SSCReader
1yr ago
She can only assume that I carry a gun because I'm a violent man, that I put it on her coffee table as an implicit threat to her, that I went to the bar that night with the intention of finding a woman to rape or murder, that my current calm and natural friendly demeanor means that I'm not just a violent man but a total sociopath who enjoys violence, she calculates quickly that her best chance of getting out of this alive is to do whatever I want, to overperform and hope I spare her life.
This is basically just Dennis's implication process right? Only unintentional. There is an implication of danger (the gun, or being on the open ocean with no way to escape). Given that men are generally bigger and stronger than women, an interpretation would be, that the implication is always there, the nowhere to run or possession of a gun just makes it more text and less subtext, perhaps.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE
Dennis: We’ve gotta pop by the department store, pick up the mattress. I’m gonna get a nice one too.
Mac: The what? The mattress? What do we need a mattress for?
Dennis: What do you mean what do we need a mattress for? Why in the hell do you think we just spent all that money on a boat? The whole point of buying a boat in the first place is to get the ladies nice and tipsy topside, so we can take em to a nice comfortable place below deck, and you know… they can’t refuse. Because of the implication.
Mac: Oh, uh… okay. You had me going there for the first part. The second half kind of threw me.
Dennis: Dude, dude, think about it. She’s out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. She looks around and what does she see? Nothing but open ocean. “Ahhh, there’s nowhere for me to run. What am I going to do? Say no?”
Mac: Okay… that seems really dark.
Dennis: Nah, it’s not dark. You’re misunderstanding me bro.
Mac: I think I am.
Dennis: Yeah, you are. Because if the girl said no, then the answer is obviously no.
Mac: No. Right.
Dennis: But the thing is she’s not going to say no. She would never say no. Because of the implication.
Mac: Now… you’ve said that word, “implication” a couple of times. What implication?
Dennis: The implication that things might go wrong for her if she refuses to sleep with me. Not that things are going to go wrong for her, but she’s thinking that they will.
Mac: But it sounds like she doesn’t want to have sex.
Dennis: Why aren’t you understanding this?
Mac: I don’t…
Dennis: She doesn’t know whether she wants to have sex with me. That’s not the issue.
Mac: Are you going to hurt women?
Dennis: I’m not going to hurt these women!
Mac: Oh okay.
Dennis: Why would I ever hurt these women?
Mac: I don’t know.
Dennis: I feel like you’re not getting this at all.
Mac: I’m not getting it.
Dennis: God damn... (looks over at woman shopping nearby) well don’t you look at me like that. You certainly wouldn’t be in any danger.
Mac: So they are in danger!
Dennis: No one’s in any danger! How could I make that any more clear to you? Okay. It’s an implication of danger.
Mac: (Stares silently at Dennis in response)
SSCReader
1yr ago
Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?
This is like asking for examples of a defence lawyer making things better for the state prosecutor (barring mistakes or incompetence). That isn't their job. The relationship is adversarial in that getting better conditions (pay, breaks etc.) for employees will generally cost X and that X is money the company could have spent elsewhere or taken as profit.
The reason unions protect bad employees is the same reason that defence lawyers defend the guilty as well as the innocent. Because the companies incentives do not necessarily align with the employees and therefore a bad employee from the companies perspective is not an objective measure. In an employer friendly location like the US, it might make sense for companies to fire employees for very little as long as the labor supply is good, but socially that may not be desirable. Also its tricky to get people to join unions if you have a reputation for throwing them under the bus when they get in trouble.
The question you should be asking is in totality taking into account employees, companies and society in general are unions an improvement or not? And that is a much trickier question to answer. It's quite possible a union could be a net good but be bad for the company itself.
Having said that unions definitely can and do soft shoe things when they are dealing with poor employees. They just can't advertise that for the above reasons. But if you deal with them you can tell. Do they go for the throat and be aggressive or do they just show up at the meeting make some notes, pat the employee on the shoulder and advise them to take the written warning etc. I've fired people while dealing with public sector and private sector unions and they do have ways of dialing back support for employees they think themselves are a problem. Which is not to say they do that all the time, but they can.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I think the issues is, that your approach doesn't do anything better, than the materialist approach you decry.
If you can't tell a predictive dream apart from a normal one until after, then functionally nothing changes. If some percentage of farmers who pray for their crops to grow it works, but we don't know when or why, then we are going to have to use fertilizer and act as if there is no such intervention. If you can't tell whether the trauma of watching your wife get murdered in front of you is going to give you (or her!) telekinesis to stop the attack, then you are going to have to try plain old violence.
If you can't tell if you are in the world of 40K's warp, or the world of the Christian God, or the world of Bigfoot, then you don't know if you should be trying to manifest the Imperial Truth, or following the 10 commandments or sending out hunting parties into Oregon. And given there is a near infinite probability space, and you can't predict, measure or know which of the 40,000 options you should be doing, then probably you should not do any of them. Or maybe pick a couple at random, but being aware that your chances of being right are near zero.
The reason why materialism is ascendant is that it can be used every day in the smallest of ways. Christians don't just pray for a church to appear, they build them out of brick and mortar. Islamists don't just pray for their enemies to be defeated, they buy guns and go and murder them. From the point of view of everyday life, a world where God exists but does not answer prayers, and a world where God does not exist are identical. Materialism is at the very least, mostly right. Whereas, all of your examples can't be collectively right. Some of them must be wrong, because they are contradictory, but you don't offer any way to tell which.
