firmamenti
11mo ago
The Los Angeles Dodgers, a baseball team are apparently hosting a "pride night" and have invited a group called "The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" to perform at it.
The "sisters" are of course not sisters at all, but in fact, an anti catholic group of men who dress as nuns and mock catholics.
Originally the Dodgers, a baseball team, after learning that this was essentially an anti-Catholic hate group, uninvited them. However, they recently re-invited them.
Baseball?
What is the fucking point of this? What possible reason does a baseball team have to indicate a sexual preference? And why does this include mocking Catholics?
God this stuff is demoralizing. Is that the point?
They is currently an 8 month old baby in the UK with a mitochondrial disease which is almost definitely terminal. The babies name is Indi: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italy-grants-citizenship-terminally-ill-british-baby-after-104666139
A UK judge has ordered that that the baby be killed. Her parents have protested this, saying that they don’t think the government should kill their baby.
The Catholics have said: give us the baby and we will put the baby in our pediatric Vatican hospital, and the Italian government has said they would cover the medical bills. The Italian government has also said that the family can have Italian citizenship.
The UK has said no, you can’t leave, you need to keep the baby here so we can kill it.
I know this sounds hyperbolic, but…I don’t think it is. Read the article. Absolutely deranged behavior.
I understand that in socialized medicine countries there is some calculation about how much life support will cost, and famously in Canada sometimes this means the government just tries to get you to kill yourself, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The Catholics are being pretty Catholic about this and just trying to save the baby. The UK government won’t let them and insists that they should just kill her.
Insanity.
Camouflage and Harley Davidson cans aren’t going to fix this, and they might just make it worse.
“Hey you dumb fucking red necks I bet you’d like some camouflage on your cans wouldn’t you you dumb fucking fratty racists. Now buy our shit and shut the fuck up while we core out your culture, you dumb fucking idiots.”
If I was in charge of Bud Lights marketing it would go like this:
“Ever had to apologize for saying something stupid?” With a strong implication that you’re talking about being a drunken idiot.
“…yeah we’re sorry. Free buds on us”
The make June 1st official “bud light we fucked up” day for the next 5 years. Here’s how you celebrate:
Commemorative cans that say “Sorry about what we said last night”, and every bar that serves Bud light gets a free keg and a free pallet of Bud light to give away to people who want it. Make it part of the marketing go apologize to anybody you sent drunk texts to. Make ads about people making these sorts of apologies.
Go on a Bud light apology tour where people can throw tomatoes or something at Bud light executives. Free food and of course Bud light for everybody.
I’d go to that, and honest it would probably make me drink some Bud light because of how funny it would be.
firmamenti
10mo ago
boomers like to drive
God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.
People point at some fairy tale version of a Finnish city where there's playgrounds everywhere and people are walking around drinking espressos and beers and wearing scarves and children are laughing and playing with one another in city squares.
It's not the lack of cars that is causing this unless cars is some sort of euphamism and I'm just not pol-pilled enough to understand what you guys mean when you envision a car free city. My city is a "walkable" city. From where I am sitting typing this there are a dozen coffee shops within a 5 minute walk, countless bars and restaurants, shopping, there's a train that goes literally right in front of my house, and a stop for that train a block away. There are 5 parks I can think of offhand that are within the same 5 minute walk from my house.
Guess what? I still drive EVERYWHERE I go.
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I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it, and even then I worry about the wheels being stolen, the seat being stolen, the lights being stolen, or some other set of things being stolen. ALL of this has happened to me or people I am close friends with. I have had bikes stolen that were locked up, parts stolen off of my bikes, etc.
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I can walk, but I have to take a bizarre circuitous route that avoids: the park, the local drug store, all of the bus stops, all of the train stops, and any convenience stores which are currently being used as homeless shelters and drug injection sites. Even still I've had friends robbed or beaten up walking through my city.
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I could take the idiotic train that our city is so proud of (and everybody who can actively avoids), and be accosted by the schizophrenic psychopaths who are using the train as a refuge from the weather.
The parks are de facto homeless encampments, meaning if I want to take my kids to play, guess where I go? 30 minutes out into the suburbs.
This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.
There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.
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The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.
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A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.
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Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.
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Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).
This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.
This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.
Edit: Trump weighs in
This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.
firmamenti
4mo ago
The Georgia thing feels pretty much identical to the "very fine people" comment, where he supposedly called neonazis "very fine people", but in context actually said the opposite.
In the call where he was supposedly pressuring Brad Raffensberger to "find votes", he is very clearly saying that his team thinks there is fraud, and is asking for permission (or help) in investigating that fraud. The "finding" votes he's talking about is not a euphemism; he is literally saying that if fraud is investigated, that there will be at least enough to flip the state.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html
This seems so blatantly inbounds ethically that it amazes me that this is what they're going after him for. Even the wikipedia page (not exactly unbiased) seems to clearly state that the was trying to get fraud investigated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_phone_call
Sure he may have been pressuring Brad Raffensberger to do something, but the something he was pressuring him to do doesn't seem illegal, or even questionably ethical.
firmamenti
11mo ago
The fact that there are still no replies to this major event I think demonstrates how I feel about this: I don't even care anymore. Yes the government is completely corrupt, yes this was a major political scandal beyond anything we've seen in a long time, and no nobody is going to be held accountable for it.
It's just "yeah, the FBI worked to delegitimize the president and used their considerable power to do so. We know."
firmamenti
9mo ago
There's something so weird about this to me.
Trump was actively involved in discussing and planning efforts to obstruct the certification of the election.
Sure in the most absolutely tortured meaning of the word "obstruct". His claim was that the election as being presented was invalid, and he was trying to use the court/legislative system to elucidate the correct/legal outcome.
This would be like if I got a traffic ticket, showed up in court and argued that the ticket was given in error, failed, and was then charged with "obstruction" for challenging the state.
If every challenge to an election is henceforward seen as "obstruction" then where the hell does that leave us? It seems to make elections a sortof winner takes all battle where the winners take office, and the losers end up in jail.
firmamenti
11mo ago
What is the purpose of recording her, then publishing the video and lying about the interaction?
The goal was to bring harm to her.
firmamenti
11mo ago
They got her fired from her job.
That is actual, tangible harm that they’ve done to her. While this different than a physical assault I think is a valid comparison.
I have a suggestion for how to solve the problem of balancing the blog-length posts in the CWR with the more discussion oriented stuff a lot of people (like me) would like to see there, and I think I have a thought on why the confusion/frustration exists:
The original "culture war roundup" was meant as a containment thread for all of that weeks stupid culture war happenings. If some person showed up at a spa and insisted on exposing himself to a bunch of people in the locker rooms but insisted that he was just trans and this was just normal, instead of needing a lengthy blog post about this, you could post in CWR. It was a containment thread to prevent these sorts of common, repetitive posts from clogging up the more in depth discussions other people wanted to have.
[edit]: It's probably my fault for being unclear here. I am giving this as a historical example of the type of things which would get caught in the CWR, not as an example of the type of things which should be looked at as ideal posts for the CWR. I clarified in a response below that at least historically these types of posts stopped being made organically because people stopped interacting with them due to their repetitive nature. My general point, also made in that clarifying post, is that allowing users to organically enforce the culture of the community is a good thing, and I contrast this with what I perceive now, which is micromanagement. My response to the 'well tended gardens die to apathy' blog is that it is also possible to over prune a garden.
I think the problem is that the CWR thread has become a place where people go to post their blogs, and that they're trying to emulate the style (or more specifically the length) of SA's posts. In my opinion this results in lots of really, really unnecessarily long, usually pretty terribly written posts about long passed culture war topics. This is fine, and just like everybody else I've of course written tens of thousands of words of blog posts myself. So here's my proposal:
Split the blogs off into their own thread, call it "longform motteblog" or "the bailey: blogs from themotte" or something like that.
Allow the CWR to return to its roots: a weekly roundup of culture war topics.
Still remove low effort trolling, sneering, etc.
For reference, here is a link to the CWR from a random week in 2018: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9sabky/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_october_29/
Notice how most of the posts here follow the form of: here is a current event, here is a couple of sentences either describing it or giving a jumping off point for analysis, and then lots of discussion. The longer posts/discussion type stuff is usually contained beneath one of these topics.
Here we can go back to 2017: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/5z5dm1/culture_war_roundup_for_week_of_march_13_2017/
Almost every top level post made in there would be removed from the current themotte CWR thread.
Maybe this type of thing is just explicitly not what themotte is trying to do, and the name is really just a holdover. Hopefully this explains my frustration (which I believe is shared by others) with the way that length seems to be getting used as a proxy for quality. I hope this also explains the recent post (which I was banned for making) demonstrating that length is not a good proxy for quality, and is easily fakeable using LLMs. (Of course like most people who get banned for anything: I think this was completely unfair, I think the point I was making was obvious, I think it was on-topic, and I think I even made clear that I wasn't trying to deceive anybody, just demonstrate that length is a bad metric for judging quality, especially now that LLMs are cheap and available).
I value the CWR threads, obviously value themotte as a discussion forum, and it makes me sad to see something I value seemingly go away. I have enjoyed the CWR roundup threads for a substantial amount of time (at least 6 years), and I think my recent posts expressing this frustration are an attempt by me to keep that type of (imo valuable) discussion alive.
firmamenti
9mo ago
How do people continue repeating this lie? You are wrong.
Here is one of the people involved: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2zLfBRgeFFo
"10 Held by H for the big guy"
H is Hunter, "The Big Guy" is joe. This isn't conjecture.
On October 15, the Post published another article regarding a business venture relating to CEFC China Energy that Hunter Biden was negotiating with potential investment partners in May 2017, when his father was a private citizen. The Post published a purported email it said came from the laptop, written by one of the prospective investors, on which Hunter Biden was copied. The email described the proposed equity shares of each of the investors in the venture, ending with a reference to "10 held by H for the big guy?" The Post reported the "H" apparently referred to Hunter Biden, and one of his former business partners soon came forward to assert "the big guy" referred to Joe Biden. The former business partner also tweeted a copy of the email addressed to him. In a subsequent email, Hunter Biden said his "Chairman" gave him "an emphatic no", with a later email identifying the "chairman" as his father. The Post also reported on an August 2017 venture Hunter Biden was seeking with Ye Jianming, the chairman of CEFC, but the paper did not associate Joe Biden with that deal. Neither of the two ventures came to fruition.[27][28]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy?useskin=vector&useskin=vector
Why do people say stuff like this with such conviction when it is so easily verifiable that it's wrong. I'm sorry to get unnecesssarily upset at this but this entire topic is infuriating to me. Downthread in the discussion about January 6th, you also have a person asserting things about the riot that took place on that day, then exclaiming that "wow I had no idea who Ray Epps was, that is really weird. Huh".
Why do people do this? If you haven't bothered to do the bare minimum of research about a topic, please stick to asking questions about it or offering opinions on the stated facts, not asserting facts which are obviously incorrect.
firmamenti
10mo ago
It's hilarious (and by that I of course mean: pathetic) that revealing things like blatantly cheating at a presidential debate means that Hilary Clinton (the cheater) is somehow the victim.
"Oh no, you've revealed what a corrupt person I am. I am the victim here!"
It's actually sortof incredible how well they framed that one to their advantage.
Simply: lots of work by libs is a sort of gay conversion therapy for straight people. Pride parades, public school education, pride month, trans day of visibility etc. all exist to glorify homosexuality and, explicitly to help straight people easily “come out of the closet” as gay.
I don’t expect ideological consistency here, but it should be obvious that this implies the reverse should be true. Could you be a closeted…normie? I feel like many people go through this transition in their 30s anyway. They have children, regret not doing it earlier, move to the suburbs, and take the grill pill.
I think if we are going to have actual IRL trans/sterilization clinics for children, then at the very least straight people should be allowed to have therapy sessions where they talk about how they wish they werent gay.
Edit: it’s annoying to say this so forgive me but I just feel the need to say it: I have 0 problem with gay people. Many of my closest, and most loved friends are happily married gay people who just want to be left alone to have their families. They’re loving fathers, and seriously cherished members of my community. It routinely brings me to tears thinking about people being mean to them, and I end up feel a sort of parental desire to protect them from the world. I understand why they hear gay conversion therapy and instinctively recoil, but this is approximately how I think most people feel when they hear about trans conversion clinics, or children at pride events.
firmamenti
7mo ago
The fact that Gavin Newsome is even considering a presidential run and that there are people who think this is a good idea is a massive black pill for me.
California has got a practically divine set of advantages:
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Some of the best geography in the world. Temperate climate, massive mountains which create plenty of fresh water for both the coastal cities as well as the extremely fertile central valley.
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A massive coastline
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The 20th century saw Entertainment and tech, some of the most lucrative industries in our country, base themselves in California.
