cartman
16d ago
This commenter's post is deeply objectionable for a number of a reasons, but the cherry on top is the dishonest framing of the evidence provided. The link to the comic which was provided displays that this book was available in a CITY'S PUBLIC LIBRARY, not some middle school where it was part of the curriculum. Of course the argument that a public city Library should contain zero material for an adult audience is absurd and I believe hardly anyone would defend it (though I'm happy to be proven wrong), which is why I believe this argument which could be defended on truthful merits was ignored instead for this dishonest framing.
Furthermore, a link to an article shows us the news that some female teachers rape their young male students. This is deeply horrible behaviour that deserves to be condemned, but I'd like to ask the obvious question, which is: what is the rate of teacher rape you are asserting (de facto by not mentioning other professions) is so much higher than other positions that come into contact regularly with children? Do we have reason to believe it's higher than the rate of priests at the hypothetical church you might join? If so, the evidence has not been provided. In the lack of that evidence, it seems a strange leap to assert that teachers are some uniquely dangerous creatures immune to societal condemnation (especially when incredibly disparate things like rape and allowing a graphic comic to remain on a public library shelf are lumped together)
cartman
22d ago
I think it's reasonable to take this as evidence that their personal relationship maybe isn't the greatest, that they have significant problems, etc. What I don't think is reasonable is a) taking this as evidence that her concern about him is definitely performative or fake. It's quite common, even in situations where domestic abuse of some significance has occured, that the people involved still have strong feelings for each other, care about each other, and likely would not want that partner deported illegally to a violent prison. This might seem contradictory but I think it's actually more the norm than the exception, and blithely assuming that abuse victims don't care about their abusers (married with children, especially) is a bit of a miss in my opinion.
And b) denigrating a person who has been accused of this as "not elite human capital" and therefore not worth caring about. First of all, the procedure was never finished, so this is tantamount to assuming guilt before innocence in legal proceedings. Secondly, assuming he had done the violent things he had been accused of, it would make not one whit of difference as to whether his deportation was valid or not, and the government should not be able to waive correct processing because someone is sufficiently 'bad'.
cartman
23d ago
I didn't miss it. And your pointing out that she didn't go through with the full process, I don't see how this is supposed to update my view. Perhaps she recanted her view of the domestic situation, perhaps she cares too much about him, perhaps it was too much hassle, perhaps it was a fake complaint in the first place. Perhaps she was threatened. Only the last would suggest more strongly to me that her concern about him is fake.
I am not routinely incensed at that because I don't see it come across my feed, which I am sure can be taken as evidence that I'm being a hypocrite, but if you'd like to point to an example I'd be more than happy to call it out if it seems like an egregious abuse/neglect of the system to me. I do get routinely incensed at whatever trampling of civil process I see exercised by those in power, of course mediated by the channels I follow.
Do you not believe the woman he married is a "US citizen"? What basis do you have for that?
You seem to have strange assumptions about people's state of mind when the first thing you think of when someone engages in PR to help return a family member from a notoriously violent prison to the country they were illegally deported from is that they are "chasing a fat legal payout" instead of maybe wanting to help out their family member who had an injustice done to them. Of course her children having quoted "disabilities" is further evidence for this somehow, alright.
This attempt by the executive to pay to imprison a man in a foreign country after making an administrative error that they now refuse to admit is what actually comes across as theater and (il)legal chicanery.
Apparently it is "my brain on legalism" to demand due process and rule-following from the authority that governs everyone's lives and controls untold power. The founders would be seizing in their graves.
I have no idea why you think any concern about this issue is "fake outrage". You acknowledge that they actually think something importantly fought over is at risk, so the outrage is not fake then, no? I guess you're saying they're disguising the cause of the outrage.
The outrage is certainly not fake. What do you think all that bureaucracy (which you call nonsense) is supposed to stop? Is it not the very deportations you argue people don't think they're at risk for, and other similar injustices? If I see a lion in its enclosure pounding away at the glass 5 inches in front of me while staring me down and yowling aggressively, I will assume that once it breaks the glass it will attack me. That's what the glass is there to prevent, and there's a reason the lion doesn't like it. It's because it wants to bite people it's angry at.
