I Accidentally Got SBF To Admit to Fraud
So...SBF is simply a moron. I've been trying to resist that conclusion, but now I'm asking myself why I bothered.
In the link above Youtuber Coffeezilla drops into a call with SBF (a second time! Why is he still taking calls??) and proceeds to basically get him to admit that funds were comingled.
Coffeezilla noted that SBF always deflects the issue by arguing that some accounts were trading on margin and so were deliberately open to being used by Alameda, unlike regular accounts. So literally all he does - and all any journalist needed to do - was just keep drilling down on whether the FTX only customers who weren't doing that could still get their funds. SBF obviously has no answer. Even worse, he basically screws himself by admitting that they had one withdrawal process which was him admitting to comingling funds.
So...the guy is just a moron. He doesn't have some grand legal plan to plead negligence or ignorance. He has a half-baked plan based on the idea that everyone is dumber than him (despite multiple counterexamples) and he falls apart the minute anyone puts any thought into his answers.
The entire video is actually a good look at how a journalist should view someone like SBF and his word games and deflections and how they should strategize to defeat them (and the end has the sort of pure joy at skewering the target that I bet all journalists feel but are too dignified to admit when picking up their Pulitzer). And this is coming from someone who thought the idea of people like Coffeezilla being "journalists" laughable.
But he has legitimately done the best job of questioning SBF out of everyone (Stefanopoulos was the close second)
Sam Brinton Warrant Issued—Biden Official Accused of Stealing Luggage Again
A felony arrest warrant has been issued for Brinton, who is non-binary, after accusations they stole luggage from the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas TV station KLAS reported.
The charge is for grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000, the warrant states.
Grand larceny is a category B felony in Nevada and punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.
So I think it's safe to say I believe that that Tweet thread that accused him of having a continually escalating fetish was right. IIRC there was some criticism of the Tweeter's objectivity and credentials, but I guess even a broken clock..
I suppose my reaction could be called bigoted but I'm not surprised by this, nor was I surprised by the initial charges or even the claims that he was playing out a sexual fetish. In fact, I found it highly more plausible than the alternative given his bizarre behavior and reported lies when confronted.
Taken as a whole, I am more likely to distrust someone who shows such suspect behavior while also apparently being hellbent on signaling deviancy. Not a good combination.
EDIT: Strong language edit.
Harry Potter and the Vibe Shift
I actually was thinking about giving this topic a rest - it makes me feel like I'm being radicalized in slow motion - but...just when I thought I was out...some room for optimism: NY Times: In Defense of J.K. Rowling
To give a brief rundown of the situation:
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NYTimes employees in conjunction with GLAAD released a letter putting pressure on the NYTimes for reporting in a "biased" fashion on trans issues recently and how it's being used by states to pass bills against gender medicine.
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The NYT...actually shows some spine and refuses to bend, saying: “...But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.". Who would have thought that we'd get to the point where a basic recognition of the different role of activists and journalists would be noteworthy?
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Apparently the NYT also posted an internal memo warning NYT staffers against public working with an activist organization against their own company stating that they: "will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums."
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Then, we see what the bruhaha was likely about and what the open letter was trying to preempt: we get the above op-ed yesterday, basically defending JKR against the criticism she faced - ahead of the release of The Witch Trials of JKR by Megan Phelps-Roper, an escapee from the Westboro Baptist Church.
In essence: the same strategy we've seen from wreckers and ideologues time after time played out, but the Times did the bare minimum and acted like adults. At a certain point - just as with wreckers like Felicia Somnez at WaPo - I suppose it simply became too much for too little gain. The constant fitna was fine when it was in service of popular causes with little cost, but now seems to be in service of a cause that is dragging many people down. So why not put out the op-ed, while also keeping the workers in line?
Said article's content?
This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.
So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think.
...
But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.
Nothing here is new to anyone who spent any time checking on the actual words of JKR and her defenders. But it is interesting to see the NYT posting about it and fighting the pushback, especially as it follows the incredible failure of the Hogwarts: Legacy boycott and Sturgeon's fall from power*
The backlash can no longer be written off as the cultural peculiarity of "TERF Island" - a desperate rhetorical ploy used by activists to distract the blind. It's not just a European thing. It's everywhere.
My personal take was that transactivism was just the next, inevitable step in the march to atomization in liberalism. And it probably still is. But there may be bridges too far, even for liberals. I hope.
A good note to leave the trans issue on for at least a while and reset my brain before I become some sort of schizo, hyper-reactionary monarchist or something. Maybe go play a few new games...
* It's been a great month for her, after years of shit, I have to say.
TikTok is a Chinese Superweapon
Basic argument of the article is simple:
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Social media addiction has clear psychological and societal downsides. It can shrink and monopolize our attention, make us more anxious and lead to damaging fads like stupid "challenges" that kids do.
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TikTok is very good at this due to its ability to adapt to the user and the short attention span videos require.
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China is aware of this and has demanded that Bytedance moderate TikTok moderate TikTok for China (so as to encourage people to wish to be things like engineers instead of influencers) and banning it for Chinese kids, while allowing it to run rampant in the West.
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This is sort of a practical proof of the degeneracy and internal contradictions of Western capitalism and a deliberate attack.
An interesting look at how the Chinese view the West through the eyes of a powerful Chinese policy-maker:
Wang writes:
“Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification… Commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, can increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.”
Thus, by turning everything into a product, Western capitalism devours every aspect of American culture, including the traditions that bind it together as a nation, leading to atomization and polarization. The commodification also devours meaning and purpose, and to plug the expanding spiritual hole that this leaves, Americans turn to momentary pleasures—drugs, fast food, and amusements—driving the nation further into decadence and decay.
