magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
One such developmental milestone many miss out on is the comprehension that multiple claims can be true at once. It can be true that Arday was a plagarist and compulsive liar who represents the worst failures of academia and DEI policies and that the number of articles and focus on him was pretty excessive.
As one tweet pointed out, it's quite blackpilling to consider the difference in both amount and style that The Spectator covered with Arday vs Epstein and his associates. And as a reply to them pointed out "Or Quilette - Im still getting ads for their Arday story. Meanwhile their founder said the Epstein story is "boring""
An intentional predator ring run by a well connected elite and covered up by multiple powerful politicians gets less focus (and often in the case of The Spectator, active defense like in the case of Prince Andrew) in them than a professor getting caught in a plagarism scandal. Is this not crazy?
The solution being even more government suppression is hilariously stupid and you would think at some point the UK left would realize that their anti speech policies tend to just be abused against them (like the strong libel laws and anti terrorism support laws have been). But that doesn't negate the claims that the media reaction to him is that of carrion-eaters as Sam Kriss wonderfully puts it. After all again both can be true, free speech restrictions are dumb and the UK press hyper focused on this in a way they don't for far greater stories.
It’s also completely true that the press had every right to report on this. It’s news. Cambridge is a major institution, it takes government grants, it represents the country; of course we have a right to know if it’s giving out professorships to lovable rogues with a totally invented backstory. Arday was advising the government on the school curriculum; people in that kind of position need to be held to public scrutiny. But is that really all you were doing? Admit it: you were having fun. Everyone was enjoying it. Peer into the man’s house, infrared cameras, concrete-penetrating LIDAR, let’s see what’s in his sock drawer: socks. I knew it.
If a lot of people seem to have suddenly started making very different noises in the last few days, it’s not because any of the substance has changed. Everything they said is still true. The allegations against Arday are the same, and the evidence is still overwhelming. The only difference is that it’s not fun any more. The victim can’t run or hide, but if they’re desperate and vicious enough they can choose to ruin the fun. ... You’re not really sorry, just momentarily embarrassed. A few weeks later someone else is being paraded for your amusement, and you’re whooping like a gibbon as their skin starts to fissure in the light.
It can be true that Arday was a fraud who represented the worst of academia's failing and be true that the response to controversies is dominated by psychopathic vultures hungry for their next meal against an "acceptable" target.
I liken it to those guys who won't shut up about how they want to be home invaded. Self defense is morally okay and it's a weird thing to constantly wish to happen so a good bit of them are just sadists who are fantasizing about the legally acceptable way they can finally kill someone and part of why every once in a while you get "guy shoots at girl scout who knocked on door" stories because they saw a potential opportunity to finally shoot and their idiot brain took it without thinking. Normal people plan for self defense as a potential and necessary option, but they do not day dream about the shedding of blood.
magicalkittycat
5d ago
Who's proposing to charge anybody for Arday's suicide?
I don't know how we can say "X is responsible for Y's death" and "X should not be punished" at the same time. Causing another person's death is one of the worst things that someone can do, and should be disincentived!
There are bad behaviors that perhaps should never be made illegal, but that doesn't mean we can't still consider them bad.
I'm one of the most libertarian small government people here and completely agree, and have argued this about drugs and children transitioning and all sorts of other controversial topics. But causing the death of another person is not something I would ever make an exception for, it's literally harmful to others. That is like the one thing law is for.
The thing here isn't that causing death should be legal, it's that mean words != causing death.
magicalkittycat
6d ago
I'd add criminal harassment campaigns, i.e. "I go to your house, smash in all the windows with thrown rocks, graffiti it with horrible insults, and repeat this every time you fix it",
Those are not speech and wouldn't be an exception as they are completely different things to begin with.
You don't seem to have studied the subject of suicide at all.
No but I do understand basic logic and know that "someone killing themselves" necessarily means "someone killing themselves". It is the suiciders very own action.
Someone with major depression can't make (or not make) the same choices you can make.
I'm all for suicide prevention and trying to help people out, but there is no world in which it's not their choice. If it wasn't their own actions then it wouldn't be suicide it would be murder. If you're arguing for some expansive definition of the phrase where it involves other people then go ahead I suppose, but under the general meaning that I was using suicide is necessarily their own choice, even if we agree it's an illogical one.
If not, who do you propose we should charge for Arday's death, if someone else is responsible? Maybe the writers at the Guardian or the Telegraph.