If I'm in a crowd of 1000 people at the zoo when the glass breaks, my personal odds of getting eaten are very low, but I still don't want it to happen and would take measures to prevent it. I might even feel some fear if I saw cracks forming in the glass despite knowing my odds are good. This is all pretty normal human behaviour, not what you call "play acting".
There is no legal protection for any citizen without adhering to some forms of bureaucracy, and people get scared when they are not protected.
Also, its strange that you dismiss the threat of deportation to Europe. I guess you don't see a huge cost in forcibly having your life uprooted from friends and family and work? But again, doing the utmost to avoid such a thing and being worried about it when its use is actively threatened against citizens is pretty normal human behaviour, even if the countries are nice. If you truly would have no qualms about such a thing (which I do find a bit hard to believe, but I'll take you at your word) then all I can say is I think you are in a tiny minority.
In general, I have a hard time understanding the distinction you're trying to draw between people worried about the fall of this supposed "shadow government" and actual cuts to USAID, government departments, etc, none of which I would describe as "shadow organizations". It really seems to me like people are worried about exactly the thing that it says on the tin, the thing that both Trump supporters and his opponents agree he is doing: "circumventing the procedural nonsense" that our country's documents call laws and taking a tire iron to the parts of the government he doesn't like, and which the people he dislikes support.
cartman
27d ago
"pro-Trump camp who wants Abrego Garcia to stay in El Salvador are not at all concerned that they will be next, because in their view citizens and non-citizens are two morally distinct categories."
You are either ignorant or a liar. Which is it?
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-says-he-supports-deporting-u-s-citizens-237322821769
Literally from the man's own mouth in response to a direct question. He does not care about citizens that he decides he doesn't like. Maybe you or I will be next because we have a Hispanic name and tattoos.
What did you think the judiciary's role was? I see barely any room between having judges exercising their normal amount of power and what you say means the country is basically doomed. I don't see why this particular individuals case is somehow of primary national importance such that a judge cannot be allowed to interfere. Nor do I understand why this is black pulling or surprising, this seems like a very typical type of thing for a judge to do in the course of business absent any special evidence to the contrary. Do you think this particular judge has done something illegal?
"A country deciding for itself". The trump administration is not The Country, just as the judge is not The Country. You seem so afraid of vesting a minimal amount of power in the judiciary that you are willing to accept much greater authority from a third party.
cartman
1mo ago
What is your approach with regards to preparing raw fish for sushi at home? I've been tempted recently and have done some research, but it seems very difficult to find any relevant safety statistics for different preparation methods. For example, I THINK at this point (at least for salmon) the consensus seems to be that you want farmed Atlantic salmon that has been previously flash frozen at lower temps than a consumer freezer to kill parasites. However, a) it's hard to find out whether a salmon filet has been previously frozen, especially since amateur fishmongers seem to think 'fresh never frozen' sounds better even if they don't know/it's not true, b) I can't find any raw numbers about parasite infection risk from eating salmon this way at home, c) I can't find data about the risk from food poisoning eating this way, and to what extent curing for a short time might help with this. Also whether buying frozen or freezing at home has any significant effect or if it's just totally useless of it's not at low enough temp.
I'm probably going to just rip it with what knowledge I have and see what happens, but if you have any ideas they would be appreciated.
cartman
1mo ago
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If anyone on the left had said that Tesla vandalism is going too far, do you think your media/info channels would tell you about it? What do you think the motivations are of the news sources covering this? My prior is that any right coded media source would downplay/ignore any such statements.
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Your statement about the right reining itself in seems pretty shaky to me. If people march with Nazi flags they'll scream from the rooftops but Elon Musk himself questionably, ambiguously does a Nazi salute on a huge stage, notably doesn't apologize or even acknowledge that this would be offensive to some people, even if it was initially accidental,and the right as a whole lets him off scot free? This doesn't support your argument. And neither does the bit about riots, unless you think everyone in the Capitol building on the 6th was actually no criminal at all. I recall lots of financial and legal support being thrown their way.
If you don't give a shit what I think, I recommend stopping the engagement. This will be my last comment given this fact. I do find it a bit hypocritical to complain about the "way you talk to me" when you like to throw in some "LMAO"s and "Bud"s and openly don't care about what I say, yet accuse me of condescension as I clearly state my opinions, but alas.