I would suggest the traumatic transcendence is unlikely because the world is FULL of trauma. If that was all that was needed, then the world should be full of observable examples (even if they can't be repeated!). Were Jews not under enough trauma? The man forced to watch his family murdered before he was tortured to death by cartels? Gang raped girls? Either this has to be so unlikely, otherwise we would see many more examples, (at which point it is again functionally irrelevant) or it simply does not happen.
Bacon's position likewise has a problem, if we have collectively realized our own reality and we can't opt out of it or change it, just by being aware of it, then it is once again fundamentally useless, you can't tell the difference between a world where it is true and where it is not and the only correct response must be to live in the world as it is. Incidentally this is very similar to the collective reality as posited in the Mage: the Ascension White Wolf RPG, where the "awakened" mages are able to substitute their reality (magic) against the consensus reality of humanity as influenced by the Technocracy. But they could do so repeatedly, though risking the punishment of the universe in so doing. (As an aside Roger Bacon was an influential mage in that reality), their long term goal was to break humanity free of the current paradigm, back to the older one where consensus reality was much more malleable.
However the reason humanity embraced the current paradigm was because it was safer, dragons and demons and other monsters (there were those seeking to inflict madness and corruption into the world) were banished by the light of reason, which meant that there were arguments that Mages were trying to wake humanity into a much more dangerous world and that they did not have the right to do so. Even if Bacon is correct, is a world with less predictability actually better? Or have we manifested this world because it is the one where we have the best chance?
SSCReader
7mo ago
Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing? Sure you can all vote to make a starbucks union, but...I just won't hire anybody in your union.
The question there (setting aside laws and the like) is, what if there aren't enough people to hire otherwise? Remember that unemployment is pretty low in the US currently, so are there enough people you could actually attract, in the area you need them, for the lower wages you are refusing to hike? With the skillset you need, and all at the same time so you don't have to shut down anyway because you need at least a 100 or 300 or 3000 factory workers all at the same time? And then you need to train them, and who is going to train them with your experienced staff just been fired?
That's a gamble in and of itself. And the more people are in the union, or who won't work as scabs (because they are in an affiliated union or something) the harder it becomes. Now if truckers refuse to deliver to you because they are crossing a strike line and so on. A strike is a balancing act where labor does hold some cards, because replacing them will cost time and money, and a short term shock can kill a company. They leverage that in exchange for better conditions.
Recruiting large numbers of new workers is very expensive and it takes time your cash reserves may not be able to support.
Firing everyone who tries to unionize (again ignoring laws for the moment) would be a signal that you want to hamstring the power of labor. Which is entirely reasonable for an employer to do, but then it is also entirely reasonable for labor to move to an employer who doesn't if available. If you can manage it and keep your staff then you win, but if they have other better options you lose.
Then of course labor can elect politicians who put in place anti union busting laws which is also entirely reasonable for them to do, leveraging their numbers for advantage. And employers can leverage their advantage (wealth) to lobby politicians for anti-union laws. Whomever is more effective gets an advantage and so round we go. That's what it means to have the adversarial relationship you spoke of. Employees using the options they have available to try and better their conditions, with Companies doing the same.
SSCReader
1yr ago
As a point for discussion, if (and it's a big "if) the Republicans fully take up the flag of the working class, would that make them the left-leaning party?
Probably the best idea would be to breakdown the individual positions. Taking my working class neighbors at their word the positions they are roughly in favor of are (not a complete list of course):
-
Reduced immigration - Right coded
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Traditional morality/End of wokeness/American values taught in schools - Right coded
-
Universal Healthcare for Americans - Left coded
-
Regulations on businesses to prevent them screwing over workers pensions/workers comp - Left coded
-
Cheap college for their kids - Left coded
-
Federal money into rural/rust belt communities - Both?
-
Protectionist trade/manufacturing policies - Right coded nowadays?
I live in a rustbelt town where my neighbors are ex miners/steelworkers and the like. Notably Bernie Sanders got a pretty good reception nearby when talking about holding big businesses accountable for pensions and better access to healthcare. My neighbors don't want their kids to be miners or steelworkers because they have the injuries, missing fingers, limps, bad backs and the like to show for it. They want their kids to have "better" careers and options than they did. And for most that means they want them sitting in an office. And that means mostly a college degree. That's why so many want to send their kids off to college. Not all of course and I think if you look at plumbers and other tradesmen it changes somewhat. But most of the manual workers emphatically do not want their kids to have to do what they did. For better or worse, they have bought in, I think to the American dream, which involves higher education.
Trump was popular here for campaigning on/towards 1,2, 6 and 7. Bernie Sanders would have hit 3, 4, 5 and 6 perhaps. 6 is unclear politically because farm subsidies and green subsidies are in play for both sides so depending on framing spending could be either. Though it would probably annoy the Libertarian leaning wing of the Republican party. 7 used to be more left wing Union sides leaning but is probably more associated with Trump style populism now.
Interestingly the poisoning of the idea of unions has been very effective. My neighbors might wish there was a group that would advocate for the workers and protect them against rich business owners outsourcing their companies to India or Mexico, but they don't want unions because they associate that with corruption and the like. Trust in the Federal government is low, but the idea that the Federal government SHOULD protect it's working people over business owners is pretty strong, they would be likely to call big Business leaning Republicans as RINOS and the like. Whereas a century ago miners unions fought near wars against mining companies for workers rights.