At the end of the day the only person who can kill themselves is obviously, themselves. We can talk about how hard it is to weather harassment and controversies and whatever, and how much anyone in particular "deserves" to have mean stuff said to them, but I have always been against the idea of blaming others for someone else's choice, regardless of how grim it is. Just turn off the computer/leave the room/whatever if people are being mean and you don't like it, they have free speech to say awful stuff and tough shit deal with it. Tons of other people live with seeing awful stuff about them all day, just check the comments of any controversial minority group content creator like outspoken jews or trans people to see evidence of that. There is no shortage of meanness on the internet and if that existing means no one else can speak then why even have the internet to begin with?
The only place I can think of at the top of my head where there is a meaningful exception is with school bullies, and that's only because the government mandates attendence for anyone who isn't being home schooled (which isn't possible for many families) thus making "just leave" not an option.
It sucks that Arday died, but no one is at fault for a suicide except for himself. We can't give up our freedoms to criticize and mock just because someone else might do something bad (whether that be suicide or murder or whatever).
magicalkittycat
9d ago
It's really just another way of saying that people misread the mandate they actually had and overreached into nonsensical and unpopular areas. For example anti discrimination rules against racial minorities are pretty well supported (even if I think they're unnecessary and illiberal), where as discriminating against white applicants to boost minority groups is not. Some of the people riding the waves of the first push into the second and trigger a rebound.
The same thing I've been talking about what the GOP is doing now. Securing the border and kicking out bad criminal immigrants is popular, shoving a gun in the face of the friendly abeula who lives across the street or kicking out a hard working farm assistant is not.. Greg Bovino might literally believe there needs to be 100 million deportations, but the general public does not. That's why putting Bovino in charge of deportations was stupid and why he inevitably created major backlash. There's a natural ebb and flow to the stupidity back and forth. A very recent example, vaccine mandates violated people's rights to body autonomy, so now we have a retarded antivaxxer in charge of public health recommendations instead.
Things are looking to flow back to the Dem side pretty soon so let's hope woke 2 won't be as stupid as before. It will be, they're still playing the same incentive and signaling games everyone else is, and they'll cause a right wing backlash which will cause a left wing one and so on and so forth as people refuse to learn the lesson that bathing in the excesses of your idealogy is not actually a good way to maintain support, but who knows. Maybe someone will finally learn to moderate their actions for once and tell their sides extremists to fuck off.
magicalkittycat
10d ago
Right, so this is actually the real reason.
Yes, the real reason of me showing you some of your basic comprehension mistakes to demonstrate that you're not some smartiepants who knew everything compared to the other jurors who were stupid for checks notes disagreeing with you, was to do exactly that. Good job detective.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
Okay, so the prosecutor wasn't bringing criminal fraud charges, the plaintiff was bringing a civil fraud case. Happy now? Look, just admit you got hung up on the terminology
It's a great irony to be pointed out when someone speaks as if they're smarter and better than the unwashed Karens of the jury they served with, only to fail at understanding some of the basics is it not?
and shouldn't have claimed OP was making it all up. No harm, no foul.
I didn't claim that, it was one of the possibilities. Either they misunderstood or they were lying. Your defense of "they misunderstood" is literally saying I was correct.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
The difference is between fraud charges and fraud claims is pedantic and not how I think
And yet the difference between criminal charges and not exists regardless.
This could have been an informative post with you correcting me and explaining the difference.
I was illustrating how in your argument against democracy, where you essentially propose yourself as an enlightened individual unlike those Karens, you failed to understand some very basic concepts and terms. It's a great irony. Had you not approached with the ego that you were better than the rest there, perhaps you would not need to be humbled when you messed up such simple parts.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
I'm not mistaken, I'm just not pedantic af about syntax
If you're not mistaken when saying the civil court was handling fraud charges, then the other option must apply and you would be lying instead because as I established, civil courts would not handle that.
"You are mistaken" is the nice explanation for the false claim you made. We have an known to be incorrect claim and two possible explanations, choose one.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
You are just wrong, it was you who claimed fraud can only be criminal.
Fraud can be civil. Fraud charges would not be, which is the term you literally used. You were mistaken, which is what I predicted to be the case.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
"More likely than not" that the plaintiff had to prove, which she seemed to fail to submit evidence to do so. Meaning the lack of evidence would fall on her, giving a default judgement to the defendant.
It's not enough in your opinion.
So I guess if your stance is that bad biased evidence is more believable than no evidence, thats definitely a stance, though I'm not sure you'd like that applied to your interlocutors in the future.