For Wang, then, the US’s unprecedented technological progress is leading it into a chasm. Every new microchip, TV, and automobile only distracts and sedates Americans further. As Wang writes in his book, “it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” Though these words are 30 years old, they could easily have been talking about social media addiction.
Wang theorized that the conflict between the US’s economic system and its value system made it fundamentally unstable and destined for ever more commodification, nihilism, and decadence, until it finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. To prevent China’s own technological advancement leading it down the same perilous path, Wang proposed an extreme solution: neo-authoritarianism. In his 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” Wang wrote that the only way a nation can avoid the US’s problems is by instilling “core values”—a national consensus of beliefs and principles rooted in the traditions of the past and directed toward a clear goal in the future
The bolded is especially relevant to the final solution to what the author (speculatively) considers an attack by a civilizational competitor:
That leaves only one solution: the democratic one. In a democracy responsibility is also democratized, so parents must look out for their own kids. There’s a market for this, too: various brands of parental controls can be set on devices to limit kids’ access (though many of these, including TikTok’s own controls, can be easily bypassed.)
The article first concedes that China is right that the market will drive us to the bottom of short-attention-span content and degeneracy, but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility" in the face of an unprecedented technological challenge.
We've never dealt with this problem before. The idea that individual parents are going to figure this out when they're in competition with some of the most sophisticated companies in the world who've totally saturated the web with their influence seems patently absurd to me.
Especially in a system where the state is usurping more and more responsibility for child welfare. But, when it comes time to regulate tech companies, the state is powerless?
This sort of learned helplessness is common in the West, even when China is providing a counter-example of what can be done (i.e. regulation, which the author writes off because people will just make a new site*). But the argument is: in an ideologically fractured world the state has no right to impose its preferences in terms of the good life on citizens who may disagree. Now, it may be that the West is too far down the anomie and moral anarchy road to change course. But then the question is whether this is palatable to anyone else who is shopping for a civilizational model?
Especially since there's a strong argument that it is precisely this sort of liberal-influenced learned helplessness that leads to the very fracture of core values that could help mitigate such crises. I would bet that a 1950s America would have more social cohesion to push back against some of these things, but that's due to a shared culture that has been destroyed by...well, take your pick: neoliberalism, secularization, individualism, mass immigration, therapy and the breakdown of homogeneity, racial animus.
So it may be true that liberals - once their culture has become sufficiently fractured - cannot solve this problem (due to the ideology's resistance to compelling certain choices). But that may be an argument to never become liberal in the first place.
* If only someone had applied this insight to the drug war.
Twitter: BBC objects to 'government funded media' label
"The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee," it said.
When BBC News highlighted to the Twitter boss that the corporation was licence fee-funded, Mr Musk responded in an email, asking: "Is the Twitter label accurate?"
The level of the £159 ($197) annual licence fee - which is required by law to watch live TV broadcasts or live streaming in the UK - is set by the government, but paid for by individual UK households.
Collection of the the licence fee and enforcement of non-payment is carried out by private companies contracted by the corporation, not the UK government.
TV licence evasion itself is not an imprisonable offence. However, non-payment of a fine, following a criminal conviction, could lead to a risk of imprisonment - "a last resort" after other methods of enforcement have failed.
I'm sorry, I don't really see the point of the complaints. Or rather: I see a point, but it's not interesting or flattering.
The BBC license it's mandated by the government.
The fact that artists and defenders of the BBC itself argue attempts to remove the 'fee' will harm programming or is a deliberate attempt to cow the BBC also militates towards the conclusion that the worries implied by "state-affiliated" or "state-funded" apply - though I grant that it is a more refined arrangement than direct payment.
Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell said: “The cat is out of the bag. The Prime Minister thinks those reporting on his rule breaking should pay consequences, whilst he gets off free.
"The Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary seem hell-bent on attacking this great British institution because they don’t like its journalism.”
So...the government not imposing a "fee" is an attack on an institution's functioning but we're supposed to act like it isn't a tax or the BBC isn't government funded?
So what reason does anyone (not benefiting from media branding) have to take any of this seriously? It seems to me that the real basis for complaint here is that BBC doesn't want to even theoretically be in the same bucket as Al Jazeera and RT. But it is precisely the media's fault that terms like "state media" are so badly received. Just as it is the media that marks certain dictators as "reformers" and others "strongmen" with "regimes" to aid its attempts to manufacture consent. They constructed this complex of Words That Hint At Things But Can't Be Called Out Cause They're Technically Correct.
So, because the media doesn't want to be marked by its own taboo-words and bad branding everyone is supposed to pretend that an entity funded by a government mandated license, whose supporters claim would fail without aforementioned government mandate everyone is supposed to ignore the correct labeling?
Tanista
1yr ago
Black Cleopatra Goes Mainstream or Netflix exploits the Toxoplasma of Rage?
So Netflix and Jada Pinkett-Smith worked on...a new version of the tale of Cleopatra that is deliberately designed to piss people off.
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Action Girl Cleopatra.
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Implying, of Caesar, that he was looking to rise to Cleopatra's level which is just...so wrong as to have either been deliberately malicious phrasing or born of only watching the 1963 Cleopatra film.
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And, of course, Cleopatra and her courtiers being black - not SSA-black but at least ambiguously so, with the called out curly hair. They make sure to insist, for a good chunk of the trailer, on discussing this fringe Hotep bullshit.
I've always thought that the black American focus on Egypt showed a deep insecurity at best (since Egypt is the one "African" state that's broadly respected and known in the West) or outright spite at worst - an attempt to seize and twist a European icon in Morgoth-like fashion so you can have an "aha!" gotcha.