Some excerpts from Sanders town hall in "Trump Country"
"He (Sanders) reminded everyone of how hard he was working to get Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to restore pensions and health care that they had been cheated of by the mining companies."
"They applauded Philip Lucion, an almost painfully sincere coal miner, recently rehired (Thanks, Mr. Trump!), when he told them, “I love being a coal miner, that’s what’s in my blood.” They also applauded when he said that most miners he knew would quit and do something else for the same pay and benefits if they could."
"They agreed with Bernie that climate change is real"
"Coal mining, they knew, killed you quick or killed you slow, and the only way to get anything out of it was to make a serious demand on power."
"Their support for “Medicare for all” seems genuine,"
This one was from a different town hall in PA:
"When the town hall moved to Medicare for All, the single-payer health-care plan that Sanders backs, Baier asked for a show of hands from everyone currently getting health care through their employer: Most of the hands in the room went up, Baier's and Sanders's among them. Then came the follow-up. "Of those," Baier asked, "how many are willing to transition to what the senator says, a government-run system?" Hands fired back up and the crowd began cheering."
A working class Republican party would be like a Trump/Sanders unity ticket. Trump's immigration and MAGA and protectionism combined with targeting the proceeds at the working class through healthcare, pensions and siding against big business/ the 1%.
SSCReader
1yr ago
I have never understood the word "groomer" to be a synonym for pedophile, and in fact it is not a synonym for pedophile.
The word groomer is used because to most people it codes to pedophile. It is an effective political attack for that reason. If I were still in politics and working for the Republicans I would certainly be encouraging them to use it as an attack, but if it didn't have that connotation it would not be an effective political attack in the first place. Fascist is an effective political attack on right wingers because people generally think Nazis are bad. Groomer is an effective political attack on left wingers because people generally think that people who groom kids for sex are bad. They wouldn't be used if they didn't carry that emotional valence.
As for other words you could use, how about priest, or vicar, or Rabbi or sunday school teacher. Not in the pedophile sense again, but in the sense that this is how sexual morality in adults was formed. By teaching kids that masturbation is sinful, that homosexuality is sinful, that sex before marriage is sinful and so on. And for a long period of time this was the dominant waters that kids growing up swam through, even if their parents did not want that. That is the genesis of the woke movement you are criticizing. The rebellion against this enforced cultural teaching and the harm (as they see it, but see below) it did to kids who did not do well in that system. Hold onto that idea for a moment.
You mention it being done secretly or against your wishes but that is not relevant to the groomer tag in this scenario. I could teach your kids how to fish against your wishes and secretly and you are unlikely to call me a groomer. The key must then be WHAT is being taught. Would you call these secular teachers groomers if they were teaching your kids secretly that America is great even if you thought it was terrible? So to answer the question what do we call people who try to adjust and manipulate the sexuality of kids? Society, priests, nuns, teachers, parents, peers, televangelists, therapists, writers, and yes pedophilic groomers. It's one of the core roles of society, to set and teach boundaries on all sorts of human interaction and that includes sex and relationships. Which doesn't mean that we can't make a value judgement about which are better and which are worse, just to be clear. But almost everyone trying to mold the sexuality of kids are not pedophiles, they are not grooming them for abuse.
My RE teacher taught me about how Onan was sinful and I very much did not want to be there to learn that. If teaching a kid that is ok to be trans or gay or to masturbate is grooming, then teaching the opposite should also get the same brush. Are nuns at Catholic schools groomers when they teach not to do X or that Y is bad and will get you sent to hell and have you grow hairy palms?
I come to you as a veteran of the Atheist wars. There once was a passion burning bright in my breast about religion. I would literally call religious parents and priests child abusers. Not for pedophilia (though that was of course a useful weapon!) but because they are teaching kids what (in my opinion!) is utter nonsense. They are damaging their mental and intellectual and moral development. They are monsters. Or so my old self would have told you long and loudly and quite possibly whether you wanted to hear it or not.
Now that fire has dimmed with age and experience, and I no longer think religious parents and rabbis and the like are evil child abusers. I still think they are wrong, but I now understand they are doing their best to try and raise their kids and other peoples kids with values they think are beneficial. Indoctrination isn't in itself bad. All societies must indoctrinate their children into something. It's the only way to get a cohesive polity. So even though I think they are harming these children (albeit without meaning to), I accept it.
To go back to the original question I would suggest not using any new term at all. Anytime we put labels on groups we don't like it makes it more difficult to be charitable and welcoming to that group, and for me the most important rules of this space are those around writing like we our opponents are reading and we WANT them to be here. My suggestion is simply to address particular instances of behavior without using a particular term for those doing it.
"I find it very worrying that there are teachers who have been revealed to be secretly supportive of kids transitioning without telling their parents. I think this is bad because it robs the parents of their agency, it assumes they are bad people, and because I believe that trans behavior is likely socially conditioned and no child would know at that age. I think that kids supported on this route may well have irreversible harm done to them through puberty blockers and other treatments. I find this to be infuriating at a visceral level."
Now that is a lot wordier than "Did you hear about those groomers trying to sterilize our kids" but it at least gives us specific actions to discuss rather than whether telling kids that masturbation is natural is grooming or whether telling kids masturbation is sinful is emotional abuse. And we are after all at The Motte so we're not scared of a little wordiness are we?
