TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
11d ago
Completely forgot to respond to this— thanks for the informative reply. Sounds like you have an interesting job! The substantial difference with previous secretaries is definitely concerning, as is the general sense of dysfunction you’re describing. Maybe he was a good politician but a not-so-good administrator, appointed above his level of competence? I’ll certainly keep this in mind about him.
TheDemonRazgriz
17d ago
I had to deal with his office and him professionally as the secretary of transportation
If you don’t mind my asking, how/why did these interactions happen? How high up in the office were you dealing with, or did you literally deal with him personally? Had you dealt with other secretaries of transportation?
TheDemonRazgriz
20d ago
You are pwned. You cannot unsee it. You can only feel rage and vow not to click on it.
This is an excellent way of putting it. Even worse is when the video topic is something I actually do want to see, and then I have to decide if it’s worth the dirty feeling of clicking on it…
TheDemonRazgriz
25d ago
There's been a myth that there was not a rise in COVID afterwards that was pretty easily debunked by looking at city by city data
I recall seeing this once or twice in the wild from online-left types a while back, and it was tremendously funny to me, because if it were true that the mass protests didn’t cause a spike of covid cases, that would mean the lockdowns were totally pointless in the first place… which never seemed to be the point being made…
TheDemonRazgriz
25d ago
I mean, how do you surprise your live in romantic partner with a political assassination? They really didn't see any signs?
I think it is entirely possible that Robinson had been mentioning that he wanted to kill Kirk for a while and the partner assumed he was just being edgy and joking around. This would be entirely consistent with the slightly weird text logs, where there’s (imo, at least) a clear tone of “oh god please tell me you didn’t actually go out and do this”, even as Robinson is talking about it in a tone that’s more like “lol obviously I did, why are you so surprised?”
By all accounts the partner started talking to the police/feds almost immediately after Robinson was identified/arrested and turned over the chat logs voluntarily. I suppose it is possible that the partner was involved and either regretted it or decided to play innocent, but that seems to require a lot of epicycles compared to the simple scenario where the partner knew Robinson hated Kirk, but didn’t know about the actual assassination plot. Any signs he may have given off would be much more readily explained at the time as “edgy jokes” than “literal murder plot”, until he went out and did it.
TheDemonRazgriz
29d ago
I disagree with this on baseline free-speech grounds. I think it’s gross and stupid to be publicly posting your glee that a pundit you dislike was killed, but unless you are in an exceptionally public-facing position (like a spokesperson, or an executive, or a government official), or you are actively harassing your coworkers, I don’t think that should have any bearing on your employment. The idea that doing things in poor taste should lead to any consequence worse than social shunning is, in my view, flatly toxic to society. Employers should not be making a judgment that something is intrinsically beyond the pale; the social role of Goodyear is to provide tires, not to act as referee about what is and isn’t acceptable in civil society.
If I found out that an engineer at my company had been fired because he posted “Charlie Kirk had it coming” on Twitter I would be extremely disappointed. Even more so if he was just making edgy jokes about it. As long as he’s not bringing it into the office and making people uncomfortable, I don’t see why my company should give a damn.
I'm happy if you cancel me for celebrating the intentional murder of a political figure. If the price of that was removing all other threat of cancellation, well I would be giddy with a sense of freedom that I haven't felt in 13 years.
If that was the tradeoff, I’d certainly agree with you. Unfortunately in reality this is not an option on the table. Perhaps an escalation of right-leaning cancel culture in a “your rules applied fairly” sort of way is needed, or at least inevitable, in order to get a de-escalation of cancel culture broadly, but that doesn’t make it a good thing.
TheDemonRazgriz
30d ago
Huh. I think I remember that guy actually, but not the FLCL iconography. Thanks
TheDemonRazgriz
30d ago
First the violent nutjobs took FLCL references
Wait, when did this happen?
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
If a right wing equivalent to Luigi happened (perhaps something like a high level and very woke partner at a law firm getting killed) I don’t think the reaction would be nearly as positive as it was for Luigi. I also think it’s pretty clear these things are less likely to happen in the first place than the reverse
If an assassin killed, say, George Soros, or a higher-up in the DEI/ESG program at Blackrock, I could absolutely see the very-online right gloating and joking about it.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I agree it’s more likely than not, but I wouldn’t yet rule out the Democrats managing to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I have seen some lefty friends and acquaintances calling him a “notorious transphobe” and similar. I have no idea how true this is, but there seems to be a perception among lefties (highly online ones at least) that he was a particularly virulent anti-trans figure and thus deserving of special hatred.
Honestly I doubt that he was any more anti-trans than any other vaguely right-wing figure, but that’s the perception I guess. Maybe because he was known for talking on college campuses and therefore getting into spaces where even mild pushback to trans talking points is normally forbidden? Or maybe he really did make a point of being aggressively anti-trans, again I don’t really know. But the “unique” accusation I’ve seen leveled at him is transphobia, not being pro-gun or pro-life or a Zionist or whatever.