I doubt the defense felt further evidence would have helped their case, given they did not seek it in discovery. In this situation it's likely as another comment already explained to you, they submitted enough that they felt was convincing without having to expose the two parties even further than necessary.
North Carolina allows for civil fraud.
No, you don't get to acknowledge you used the wrong terminology in another comment and then do this game here. I am well aware civil fraud is a thing, but what you said was fraud charges. That is incorrect.
What's my motivation for writing out a 3 page essay on my jury trial experiences when I hate writing, and I hate looking at my writing. Skepticism is never an unfounded trait on the internet, but if you are banking on your layman-legal knowledge as the critical support pillar, then I think you should recalibrate how much you think you actually know.
As I explained in the other reply, this was because there was only two options. Either you were mistaken or you were lying. I didn't know which one, just that one of them had to be the case.
You were mistaken and therefore I was right. It was either of the two, and it ended up being one of them. If you do not understand the concept of "either or" and take one of the options as a direct accusation, then that is on you.
If your first response to improper legal terminology is accuse me of fabrication, I think the internet has ruined your mind.
Except that wasn't my first response, the very start of the sentence was actually saying you didn't know what you were talking about and were showing a misunderstanding about what the jury would have been adjudicating.
A civil jury would not be deciding criminal charges for fraud, thus we have the two options.
- You misunderstood something that is real.
- It's not real at all.
Those are the only two options, given that the claim itself is known to be incorrect (unless my knowledge and the double check was wrong and there is a weird jurisdiction thing going on, but it would be an incredibly strange thing in the US system).
As we have confirmed right now when you said "improper legal terminology", I was right. That is option 1, you were mistaken. You have admitted to this yourself right there in that comment. You are complaining about my factually sound conclusion proven to be correct.
magicalkittycat
12d ago
Civil liability fraud is not referred to by "fraud charges", charges are brought by a prosecutor.
The human brain didn't evolve to be so smart for understanding complex emergent behaviors, it's just a fortunate part that our intelligence also allows us to do that. But it's still really hard for us to figure this out, especially from first principles.
Some form of mercantilism or similar systems was basically the default idealogy for very long periods of time across many civilizations, breaking out of that mindset and into free market capitalism was genuinely groundbreaking. Even now the biggest nation in the world, China, is still idealogically controlled by anti market leaders who were dragged into some semblance of proper economics by what might as well have been sheer luck. If not for Deng Xiaoping's market reforms breaking open some of the idea trap they'd likely still be extremely poor.
reality is random, cruel, senseless, not governed by human-compatible narratively satisfying laws. There isn't necessarily a cabal; a lot of things are driven by emergent phenomena.
The Big Bad Evil Who Deserves All The Blame is common everywhere, in all societies. Whether it be the witches who cursed your son to be weird (now understood as autistic), or The Man who controls government and the economy keeping you from being more than a fast food employee, or the Jews conspiring behind doors or 9/11 being an inside job or the secret labs that must have intentionally released dangerous pathogens, everything bad gets pinned on the evil shadow figures because the idea that nature or complex systems like that can just do that is somehow even more terrifying.
Ironically it can even be the people who are trying to help you that become the Boogeyman. Whether it be the Jewish merchants who were blamed for the high prices in black neighborhoods that the other stores refused to even touch (the same way that all "price gouging" complaints work) or foreign aid workers with conspiracies alleging they're responsible for the disaster they're providing aid for, they become the face of the great evil because they're the only face around to blame.
In the same way strongman populism is like the reverse. If Evil Authority is responsible for all the bad in the world, then Good Authority must be able to do all the good. You don't need a person with sound policies that consider those yucky tradeoffs as real, you need a powerful fighter who exposes the illuminati and beats them up.
magicalkittycat
12d ago
You could have accused him of being imprecise rather than going to "You are making this up."
But I did accuse him of that as a possibility! I said
points to you either being really confused about what was going on (likewise with not knowing the difference in evidentiary standard) or perhaps the story itself is fabricated.
So it's either he didn't understand (or at least failed to properly explain his understanding) what is going on (as they weren't deliberating fraud charges, they would have been deliberating civil liability fraud) or the story was fake.
I listed the possibilities out. We know it's one of those two, but I can't say which one.
you have no reason to be accusing him of outright making up this entire story.