To add on a little more, I do think that both the people who want to teach kids that sex is ok and nothing to be ashamed of and the people who want to teach kids that sex is sinful and shameful both can attract actual pedophiles and abusers. In one case it gives an excuse to broach a subject that can deflect suspicion and in the other it can allow the idea of the shame to coerce kids into not revealing their actions or because the kids don't even realize what it is that is happening through ignorance. Predators will use different tactics in different situations and both situations have failure modes. This absolutely should be kept in mind in both scenarios by everyone who is involved. Most people who want to teach either thing are not pedophiles but both absolutely can and do give cover for "real" child sexual exploitation.
As someone who was involved in anti-CSE activities in government I also am a little worried that using groomers in this context conflates the two and will lead to both false positives and negatives and thus leave kids at more risk of harm. But that cat is probably out of the bag and about to drop a dead bird on the doormat in the wider context unfortunately.
SSCReader
1yr ago
The politicians I managed at one point, never said that on camera, but they very definitely got strong notes from me saying things like "DO NOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION!!!!!!!. Pivot to talking about taxes/record on whatever etc).
Could they override me, sure. Though given I was employed by the party ignoring me, meant ignoring their own party which could be a bad idea.
I am not allowed to by my public relations team (because it is a bad look) is different than I am not allowed to by my mysterious puppet masters.
I have actually met Biden a couple of times (long before he was president) and he did have a habit of kind of gesturing behind the curtain which kind of fit with his folksy quasi-honesty look. Whether it plays well as President seems more of a stretch. If I was part of his team I would probably me rubbing my temples every time he did that. But maybe it is supposed to play in a kind if "I could tell you but then I would have to shoot you"
SSCReader
5d ago
Shame is an innate and necessary part of the human mind. It's a warning alarm, and it exists to warn you of the existence of a serious problem. Turning off the alarm doesn't make the problem stop existing.
But what you feel shame about is culturally formed. Kids don't feel about being naked or touching themselves until they are trained to do so. Catholics don't feel shame about the things they feel shame about until they are trained into it.
And that means your alarm can be false. Like people who internalize that they should feel shame about approaching members of the opposite sex even respectfully or who feel shame about feeling sexual attraction at all.
So you can't use the alarm to tell you there is a serious problem. All it can do is warn you that you have internalized that X is a problem. It doesn't do much to tell you if X is a problem really.
My grandfather was raised in an ultra strict Quaker offshoot, where any contact with the outside world was seen to be wrong and that music was sinful. He felt ashamed of listening to a choir in the less strict Church of Ireland he later moved to. Is hearing a Christian choir a serious problem he should have been alerted to? Or was his sense of shame miscalibrated because his society was simply wrong?
In other words, I agree shame and shaming is an intrinsic part of the human condition and that it exists to bring together societies through incentivizing behaviors your society see as positive. What it can't do is actually tell you if those behaviors are or are not positive in and of themselves. Because shame is sub-conscious.
And just like with feeling shame about a choir, the seeds of the sexual revolution lie in the fact that if you shame too much it becomes just as much of a problem as shaming too little. We historically shamed too hard and too deep and as with all oppression, a revolution will form. The previous norms of sexual shaming were crushed, because they were not moderated, because so many people ended up being shamed that they were in fact able to overthrow the shame mongers. That is the lesson I personally think all ideologies need to learn. Shame too many people (whether for sexual immorality or for racism or sexism or whatever), then there is a tipping point.
You might argue the results have been wretched, but obviously enough people felt the previous situation was ALSO wretched enough in order to overthrow it.
SSCReader
1yr ago
I think this is more complicated, some trans people may take the pill, but others I am sure would have the same reaction that changing your mind fundamentally is a bigger change than your body. I have a friend who feels his medication "kills" him because the person he is on it is not his real self. If your identity is a core part of your mental conception of self, then there is an argument that changing how you think is bigger than surgery.
Like if many people here had a choice between having a hand lopped off, or taking a pill that dropped our IQ by 20 points or removed our contrariness, or enjoyment of 10,000 word comments on culture war esoterica. I think I might take the hand lopping off, because then I am still me absent a hand, whereas changing the way I think, may in fact erase this version of me.
You're in my house now Kulak cracks my knuckles
Good read overall, though I'd point out a couple of things, even as a Cyberpunk fan, the life path thing is interesting, but was all the rage back in the day. In Traveller (1977) you could infamously die during character generation as you would roll for what happened in your various service related lifepath tours which could range from learning skills, being maimed, going to jail for 20 years (and potentially thus being unavailable for the game) or indeed dying. There was also an old swords and sorcery game I think Chivalry and Sorcery (also 1977) where you would randomly generate your background that then informed your attributes and could mean your idea of a noble knight ended up being a clubfooted exile born under the wrong star sign.
You can compare this with things like the more modern 7th Sea where you can create your own narrative hooks in your backstory and then earn XP when the GM uses them as another way to encourage creating whole backstories.
Combat back in old school RPGS was also noticeably more deadly in general. Early Shadowrun (my personal preference for cyberpunk rpgs) was very deadly where a non combat specced character could often be taken out in a single shot and even OWoD (old World of Darkness eg Vampire et al) combat was dangerously swingy even for people prepared for it. Call of Cthulhu you mention but there was also the knock off Chill (my physics professor character was eaten by a sentient 4th dimension tesseract, way back in 89, as there was no actual way of fighting back) and Kult (come to think of it, another Cthulhu knock off) in which dying was very easy. Alien, the Roleplaying game was so lopsided you would be lucky to get a single player out the other end as well. Delta Green (again a spin off from Cthulhu) would have your soldier pretty overmatched. I think Gamma World was the one where character gen was almost entirely random meaning you could end up being a sentient tree with the ability to mind murder people, or being a near normal human who can breathe underwater which had pretty big implications for survivability in a post nuclear wasteland.