That's why it made sense for it to be a fringe hotep thing.
Now...apparently it's going mainstream. I kind of missed out on history documentaries after I lost History Channel so I can't remember if they were always this bad. I'm pretty sure not though. This also doesn't just seem stupid in the way Ancient Aliens is stupid - the point seems to be division. On a naive level you'd expect people to fight over more than one Egyptian queen being black, if they wanted "'representation". Yet it all seems to center on like the one person you'd think would be unambiguously "white" by our standards.
I suppose that's a comfort - I don't have to worry about Aurelian suddenly becoming Desi. Clearly some figures are preferred.
And yes, I checked Netflix and it is under "Docuseries" and "Historical Documentary".
An attack on their people is an attack on me. They are part of the civilized world and I will defend them from barbarism.
I'm glad you feel that way because some members of the Israeli Knesset and Israel's intelligence minister have found ways to help defend them: The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees & Victory is an opportunity for Israel in the midst of crisis - opinion
We must try something new, and we call on the international community to help make it a reality. It could be a win-win solution: a win for those civilians of Gaza who seek a better life and a win for Israel after this devastating tragedy.
Those refugees, if spread out, will have a relatively low impact on the West and will benefit themselves and Israel will be closer to a secure ethnostate. A win for the "civilized" world and an example of the value of allies. So better make some room.
Is the future trans? The Gay Rights Movement Has Been Hijacked by a Radical Transhumanist Agenda
“Transgenderism” is a word acting as a social bridge between transsexualism and transhumanism. It is an umbrella term with weak borders that allows this bridging quality to transhumanism to nimbly evade scrutiny. Transsexualism is largely an adult male fetish that compulsively objectifies and covets womanhood. Men with autogynephila (the professional name for this form of transsexualism) seek to medically appropriate the sexed humanity of women by purchasing surgical simulacrums of their sexed reality, in parts, to assuage their compulsion. It is the apex of the sex industries, reducing women to parts for commercial and sexual use.
“Transgenderism” is an offshoot of both these words and is being used as a rebranding of transsexualism to appeal to a new, youthful market. It is a harbinger of the genetic and technological manipulations we are being conditioned to accept via transhumanism obscured by co-opting the familiar branding of a wildly successful human rights movement. In reality, it is an anti-human agenda.
The next most crucial step toward the transhumanist goal is to usurp human reproduction and move it into the tech sector. The assisted reproductive market is currently $25.6B and is projected to reach $41.4B by 2030. This market is being invested in by many of the same elites investing in the gender industry, who are invested in the medical and tech sectors in general, and who are simultaneously using the LGB human rights political infrastructure to abolish sexual dimorphism—reproductive sex. It’s a perfect fit because individuals in same-sex relationships will need the assisted fertility market if they wish to reproduce—and only those with considerable resources can finance these risky medical procedures. The rest will stand as the medical refuse of eugenicists, sterilized for life.
I don't think the average person in support of transgenderism thinks of themselves as a transhumanist or reads transhumanist literature, they seem to have come to it by way of a strange version of liberalism; not just that you're free to act as you like but are free to be whatever you say, even against the veto of biology, society and basic sense. Combined with a runaway social constructionist impulse and Rousseau-like mindset where the individual is always prior and it's society that corrupts them and you get to the situation where a tiny fraction of people can overthrow the most basic assumptions of a society. Transhumanism by way of rampant individualism .
I also think it's..dubious to frame transgenderism as-such as merely autogynephilic men. Even Blanchard has a two-part typology with homosexual males and autogynephilic males. Even if we want to reduce transgenderism to a mental illness or fetish in men, the article -by playing the traditional leftist game of trying to "solve"' problems by insisting they're caused by male issues - ignores the fastest growing "'transgender" population: young girls.
This would fit well with the trans-as-transhumanism position: girls who would usually go through puberty (a messy time) and the difficult adult life are instead offered a solution to their life's problems via transhumanist surgeries and procedures. Don't like your life? Go be anyone else you want. Never mind that we aren't actually the Culture and you can't mold yourself at will.
Interestingly: this argument actually makes me less anti-trans. I personally see no reason to validate any of the attempts to problematize the sex binary and plenty of reason not to. But clearly the march of progress won't be stopped by me or anyone. Medical technology will improve and people will have the ability to mold themselves more and more.
So really, is the only sin of "transpeople" being early?
So, in the wake of Elon Musk's bid for Twitter being back on and him apparently suggesting layoffs of up to 75%, Twitter employees have released an open letter begging demanding:
We demand of current and future leadership:
- Respect: We demand leadership to respect the platform and the workers who maintain it by committing to preserving the current headcount.
- Safety: We demand that leadership does not discriminate against workers on the basis of their race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. We also demand safety for workers on visas, who will be forced to leave the country they work in if they are laid off.
- Protection: We demand Elon Musk explicitly commit to preserve our benefits, those both listed in the merger agreement and not (e.g. remote work). We demand leadership to establish and ensure fair severance policies for all workers before and after any change in ownership.
- Dignity: We demand transparent, prompt and thoughtful communication around our working conditions. We demand to be treated with dignity, and to not be treated as mere pawns in a game played by billionaires.
I mean, obviously there's a lot of schadenfreude to be had by conservatives and anti-wokes over demands that political beliefs be respected.
Personally, as someone who has watched the Left begin to sound like libertarians on corporate power ("Facebook is a private company) when it comes to social media sites (which I view as a purely self-serving move) I find it hard to be sympathetic. Since nobody has any principled solution to billionaires owning the public square and they should deal with the consequences if things don't always swim left.