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Not much in the way of natural disasters. Some earthquakes and wildfires, but the wildfires are arguably California's fault, and the earthquakes dont' seem to be much of a problem for a 21st century city.
Despite having the money for it, the desire for it, and near total control of the government meaning free rein with the funding to pursue basically any policy they want, California feels like a failing civilization. Californians and the politicians they elect have squandered the biggest head start of anybody ever, and still instead of reflecting on their obvious failures of their ridiculous policies, they just keep doubling down.
firmamenti
11mo ago
First of all, I absolutely love that movie. I think it works because the schtick of “Famous story but told differently” is acknowledged and core to the work.
If somebody made Lord of the Rings, but did it in a modern setting, with a diverse cast, and it took place in New York City, I think people would accept it (mostly). Similarly if you did lord of the rings, but it took place in the Congo, I think people would like that (I would).
firmamenti
3mo ago
This entire discussion is just painfully terminally online.
My experience is that nobody who spends the majority of their time in meatspace is thinking about this stuff. The weirdo conservatives you see online are just as rare in real life as the weirdo antiwork type communists you see online. Yeah there are weirdo conservatives...but the guy wearing a MAGA hat at this point is considered a weirdo even by his conservative friends, unless he lives in an extremely rural area. Most cons just want the economy to go back to the way it was, and wand their kids left alone.
firmamenti
5mo ago
Charitably: the pope is trying to engage with sinners and help them return to the light.
Christ didn’t hang out with prostitutes because he thought being a prostitute was a good thing.
This should be an incredibly interesting discussion for anybody following this topic: https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1712170815637061914
This is Lex Fridman interviewing Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner is interesting on his own, and as an advisor to President Trump, but what makes him really interesting given the topic at hand today is the role that he had in negotiating The Abraham Accords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords?useskin=vector
The Abraham Accords are bilateral agreements on Arab–Israeli normalization signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 15, 2020.[1][2] Mediated by the United States, the initial announcement of August 13, 2020, concerned only Israel and the United Arab Emirates before the announcement of a follow-up agreement between Israel and Bahrain on September 11, 2020. On September 15, 2020, the official signing ceremony for the first iteration of the Abraham Accords was hosted by the Trump administration at the White House.[3] As part of the dual agreements, both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, enabling the establishment of full diplomatic relations.
The Trump administration had normalization between Israel and Palestine as one of its primary policy goals, and they actually (via the Abraham Accords) made real progress towards it. It's a tragedy that they weren't able to keep working on this. I strongly suspect that this, (as well as [not to get too far off topic here], Biden's multiple absolute foreign policy embarrassments) will be a major issue in the coming 2024 elections. I think that the reality is that the world really was a much safer, much more peaceful, much more prosperous place under the Trump administration (although not domestically, given the Floyd riots). The guy being interviewed here, like him or not, seems to have had a role in making that happen.
And as a complete aside: my absolute dream podcast guest on Lex Fridman would be Steve Bannon. I strongly suspect that Trump is largely a creation of Bannon, and hearing a long form interview with him would be absolutely fascinating. If you need an introduction to Bannon, here's a talk, as well as substantial Q&A that he did at the Oxford Student Union 4 years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8AtOw-xyMo8
Anyway, this is all related. Kushner definitely has some interesting things to say about the current crisis.
edit: not to sneer, but god damn this is depressing: https://old.reddit.com/r/lexfridman/comments/175kl5e/jared_kushner_israel_palestine_hamas_gaza_iran/
This is the /r/lexfridman discussion about this podcast. Nearly every one of these top comments are some version of "what the hell does Jared Kushner have to say about anything?" - Lex Fridman's audience I suspect thinks of themselves as above average intelligence and doesn't even have basic knowledge of this topic they're all talking so confidently about. Insane.
So the charge is that he, an adult man, tried to convince adult women to engage in consensual sex with him?
I’m getting sick of this thing where every shot a guy takes which doesn’t land is somehow seen as a sexual assault. Do people realize that women have agency as well, and also engage in these sorts of fantasy? “Oh no I guess I have to sleep in this bed with this big strong man who is out here saving the children for the sake of the mission” is the plot of like 90% of female targeted erotica. “We had to shower together to convince the cartel that we were married” sounds like it was literally written by a female erotica writer.