I think Cyberpunk is excellent but I'd submit luck also played a pretty big role in it's resurgence as there are lots of rpgs that did mostly what it did as well. Perhaps the biggest thing is that Pondsmith largely kept control of it so it didn't get hobbled with things like the FASA and TSR collapses.
That and the resurgence of 80's/90's aesthetics and nostalgia probably helped. I'd second that Cyberpunk 2020 is the best tabletop version, just as Shadowrun 2nd was the best it ever got (even if they mostly failed to predict wireless connectivity so you end up having to manually plug computers together).
Edit and how can I forget Rolemaster? Critical hit tables so bad the joke was that most characters died from tripping and receiving an E class critical. At least there was more variability than in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - you did hear "Death from shock and blood loss is almost instantaneous" a lot in that game.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Please find me an Irish congressman addressing Irish in America in Irish
Well the main language in Ireland is English, and Irish is not even spoken by a majority of the population there, less than 40% have "some" ability to speak it. It's highly unlikely then anyone would be addressing a full speech in Irish, not because they assimilated to the US, but because even most Irish people would not understand it! I think your requirements for something that matches her speech are way too narrow but I will give you a brief set of examples below about how strong the Irish grip on America is. The Irish lobby in the US is arguably weakening but it is still huge. And I think it is hard to say her speech is worse than the actual actions taken across decades (from your point of view).
Having said that Peter King was a congressman until 2021 and he spoke repeatedly on the idea that the IRA was legitimately trying to create a free Ireland for his people.
"Speaking at a pro-IRA rally in 1982 in Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to "those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry."
"Shouts of "Long live the King" marked the annual St Patrick's Day parade here -- cheers for Peter King, a militant supporter of the Irish Republican Army who led 200,000 marchers up Fifth Avenue. King, the financial controller of suburban Nassau County, was named grand marshal of the parade after a bitter two-month campaign. "I was elected to send a clear message to England to get out of Ireland," he said. "The IRA's violence is only a reaction to violence started by the British Government.""
He spoke to try and stop the US government deporting Irish terrorists:
"Reps. Pete King (R-L.I.) and Tom Manton (D-Queens) will lead the speeches in support of Irish political figures such as Brian Pearson, whom the Immigration and Naturalization Service wants to deport as a terrorist.
"We want to focus attention on the terrible abuse of power by the Justice Department to deport these decent men," said King, Sinn Fein's biggest cheerleader in Congress."
And here we have another congressman saying support for meeting the queen is ok because "more Irish" (implying of course that he is himself at least somewhat Irish) people support it (this his position is not determined by what is good for the US)
"Democratic Congressman Richard Neal of Massachusetts, leader of the Friends of Ireland group in Congress and a vocal supporter of the peace process, told the Irish Voice he was surprised and pleased by the gesture. “None of us are more Irish than Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and John Hume,” he said. “If they say it’s okay, it’s okay for me."
We can also add Ronald Reagan saying Ireland was "home" and talking about how he had so many Irish-Americans in his cabinet that he had to fight them off Air Force One, and that he was an Irishman himself.
"Now, of course I didn't exactly expect a chilly reception. As I look around this chamber, I know I can't claim to be a better Irishman than anyone here, but I can perhaps claim to be an Irishman longer than most any of you here."
"I think you know, though, that Ireland has been much in our thoughts since the first days in office. I'm proud to say the first Embassy I visited as President was Ireland's, and I'm proud that our administration is blessed by so many Cabinet members of Irish extraction. Indeed I had to fight them off Air Force One or there wouldn't be anyone tending the store while we're gone. And that's not to mention the number of Irish Americans who hold extremely important leadership posts today in the United States Congress."
Or the so-called "four horsemen" of the Irish-American political grouping who used their influence to lobby the UK to treat their ancestral homeland differently? Sure they didn't say exactly what you asked.. but actions speak louder than words. They didn't just give speeches, they raised money and influenced government policy.
Whatever was said about Somalia and Somalians it probably also doesn't match up to Irish-Americans raising money for a violent group dedicated to unification of Ireland. Unless you think loyalty to Ireland had nothing to do with it of course.
SSCReader
1yr ago
But we won't, because the Tories only worship at the altar of Line Go Up.
More accurately they have internal models that suggest that reducing immigration (which even before Brexit they could have almost halved with no real legal problems) will mean the economy will not grow and as the party of making the economy grow they are terrified that will lock them out of power, long term. They believe they can largely make immigrants Conservative (see Sunak, Patel et al) over time and that localized issues are less of a problem than widespread economic issues. The Davos set are not particularly part of their thinking here. Avoiding things like the Winter of Discontent which gutted the Labor party for decades is their biggest driver. Talk tough, do nothing has been the Tory position on immigration for a long time.
Source: Worked for the Conservative party.
SSCReader
1yr ago
My parents got a security sytem after a single break in 2 decades ago. Guess how often it is now actually on? They remember to set it about a third of the time leaving. And my dad dosen't like it on when he is in the house because it goes off when he opens the windows. In theory he turns it on when they go to bed but thats a coin flip at best.
