naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I'm definitely team "Nothing Ever Happens" most of the time, and I suspect the same will be true of today. This is very unlikely to be the straw that broke any particular camel's back.
But it is different, I think, in important ways that do increase the feeling that this one could lead somewhere.
I have been trying to put my finger on why this one feels different, and a Facebook post from Nick Freitas has I think cleared it up for me.
Charlie tried to win that fight through argumentation, through discussion, through peaceful resolution of differences.
And the other side murdered him.
Not because he was “extreme” or “inciting violence” or any other hyperbolic slur they hurled at him. They murdered him because he was effective. Because he was unafraid. Because he inspired others and made them feel like they had a voice, that they were not alone. And he did it at the very institutions which have fomented so much hatred toward conservatives.
Charlie wasn't an elected official. He was a young man who was willing to speak up for his beliefs. His arguments were often not all that sophisticated; he did a better job as an avatar of free, heterodox expression in academic settings, than as an advocate for any particular position.
This was not an untargeted massacre, as sometimes happens. It was also not the assassination of a government figure or candidate for office, quite. When was the last time someone like Kirk was assassinated? Someone who stood for a political view (or, arguably, a tribe) but who was strictly involved at the level of discourse, rather than politics or government operation (e.g. the Israeli staffers)? What would that even look like, with tribal positions reversed? Would it even occur to a violent right-wing nutjob to go after someone like Kirk? Who even is the "Charlie Kirk of the Left?" What other figures in history occupied this peculiar niche? Maybe Martin Luther King, Jr.? Or (less effectively) the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, though that was an Islam thing rather than a red tribe/blue tribe thing.
Whatever the case, this one bothers me a lot more than any of the other recent violence. It feels like a truly, purely ideological hatred--not activism or civil disobedience, not "mostly peaceful protest" or even "unapologetically violent protest," more of an absolutely unhinged, Excessively Online commitment to "fuck the outgroup." Kirk was harmless in a way Donald Trump obviously isn't, even in a way state legislators and law enforcement aren't; he was not in any position to oppress the way even the lowliest of government officers and officials sometimes might. Kirk had no power but that of his voice.
Kirk was just talking.
And he got murdered for it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
@WhiningCoil edited links into the comment. I clicked a few. They seem basically adequate to me, and I appreciated the effort of their addition. Your copypasta has no power here.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
It's that sufficient?
Do the tweets have receipts? I mean, I assume there is some external evidence that e.g. North Carolina has criminal trial judges without law degrees, a public list (and maybe photograph) of all the members of the relevant "council of black women," etc.
Linking to a bunch of people just saying stuff on Twitter is not any better than just saying stuff here. But "amateur" journalism from Twitter users is fine, provided they are doing something recognizably journalistic, like linking sources, posting credible video evidence, etc. Randos doing journalism on Twitter are at least as good as those working for the New York Times (and often twice as honest!).
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I'm tagging this post as borderline low-effort for the lack of links, which nudge it toward "weak man" territory. Assuming you've characterized the facts accurately, the post itself is basically fine, but I'm not going to go link hunting to chase down every single one of these claims to determine whether you're identifying sufficiently narrow groups, being sufficiently charitable, etc.
So basically, more effort than this please: bring evidence in proportion to how badly the facts seem to reflect on the group(s) under discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Thought I'd be clear by now but the mods will have to do it manually I suppose.
Top level posts must all be approved manually, no matter how long you've been posting. Unfortunately this has proven to be the only way to keep the site from being overwhelmed with botspam.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
The amount of money listed on Patreon isn't per patron, it's the combined total given by all Patrons per month.
Any takes on what made our lifeboat more successful than other Reddit pilgrim colonies throughout the internet?
I'm sure the emergent property of "success" in this context arises in several ways. For one, we do just have a great userbase. But one important aspect, I think, is probably that there is a real demand for spaces like this, and very little plausible competition.
It has been interesting, to me, to watch the SSC subreddit really struggle with CW posts lately. It's clear that a lot of people posting there want to talk about CW issues in a rationalist-adjacent way, and the most active moderators joined post-split and are a lot more tolerant of CW content (often going so far as to make tortured arguments for why this or that post isn't really CW, even though, uh, it clearly is). The CW thread was originally a pressure release valve, basically, keeping CW out of the rest of the sub (usually!). It improved the quality of the rest of the sub--but by being a part of the sub, the quality of the CW thread was itself increased.
But this only works if the mod team is genuinely committed to a "tone not content" moderation policy. In committing themselves to advancing one certain approach to American politics, Reddit admins made this increasingly difficult to achieve. Some of our own spinoffs, right and left (CWR and TheSchism, respectively), never really went anywhere, because they abandoned the one thing that people actually want from this space: content-neutral moderation.