"You say you aren't a faceless representative of the other side, but that's exactly how you behave." You think that's how I behave, because you seem to have flattened everything in the world of cultural and artistic appreciation that you either have no interest in understanding or cannot understand into the bucket of 'globohomo woke' and the cultural left. Case in point, my argument, which you have repeatedly misunderstood, as below.
"yet as far as you know nothing I said about the show is incorrect". Yes....if you read my last paragraph, i stated that this was the case and that that wasn't my point. It is very tiresome to have your argument misunderstood over and over again despite stating it in plain terms.
Yes, I do in fact believe your practice of consuming artistic and cultural objects is intellectually lazy. Writing some text about why you think this is not laziness doesn't change that fact.
Am I supposed to take your comment regarding "irony of just desserts" as saying that your first comment wasn't serious? Or was it? If the former, then it seems a mistake to engage on this forum in that way. If not, I don't see why this should be some new understanding for me if you still support what you said there in earnest. That's not irony. I think calling it the irony of just desserts when the the behaviour in question is really just trusting negative reviews from people who don't know what they're talking about to spite people you dislike is dressing up the behaviour a little bit to make it more presentable and sound more sophisticated than it really is.
So you say word of mouth is your method of discovery. That would be fine, except for the fact that your word of mouth supply chain seems to also consist of people who don't consume or know much about the things that they positively or negatively recommend. So you're not getting much value there if the posts in this forum were sufficient evidence to stay away from this show. I stand by the fact that if there were something important and iconoclastic in this or other shows, you would be extremely unlikely to come across it given your artistic consumption habits.
"No bud, you said "My attitude privileges nothing" so you can tuck that condescension back up your sleeve, your attitude privileges positive coverage." So I said essentially a synonym of what I said that I did, with about the same meaning, and you have chosen to not believe me. Fair enough. Again, the only reason you seem to think that my attitude privileges positive coverage is that you think other faceless people do this and that I'm one of them. That's what happens when you treat individuals (and artistic objects) as if they're all in a bucket that you despise.
I will disagree that this concept is a core part of advertising. I stand by what I said, if someone admits ignorance of the thing they're reviewing, they will be roundly mocked. Reviews rely on the perception the reviewer knows what they're talking about. These people may in some cases be paid to say those things, but the outward message is that they have consumed the thing and are recommending the thing. Advertising from the company that makes a product itself or makes money off of it can be heavily discounted, and indeed I think most consumers understand this and are not deceived that the sexy person in a Lexus commercial has some intimate knowledge about cars and prefers a Lexus. This does require some intelligence and intuition on the part of a consumer to separate what the company wants your perception to be of the product and the reality of the product given marketing expenditures, but that's why there is a vast information ecosystem you can use to make this determination, and independent reviewers exist. Refusing to do this legwork and instead throwing out the baby with the bathwater is what I would call lazy.
I'm not sure who you think you're talking to. I am not a faceless representative of the political side that you so clearly despise. I am an individual who has provided my personal view on how media should be commented upon.
You are conflating a ton of things. There are some things people will call review bombing, will flood with negative reviews, etc. There are also people (like you) who will do all of the same negative behaviours and think they're justified for some reason? Sure, those things happen (I also think review bombing is a term that points to a distinct phenomenon, albeit with a negative connotation) and are sometimes bad. How much water do you think the 'I'm going to blame the general audience for my show being unpopular' argument really holds with the public? Is this a thing you think all "globohomo woke" people believe, or is it something you saw a few people say on twitter and now you're repeating in your deluge of spite?
"And no, you can say that you personally don't hold that attitude to privilege positive coverage over negative coverage, but of course boosting positive coverage and chilling negative coverage privileges positive coverage". Umm...yes, privileging positive coverage privileges positive coverage. I said that I didn't boost positive coverage. And I also don't think it's common to do so with coverage from people who don't know what they're talking about. Anyone who posted a video to social media where they gushed for 5 minutes about a movie that they announced throughout the video that they had no knowledge of would be roundly mocked in most circles. "Think pieces" Again, why are you letting what a couple random people online write about dictate your entire artistic life? If you asked the general public, what do you think trust in user scores would show?
Your 2nd last paragraph is a bunch of motivated excuses for laziness in not attempting to appreciate the artistic work as a cultural object. From everything you have said, I would have to reply that the world you describe does seem to be the world you want to live in, since you seemingly make no attempt to do anything other than perpetuate it. You'll never know when something "important and iconoclastic" really does come along because you'll never have given anything a chance.
This whole time my point has been that you should not proudly proclaim a positive or negative opinion on art that you have basically no knowledge of. I have no interest in watching the show myself because my point is not that it definitely does not say what you think it says, my point is that you simply don't know if that's the case. Neither do I, and neither does anyone else on the forum apparently. I'm not inclined to do someone else's homework if they want to take the leap of making proclamations about a show they haven't seen.
cartman
1mo ago
You do need to watch the show to know if the show is saying little white boys are the problem. Anything else is laziness disguised as politics.
Is any show that depicts a young white male murderer implying that young white men are The Problem? I want an actual answer to that, because it seems like you're saying yes to that if you feel this comfortable shitting all over something you have the barest passing familiarity with. If no, then I don't understand your reasoning.
My attitude privileges nothing, it is simply the fact of the matter that people will spend hours and paragraphs shitting all over something they have no idea about. The reverse is usually not true. When it is, I also find that distasteful.
Your attitude of treating every artistic and cultural object as a missile to jam down the throat of the other political side without any of your own analysis is both lazy and sounds incredibly tiresome and unrewarding. I prefer analyzing things on their own merits. What you describe is certainly not the world I want, nor is it the one I find myself in.
cartman
1mo ago
That's well and good if that's what you want to talk about, but the OP has 2 sentences which relate to the series being discussed by MP's. The rest is their own analysis of the plot, its supposed real life references, and some non sequiturs about knife bans and asian hate, which as far as I can tell have nothing to do with the show, they're all just getting lumped in as things that people that OP dislikes are promoting.
If the culture war angle relies on what the message of the show is and not just who is talking about it, then I would simply repeat my comment that I find it irritating that people will decide what the message of a show is based on a review from someone they dislike. It is simply lazy.
In that case I commend you for practicing a forgotten art. I also read Babel last year (not knowing much about it going into it). I actually quite liked the historicity and worldbuilding of the book, it was pretty different from what I normally read in that sense and a good change of pace, but ran into a headache with the sections that were maybe to the most unsubtle degree I've come across in modern fiction so overtly didactic and earnest about the reader getting the point. Like, we get what you're trying to say, you don't have to try so hard. Still glad that I read it.
I agree that there's no way to please everyone, but there's also no reason to attempt to. Read what you want and comment however you like on it. If someone thinks you missed The Point or are wasting your time but you found it a valuable reading experience, they can get bent. If it wasn't, then you can reevaluate whether you want to continue those reading habits. It just irks me when people will dismiss something so completely out of hand because the wrong people like it. It's one manifestation of the brainrot you see everywhere these days where people don't want to bother taking the time to form their own critical opinion of something, so they'll regurgitate what some content creator said about X or Y or judge it on the most surface level of details.
Though on that note, I also agree with you that works which are striving to be summed up into one didactic surface level message invite bad takes. Still, I don't see how (from the summary that was given) this show would qualify necessarily. The original comment even qualified by saying that even IF young white men are radicalized in a way that the series shows, then that's reasonable. "it's not happening, but if it is, that's fine." So you don't have a problem with the possible reality of the content, you have a problem with the perceived message that this is promoting about young white men I guess?. But without watching the show, we have no idea what the message of the show might be, what conclusions it might draw about how much race/social media/drug use/gender dynamics/parent responsibility or anything else play into the narrative.
cartman
1mo ago
I must admit, as an English Lit guy, it irritates me quite a bit that all of the commenters on this forum feel comfortable judging an artistic work by reading a basic synopsis and reviews from people they dislike (if anyone actually watched the show I'm happy to be corrected but it doesn't seem that way from how people are talking). I haven't seen the series either and I can't say that it's good, but there's a reason why we have the saying about the book and it's cover and all that. It's lazy and can hardly be called analysis at all.
cartman
1mo ago
Hmm, I see what you mean but I'm not sure I agree with the premise. For example, (correct me if I'm wrong) I think we may agree that medical school teaches valuable and necessary skills to being a doctor, and is not predominantly a signalling game. However, literally no one will hire a person as a doctor if they made it all the way to final exams and then quit. The signalling is part and parcel with the actually valuable education.
Edit: and if we stopped subsidizing students to go through medical school, I don't think that would make any difference to the above.
cartman
1mo ago
Can you point me to the evidence you're referencing? My impression of the stats was that higher level education at college/university has a quite large lifelong earnings benefit.
i suppose this could still be just signalling that gets them into a higher earning network of like-minded signallers, but if we are trying to change this economic framework we would somehow have to also disincentive businesses from hiring based on this signalling. And that does not seem like an easy ask to me.
cartman
1mo ago
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There will likely be a pretty ugly transition period between programs being gutted and the states spinning up their own versions of some of these programs, if they manage to sucessfully do it at all. It would be simpler to prune specific programs carefully rather than gutting the whole department and starting from scratch.
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I'm not really understanding your point here, it doesn't sound like it makes that much of a difference to me? If the money amounts are the same and going to the same places, why do we need to make a change at all?
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Respectfully, I don't agree that some programs being wasteful on an anecdotal scale necessitates gutting a department which oversees a huge amount of programs. Fine, the programs you saw were bad and a waste of money. What about all the other ones? And further to your point, what reason is there to believe that the DOE has wildly out of whack incentives from teachers/students/parents but the states do not? Why not fund it at the municipal level?
cartman
1mo ago
I appreciate your response and recognize that these are issues that plausibly arise from more funding from non market parties.
I won't debate your points as I agree they are likely the case in some respects, I will only quibble on the point that none of these issues imply that stopping this funding would improve or leave the same the education level of the population. We might be spending money inefficiently, we might be issuing loans in a way that is net financial negative for some students, and we may be throwing off the private market of education, but those are all things you can do while still raising the education level of the population, and indeed goals like that are why we as a society trust the government and not the market for some things.
At this point, it becomes about how much extra money you want to spend for how much education, which is a much harder question, so I'll leave it there.
cartman
1mo ago
Sure, but you don't think there is a difference between your null hypothesis being that any government funded non profit is a CiA front and your null hypothesis being that these orgs waste some money? At a certain point you can judge a null hypothesis and find it wanting based on prior evidence and how much of a reach it is
cartman
1mo ago
That's not the same thing as assuming that it is specifically a CIA front sponsoring regime change and murder. I have no reason to think that about this org based on anything I have heard thus far.
Are all uncensored drawn images of sexual acts erotica or are you drawing some distinction between the two?
"Tom of Finland may have made many gays very happy, but if they want his material they are free to pay for it themselves." I don't know what this is supposed to be telling me; this is a fully generalizable argument against having libraries at all. If you want a math textbook, you're also free to pay for it yourself if you like math? Would you like to argue that erotic images are a special category that should be treated differently? If so, make the case.
Absent some evidence I am loath to accept your null hypothesis, just as you are clearly loath to accept mine. I will also note that you have chosen a specific slice of the argument I was making to defend by focusing solely on what you call drawn erotica and not, say, graphic images of war in history books. Do you support the latter being available in public libraries? If so, again, why the distinction?
Assuming that you were correct for the sake of argument, I think a pretty good justification for the change would be the Internet. Everyone already has unlimited free access to whatever type of content they want online, so it seems strange to put some special restrictions on an alternative service that is also available to serve the public at large (making it even less competitive than it already is with the Internet). Why would it be incumbent on the librarians to restrict their hub-of-information service when this onus is not placed on the Internet at large to do the same?
I fundamentally don't buy the arguments that children are being nefariously exposed to dangerous erotic content in some unique way through their public (not school) libraries. If their parents are so lax as to allow them to view dangerously inappropriate material in a public physical facility which has demarcated children's sections, when the system requires you to check out books for a defined length of time under a particular name, then those parents are lax enough that restricting the public libraries will have no effect anyway.
And everyone is always free to, you know, not take their kids to the public library if they don't want to. The fact that there is little necessity to do so is a load-bearing part of why the libraries should not necessarily feel obligated to cater their entire catalogue to the lowest age denominator.
And of course, there is room for nuance in all of these points. There is a great difference between erotic books being available in some clearly marked corner of the library vs. being advertised up front and loudly to all who enter.
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