jkf
26d ago
Today it's mostly around nailing people to trees and poking them with spears -- other times I probably don't think about them as much as I should.
jkf
27d ago
This is a myth that the PMC has bought into fully.
American PMC I would say -- there isn't really even such a thing as prestigious colleges in Canada/Europe. (I mean there kind of is, but nobody will hire you because you went to Queen's instead of UofA)
England is something of a special case in that the prestigious colleges are something of a class marker as well -- my impression is that this is mostly impactful only for certain types of job however.
jkf
1mo ago
No plans to ding the 4chan tier memery that's getting popular around here (including among members of the mod team who ought to know better) while you're at it I suppose?
jkf
2mo ago
Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."
Narrowing the topic to the point of irrelevance seems like a rhetorical trick, and not a nice one.
jkf
1mo ago
He was pretty much getting this way before the benzos though -- frankly it seemed all downhill for him once the Culture War become his focus, and the slide accelerated as he had some fiscal success with it.
I take it as a cautionary tale TBH; could happen to any of us. Maybe it's OK so long as we are doing it for free?
jkf
3mo ago
If China dominates all of Asia and Russia dominates all of Europe
Great spot for a laconic 'If' here, but more loquaciously:
If you take this at face value while it proves that Trump's critics have articulated some criticisms, it also proves that they are utterly insane -- in what world could Trump cause Russia to dominate France and China to dominate Japan/India/take your pick?
jkf
3mo ago
Importantly here the BP agents are already in Texas, and are largely Texans who wish that Biden would let them do a better job of stopping the illegal crossings; ie. they mostly support Abbot's side of things.
So it seems unlikely that there will be any sort of direct confrontation between the BP and Texas authorities -- if Biden decides to send somebody more loyal in to cut the razor wire things do get more interesting.
jkf
3mo ago
If he's a conspirator, who are his co-conspirators?
The "far-right anti-government militia" group (thanks wikipedia) that he was chapter president of? Prosecutors have had no trouble putting together conspiracy charges based on very little actual conspiring for other members of such groups.
I know that you think that the bar for conspiracy charges is high, and you are probably even right based on an honest reading of the law -- but that's not how the law is being used around J6, and I'm very confident that this case could have been made if someone were so inclined.
jkf
27d ago
We're talking about Canada here -- there are plenty of jobs in logging, mining, and O&G plus the processing of these things that more or less need to take place in the hinterlands. These jobs pay much better than anything else an immigrant who isn't already a doctor or something will get, and the cost of living difference borders on an order of magnitude if you're comparing to Vancouver/Toronto.
I'm not sure your second point is actually true, other than the extent to which there are areas of the GVRD/GTA that have been essentially taken over by specific immigrant groups such that immigrants can live indistinguishably from their home country -- if one doesn't happen to be a member of the right group, I'd imagine things could be unpleasant. Certainly the first-gen immigrants that have trickled out to my section of the hinterlands assimilate very well. My impression would be that in many cases they are more Canadian (in terms of the values of 30+ years ago) than the white progressive community. (which is very much the dominant memeplex in the aforementioned urban agglomerations)
It says "Moms for Liberty" right on the tin -- I do think that the confusion is related to a misapplication of the (artificial) Red/Blue team dichotomy. If it were "Moms for Jesus" or something I could buy some hypocrisy-based attack, but she seems to be living well within her moral framework here?
jkf
3mo ago
Even if you just stick to gun issues it doesn't hold -- Texans might be OK keeping their nose out of Hawaii, in exchange for local regulation of things like machine gun stamps/silencers -- but this is manifestly not on the table. States' rights is not the issue here, even less so than it was in the Civil War -- anti-gunners will grasp for tools of convenience, whether at the federal or state level. (and note well the pattern of introducing such things in blue states and then using them as precedent to justify slowly creeping them over towards the Red ones whenever the dice come up with the Democrats in power at the state level)
You can't make a principled legal argument for this, it's power and ideology all the way down.
jkf
2mo ago
Not really -- like I said it's an irrelevancy. Clearly they are a bit of a weakman though, which is why I'm not super-interested in going through their claims to assess plausibility. Are they the ones who did a bunch of locational data analysis showing (?) suggestive behaviour around ballot drops? They probably aren't lying about that, but of course it doesn't mean their analysis is correct. As I recall the debunkings of it that I saw were pretty misinformed/naive as well though.