Even on the matters that aren't that "culture warrey" and align with my beliefs (e.g. good worker protections) I see no reason to care since their argument seems to be that they're important enough to have a right to an outsized say and protection (since Twitter is apparently being used in important places like the Ukraine war). You see similar things during the Chappelle Netflix or Peterson-publisher kerfuffle where relatively well-off employees think they have right to dictate the direction of the company, a right they don't seem to fight for for any other set of employees.
This is the game. I think these people are confused: you're the imperial functionaries, not the Emperor. Sometimes the tune changes and you have to dance.
My perspective is probably economically naive, but I think, if Elon actually wants to change the direction of Twitter, a purge is a good idea - perhaps in the vein of Basecamp: the culture is getting less partisan, we're not going to cater to your activism, accept it or take severance. A lot of the more "woke" employees are never going to reconcile themselves and will in fact attempt to be internal saboteurs who are waiting for their chance to cause a mess and potentially get a payday (like Netflix getting sued by the anti-Chappelle protestors).
Uproot it and start again, setting good expectations for the company culture.
Tanista
1yr ago
As of this writing, House of the Dragon has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (with an 84% Audience Rating) and The Rings of Power has an 84% approval rating on the review aggregator (with a 38% Audience Rating, which should largely be discarded).
I know the article doesn't bother but: has the mainstream come up with a coherent theory for why HoD - which was coming off a controversial Game of Thrones finale and it's own "woke" PR problem - is doing vastly better than RoP in audience ratings?
Sexists are more motivated than racists?
But they are there people
They won't take them. What can we expect? They're not of the "civilized world"!
But Israelis are your people. Your struggles are their struggles, their struggles are your struggles. This really is the neatest possible solution. As the article points out: they've tried other things (including allowing an election that led to Hamas, on the behest of their allies) and it hasn't worked. If everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder against barbarism, think how dire the straits had to be (or how limited the downsides to allies with more demographic inertia) for them to suggest this.
So...more people have dropped Kanye West in the wake of his "anti-semitic comments" (it took more digging than it should have to actually see what he said - a few articles just leave it incredibly vague which is...problematic). In this case Anna Wintour/Vogue and CAA, both of which are hugely influential, even though CAA only repped him for touring.
To tie it into another recent trend: the Floyd family is allegedly thinking of suing him for suggesting Floyd died of fentanyl though I don't know on what grounds? I guess people have been emboldened by the Alex Jones verdict?
A while ago a rapper called DaBaby went through a similar thing where he refused to apologize until the consequences got too serious - I personally was interested in how far someone could take it. But the outcome proved that "cancel culture" isn't really a paper tiger that only works when people play along because they're too spineless. Nope, it'll work regardless.
This is an interesting test case because Kanye is basically as close to "uncancellable" as a person in a hugely PR-focused industry like music (and fashion) gets. He has a bunch of rabid fans who will buy his music or gear and he's already so vastly rich and famous that he'll likely always make waves. And , according to him, he has an ironclad contract with Adidas
Presumably he knew all this when he - once again - decided to say something he almost certainly knew would bring controversy. But, unlike the "slavery was a choice" or all of the other shit he did, this one is actually leading to the most serious consequences we've seen yet. Ironically for saying Jews cancel people who don't play by the agenda.
Recall also that Nick Cannon eventually was forced to apologize not for racist, Scientology-esque pseudoscience about white people, but specifically for annoying Jews.
It's a shame we don't have a way to see what the median person thinks about this (it's all just elite shunning and op-eds right now) because my first impression when I saw that happen to Cannon is "this is bad for everyone. White people are seeing this - they're basically seeing that anti-white racism is fine and the only whites you don't get to be racist towards are Jews". I wonder how black people will feel if this is what kills Kanye and not...y'know, going against the strongest racial partisan preference in the country.
So...the interminable Duchess Megan scandal is in the news again. It seems like with Charles becoming King and Harry soon to have a book out everyone is going back to their corners to relitigate this.
(For those of you who were complaining about frivolous Anglosphere topics : you're welcome :))
Last time I actually dug into this the conclusion I came to was that there was essentially a cultural clash between Hollywood and royal values. I similarly felt that the geographic divide in the reactions (Americans seeing her treatment as obviously racist, there being a more mixed British reaction) was a product of clashing ideas about work and just how awful life could be for a royal of any race (my take being that the Americans vastly underestimated the relevance of classism and foreign culture - since they tend to see this stuff through a mainly racial lens, other factors either merely being aggravating ones or just dogwhistles)
Recently, a new book based on the Courtier's perspective had excerpts published in the Times that go into more detail.. It had some interesting tidbits that were reported years ago.
The take of Palace courtiers is - unsurprisingly - that they tried to be accommodating but a combination of culture clashes made this impossible: Megan not respecting that the Palace staff had no interest in being called on late, Megan being directly hostile and rude, Megan simply not understanding how the Royal family worked (as that Palace Papers' excerpt puts it "she thought she had more seniority [than she did]").
However, relations between Meghan and the team at Kensington Palace were fraying fast ... a senior aide discreetly raised with the couple the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to Harry and Meghan’s standards, they suggested. Meghan was said to have replied, “It’s not my job to coddle people.”
...
At around the same time, Meghan spoke particularly harshly at a meeting to a young female member of the team in front of her colleagues. After Meghan had pulled to shreds a plan she had drawn up, the woman told Meghan how hard it would be to implement a new one. “Don’t worry,” Meghan told her. “If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you.”
Later, Prince William, who had heard of some of the treatment that she had been subjected to, came to find the woman. “I hope you’re OK,” he told her. “You’re doing a really good job.” She promptly burst into tears.
On another occasion, when Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue that was worrying her, she rang repeatedly when the staffer was out for dinner on a Friday night. “Every ten minutes, I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry. It was, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve let me down. What were you thinking?’ It went on for a couple of hours.” The calls started again the next morning and continued “for days”, the staffer said. “You could not escape them. There were no lines or boundaries – it was last thing at night, first thing in the morning.”
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On another occasion, there was confusion over the arrangements for a London engagement by the duchess. Meghan thought that no media would be there, but it was on a press rota. It was the sort of mishap that did not go down well. The member of staff involved knew they would have to talk to Meghan about it and was dreading the prospect. After they missed a call from her, they rang back, but she did not pick up. They said: “She hasn’t called back. I feel terrified.” A short time later, they added: “This is so ridiculous. I can’t stop shaking.”
The excerpts paint a picture of what is, essentially, a "girlboss". In multiple senses of the word . How you feel about Meghan shapes which girlboss you see. From what I've heard from pro-Meghan Americans keen on Royal gossip the Palace staff essentially come across as lazy and incapable of handling a driven woman who has strong expectations for the work ethic of her staff. To the people on the other side she comes across as a crass American determined to drive "her" workers into the ground in the name of her empowerment, incapable of adapting to a more traditional organization (one that has more...refined means of showing aggression*) - aka a "girlboss" in the pejorative sense.
Does this really come down to just a different work culture in the US vs UK? Cause, to be honest, my stereotype was that UK was basically European Canada on this: there are a few differences (and they never stop bragging about them where they feel they're ahead) but work culture and its expectations are much closer than with other states. The Palace staff sound positively French at some points of this! Is the Palace just some oasis sheltered from the rat race that envelopes other parts of Britain?
* I'm not convinced that the Palace considered her behavior immoral. At worst, it was probably considered...uncouth.
Tanista
1yr ago
By more than two-to-one, Americans support U.S. government banning TikTok from Pew Research
More than twice as many Americans support the U.S. government banning TikTok as oppose it (50% vs. 22%), though a sizable share (28%) are not sure, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that comes amid intensifying scrutiny of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
Support for a government ban on TikTok is higher among Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party than among Democrats and Democratic leaners (60% vs. 43%). It’s particularly high among conservative Republicans (70%) and less so among moderate or liberal Republicans (46%). Among Democrats, conservatives and moderates are more supportive of a ban than liberals (49% vs. 36%).
Older Americans are much more supportive of banning the platform than younger ones: 71% of those ages 65 and older support it, compared with 54% of those ages 50 to 64 and fewer than half of adults under 50. Those under 30 stand out for being the only age group in which more people oppose banning the platform than support it (46% vs. 29%).
I can't say I'm very surprised but it's more that I assumed it was getting banned either way. I'd be interested to see the trend over time to see if there's been some manufacturing of consent.
I think that sort of support (especially since the GOP is onboard and not playing criticizing) basically gives the government all the cover they need to actually do it but we'll see.
Dreher's Law defied? Transgender rapist Isla Bryson moved to men's prison
After years of haranguing feminists and critics for suggesting that things like self-ID would lead to women being potentially at risk as unsafe males entered women's spaces, the topic has burst unto the scene as a rapist in Scotland sought movement into a female prison because he "transitioned" after being caught.
The basic economic logic of "if barriers are removed from socially deleterious activities people will do them" proven once again. Yet it somehow evades certain parts of the political spectrum.
Isla Bryson was remanded to Cornton Vale women's prison in Stirling after being convicted of the rapes when she was a man called Adam Graham. She has since been moved to HMP Edinburgh.
Bryson decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial.
She was taken to a male wing of HMP Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon.
It came after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that Bryson would not be allowed to serve her sentence at Cornton Vale.
This situation seems to have proven to be a boondoggle for the SNP. Sturgeon faced resistance in her own party to passing gender legislation already and the UK government even blocked it for equality concerns (leading to a -cynical imo - row on devolution as well, which I'm sure Sturgeon would prefer to be the issue).
Now this case came up and caused a bit of a stir. Sturgeon came out proactively and reassured everyone, saying that no rapists will be allowed into female prisons, making it clear where she stood & using the "risk assessment" argument to save face: every trans applicant will go through risk assessment therefore there's no problem unless they come to a wrong decision. Of course, the problem seems to be that a) these people are assessed at the female prison and b) maybe the best system is no system. All this effort won't change the fundamental reality of males vs. females so why not use the rule of thumb that works the vast majority of the time? Certainly, if the FM has to come out and reassure Scots that the right decision will be reached in each of these cases that says something about their confidence.
Of course, I've not seen even a hint of reflection on this from the very people who called it bigoted to suggest that weakening gender barriers and implementing self-ID would lead to these ludicrous situations. If anything, activists seem to be doubling down on the claim that anyone who raised the alarm about this was just being bigoted instead of letting the process play out.
Meanwhile, a second plane has struck the Towers
So the Canadian Green Party had a meltdown over "misgendering". . No good deed goes unpunished in the land of fringe party circular firing squads; their attempt to be inclusive by having pronouns (but mistakenly picking the wrong ones) has become a firestorm.
It all started at a Sept. 3 media event in Vancouver kicking off the party’s leadership contest. In a Zoom appearance, Interim Leader Amita Kuttner was identified using a caption bearing the pronouns “she/elle.”
Of course, there is the standard "it made me feel unsafe" stuff. All of the leadership came together to harshly criticize this and the President - a volunteer- resigned cause she felt scapegoated, regardless of the apology.
The statement from the leadership candidates:
“The September 3 incident was but the latest in a number of similar behavioural patterns that Dr. Kuttner has faced throughout their tenure,” it read.
I'm sort of bemused how they frame this as some sort of pattern of racism, like calling a black person a slur or making jokes about women coders (they even use the term "harassment" at one point)
When the reality is that this person has deliberately chosen an atypical set of pronouns that will naturally cut against how most people over 5 have learned to use those things and so will naturally get misgendered sometimes.
This just solidifies in my mind that this entire thing will generally breed confusion and then conflict. That may even the point.
Of course, the political opportunism immediately follows:
Amidst all this, Kuttner launched a fundraiser last Wednesday intending to spite Jonathan Kay, an editor with Quillette and occasional National Post columnist. Kay had tweeted that the misgendering controversy sounded “exactly like satire,” prompting Kuttner to ask supporters to donate $68,000 to counter Kay’s “hate.”
As of press time, the fundraiser has pulled in $226.69, $10 of which was donated by Kay himself.
The President laments not only not being able to get anything done to the hysterical claims of harm but it being used to basically marginalize and remove her and other party figures:
Despite my best efforts to take us forward and find solutions, I am constantly distracted by claims of harm. I have spent much time trying to work beyond naming, blaming and shaming, and have called for restorative processes – yet these things continue to evade me because I find resistance to change.
Claims of harm have been weaponized in political attempts to remove people from the party. That is the truth of it. Federal Council was told that I caused harm to the interim- Leader. There was no evidence presented. I was excluded from Executive Council meetings that were organized without my knowledge. Briefly I was subjected to much harm and disrespect, and in the interest of the GPC I chose to not make this public to avoid harm or disrepute from coming to the GPC. This is evident in all our recorded meetings.
Reminds me of that article recently about how charities and organizations can't get work done with woke employees who are constantly attacking each other.
TBH, the Green Party - despite what some people want it to be - is an utter mess and small party nonsense like this isn't surprising.
The problem is that it's unclear it'll stay small party nonsense. The problem is not just this norm being spread, but that it is being enforced by both hate speech and discrimination law (probably why "safety" and "harassment"* have been so emphasized)
* BTW: I recall Jordan Peterson argued that we would end up in a place where misgendering would lead to these sorts of claims. He was told it would never happen because it was about continued misgendering. To that I say: that's bad enough + this case doesn't bode well for that position. It was a single incident, there was an immediate apology and it still became a huge fracas. Dreher's Law of Merited Impossibility hasn't struck yet, but it's looming.
Tanista
4mo ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Christianity is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as transgender ideology.
It has much more of a track record of encouraging adaptive behavior and institutions though.
Does anyone know of a good overview of the Race and IQ debate for someone who's completely ducked the topic until now and is basically ignorant?
EDIT: Thanks for the responses everyone!
Does Progressive Ideology Make People Unhealthy?
Or: The internet wrestles with the finding that progressives (especially liberal women) are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness.
John Haidt seems to have kicked it off with good piece that goes over his usual points: cellphones cause problems by encouraging comparison and closing off real independent play that builds resilience , but liberal kids specifically are being taught "anti-CBT" - instead of learning resilience and an internal locus of control liberal kids are taught catastrophizing and believing things are outside of their control. I'm sure we've all seen adult liberals emphasizing how "traumatized" and "tired" they are made by events.
Noah Smith thinks it can be reduced to phones, and many problems - e.g. competition on Instagram depressing girls, a doomer media narrative making people sad - just come down to phones too.
(The one I found most interesting) Musa al-Gharbi has a great piece that does seem to come down to "conservatives are just generally more psychologically resilient in polling, for various reasons" - there are obvious ones like them being more religious or emphasizing an internal locus of control, but also more interesting ones I didn't consider like conservatives allegedly having less homogeneous groups and progressivism seemingly attracting more neurotic types in general.
The summary:
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There are likely some genetic and biological factors that simultaneously predispose people towards both mental illness/ wellness and liberalism/ conservatism, respectively.
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Net of these predispositions, conservatism probably helps adherents make sense of, and respond constructively to, adverse states of affairs. These effects are independent of, but enhanced by, religiosity and patriotism (which tend to be ideological fellow-travelers with conservatism).
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Some strains of liberal ideology, on the other hand, likely exacerbate (and even incentivize) anxiety, depression, and other forms of unhealthy thinking. The increased power and prevalence of these ideological frameworks post-2011 may have contributed to the dramatic and asymmetrical rise in mental distress among liberals over the past decade.
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People who are unwell may be especially attracted to liberal politics over conservatism for a variety of reasons, and this may exacerbate observed ideological gaps net of other factors.
As well as an interesting prediction:
On this model, liberals would move first, with the conservative increase in negative emotionality emerging as a reaction to shifts in liberal discourse and behaviors. However, there should be a disjuncture over time because the prevailing liberal ideologies would continue to exert a powerful influence over the mental state of liberals but would come to exercise diminishing influence over conservatives. These patterns are, in fact, reflected in the data.
I'll have to dig into this to confirm but this is something to watch: can conservatives "win" the cultural contest by providing a less neurotic example or will they all be assimilated into the same therapy mindset? Clearly the phenomenon of trad-larping seems to show some dissatisfaction with what liberalism has to offer but i'm not sure how p
From what I recall of Haidt, there does seem to be some "contagion" effect in terms of liberal tactics where, if liberals complain and use school services e.g. to resolve speech disputes, cons eventually try to do the same (I've seen similar things with female/feminist style complaints spreading to the other side).
