magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
magicalkittycat
16d ago
Are you claiming that the actual beliefs of real trans advocacy organizations are propaganda lies
I'm going to leave the exercise of looking up propaganda's definition to you this time, you might be surprised to learn it also doesn't require lies.
You said
The organization is real and serious, it was created for the explicit purpose of trans advocacy.
But TTSU the ones who sent the flyers are not real and serious.
If you reread my comment
The organization isn't a serious one, it was created for the explicit purpose of doing something real activists weren't doing, sending out flyers to students.
I am clearly speaking about TTSU, the flyer sending organization, which is a not real and serious organization.
You confused TTSU with TENT, which is a real organization but did not send the flyers.
How does being unauthorized make anything they said untrue?
Not relevant, "the fake group said true things while pretending to represent a real group" doesn't make them a real organization. The TTSU is fake and was created last month https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/transgender-mailers-22485877.php
Even Republican politicians acknowledge it's not real!
“A legitimate group does not send something like that from a fake address with a fake name, especially on the first day of early voting,” said Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican and the former speaker of the Texas House.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
There's no good argument against "I made up something in my head to get mad about", given you've already proven you'll just make up stuff in your head.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
If people are angry about the term I used being incorrect, they can't then later admit the term I used is correct but it's not "the real issue". If it's not the real issue, then they should have given the correct one to begin with instead of falsely claiming that "black propaganda" requires misrepresentation!
They said
If so, I'm confused at why you're comparing it to "Black Propaganda", which is definitionally about untrue stuff (according to Wikipedia, which is only honest).
This is patently untrue. Their complaint is false. I proved it false with like seven different sources. If they have other complaints that aren't wrong, they should have used those and not a false one.
I will not accept blatant goalpost shifting afterwards. State the real problem from the start or shut up.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
It's still black propaganda per basically every definition I found.
I gave you two sources but sure let's check some more from my Google search of "black propaganda definition"
The next result is Collins dictionary which says https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/black-propaganda#google_vignette
propaganda that does not come from the source it claims to come from.
Next is Salisbury University https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/propaganda/what-is-propaganda-/the-colors-of-propaganda
Black Propaganda
One of the most deceptive forms of propaganda involves material created by one group but attributed to another. Black propaganda falsely claims a message or image was created by the opposition in order to discredit them.
Then is the Southern Methodist University https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/black.html
Black propaganda is any kind of material that is not obviously propaganda and whose origin is completely concealed. The item is accepted for something other than what it really is.
And last here's the "media manipulation casebook" https://mediamanipulation.org/definitions/propaganda/
black referring to propaganda that disguises its origins, often portraying itself as the target it is trying to discredit.
Weird how none of these links mention falsehood or misrepresentation of material as a necessary detail. Why did they all coincidentally miss that memo? If you can not provide a valid explanation for why all of these preexisting sources all happen to make the same mistake, then kindly stop arguing this point.
Heck even if we want to go to "well that's not what Wikipedia says", actually it does too. For example we can see their short definition in this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Black_propaganda
Black propaganda is propaganda which purports to be from one side in a conflict but is actually produced by the opposing side
Or just by looking at the first paragraph of the main Wikipedia page!
Black propaganda is covert disinformation deliberately attributed to a false source—often the very group it aims to discredit—in order to undermine that group's credibility.[1][2] Black propaganda contrasts with gray propaganda, which does not identify its source, as well as white propaganda, which does not disguise its origins at all.
It's not about whether or not it misrepresented the source, it's about attribution to a false source. The disinformation is because it's literally not from the correct source, the sourcing is a lie.
Which is why the end of the paragraph is
It is typically used to vilify or embarrass the enemy through misrepresentation.
Typically is an odd word for something apparently necessary in the definition. Typically is a word used when there are exceptions!
Likewise it says later
Sometimes the source is concealed or credited to a false authority and spreads lies, fabrications, and deceptions.
Weird if it was a necessary part they would use "sometimes" and not "all times" for spreading lies, tabrications, and deceptions.
I am right, it is not a necessary part of the definition.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
The organization is real and serious, it was created for the explicit purpose of trans advocacy.
TENT ("Transgender Education Network of Texas) is real, the "Texas Transgender Student Union" (the ones supposedly behind the letter) is not real outside of an LLC set up last month.
TENT has publicly stated that the TTSU is not an authorized representative.
The TTSU is a fake activist organization.
Sure
To be clear, your position here is "Republicans are truthfully spreading the things their opponents believe, and this is a bad thing"?
Never said either A or B of this.
So back at your words, try replying to what is in my comment.
If so, I'm confused at why you're comparing it to "Black Propaganda", which is definitionally about untrue stuff (according to Wikipedia, which is only honest).
Is there a more proper term for pretending to be from an "enemy organization" in this way? From what I can tell black propaganda is the closest one.
I'm also not sure it is definitionally about untrue stuff only. "Black propaganda definition" on Google gets me "Black propaganda is a deceptive form of communication that hides its true origin and falsely attributes the message to an enemy, rival, or a fake authority to damage their reputation, undermine morale, or manipulate public opinion."
Nothing there requires the message to be misrepresenting.
And dictionary.com strictly says "propaganda that does not come from the source it claims to come from".
Again nothing there requires it to be misrepresented, merely that the source is a lie. Although I guess they actually made the organization as an LLC, so it's not strictly a lie to say it came from the "Texas transgender student union" as that does exist and was created a month ago for this purpose, it's just purposefully deceptive in the intention is to make people think this is some trans activists.
If your position is that Republicans are untruthfully spreading things their opponents don't actually support: which things? It might help your comment to be explicit.
It's a fake organization. Again not strictly fake, but the way people are meant to interpret it is obvious. And that intended interpretation is false.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
Black propaganda is disinformation
The organization isn't a serious one, it was created for the explicit purpose of doing something real activists weren't doing, sending out flyers to students.
The whole thing is a literal psyop.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
The organization is not a serious activist group and does not seem to exist for any other purpose except as a psyop, how does that not inherently count as untrue?
The created story here "the trans are trying to reach your kids through the mail" is not real.
It's not a difficult mystery at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda
The Republican midterm strategy has been to repeatedly yell transgender and immigration over and over and over again at voters like the 9/11 family guy skit, hoping to get people to look past the financial disaster/corruption/etc.
We have motive. We have means. We have opportunity. They seem to be targeting right wing families in particular.
The thing that twinges my antennae a bit is that it was addressed to "Students of the XXX family," where XXX is the family that lived here about 10 years ago, for whom we still get mail from time to time, all sent from super right-wing organizations.
And we have evidence of it being a psyop already given the supposed group has no previous history and the only existing organization it has any attachment to has said it's an unauthorized usage of their name.
magicalkittycat
20d ago
This is a different debate. Before you were arguing (via Messieur Jonathon) that Trump was doing all these potentially popular things in alienating ways. Now you’re arguing that he’s just doing unpopular things.
Yes those are the same things, he's doing things that in the generic sense could be popular but in the unpopular ways. It's like if "interacting with a puppy" polled +40, so they get it into their heads that kicking a puppy will be popular. That's just not what is meant by interacting with puppies!
Which is to say, we’re not even having a conversation about whether anything Trump is doing is good. We’re just debating whether it’s unpopular. Which is a low form of debate
In a representative democracy, doing what the citizens want is the most important part. If you're a leader wanting to remain popular, you should interact with puppies by feeding them and giving them pets, not kicking them.
If you're voted in because people are concerned about old dementia patients causing inflation while more concerned about random cultural war BS, maybe don't be an old dementia patient causing inflation while more concerned about random cultural war BS. Be not that and do the popular things that citizens want.
magicalkittycat
20d ago
Is there some 5head strategy move I am not seeing here? Or is the man actually that inept? Is this because he is mad that Zelensky called him weak?
Trump in general just likes dictators. He loves the idea of strong men in extreme power and it's why he continues to suck up to Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping. And Trump doesn't really have an ideology beyond his own ego so unless you as a dictator personally piss him off like Maduro or Khamanei, he'll side with you.
Putin is literally what Trump wishes to be, a powerful authoritarian in control of a expansionist government.
I said that user Jonathon Van Moren’s complaint is an impossible standard, because there is always an optics problem. You can criticize anything on the grounds that it looks bad to other people, it’s an empty complaint.
That's just not really true at all. Imagine two candidates running for a state's governorship. Yesterday they were both filmed 24/7.
Candidate A was filmed helping old ladies cross the street, volunteer at food kitchens, and other generic good things.
Candidate B was filmed kicking puppies, stealing candy from babies, and other generic bad things.
Who do you think has an easier time with their own PR, and who do you think has it worse?
Your actual actions do matter.
Yes some people will try to spin what you do in bad faith no matter what, but it's not an excuse to be unconcerned with PR. Kicking puppies is unpopular among voters, and thus doing it hurts your electoral chances.
Likewise, look at the Trump admin. Tariffs poll insanely bad in general because the general voterbase doesn't like having higher prices ("it's the economy stupid"), so it should stand to reason that price increasing tariffs hurt electoral chances.
Maybe if he wasn't obsessed with insanely unpopular things like tariffs, betraying Ukraine, threatening to invade Canada, open and blatant corruption (one of the top concerns of voters now!), harassing legal immigrants, etc etc and sticked to widely supported policies, he wouldn't be in the puppy kicking slump.
The idea that disagreement and disapproval only comes from ill motivated haters is exactly the philosophy that helps make such bad PR mistakes. You can find plenty of conservatives and Trump supporters such as Moran or Erick Erickson or heck, the vice president himself! who voiced a dislike of the execution.
There are lots of people who are perfectly willing to give you a chance. You can see this by looking at the approval rating history.
In January 2025, Trump net approval was +11.7. Now it is -22.2.
How could it ever have been +11.7 if all the disapproval is from bad faith complainers who never give a fair shake? Were they all coordinating a lie in order to make his downfall look worse?
The swing is not from negative nancy's who hate Trump no matter what, but from people who gave him a genuine chance and found him lacking. Had he gone about things in a way to appeal to the centrist/moderate/swing voters who were giving him a very fair opportunity instead of in group extremists, perhaps the betting market odds wouldn't have swung as hard as they did. This reflects the change in voter approval! He genuinely failed people's good faith expectations.
magicalkittycat
21d ago
Jonathon Moran got it right already https://x.com/JVanMaren/status/2108586303444943246?s=20
The execution of Nidal Hassan feels like a microcosm of Trump II policies in many ways. It goes something like this:
- Take a popular action/policy (executing a terrorist who murdered servicemen, deporting illegal immigrants).
- Carry out the action/policy in a manner tailor-made to appeal to online MAGA anons, for whom the performative cruelty of the process is as important as the policy.
- Manage to lose public support while implementing a very popular action/policy.
They're in the overly online psychopath echo chambers so deep they don't even realize that a large number of conservatives and conservative leaning voters are not aligned with the most extreme and cruel ends. Americans are fine with the death penalty overall, but Hegseth just couldn't help himself and needed to go further past where the public is at. Americans want punishment, but they don't want blood entertainment.
Like a good bit of Trump era policy, the SAVE is intentionally bad and over the top so it can't actually be passed. Even Republican senators don't actually want to pass it for very fixable reasons, but they won't be fixed because it's not designed to succeed from the ground up.
The main thing being that everyone knows requiring passports and birth certificates as the main ID fucks over republicans (who are more rural and poor of a voterbase) than it would Democrats..
A young voter registering for the first time may not have a passport. A married woman whose legal name no longer matches her birth certificate may need to produce additional documentation. A rural voter may have to travel a long distance to an election office. A low-income worker may struggle to take time off during business hours. A service member stationed away from home may face barriers that civilians never encounter. A citizen who has voted for decades may suddenly need to produce paperwork simply because they moved, changed names, or updated their registration.
Murkowski is just the biggest example of a Republican senator who would be fucked if rurals couldn't vote as easily because of how extreme the ruralness of Alaska is. Every single issue with the SAVE act is amplified there.
magicalkittycat
21d ago
What's not normal is a young guy like him getting the flu for two weeks and not even posting a proof of life video.
Not only is it not two weeks (it was 8-9 days) he did have live video of him after getting diagnosed with the flu.
Talarico, who appeared via video chat because of a recent flu diagnosis, was interviewed by Javier Palomarez, USHBC’s president and CEO
Your assumptions here are based off incorrect details.
magicalkittycat
21d ago
Yeah unfortunately when dealing with lies, there is no simple easy answer. Sometimes debunking a rumor is what draws more eyes towards it to begin with.
There's a rumor going around that this was done to draw heat away from a Paxton scandal getting revealed soon after so perhaps the Talarico campaign felt putting more attention towards the debunk would be counterproductive.
magicalkittycat
21d ago
My god, those conservatives acted like liberals! How dare they behave the way the other side demands they behave!
"Anytime anyone I agree with idealogically does something bad, it's just because they're acting like The Enemy" is an interesting stance while also complaining that someone like Jesse Singal (who has taken plenty of heat for his sticking to his views instead of playing tribal politics) or Binion (who is known for doing the same) is being too boo outgroup.
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego James Talarico?
If you've been paying attention to the Texas Senate race recently, you might have seen a rumor spreading around that the dem candidate, James Talarico, had spent roughly a week in a mental hospital. This has now been thoroughly debunked but it is an interesting showcase into how the right wing influencer machine works given how far it spread.
Following a story on X can be pretty difficult given the poorly working search function, so I'm piggybacking off of some what Jesse Singal has uncovered. Best I know of is that the story started from @tickletexts although it's not locked down yet. Tickle uses an AI edited profile picture, and highly questionable claims of cancer that she's used to solicit donations over before, claiming to be a white South African immigrant now living in Texas. Singal tracked down a relative who confirmed her as actually being a native Texas woman, most likely doesn't have cancer, and a criminal record.. She's known for giving false identities before even.
As Singal points out
A huge number of prominent conservative influencers took this disturbed woman's claims at face value, and there is a direct line between those claim and the subsequent viral rumors about Talarico. Something went really, really wrong here.
According to Tickletexts she worked alongside a lady Caroline Wren in developing the story and theory
Anyway how did we go from a lie made up by a crazy con artist to Elon Musk and Stephen Miller peddling it?
Somehow it seems Sykes's claims got into the eyes of the two influencers Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher. They claimed to have called the Lindner Center of Hope in Ohio and received confirmation that Talarico was a patient there.
The details of how it evolved from here are even fuzzier. The Twitter account Louis Riel claims to have done a visualization of it through scraping posts, but I have not verified it so so let's go back to Singal who was in a twitter space with Amacher and confirmed a lot of the details and Tony Ortiz who has access to the full call audio and also participated in the spaces.
Amacher points to Caroline Wren and Tickletexts as his source. They called to "verify" the story, and after being repeatedly told by representatives that there was no man named James Talerico at the facility or in their records, one of the representatives offers up a guess that perhaps he was discharged recently and it's not showing up for that reason.
Staffer: I do not see that name here. So maybe he’s been discharged.
And
Staffer:
I do not find anyone with that name for the last four days that’s been discharged and they’re not here in the building.
Rhein Amacher:
Okay, so nothing for James Talarico?
Staffer:
Um, yeah.
And
Staffer:
Let’s see. Well, this is. What is today? Looks like he was just discharged this evening. That’s why I don’t have it.
Rhein Amacher:
Oh, he was discharged then?
Staffer:
Uh, huh.
What's interesting is even if it wasn't just a theory offered up by the staffer, as Nick Ortiz points out this timeline still would not match Amacher's claims
“This evening” was Saturday October 10th, according to Amacher. Talarico was photographed at ACL in Austin on Friday afternoon, October 9th, which the campaign and the Texas Tribune both reported that day.
Rhein Amacher, who confirms the call was his, posted that the staffer said Talarico “had been discharged within the previous 24–48 hours.” Sortor’s post says “earlier this week.” Neither phrase is on the recording, leaving Texans with three timelines that don’t necessarily match.
Talarico’s last in-person event in Texas was on September 26. On September 30 he said he’d been to an urgent care in Dallas the night before and had the flu.
He wasn’t seen in public again until ACL on October 9.
So we know that he couldn't have been "just discharged" on the evening of the 10th, since he was in public on the 9th. This was just a theory offered up by a staffer.
Amacher tried to shop it around to the tabloids such as the TheBlaze and the Daily Mail, but they wouldn't pick it up on suggestion from their legal teams so he gave it to Nick Sortor instead who as an influencer has lower standards than a journalism outlet. Amechar denies this but as you can see from the community note, this is what he said. Not really surprising he would lie though is it? From Nick Sortor the story picks up among the MAGA X space and spreads from there. There's also some evidence that the Paxton campaign (the Republican running for senator) might have involvement in this.
In another X space, Senior Politics Editor at The Daily Caller, Will Upton, alleged that Jeff Roe of Axiom Strategies was pitching the Talarico hospital story around. He calls Roe “skeezy.” A speaker in the space calls Roe a “fucking retard” and they discuss how unreliable the newest Talarico story is: However Axiom strategies states they had no involvement, so it's currently just Upton's word vs Roe's.
So let's go back to Singal's statement, Something went really, really wrong here.. What happened, and how did it spread?
The conspiracy is sought out. As user quantumfreakonomics pointed out in another thread, the original evidence towards the mental hospital theory was really weak to begin with. It's literally just a private plane (without any proof of Talerico being on board) flew from Austin to Ohio and back. This doesn't generate a conspiracy theory unless you wanted a conspiracy to begin with. You start with the idea that something is up, and then look for clues that can hint at something, anything being amiss.
If we want something to be true then we look past the obvious red flags in the case. A person with an AI generated picture claiming to be them should be automatically suspicious right? "It's because I have cancer" is a very convenient excuse to be faking identity. Some sort of party putting their real name and face to a story is a key part of journalism, it forces a layer of responsibility and risk of reputational harm onto a real human being. Anonymity and anonymous sources are common in reporting but their identity is generally still known to the journalist. For example when JD Vance is an anonymous source to Politico, the journalist knows who the source is. The journalist is simply shifting the risk of harm away from the anonymous source and onto themselves. When a politico writer says "a source in the white source", they are putting their name to a real and known source in the white house who I have confirmed. Of course similar to the red flag of AI pfps, another red flag is when claims are made by objectively bad people. Nick Sortor has an extensive criminal record and has an active Kentucky state warrant out for his arrest. Someone being immoral doesn't instantly invalidate their claims, but generally immoral people are more willing to do other immoral things like lie seems a given.
Mainstream media, as bad as it can be, still generally has standards too. There are real people making real claims. Scott Alexander has a great piece on how the media very rarely lies I suggest you read. As Reason writer Billy Binion points out
This guy—like so many right-wing provocateurs—has tried to make a career railing into "the mainstream media" for lack of standards. Meanwhile, he posts "BREAKING EXCLUSIVES" that are obvious lies I'd expect a 9th grader to reject. The absolute state of our media environment. If someone at The New York Times published this fake Talarico “scoop,” they would’ve been fired and driven out of journalism, because the NYT actually has journalistic standards. People like Nick Sortor do not. He is 1,000 times worse than what he sits around criticizing.
A lot of right-wing personalities want to gripe about “the mainstream media” so they can cast themselves as perpetual victims. It’s good for business. Yet they’ve created their own media ecosystem that is much guiliter of the stuff they supposedly hate. It’s so embarrassing.
To reiterate the most important part he said IMO, It's good for business. There is a market demand for this sort of slop, but not enough actual verifiable high standards of evidence supply. So a bunch of personalities grift, using victimhood culture as their excuse for why they can't operate in the traditional higher standards environment. Nick Sortor was chosen precisely because he doesn't have the moral or ethical or legal standards of the daily mail or the blaze after all. The influencer space is so bad they don't even compare to some of the worst and most questionable mainstream journalism outlets.
That's the real reason this spread. There is a demand for bad news and conspiracies about Talarico, but there just isn't enough supply to match so sloppy and unethical influencers see financial incentives to find something. And they did. It doesn't seem to have had any meaningful effect on the actual election chances so at the end of the day it's all a wash anyway I guess.
They also first tried to get it in the Daily Mail and TheBlaze which should really be quite telling on its own if even some of the lowest evidentary standards imaginable tabloids aren't willing to touch it.
How low quality must your "evidence" be for the daily mail legal team to reject it as too risky of libel?
But it's really important to note here that among the influencer right truth does not matter. It simply does not. They do not give a rat's ass if the story is real, they just want to put Talarico's name next to "mental health crisis". They are the demons from Frieren, words to the influencer right are merely a tool to trick with.
Sometimes if you catch the demons among their group, you'll find they even admit to it.
magicalkittycat
26d ago
Everything you get at the store also uses gasoline for transportation, so higher prices puts a direct inflationary pressure on basically every physical product. These effects will not be seen immediately as prices tend to increase more smoothly, but they will happen overtime just like with the tariffs.
You are obsessed by tests
Yes, because this is the generally accepted way we empirically measure intelligence.
Somebody who is constantly wrong, but enjoys being wrong and expects himself to be wrong and puts in place structures to cope with the inevitable fuckups that happen when you bash yourself against reality and reality wins, is far more useful and intelligent than the kind of person who prides themselves on getting A in a class about French artists.
Well obviously not. If they were more intelligent why are they constantly wrong?
The French artists is just an example. We can make it physics, we could make it engineering, we could make it anything. In general the smarter guy should be better. It's practically tautological.
Now, IQ tests have a meaning. Scoring better on IQ tests tends to correlate with the kind of intelligence I am talking about. Knowing nothing about them, I would rather have higher IQ students than lower IQ ones. But that is not enough, and a history of perfect test taking can often correlate with the kind of arrogance that makes you an extremely bad employee and problem solver.
Interesting enough, higher IQ tends to be correlated with prosocial traits. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/2049959070556172302
This is literally the issue, money must come from somewhere. Every dollar of tax that a retired boomer getting 3k a month off social security with a paid off house now worth 10x they bought it for fifty years ago they get to stop paying, is another dollar charged to someone else someway else.
Just look at the mess of California's property tax to see this in action, the old pay basically nothing so the young pay basically everything. Your money already goes to a 75 year old couple spending it all on cruises and casinos, and they get free services from the city on top.
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