Complacency is common even among the well off, especially if you haven't had any incidents in a long time.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Well, I̵ ̴s̷u̸p̴p̸o̴s̶e̷ t̴̮͒ĥ̷͙a̴̦̒t̶̥́ ̴̞̓I̵̟̍ ̷̢͝c̷͜͠a̶̱͗n̷̫̽'̷͖̇ẗ̸̪.̷̢̫̂̍.̷͔̱̏̈.̴̦̳͐ ̸̡̥̪̄o̸̝̅̋́h̸̛̖̗̰̓͗ ̷̤͔̲͑͗G̵̼͒̎͝o̶̯͇͓̓ḋ̵͈̻͈͛̈́, ṋ̴̞̹͉̊̐̀ͅở̴̱̀̎̂͛!̴̖͓̟̬̊̇̓̾ P̴͕̗͚͙̘̏̿̀l̸̥͚͕̺̤̺̙͇̉̉͆̈́͗̃͘̚ë̸̟̘̟́̑̾a̸͈̗̦̟̘̱͓͊̇͋ș̷̱͚͔̤̀̇́͑͜e̶̘̿́͂̋ ̶̬̈́̒m̷͇̓͗͐̔̿̿̚͝ắ̶̲̫͖̪̺́̈͒̂́͜͠k̸͍͔̙̣̰̖̻̩͆e̴̱̤̤͎̟̐̀ ̴̹̪͇͈͚̉̾̈̚i̷̡̖̹͇̤̝͛̽̎̍t̴̻̓̾͠ ̵̭̿ş̶̧͔͖̹̣̃̂̈́͐̚̕ṱ̴̡̜̀͋̉̃̉̃͜o̶̬̹̒͌p̷͍͖̼͔̓̌͜͝!̷̛͉̎́͐̕͘̚
Can we not? Discuss the culture war not wage it is our raison d'etre. Your whole spiel would be much more fitting without the feigned Hey guys rhetorical device. State your point clearly. This might be interesting to discuss but with the partisan trappings splashed all over it why bother?
SSCReader
1yr ago
If you have a shitty life, it's because someone fucked you. If nobody fucked you, personally, then their ancestors fucked your ancestors.
Note that if you switch their ancestors fucked your ancestors to "your ancestors fucked you through giving you shitty genes" then the argument still holds. If I want to prevent people having shitty lives it doesn't matter whether they have shitty lives because they were oppressed or because they have "bad" genetics or because their dad beat them or their uncle abused them.
My prediction is this. Even if HBD in the form you describe became a mainstream belief, roughly the same people who want distributive egalitarianism now would want it then. You are looking at their rationalizations not the cause. The cause is that they truly do not want people to have shitty lives. Lighting piles of money to try to help makes them feel better and those feelings will trump any facts. The arguments they make (as most people's are) are backwards rationalizations to justify how they feel. That's why they can switch the argument each time it is disproven and keep the conclusion, because the conclusion comes first. People are not rational, logical agents.
SSCReader
25d ago
I definitely am not, and thats after going to take a look. The whole place looks deeply unappealing to me
I am sure lots of people enjoy it, but the overlap with here seems to much less than 100%
At the time, there was a lot of vocal critics of the tonal shift from 1 to 2. 1 was a much darker, dirtier, more hopeless portrayal (with some few exceptions, the Tardis and so on), where 2 leaned much more into comedy. You can see some of the follow through of that into New Vegas and beyond where you could take perks or enable the "sillier" elements (Wild Wasteland trait I think). Indeed that trait was a compromise between the developers who preferred the wilder and wackier tone against the more "grounded" one.
To steal a random comment or two:
"I played Fallout 1 and 2 back to back. Fallout 2 felt insulting to Fallout 1. Sure, there's a lot more content, but it's absurdly immature.
LOL PORNO. LOL MAGIC THE GATHERING. LOL ASIAN PEOPLE. LOL SCIENTOLOGY. LOL GETTIN' RAPED BY A SUPER MUTANT. LOL DAN QUALE."
"Fallout was kind of like Wasteland, but different. Fallout 2 was kind of like Wasteland, but worse."
"I'm old and played the games as they came out, though I was young. Fallout is a masterpiece, Fallout 2 is too silly for me. I like the darker tone, which is probably part of why I loved 3 as well. It sucks that 2 didn't even improve the gameplay. Contrast that with Baldur's Gate, which was a great game followed by a sequel that is probably my favorite PC game of all time."
And of course if you want to start an argument on RPGCodex you can simply mention that the retcon (in Fallout 2) about vaults being social experiments rather than actual attempts to save people, was a superior choice and watch the fires burn... not as hot as if you claim Fallout 3 is a good game of course, like the chap above. We prestigious monocled gentlemen have standards after all.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I want you to seriously try and do some experiential religious practice and try to have an open mind as to the existence of divine entities.
You realize most Western atheists were raised Christian? I had an open mind, I went to Church and Sunday school and church camp and prayed and gave it a shot. And I felt nothing. I believed with all my heart until I was old enough to start realizing there were huge holes in what I was being told and no-one had solid answers about them, but that they were still nonetheless certain they were right.
"I want the religious to seriously try and do some proper rigorous thinking, and try to have an open mind about the existence of confirmation bias, brainwashing and socialization. I want folks like yourself to perhaps even try to do experiments, or even learn advanced physics and give it a genuine shot. " - hopefully you can see why that isn't particularly a convincing argument.
