basically is a better articulation of what I was trying to say lol
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
What intellectual basis do random youtubers have to talk about instrumental convergence and so on?
About as much as any one of us do on this forum. Ross is by no means an expert, but he is decidedly (for lack of a better term) a 'weird' guy who discusses all kinds of weird stuff through his videos, they aren't exactly stardard game reviews/retrospectives, and he does it reasonably compellingly too. His unique, even if non-expert, outlook alone I think justifies some interest in what he thinks (I say this as a admitted fan of his videos)
Articles like this infuriate me. I am a pretty mellow individual and it usually takes a lot to get me riled up, but feminist articles, particular those about "masculinity" (God I hate that word and how it's used to pathologise men) I just find so rage-inducing.
Like all feminist piece about masculinity, it's doomed to fail because they cannot contradict the core beliefs and assumptions of feminist theory, which is a major, if not core contributor to the problem the article is trying to address in the first place.
When the author talks about the protector and provider role, and fatherhood being the base for developing a new positive "masculinity", my immediate response is "just what the fuck do they think they think masculinity has been about for millennia?" The feminist answer of course, is that masculinity has historically and currently been about oppressing women. "Hegemonic" masculinity and related terms. Before feminists turned "patriarch" into a dirty word, it actually reflected the reality that historically family life has always formed a key part of male identity, and it wasn't oppressive!
Of course, the author can in no way put any responsibility on to women for the social breakdown - and if they do it admit it, it's a good thing! In fact the article tacitly admits to this by singing the praises of the working woman, but the solution is never an adjustment on the part of women, oh no no no, the solution is always that men have to do more, "be better", and remake themselves into the New
SovietFeminist Man if necessary. How can you expect to build or maintain a masculinity around fatherhood and family when feminism has spend the last 60 years demolishing the family and cheering on its demise? How can you expect men to put family and fatherhood first when women clearly aren't putting family and motherhood first. Someone reneged on the social arrangements around family, and it wasn't men. But apparently men are expected to build a new "masculinity" to try and plug the gaps that weren't created by them.The end of the article had me rolling my eyes incredibly hard.
Yeah, because men totally haven't been held to high standards in the past and have been "free" to do whatever they want throughout history. I'm not sure how we the readers are meant to square the circle with the claim that men are protectors and providers but are also "free".
"Hey men, you know how masculinity has traditionally been built on men being protectors and providers? Well we feminists decided that actually didn't happen and you were all oppressive bastards who have to pay for the sins of your ancestors. But we now going to give you the opportunity to build a new "positive" masculinity that built upon being protectors and providers in a feminist friendly way! What does feminist friendly way mean? Well, it's kind of the same as before but this time women are under no obligation to reciprocate in any way! Hope you join us with building something better!"
There's something so insidiously evil about selling the cause of the problem as the solution. If only we had more feminism and men embraced it the problem will be solved. True feminism has never been tried! Gotta keep digging ourselves in that hole I guess.
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