Human adults have sex with each other. Sometimes there is a period of courtship. Sometimes, and in fact just due to pure statistical reality, most times that courtship fails.
That is not a scandal.
The scandal is that these people just cannot understand that the scandal is the fact that adults want to engage in sexual activity with CHILDREN.
Go to a drag show? No problem. You do you.
Go to a drag show, with children? Problem.
Engage in a gender fetish? No problem. You do you.
Engage in a gender fetish with children? Problem.
Make erotic literature? No problem. You do you.
Make erotic literature for children? Problem.
The scandal is that these maybe actual pedophiles don’t understand the demarcation between “sexual activity among consenting adults” and “sexual activity with children.”
firmamenti
3mo ago
Do you have that same energy for the US congressman Brian Mast who wore his IDF uniform to Congress and said
I'll say this: if you are a dual citizen, you should not be able to serve in congress, and probably shouldn't be able to serve in any role whatsoever in government including police. I'll even go so far as to say that only natural born US citizens should be able to serve in congress.
firmamenti
4mo ago
Has there ever been an example of a professional sports organization being held liable for the riot after a team won or lost a game, and the fans damaged parts of the city?
This topic perhaps more than others is impossible to find good analysis of. Could some of you help me understand the arguments around something?
I routinely see people call Gaza "an open air prison". But...isnt' Egypt participating in this open air imprisonment? Egypt has a border with Gaza. If the Israelis are imprisoning the Gazans, then aren't the Egyptians doing the same thing?
And why would these two groups coordinate on this? Same question goes for: shutting of water/electricity. Why would Egypt help Israel with this? Why doesn't Egypt simply give the Gazans the water they need?
edit: I think my question was unclear here. I understand the obvious answers which are basically: Hamas/Gaza are terrorists. Of course Egypt doesn't want them. What I'm asking for is for somebody to steelman the liberal position that Gaza is an "open air prison" and that this is Israel's fault.
Not to be outdone by Bud Lite, Miller Lite has apparently been running their own "woke" beer advertisements: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NtBQWZqaHo
IMO the campaign here is actually clever, take this "bad" thing, use money to buy it, and turn it into a "good" thing. Whoever came up with this idea: cool idea.
But here's my question: is any of this old "bad" stuff actually bad? Let's look at contemporary things like onlyfans, instagram, tiktok, the hundreds of reddit 'gonewild' type porn forums, etc. It seems to me that many women, given the chance, enjoy wearing bikinis, being sexualized, being lusted after etc. Not all women, obviously, since some women don't like this, but...isn't this trying to strip the pro-sexualization women of their agency?
Aside from that, isn't Miller saying that women belong...in the kitchen? Don't go out to the beach and get drunk and have fun. Wear modest clothing (like the person in the ad), stay inside in the dark, and make things for people to eat.
Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihenstephan_Abbey?useskin=vector
Some say people who game the system like this actually deserve to have the bike taken more.
Burning man has a set of free use bikes called “yellow bikes”. They’re just left around the city and wherever they are you can take them and ride them.
Some people will take them and try to reserve them for themselves by hiding them, locking them to their friends bikes, or decorating them in a way that disguised their status as a free, community use bike meant for eveyone.
Every year it is considered good sport to spend some time hunting for these bikes and punishing the people that do this.
My favorite is when I find that they’ve locked a yellow bike to their friends bike, to pick up both, and move them somewhere else, not so far that the owners will never find it, but far enough to cause them some panic. Others are if somebody leaves one of these bikes in their camp to loudly and publicly take it back and put it in the street, hopefully shaming the camp along the way.
Somehow burners, often some of the most entitled people on earth, can figure out the concept of a shared resource, and figure out that the people abusing it should be punished, but the people reading this story can’t?
These kids should be getting fucked with for abusing the system. Not only is the pregnant lady in the right to take a bike she simply paid for. She’s also in the right for doing it to these kids, who are effectively acting as thieves.
I encourage anybody who sees people abusing a public resource like this to act like pregnant lady.
Edit: the more I think about this the more angry it makes me. A normal person, the type of person I grew up with, not only wouldn’t bully a pregnant lady, they would get off of their bike and give it to her, even if it cost them money, simply because she is pregnant.
What level of anti social behavior are we at where anybody is defending these kids? I don’t even care if the most charitable version of their story is true. Get off your bike and give it to the pregnant woman you idiot. We are trying to have a society over here.
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