We're not people who just haven't tried to believe. We've heard that same condescension for years. If you truly want to inspire people to change, you might want to try a different tack.
I don't think you can have that symbolic approach and keep the benefits of modern science. The ancients were wrong about many, many things, so why would we suppose they were right about religion? And even if they were, how do we tell which they were right about? Zeus? Ra? Yahweh? Quetzalcoatl? Morrigan? Thor? Buddha? Baal?
SSCReader
1yr ago
Be serious. If that's not grooming, nothing is.
It isn't. Grooming in the context of CSE means to try to position a child so that you can have sexual contact of one sort or another with them. If you convince a child to wear a thong via drugs or alcohol or love bombing or manipulation so that you can have sex with them, or derive sexual enjoyment from watching them, this would be grooming. If you did so for any other reason it really shouldn't be called grooming. It's probably a terrible idea and might open your child up to positions where OTHER people can take advantage or derive the sexual pleasure talked about earlier, but it isn't grooming in this context.
Just like having your child take part in beauty pageants (as you mentioned) where they dress up as adults, might wear swimwear etc, wear make up, is not grooming unless it is with the intention of taking advantage of them sexually. In both cases you may well find such activities attract predators and this is a real risk, but the mothers of these sexualized girls are not groomers either. Living out some strange projected idea of success and acceptance through their own kids? Sure. Depriving them of a healthy childhood? Almost certainly. Guilty of some kind of emotional abuse? There is a good chance. But those things aren't grooming as used in the context of CSE which is the link that the rhetoric is trying to make.
It's a rhetorical weapon, building off of visceral dislike for these behaviors. Just like calling right wingers Nazis. The vast majority of right wingers, voters, politicians et all are not Nazis. The vast majority of parents and organizers of Drag events or child beauty pageants are not groomers.
I used to work with social workers and dealt with and wrote reports on some CSE cases, including Rotherham et al, the people grooming kids in those situations were doing so, to literally rape them and then often prostitute them. So no, neither child beauty pageants or drag kids stuff are in and of themselves grooming, without that intent. Stupid and possibly psychologically damaging yes. Grooming no. There is a gap in between. Just like there is a gap in between "I don't like illegal immigration" and "I hate the Jews".
It's entirely understandable for it to be used in the normal context, it is an effective weapon. I'd certainly if I were still a political advisor be advocating for Republicans to use it as an attack strategy. I am a little disappointed it seems to be getting traction here. The behaviors can be bad without being actual child grooming. A mother who has her child wear make up, takes bikini pictures of her in suggestive poses and the like in order to offer her to her new boyfriend (a real case) is a groomer. A mother who does all the same things because she things it's progressive or because it will let her child experience new things or because she wants to live out her glory days vicariously is not. It is still probably a terrible idea regardless.
For those who deal with CSE, and hopefully for us here, that is a distinction worth making.
SSCReader
2mo ago
I can't imagine what it's like to live in right-leaning communities at a time when most believe the election was stolen and they're living under the equivalent on an anti-pope.
It's fine to be honest. Just as the opposite is fine mostly. Most of my Red neighbors don't rant about Biden or Trump all the time. It certainly isn't what i would call scary. Just as with abortion, or that capitalism is murder or whatever, what people say and what people actually do is very different. And what people mostly do is go to their jobs, come home and then repeat.
Almost every Republican who says they think the election was stolen are not going to do anything about it. Just as almost no-one who says that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism actually does anything about it. Let's not get people's rhetoric confused with something they believe enough to actually do something.
You would be perfectly fine living in the vast majority of right wing leaning places in the US, just as your right wing counterpart would be perfectly fine living in a left leaning area. The vast majority of people are simply not that politically engaged.
SSCReader
7mo ago
In PA, Republicans passed the mail in voting law in 2019 (thus nothing to do with COVID) because they thought it would help their rural voters or because they wanted to get rid of straight ticket voting in exchange (depending on the representative in question).
This is what they said then:
"In late October 2019, the Pennsylvania General Assembly was preparing to pass a comprehensive voting reform package that included no-excuse mail-in voting. Republicans, who controlled both chambers of the Legislature, were happy that they had managed to eliminate straight-ticket voting as part of the legislation. Some Democrats, including state Rep. Mike Sturla of Lancaster, were miffed by this and so voted against what would become Act 77. But the Lancaster County Republican delegation to Harrisburg voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation (state Reps. Steven Mentzer and David Zimmerman voted against it). The legislation passed in the state House in a 138-61 vote (note 59 of the votes against were Democrats) , and was approved by the Senate in a 35-14 vote. (note the 14 votes against were all Democrats) The state House Republican Caucus website was almost giddy in its characterization of this “Historic Election Reform,” the “most comprehensive effort to modernize and improve Pennsylvania’s elections since the 1930s.” State House Majority Leader — now Speaker — Bryan Cutler, of Drumore Township, discussed the legislation in glowing terms. “This bill was not written to benefit one party or the other, or any one candidate or single election,” Cutler maintained. “It was developed over a multi-year period, with input from people of different backgrounds and regions of Pennsylvania. It serves to preserve the integrity of every election and lift the voice of every voter in the Commonwealth.” What was not to like? Reporting on the new law, CNN noted that it eliminated a “requirement that applicants for absentee ballots provide an excuse as to why they can’t make it to the polls.” “We never checked anyway,” said state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, who’s now the Senate president pro tempore and is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination. As Spotlight PA reported, Corman hailed Act 77 as the “most significant modernization of our elections code in decades.”"
and
In a column published in May 2020 in LNP | LancasterOnline, Kirk Radanovic, chairman of the Republican Committee of Lancaster County, wrote that “this new mail-in voting option in Pennsylvania will be a crucial tool for the Republican Party and candidates to succeed.” “Anyone can apply to vote by mail, without a reason or excuse needed,” Radanovic wrote, encouragingly. “If you think COVID-19 or the prospect of long lines will keep you from wanting to go to the polls on Election Day, then vote by mail. “Our state senators and representatives have worked to ensure the integrity of this process, including safeguards to protect your vote.” He pointed out that every “mail-in ballot includes a unique bar code that is used to match you and your ballot, a security safeguard.”
PA only expanded mail in voting because the GOP wanted it done, they had majorities in both House and Senate. Mostly it was Democrats who voted against it because they feared the loss of straight ticket voting would hurt them. The fact that barely a year later they were now saying the very law passed by Republicans was unconstitutional and left things open to fraud is you have to admit a little laughable.
There is shooting yourself in the foot and then there is shooting yourself in the foot and then saying:
"Act 77 also had the support of almost all of the Republican state representatives in the Pennsylvania House, including state Rep. Dan Moul, a Republican from Adams County who joined the lawsuit over the mail-in voting law in 2021 "So my bad. I should've checked the constitutionality of that big bill," Moul says."
It's either staggering incompetence or a scapegoat for the loss, but at least in PA, The Republican party were all for mail in voting..until they weren't.
Some black people speak like that, Yes. But in peer to peer interactions mostly.
Virtually all of the black kids I know call any adults Mr/Miss/Mrs Firstname very politely and get a clip round their ear (or worse) from their parents if they do not. And that's including the ones literally from the ghetto. Where even the adults in their 30's are very likely to call me "Boss" or Mr SSCReader as an older man and be more deferential towards me than each other. For a black kid going up to knock on an adult's door they do not know well (given they didn't get the address right) it seems more likely they would be saying "Miss Talia, my mom sent me to pick up my brothers" than stereotypical ebonics even if he were a literal hood kid. Because if he didn't his mum was going to be told about his disrespect and so would her friends.
There is a lot in common with more southern politeness norms in black communities. And to be fair also in regards to levels of violence/threat. It is very similar to my Ulster-Scots brethren, where there are a lot of norms around politeness but also lots of fights/aggression. Which is perhaps why despite being in some of the worst ghetto neighborhoods as one of the whitest white men who have ever walked the earth, I've never encountered any problems. And it's usually pretty easy to see who has had in depth interactions within these communities and who hasn't. You were comparing people in an argument in the street and kids playing basketball (both where trash talking is likely) to a kid going up to ring a doorbell and collect his siblings from an adult. Why would you assume they would be similar interactions? Those are very different social situations. Codeswitching is a huge thing in the black community as you acknowledge later about professional settings and it is also very relevant to interactions like this.
And that's before we even get into the discussion of whether this kid was from a community where he is likely to use that language anyway in the first place.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Having worked closely with national politicians, I will tell you my experience is that about 85% of them could be replaced by a trained monkey who know to raise their paw to vote the party line and that is it. Staff cover most of the day to day actual duties in any case.
"In Labour and Conservative safe seats, a common saying is that a pig or monkey in a red or blue rosette would win an election in that seat" This is a very, very old joke, in political circles for a reason.
SSCReader
1yr ago
The mental stats in DnD have always been in this weird place. How does your 100IQ player or GM portray an INT 25 Psychic super genius? The answer is badly in my experience. All it usually comes down to is a stat that impacts your skill rolls, spells modifiers and so on most often. Do your spells key off Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma? What are you adding to your skill checks? It very rarely comes down to anything beyond that. Dumping INT as a Half-Orc Barbarian and then playing it with your own level of intelligence outside of stat modifiers is pretty common. And having an Int 20 Wizard played by someone who doesn't even themselves know what their spells do, or how many they get.
Should the player whose bard has 22 Charisma have to roleplay making a speech to convince the king to spare you or is their nigh supernatural charisma and a single die role the way to go?
If it's fake though, your better understanding is at best just noise. If you think you are psychic and can see auras, you will think you have more to say about people's words and truthfulness and the multi colored auras may even add beauty to their speech. But if you have a brain tumour then none of that information is true. If you call the FBI and tell them you know Bob Smith is going to kill someone, whether you have true or fake information is critical.
The same for an astronomer, if you think the reason for some phenomena is God and it is not, then you are further away from the actual truth.
You are correct that the Catholic has additional context and information, but that is only a good thing if they are actually correct. If not it may well be actively harmful. If it was only taken within the aesthetic context than that isn't really a problem. But I would argue that history shows that people are really very bad at keeping their beliefs in that sphere.
If Catholicism is wrong that gay sex is sinful and instead Gay God thinks it is the most virtuous act and gets you into Heaven, then that additional information being taught may have doomed hundreds of thousands of people to Hell. Whether your additional information is accurate or not is basically the whole point, if you are going to try to teach and pressure people into following it.
Catholics can certainly be scientists however no question, the ones that are generally focus on the fact that God created a universe that He wants to be explored with reason. So while God might be the ultimate cause of a super nova, the proximate cause was running out of hydrogen or whatever. Whether the sense of wonder of Godly creation outweighs the materialistic sense of wonder about a vast universe of chaos and beauty does not seem to be proven though.
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