TBH I also think there's a "capitalist realism" thing going on where no one can see outside liberal ideas even if they seem manifestly inert or outright unhelpful. They're just considered "the right thing". And it's repeated over and over. In fact: failure just leads to more calls to "promote mental health" and more demands, not less.
Reading Crazy Like Us after it came up here really reinforced this: As one user commented on Scott's review: "I found the trauma section of the book very compelling, in part because it squares with my impression of the United States as a society that is convinced it understands trauma better than any previous society but seems to achieve uniquely poor outcomes. It would be like a land that was convinced it had the best vaccine for polio but you look around and every fourth person is in an iron lung."
Even if conservatism offers a better outcome psychologically it doesn't matter, cause liberals won't listen to conservatives anymore than the well-meaning "trauma" counselors in Crazy Like Us cared to listen to the locals' own view of things.
Celebs, boundaries and emotional abuse
So two stories have popped up around the same topic recently: how much men have the right to complain about or police their women's public behavior.
First off: recent mother Keke Palmer finally got to go out and enjoy herself, and her outing involved being serenaded by R&B star and notorious hound Usher Raymond. Her "baby daddy" decided to come out and complain that: "A man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others".
Well, that didn't go well. The feminist-aligned internet tore into him and he appeared to have been promptly dumped and, insult to injury, merch clowning him is now being sold
At the same time, "toxic masculinity" has a white representative to balance it out: Jonah Hill is now being attacked for being a misogynistic narcissist. Soon after the birth of his child, his ex decided to post texts showing his demand that she stops sexy photo shoots or overly close relationships with men or hanging out with women from her "wild past"
Hill is also facing a backlash from the DM women for "emotionally abusing" his ex via his boundaries and non-negotiables and his exploiting of "therapyspeak" to sanctify controlling behavior.
In both stories both men are excoriated for hypocrisy because these women behaved this way when they met, and expecting them to change (including after childbirth) is inconsistency.
So, what culture war implications to take from this?
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Keke Palmer's boyfriend had a very standard male reaction, regardless of charges of hypocrisy. Making it public that way was unwise, especially since he was the comparative minnow in the status competition. Times have changed. Maybe men like that should reconcile themselves to playing the role of the honorable wife who conveniently never sees any of these shenanigans, for everyone's sake. Of course, that would suggest some more restraint on Palmer's part...
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The situation is reversed with Hill. He has the status. Which I suspect is a significant part of the motive to release it now and draw in Deuxmoi-reading women to help win a battle that she couldn't have won in the relationship. As many people asked: why did she put up with his absurd demands (asking her to not post risque surfing photos when he met her through them) for any time whatsoever? Well, because he was Jonah Hill, presumably.
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No pretense to even wrestle with why men don't want the mother of their kids publicly on display. Just near-total lack of care.
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Obviously the concept creep on abuse continues.
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Is the celebrity (and wannabe celebrity) class just going to litigate every relationship online now for fans and political affinity group points...forever? The Hill thing happened a while ago and now it's supposed to be a thing? I suspect part of the push to call some of this "abuse" is precisely that there's a realization that no one should care about messy personal business. I assume the word game is retarding us coming to the conclusion one should in a panopticon: to stop caring. I wonder how long it'll hold.
I do see where the Left is coming from here. Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades. But I also think a given community has the right to maintain the integrity of its society and culture.
Sweden had and still has that right.
They chose to let in migrants. They chose to have a non-ethnic conception of citizenship.
Everything happening is Europe's choice. None of these Ancient Roman comparisons really map. One of the wealthiest, highest human capital regions in the world is not being presented with a fait accompli by Somalians or a technical problem it can't figure out.
This is just what they chose.
Tanista
4mo ago
Maybe America could do with a general taboo against the display of all flags except the US flag?
I recall the debate over Tlalib's Palestinian flag (and comparisons to a Congressman showing up in his IDF uniform) and it all seems like a - somewhat distasteful - hassle.
There is, however, one type of leader who tends to create long-term positive impacts for a country. And that is a benevolent dictator, or dictator-lite. Examples of leaders in this mold are Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew.
That list is tiny, and you might have to drop a few if you consider whether they have successfully locked in their gains and had an orderly succession to a still flourishing system.
Nobody has any idea how to make Lee Kuan Yews or General Parks*, or they'd make a dozen of them. Often people act enlightened to fool the West and then do whatever (Obama used to think Erdogan was that guy) Which is why a lot of people default to "get a democracy going".
TBH there is no "Western narrative" - there's many. Even in the same government you'll find people supporting democracy and change until they turn around and support the only strongman on the grounds that they're the ones who can keep the state running or, at least, do what the US wants (basically Obama's relationship with Egypt after the Arab Spring).
(I don't think you're wrong about Western NGO-types framing people like Bukele as autocrats for violating "civil rights" but that just makes me skeptical that he is autocrat, as opposed to proving he's a successful one)
* This being The Motte, someone might also remark on it being a strange coincidence that the examples that immediately come to mind are East Asian...
Is the Gender War the oddest "culture war"?
Fair warning: this is going to provide few conclusions. TBH I'm more interested in soliciting opinions on which explanation seems most plausible.
I was on another sub and someone complained about how tiring the interminable gender war was. And it raised something I had been thinking of for a while: it feels like there's something very odd about a society where sexes are encouraged to disdain each other despite being unable to actually do without said sex.
I grew up in Africa and moved to the West near the end of my teenage years so I've lived in very different societies and have struggled to understand their differences. . One highly progressive and aiming for gender egalitarianism and another that has a very traditional understanding of gender still, due to religion and culture. As Muslim nations go we're pretty progressive relative to some of the Arabs (no one I knew growing up wore or was expected to wear hijab - though I saw more of them around when I returned not too long ago), but it's no Sweden.