And I say that, knowing full well how often we moderators are accused of thumbing the scales for the right, or the left, or whatever. But even those accusations are a reaffirmation from the userbase that it is content-neutral moderation that is desired, even if people don't always agree on how that looks in practice.
In short, what makes this place as successful as it is, remains the foundation of the space:
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
People actually want that, but almost everyone out there promising such a thing are actually trying to build a "neutral" space where they can prove that their particular views are the actually neutral ones. Literally millions of dollars in grant money have flowed to university research projects promising to "improve political discourse" and yet we do more to accomplish that here every single day, on a Patreon shoestring, than every single one of those universities combined.
I think that counts for something!
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
To the best of my understanding, that is not actually a function of the site--maybe leftover code from rDrama? I would need @ZorbaTHut to say more about that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Happy birthday to the Motte! If nothing else, it is a good time to remind myself that I am bad at predictions and should never play the prediction markets, because I didn't think we'd last this long. But here were are today, entering year four!
Just like last year, I will point out that the server costs continue to be borne by about 25 patrons, making us the Internet's leading (possibly only?) independent user-funded (ad-free!) open political speech forum.
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
(Proverbs 27:17)
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
A classic, to my mind. Honestly it's a rare case of the movie being even better than the source material, and the source material isn't bad! Sadly, the sequel didn't really do it for me, and it's a high water mark for Chloe Grace Moretz on film (though she has done some solid voice work since).
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
It's always interesting to me what people nominate (and what they don't). But I do think almost all nominated comments plausibly fall under one of the old "Slashdot Metamoderation" categories (Insightful/Interesting/Informative/Funny). My bet is that the people who nominated your comment found it informative.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
After discussing this with other moderators, we are reducing your ban to "time served."
A couple of things, for you and for everyone:
First, other people's behavior is not, never has been, and never will be an excuse for your own. Directed invective like "you fucking asshole" is ban-on-sight behavior even if the other person did something to deserve it. This is pure heat. Use the "report" button instead.
Second, our moderators are generally pretty thick-skinned, and we usually avoid modding in a thread where we're participating. But sometimes users think that means it's open season on the mod team. This is not the case.
Finally, it seems to me that a combination of Internet-mediated communication and partially hidden information (specifically, some "user reports" on various comments, and some inter-user histories) combined here to create conversations that were effectively "garbled" by how they played out. This is one reason I personally try to avoid the "meta," if at all possible.
Anyway, I'd like to end the litigation of this here, and hope everyone is willing to cooperate with me on that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
These are definitely questions for @ZorbaTHut. However the "themes are not supported" message is probably there on the settings page for reasons like this one. I have no idea re: Patreon.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
If you click your username at the top right (on a desktop web browser, not sure on phones), under "Settings" there is a "Website Theme" dropdown, which includes several different color schemes, including "dark."
First, culture war topics only in the culture war thread.
Second, this is not nearly enough effort even for a culture war thread, and it arguably violates our rule against consensus building (who is the "we" the recognizes "general facts" here)? "What will London look like in 30 years" is probably okay by itself in the Small Questions Sunday thread.
Third, a brand new account leading with white hot culture war material as its very first post? That's not getting through the filters, sorry. Maybe try participating in some existing conversations and get a feel for the rules and norms first?
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
It's sad that there's this misapprehension that girls are being kidnapped by abusers, when a huge number of runaway girls (something like 20%-40% in most studies) are fleeing sexual abuse in the home.
Right--I've seen other studies suggesting that a majority (perhaps more than 70%) of runaway girls experience some kind of sexual abuse, but I don't have access to the study to see whether they distinguish based on when and where that abuse occurred (i.e. prior to running away, or as a result of it).
Also, no small number of teens run away from home because they are addicted to drugs and their parents are trying to stop them from using. It really is an extremely multifaceted problem.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Sure, you might start here. Some tidbits:
In effect, the more disrupted the family, the greater the likelihood of running away. Youth living with both biological parents were least likely to run away, followed by those with at least one nonbiological parent, those with single mothers, and those in other family structures.
...
The finding that females were more likely than males to run away was unexpected given results from prior research showing that males are more likely than females to have spent the night in a shelter, public place, abandoned building, outside, underground, or in a stranger’s home. In that study, however, youth were not asked directly if they had run away, and some may have had other reasons for being away from home, such as family homelessness. It also is possible that female runaways are more likely to stay in locations not included as response options in that study, such as with a friend or acquaintance (sometimes known as “couch surfing”). Although perhaps less dangerous than other destinations, couch surfing still constitutes a risky environment for youth. