jkf
4mo 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.
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
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
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
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
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
1mo 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
1mo ago
Our overall traffic is down, but I think we lost high-quality users and shitposters in about the same proportion.
Probably true, but when you have a group of high-quality users that would fit on a school bus vs an infinite tide of shitposters (who seem to be more inclined to set up alts and get even more shitposty when banned, rather than just saying "fuck those guys" and carrying on with life) this is not a sustainable state of affairs.
jkf
1mo 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
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
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
23d ago
It's not true (but often said) that the Canadian national identity consists entirely of 'don't be American'. This is however a major component, so I think your scheme would mostly fail due to lack of interest. We can visit whenever we'd like; why buy the cow when the milk is free only like a dollar a gallon?
You could probably convince some gunnuts to go gay over it, but that's probably not what OC is after.
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.
I want to be wearing goggles that won't shatter into my face like sunglasses
Riiight: Just things everyone knew in the 90s
Face it, you've been fed a bag of shit since the day you were born by these safetyists -- retvrn to the 90s, you will not regret it. (nobody worried about people ramming you from behind then either, but everyone also knew that the uphill skier/boarder is the one at fault)
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.
jkf
24d ago
Am very white, can work up to a tan such that I can indeed spend all day outside without any accessories and not burn. Some SPF-15 for the first couple of weeks and it's all good. I honestly can't imagine living in such fear that one feels one needs a bunch of crap to safely go outside four months of the year.
First of all, your mask is slipping - your original claim...
Dunno who you think I am, but this is the first comment I've made in the thread and I don't do masks.
you were worried
I'm not worried about any of it -- I'm a man and don't care who goes in the men's room. I do know IRL women who are worried about who goes in the women's room though.
about cis men pretending to be trans in order to access women's spaces
My guess would be that a given Peeping Tom or piss perv is extremely likely to be a non-transgender heterosexual man? Who (in the case of the Peeping Toms) are known to go through schemes much more elaborate than "walk into a washroom and claim to be trans if challenged" in the course of their fetish.
you have immediately moved your rhetoric to 'women putting up with trans people'
You're the one bringing up Buck Angel -- it's a different failure mode, but still pretty valid. Not all women want to 'put up with' sharing a bathroom with trans males, is this under dispute?
Buck Angel and people who look like him go to the men's room
If the bathrooms are gender neutral, Buck Angel can go in whichever one he chooses, no?
You were also the one who brought up the idea that Buck being in the ladies room would be some sort of problem under the traditional bathroom management policies -- or that's how I took "If your worry is that seeing male-looking people go into the women's room will make life more dangerous for women" anyways. If not, what did you mean by that?
jkf
4mo ago
Same thing here. You can clearly imagine this situation in your mind, but it doesn't really happen.
How about Peeping Toms? Do they happen? Bathrooms seem like a great place to be a Peeping Tom.
I'm sure there's not very many pervs out there who get off on hearing women pee, but it's definitely not zero -- can you understand how women might not like wondering whether there's a perv jerking off in the next stall while they are trying to pee?
if trans people must use the bathroom of their birth gender, then Buck Angel has to use the women's room.
Do you think the sort of women who is concerned about males in the woman's room would prefer Buck Angel, or the "IT'S MA'AM' guy? Is Buck Angel prohibited from going into gender neutral bathrooms? Not sure how Buck Angel is relevant here, but under the trans-acceptance framework it seems like women are expected to put up with both Buck Angel and "IT'S MA'AM'.
jkf
1mo 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)
jkf
3mo ago
And yet, most of their advocacy revolves around banning books and curricula
I agree that it's a bit ironic, but I wouldn't go so far as to say dishonest. In context I'd defend it as 'freedom not to have one's children indoctrinated into the state religion' -- school is mandatory and funded by all sides of the political spectrum after all. I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a neutral curriculum -- although they seem a bit nutty and I'm sure that I wouldn't want to defend their specific choices of books that should not be taught in school. (much less whatever straw version of them that the D.B. has cooked up)
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
2mo ago
The forum is being overmoderated, and the additional mods are not helping. Not that they are making bad decisions or moderating good posters particularly, but the presence of somebody breathing down one's neck as to whether a toppost is 'substantial' enough makes the place less fun for everyone, resulting in people finding better things to do with their time.
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.
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