There is a specific reason that I gave, a jury trial would not be deciding if they give him criminal charges or not. It is possible he misspoke or misunderstood something, but the story as it sounds right now is not true, because the civil jury would not be deciding against fraud charges as it would not have the ability to do that to begin with. That was never a potential thing.
And it's not even some weird special super unique jurisdiction thing as I checked that with the bots
Is there any jurisdiction in the US where a civil trial jury would be deciding criminal charges?
There isn't a U.S. jurisdiction where an ordinary civil-trial jury is empowered to decide whether someone is guilty of an ordinary criminal offense as part of the civil lawsuit.
He either completely misunderstood what the jury was empowered to deliberate there (he might have meant civil liability fraud) or it's fake. But it could not have been fraud charges. When someone says they've seen a flying unicorn the response is "you either mistook something else for that or you're lying".
The other jurors are probably correct here, the standard of evidence for a civil trial is not beyond reasonable doubt but instead "more likely" (preponderance of the evidence) and when one side is bringing evidence and the other is a known scumbag who only uses words, it tilts likelyhood pretty hard. I think his defense was just incompetent, either through bad luck with the lawyer or because the defendant himself is garbage and both made the bad call to go with a jury trial to begin with and demanded this bad defense strategy against counsel (more common than you mignt think, lots of people refuse to trust the lawyers for some reason).
Add in the possibility that your framing might be missing any more details in her favor too, and it seems like siding with Becky with here is quite reasonable.
Summing to about 12k. No fraud charges or punitive damages. I can't imagine I would have made many friends but I'm not sure I ever want to see any of these people ever again.
Why would a civil trial jury bring fraud charges? Criminal charges is a really odd thing to bring up multiple times in a civil suit in the US and inconsistencies like this points to you either being really confused about what was going on (likewise with not knowing the difference in evidentiary standard) or perhaps the story itself is fabricated.
magicalkittycat
14d ago
Fair point I misunderstood what it could be meaning there. Still by now when it comes to Trump a "deal" is not meaningful till we actually see it happen. Hamas still has weapons. I'll change my view on his handling of Gaza if it ever happens that Hamas is genuinely disarmed.
Recently, the Board of Peace announced, over the objections of Iran, an unprecedented agreement to disarm Hamas
This is hilarious to frame something created very recently as "unprecedented", no shit it is, the BOP has no precedent of anything to begin with. Add in that it's US led and basically controlled by Trump himself and it is literally just this meme when the deal fell through already anyway.
It's slightly more serious than the FIFA peace prize and really is a brilliant illustration of how far the goals here have to be stretched for even a semblance of "victory". Hamas still has their weapons and eventually people will stop counting the Trump chickens before they hatch. But this is the man also claiming the US has already won back in March already so I'm not sure why he's even bringing up old news here. Certainly 5+ months after the US winning bigly and the conflict ending, the results would speak for themselves right?
Don't think it's fair to compare a taco bell burrito and a Chipotle-style super burrito. Taco bell burritos can hit the spot but are undeniably cheaper in quality. Chipotle burritos use real meat chunks at least.
Taco Bell is real meat, it's ground beef + seasonings + water + oil and then a little bit of things like thickeners and other binders. Is it the best cut of meat ever? No, but it's perfectly safe and edible. In fact it's more reliably safe than food was at pretty much any other point in history (even accounting for the recent outbreak, since having random infections and parasites was basically the norm for much of the past).
And taco bell packet sauces slathered on a bean burrito is always a 10% risk of painful, explosive, and watery poops IMHO. That organic wagyu burrito where the beef was hand-massaged daily is honestly way tastier and does not have the same risk of explosive poop.
I've never had that issue once and I think it's either just a meme or serious lack of fiber in people's diets so they get hit with the 1-2 punch of grease + sudden fiber introduced.
magicalkittycat
15d ago
Consequently, they're reduced to playing dumb, either mildly dumb by pretending it's all about the cost of food vis-a-vis other expenses or downright retarded by pretending that the issue is about literal $20 burritos and going "heh, don't you know burritos aren't actually $20". They're basically in the same position as Biden was four years ago; they can pretend nothing is wrong or they can blame the last guy. Neither is likely to work.
As I've said countless times, the main issue of 2024 was prices. Fair or not, that's what it was, and what it continues to be. The no 1 complaint I constantly saw was "Bidenflation". The no 1 sign I saw for Trump was the "Trump low prices, Kamala high prices" one. The most successful Trump ad buy was literally portraying Harris as an idealogical obsessive concerned over unimportant culture war fights (trans people in prisons) over the everyday issues the typical American deals with (prices/jobs/etc).