The interesting thing is though, growing up, gender wars weren't as big a deal as in the West. I'm not saying that women never reacted badly to sexism or no one ever pushed for change. But...it just didn't feel like there was this interminable "battle of the sexes".
Thing is: we had many other forms of culture war. The most obvious being ethnic strife. That was just taken for granted. It makes perfect sense to me that tribes will dislike one another, groups will cynically deploy identity politics as suits them and so on.
It doesn't seem obvious to me that any tribe will be so riven internally that men and women (the two components necessary for it to reproduce the tribe) see themselves as competitors or enemies. With this logic being taken to absurd extremes where women make money publicly mocking their husbands for the applause of the internet
So why is there a gender war? Why didn't it feel as big a deal back home? Potential reasons:
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There was, I was just too young to know. The most parsimonious and intuitive. Game stops, do not pass "go".
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There's "'gender war" in the same way there's "class conflict" in the medieval era: exploitation is still happening but conditions haven't allowed something like marxism (well...feminism here) to explode cause the proles are still too oppressed. So there's a latent gender war. a. There's some attraction to this one too, especially when it comes to one obvious gender war issue we don't share with the West: polygamy. Here many women are opposed and it does create a clear split between men and women. But it seems like it simply hasn't bubbled up into a politically salient critique of the whole institution or, even broader, some "patriarchy"
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The West has much weaker tribal and religious links, which means there's much less of a sense of intratribal loyalty to block gender wars or redirect them. If you're just someone in some random urban region (that you likely moved to) they're not really your men/women, it's not really your tribe. There's no common destiny; it's just random individuals and so it's easier to demonize them as oppressors/bitches. a. As a corollary: the absence of strong, traditional identities allows/drives people to identify in different ways that allow gender conflict.
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Traditional societies have a much clearer path to marriage/family which reduces what there is to fight over. It is precisely the shifting of norms (and their endless litigation) that justifies becoming a gender warrior. Even unjust but stable norms may be better here.
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Blank slate ideology hasn't taken root. IMO this leads to damage because the natural points of divergence between men and women are no longer natural tendencies we have to work around but actual failings on the part of the other side (obvious examples would be: women being "too" choosy, men valuing youth and variety "too much")
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The American culture war is just particularly strange; Austrians and other Westerners do not speak this way but they don't get as much airtime.
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Similarly: the Culture war doesn't actually represent lived reality, it is just a loud form of kayfabe, especially on the Left. Women and men pair up and go about their days, regardless of the TikTok rhetoric
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Feminism itself is to blame: the ideology, especially when stripped of class, requires a male enemy. When stripped of class it becomes a tool of middle class and above women seeking to remove barriers to their privilege who especially need men as such to be the enemy (if they argued on the basis of class they would risk arguing against the very privileged state they wish to reach). If this allows a middle class woman to talk down to a working class man as an avatar of the problems of all men...all the better.
So...I'm curious which ones the Motte finds intuitive (besides the obvious). Because - if I ignore my desire to be epistemically humble - I do have sympathy for 2,3 & 5 (though arguably 5 is just a proxy for how far feminist ideas have spread in the first place).
Elevatorgate: Effective Altruism version?Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse
Does anyone remember Elevatorgate? Long story short: the atheist "movement" had gotten going, many books were published and cons were attended. At one a figure in the community "Skepchick"- Rebecca Watson- was propositioned by a man who'd attended her talk in an elevator and made a video stating - in understated tones given the conflagration it started tbh - that she didn't like it and it made her feel unsafe.
Because this was pre-#MeToo and the Great Awokening and atheists at the time kind of prided themselves on being
assholestruth-tellers , figures like Dawkins jumped in, criticizing or mocking her for complaining about such an anodyne event. Dawkins wrote a notorious letter titled "Dear Muslima", mockingly comparing the suffering of a hypothetical circumcised Muslim woman with Watson in the sort of move that wouldn't even begin to fly today.Well...that led to an absolute shitstorm that split the atheist community with some using it to create "Atheism+": basically atheism that was sufficiently woke, after insisting atheism had a racism/sexism/whatever problem. As foreshadowing for a now pervasive social tendency, it then ate itself with circular firing squads and purity spirals.
At the time, there was enough pushback that Watson and her defenders didn't outright win but she probably won the moral victory. Years down the line most of the leftover "100% atheist" communities were pretty woke, see the banning of RationalityRules for arguing against trans-identified males in women's sports.
Now...
...
...
I'm torn.
On the one hand, I recognize the same tactics (and, tbh, it doesn't escape my notice that the first victim seems to have social competition with males for funding on her mind) that ripped the Atheist community apart. I also find most of the examples of harassment to be of the all-too-common nebulous and vague variety that allow people to claim victimhood. I honestly don't know if people are this fragile nowadays, or are exaggerating their fragility for points, but it is a bit absurd. If you're an adult, I don't want to hear about you being groomed. A "22f-44m" relationship is one where one party is twice as old but it'd be absurd to act like one party didn't have agency.
A lot of the complaints also seem to be that alleged rationalists and effective altruists - for some reason - don't just take people at their word.
On the other hand: some of these (e.g. the final one I quoted, the one about a male jumping into a woman's bed at night) are more egregious and the quokka point is well-applied here for those "good" EAs who still encouraged people not to go to the cops. It's exactly the sort of problematic math I can see some people doing. Hell, people did it all the time in churches, schools and so on. It's not a particular foible of EAs.
Also:
I have to say I find this funny. People discovering that looser social and sexual norms allow bad actors - or merely "people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve" - to accrue sexual and social benefits and blur the lines. Quelle surprise.
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