Look at it this way -- BLM-associated groups lie all the time about the dangers of being black in America. This doesn't mean that race relations in America are not an interesting thing to discuss, but if I make a post saying "I only want to talk about these assholes who are lying, what a buncha maroons, amirite" I am not making a quality contribution to the discussion.
jkf
4mo ago
I highly recommend listening to that call and/or reading the transcript -- there's very little room for the alternate interpretation, he goes on for like an hour about all the ways he thinks fraud was committed, and how many votes can be 'found' just by looking into one or two of these things. It doesn't really support the idea that he didn't believe what he was saying to be true either, he's very vehement.
I feel like sometimes I’m good at this where you say something in a scissor statement way. I usually do it in a playful way. Trumps good at this.
I think it's more that he says a lot of stuff, and there's an army of people employed at sifting through it to snip out bits that make him look maximally evil out of context.
jkf
3mo ago
The most vocally trans woman I know reports being abused by guys in middle and high school locker rooms specifically due to insufficient masculinity.
If this person is over ~35 I'm gonna go ahead and say that (oddly) this was pretty much the universal experience of middle and high-school boy's locker rooms -- somehow even the bullies get bullied. (now they don't even make dudes shower together, so I'm not sure it's the same)
jkf
2mo ago
IIRC this was the one where the observers were 'in the room' but kept behind barriers quite far from the actual counters, so that they couldn't actually monitor or object to anything the counters were doing -- there were photos at the time that made this quite clear. Observers who tried to approach more closely were kicked out because covid.
I'm fairly sure I've brought this up with you more than once before, and have a vague memory of you acknowledging that it was bad on one occasion -- now you are triumphantly bringing it up again as an example of Repulicans being unreasonable, and writing blog posts about it. It's a good example of what Dean has been complaining about -- you are coming off as a dishonest interlocutor here to anyone who followed events at the time and maybe went to the trouble of digging up links for you.
jkf
5mo ago
Where’s the equivalent to cult control of income?
Ummm....
Maybe the way the cult will get you fired from your job if you get too heretical, or alternatively get you some sweet DIE points to help with a better job if you are one of the stunning and brave ones?
(I mean I don't necessarily disagree with your thrust here, but I'm not sure the line between 'regular social dynamics' and 'cult behaviour' is as bright as I'd like for literally anything these days. See "You know what nobody hates each other about yet?")
jkf
1mo ago
Yes -- they make shitloads. Even lower-tier sites make absolute boatloads on subscriptions if managed somewhat intelligently. There's a certain amount of whale action, but a lot of it actually amounts to 'drunk horny dude wants to watch the rest of one of your videos and puts a $10 subscription on his visa". On aggregate there are a lot of drunk horny dudes, and a certain number of them are also less-than-conscientious about cancelling subscriptions. You can certainly fuck it up, but if one is moderately savvy it's a lucrative business.
jkf
27d ago
I guarantee you that almost every swing Tory-Labour in the UK, Liberal-Conservative in Canada, or Labour-National in the New Zealand hasn't suddenly decided COVID policies were the wrong way to go.
True -- but they are also Noticing that things kind of suck ATM and seem likely to get worse before they get better; this is what I mean by the electorates' inability to put 2 and 2 together at least not hindering them in making sure the incumbents reap what they've sown.
Note well that this isn't really a left-right thing -- the British Conservatives are probably getting hammered by a Labour party which in it's Blair iteration was to the right of the current Canadian Liberals -- who are set to be hammered by a Conservative party that is a bit incohate at the moment, but certainly very left wing by American conservative standards.
jkf
27d ago
Donno man, the guy was turning up tens of thousands for boring (?) rallies at the height of a Deadly Pandemic (tm) -- say what you will, the man can turn a crowd. The money thing I'm pretty sure he proved false in 2016 -- as I recall he raised like half as much as Hill-dawg? For Trump, the media does it for free -- Biden does too to a great extent, we'll see how he campaigns but much of his messaging is actively distasteful to the black/hispanic (and now maybe Muslim, depending on the path chosen re: Israel) demographics.
jkf
3mo ago
I wouldn't be shocked if Epps indeed conspired with members of his militia to commit some crime or other, but I haven't seen any evidence of that, and evidence is necessary for a conviction.
That's just it -- these 'militias' are riddled with for-sure feds, if they wanted to go after basically anyone involved for conspiracy there's plenty of evidence to be had -- given that Jan6 itself is being treated as a criminal act.
Have you read the Revolver articles on Epps? It's been a while, but as I recall while they are focussed on the idea that Epps is a fed, they've gathered enough publically available information to make a pretty good conspiracy case -- never mind all of the evidence that the actual feds have from all the other prosecutions.
There were several, but the shut down the public API for IPO$/fuck you reasons and now they are all broken.
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