MelodicAthlete
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User ID: 1861
MelodicAthlete
9mo ago
Yeah my comment was mostly alluding to this. He has no influence over conservatism, but perhaps progressives who read the NYT might think he speaks for "the conscience" of conservatism.
MelodicAthlete
9mo ago
This is like "other ways of knowing" for the wealthy.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Right, and with this decision there will be a lot of pressure for UC to become less enthusiastic about skirting the law because it just takes one admissions officer or dean of whatever to say the quiet part out loud in an email.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
When the complainant is of the wrong color (white or yellow), the courts will interpret these requirements VERY strictly and the cases won't go anywhere.
I don't think this is the case after today. Any lawsuit like this would get national attention and won't get quietly swept under the table. I know progressive judges can go off the rails sometimes, but it's still considered a mark against you if your rulings get overturned by a higher court.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
You're not going to see me defend Clinton's server, clearly it was wiped to preclude any further evidence gathering. The FBI should have simply seized the server, not asked her politely to hand over hand-picked "relevant" emails and then allow her to erase it. But she complied with that very lax standard. Also her apparent motive (FOIA noncompliance, mixing government work with business) is worse than Trump's, which is purely his ego.
If Trump had complied by handing over the physical documents when asked, I doubt he would have been prosecuted. His defiance and his stupidity are major factors here, he admits to committing a crime on tape, which makes it so easy to prove in court.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Correct. Clinton clearly set up her server to evade FOIA and got kid gloves treatment from the FBI. But she at least played along with the investigation a little bit and could feign some ignorance. Trump was brazenly defiant and they literally have a recording of him breaking the law. All he had to be was 10% less stupid but he couldn't pull that off.
MelodicAthlete
8mo ago
For what it's worth, you're right on the nose with his career earnings in the NFL: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/carolina-panthers/michael-oher-5484/cash-earnings/
MelodicAthlete
9mo ago
Anyways, shoutouts to this whole debacle for rekindling my fear of women, and quenching my fear of missing out.
Meet women in real life, they're not crazy IRL like they are on reddit.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Admissions offices are ideological, I just don't think they're this suicidal. I don't think this decision is some silver bullet, but any "tinkering" that Universities will do will make them targets for lawsuits. Affirmative action will continue in some form, but it's going to be much more marginal as opposed to a heavy thumb on the scale. There is only so much Universities can accomplish without explicitly using race as a criteria.
I'm pretty cynical, but many posters here are taking it too far. If you're opposed to affirmative action, this is a good day not only for the decision but for the embarrassingly bad arguments put up by Harvard, UNC, and the dissenting justices. It's also a wildly unpopular policy, so the public will back up the decision.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
There is going to be a lot of legal scrutiny for any institution that tries to implement the old system by other means. How does a University actually implement this policy without incriminating texts/emails? A University can't have emails to their admissions officers that "being from a black community is hardship wink" or they'll be violating the Civil Rights of other applicants.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
Yes it does. Unless you mean the following: Jews are unsafe in Gaza. But if Hamas were to take over Israel, they would change their behavior.
You're correct that Emmett Till's murder had a significant impact on support for the Civil Rights movement and a 1-for-1 comparison to the Zebra killings isn't accurate. The Zebra killings did not have a historical impact of note. Likewise, it's still early, but George Floyd's murder doesn't seem to have had a long term impact on policy. We are probably experiencing some sort of Ferguson Effect with rising murders and de-policing right now, but that part will probably be short lived and will be forgotten in 20 years. In that sense, his murder is not historically significant.
You have mentioned that you're not making claims about media coverage as it relates to this topic, so feel free to ignore the rest of this. This is my primary issue (maybe not the OP's), and maybe we were talking past each other a bit.
Despite its apparent lack of historical significance, I don't think Floyd's name will disappear from mainstream media coverage in 25 years, but will be revived in mainstream press whenever useful. Similar to how Emmett Till's name appeared 0 times in NYT coverage in 1980, and 72 times in 2018. Perhaps I'm "poorly informed" that I had never heard of the Zebra killings (dozens killed). Like many, I typically rely on popular media, news media, and the education system to inform me of these stories. But I also have the feeling that if I ask 10 younger people close to me (many Californians), maybe 1 has heard of Zebra. This seems odd to me but fits a pattern of the media suddenly becoming uninterested in a mass shooting when the perpetrator's identity/motives are "off-narrative" (or being cagey with details, not publishing his picture). That was the "racial angle" I was referring to.
Thanks for the links.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
I'm in the same boat as you. A friend explained bitcoin to me in 2012. How it works makes sense but I kept circling around to "But what is this for?". The basic arguments:
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No government control of money
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Making transactions easier.
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It's scarce
(1) is a pipe dream and just makes it a big flashing neon target for government capture or destruction.
(2) is just false. Crypto is an immense PITA to actually transact with and debit/credit cards are almost too easy to use. Add in scams, complicated passwords/keys that can be easily stolen/lost, and widespread usage seems like a joke.
(3) is meaningless without some underlying value. Lots of things are scarce that nobody wants.
Everything about it screams "speculative asset"/"baseball cards". I guess I would be much better off today had I not been skeptical and set up a miner or ten.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
Hamas is either covering up evidence or they're missing a golden PR opportunity.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
If LibsOfTiktok had made a habit of publishing the home addresses of those involved in the drag event, then yes that would be a threat to the personal safety of those involved. As it stands, the standard that got LibsOfTikTok repeatedly suspended was resharing videos that people voluntarily posted. How you think this is the same standard is beyond me.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
There is no way this event would have been front page news, knowing what we know now. "Parking Lot bombed, 30 killed" doesn't have the same ring as "Hospital bombed, 500 killed".
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
There will continue to be bias, but I think the difference now is that there is actual clarity in the law and monetary consequences for the losers. Any kind of wink-nod policies are going to have to survive potential whistleblowers and legal discovery.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
I know these institutions seem like hiveminds, but there has to be some level of actual coordination to pull off affirmative action as it has been practiced. If Universities attempt an end run around the ruling, then the whole admissions process will be open to discovery and one email or whistleblower will blow the whole thing up. I know Middlebury and Harvard PR teams have put out statements to this effect, but I think cooler heads will prevail. University endowments are a big fat target for lawsuits and alumni donors won't appreciate it being ransacked for progressive brownie points. Universities won't be able to operate in the shadows knowing that they will need to meet a strict scrutiny standard for their admissions process.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
Yes and the Republicans just sat by and watched them fight. The inability to select a speaker is a different level of dysfunction compared to the inability to pass $4T in new spending (while inflation was picking up steam) requiring 100% yes on a pure party line vote.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
You seem to be shifting the goalposts here, your only point now is this very narrow one where he is throttling an account that can be reasonably perceived as a threat to his personal safety when he said he wouldn't do that earlier. You're not making any broader claim about how he is being a hypocrite about Free Speech? Because the context for why he criticized old twitter management was very different than doxxing/safety threats.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
Saying that it's protected expression is correct in both cases. This is different than celebrating the guy who ran over Heather Heyer, which is the equivalent of what many on the pro-Hamas side ("this is what decolonization looks like" sentiments) did the day after the 10/7 attacks. I'm sure you can find people who supported the Charlottesville driver, and I agree they shouldn't get jobs at big law firms and should be deplatformed from social media.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
What makes you think "hospital workers" will be given the freedom to come up with an authoritative statement that is independent of Hamas' messaging on this? Did Hamas allow 3rd party investigators in to survey the blast, collect shrapnel fragments, etc? If this were an Israeli strike, isn't it in their interest to allow outsiders to investigate the site?
MelodicAthlete
11mo ago
Does she look like she's ever drunk a beer for fun, instead of standing around giving lectures on feminism while everyone else was trying to have a party?
Much of the appeal of her Comedy Central show Broad City was Ilana being half naked and partying a lot. Not sure how much was a completely fabricated character, but if it's based partially on her then she was probably pretty fun to be around in her college days.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
Yeah they're everyone's corner case, as they should be. Someone who isn't partial to their own children is typically considered a lowlife (i.e. deadbeat dad, druggie mom). When discussing politics, people can be awfully bold when it comes to distant hypotheticals, but it just makes me distrust what they're saying. I just don't believe someone who has real life children would say something like that and mean it.
That's true, but now it's unconstitutional and a violation of Civil Rights.
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