So what lesson was taken away from this? Nothing. Trump has pressed multiple "slow down the economy" buttons that most presidents would never push with his tariff nonsense and record pace losing war, while spending his time about the same things the typical American doesn't really give a shit about like the reflecting pool or ranting about transgender data centers (no seriously, he seemed to have mixed up "transistors" with "transgender") or whatever else.
Like I believe most of the complaints are pure vibecession both now and during the Biden era, but if you explicitly run on a platform to focus on the economy and lie and say you will lower nominal prices (because you know that's what people want) and then fail to do it, then of course people will be upset. There is literally no way around this, the GOP ran on lowering prices, and everyone can see prices are not lowered. They exploited the delusion there's a fix everything button for votes and then seem surprised that people actually believed in the fix everything button they were constantly told and promised was real.
From the literal standpoint, unless you're ordering from super fancy joint (and probably getting a personal taxi for your food on top), no burrito should cost you 20. That's completely nonsense. I literally get 4 burritos for the family at 12 bucks at taco bell on the way home sometimes and if I cook my own it's even cheaper.
But lets take it more seriously as "food prices in general are high and I'm being hyperbolic in my complaint". Well, food prices are not that high historically compared to a share of income. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-expenditure-share-family-disposable-income Even post 2020 is a pretty small blip on the chart compared to how much households were spending.
But fine, people are ahistorical and judging off their own perceptions rather than actual data and their own lived experience is food getting more expensive. Why is that? Well lots of it is that they're just eating out more, there was a massive spike in food consumed away from home and it now outspends food at home. This of course is more expensive, but also a choice. Or maybe food prices are just another proxy for the real financial strain in housing costs, and the pressure there bleeds over into their food budgets or something.
But honestly, I think all of this is also irrelevant. If you look at the replies of people who are pointing out that burritos are not 20 dollars, the complaints aren't "you're lying, a burrito is 20", it's "yeah but that's trash food and it's unhealthy". They're not saying it's 20 bucks at taco bell or at home, they're saying it's 20 bucks at their bougie MAHA/Gwyneth Paltrow approved entirely name brand products all organic no pesticides each cow got tucked in at bedtime by the farmer burrito joint. This what they consider the basic standard of food now and everything else is toxic non-food, plus of course the personal taxi for it, so no, a burrito does not cost less than 20 for them.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
No I think cause and effect is reversed with that.
People have cars first, therefore they are willing to drive to bigger supermarkets, therefore smaller markets which have less choice and are more expensive (no economy of scale) are less appealing, and therefore more likely to be unprofitable.
Now if we want to open up unprofitable charity markets for the few people who can't do that, sure. The government takes a loss doing other forms of charity after all, like I said with mail. I'm against it, but that's a political decision we can at least reasonably make. But also at least, the charity should be able to do what it's for, like rural Alaska gets the mail even if it costs the rest of us money.
The problem with discussions like this is always the same thing, we can't decide on what exactly punishment (and jailing someone in particular) is meant to be for. Is it revenge? Deterrence? Rehabilitation? Is it just keeping known dangerous elements locked up? It's all of those to some degree, but also kinda none of them either.
Like imagine for instance a virus is created that causes .5% of the population with a rare biomarker to go and kill the nearest person. They can't control themselves and once they kill they go back to normal and build up an immunity so they can't be infected again with it. These are known and proven results, no amount of willpower can resist it and no one with the killing virus has ever done it a second time. Should we still punish them? I think there's a fair argument towards no, that they are perfectly fine and good people who had their sense of reason momentarily snatched away from them.
Ok now imagine it's say schizophrenia, extreme enough that they engage in violence and murder but we invent a long term cure and 95% of these violent schizophrenics are no longer violent and won't reoffend, should we let them out of jail early since the problem is solved? Are they not too fine and good people who had their sense of reason snatched away, and now restored?
Or what if we believe there's a high chance that a mentally ill killer won't reoffend again if we put them in a nursing home and just have them watched all day? What if the postpartum depression mother, overwhelmed by uncontrollable thoughts and feelings, won't ever hurt anyone else again and with some careful watching of any future pregnancies won't be able to reoffend? Should we punish those people still if the problem is solved?
Of course the real world isn't so clean and simple as thought experiments and erring on the side of caution is what I'd do for real world scenarios, but there's definitely a lot of fair discussion to be had.
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