I will say, if it turns out the shooter is trans, that’s going to be a whole new shitshow.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I’ve always thought Mangione just gave up on running, and expected to be caught there. Why else would he be carrying the manifesto?
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Yeah, I’m not trying to go too far with this take. Very true that we’ve always had alcoholics, opium dens, and weirdo hermits. But I really do think the barrier to entry for that sort of extreme dysfunction is significantly lower now than a century ago, and that has to have some effect.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I believe this is standard journalistic practice, in that it’s not technically a “murder” per se until someone is found guilty. The same way news outlets have to call people “suspects” and crimes “alleged” until a trial happens even if there’s obvious video of them committing the crime, it’s just accepted standard practice, nothing nefarious. It does result in somewhat silly outcomes at times, but I think the legalistic consistency is worthwhile for a non-tabloid outlet.
Edit: Just scrolled down and saw that @VoxelVexillologist already posted essentially this exact comment. Whoops.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
disparaging euphemism
Fun fact, the little-used word for this is a “dysphemism”
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I suspect, although I’m not sure how one would go about proving or quantifying it, that this mechanism has been broken down by what I suppose you could call the vices of modernity. The type of “long-term unemployed” people who in the early 20th century would be riding the rails, as you say, today either end up on the streets and become addicted to hard drugs, or shut themselves up at home and become grotesquely obese. These conditions are supported by welfare programs (and in the former case supplemented by petty crime) such that they never have any incentive to even attempt to find work, their conditions worsen, and eventually they become functionally irreparable parasites on the society. Many of these people, in decades past, would’ve picked up low-skilled jobs as drifters, doing a lot of the work that today is done by dubiously-legal low-skilled immigrants. The path to becoming a true “lost cause” in this sense, someone who is not merely disincentivized from working but so far gone as to be genuinely incapable of it, is far shorter now than it has ever been, and I think this has more of an effect on the economy than is usually discussed.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
The author of the appeals panel's opinion autistically changed nearly every quoted instance of "cell phone" to "cell[ular tele]phone".
The image of him doing this is just killing me. “No colloquialisms in THIS court!”
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point.
In fairness, there’s a non-negligible amount of genuine racists who include Asians alongside whites in the “civilized” category.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
It shocks my tiny European mind when I see guys in the US getting literally arrested and charged for pissing in an alleyway, as if that is an actual crime.
Not only that, in most (all?) of the US, getting caught for public urination can land you on the sex offender registry.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Oh definitely, yes. I’m not trying to say the OF-style market won’t take a hit. But I don’t think it’s going to die, either, I’d imagine there will always be an audience willing to pay for superior verisimilitude.
It's hardly more shameful to be in a relationship with a machine than an e-whore. Neither is something people are likely to admit.
I think the ability to pretend to oneself that it’s really the girl on the other side puts a floor on demand for the “real” thing. If anything I think OF girls using AI to talk for them will generally outcompete AI chatbots alone.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
There's a great quality yet cheap Japanese place called KENKA on Saint Marks Place. $7 for a bowl of hearty ramen and $7 for a 20oz bottle of beer with good vibes.
$7 for a bowl of ramen in NYC?!? I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I visit.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they were two chav-adjacent girls doing chav-adjacent things in the park with their friends, and an innocent immigrant found himself caught up in the mix.
If this were the case, why is he following them around and filming? He’s walking toward them, and they’re backing away, not the other way around. Certainly I can believe that the two girls are not, themselves, “innocent” exactly. But it is very weird to follow two teenage girls around the park with a camera.
Although it is very strange that the released video is from the man’s perspective, which is a point in favor of his innocence. Has anyone seen an explanation for this? Did he post it himself? Has he accused them of stealing from him, or anything like that?
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I remember that video well, it was actually one of the first (well, not the first, but certainly one of the more acute) cases which really shook me from the lefty consensus I had grown up in. I was already drifting away for various other reasons, and had always disliked SJWs (as they were then called), but the SJ race-war reaction to this incident was so ludicrously indefensible, and the left-leaning pushback so conspicuously absent, that it really stuck with me.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the video, the cop absolutely unequivocally saved the other girl’s life; the one who got shot literally had her arm up mid-stab (and going straight for the heart) when he opened fire. It was quite heroic, really.
It was just such an obscenely naked case of “black lives matter, but only when it makes a white person look bad”. It’s not like anyone would be saying that other poor girl’s life mattered if she had been stabbed.
Thanks for this, I’ve noticed my own confusion about this distinction occasionally when people were talking about Mastodon, but had never bothered looking into it. Makes much more sense now.
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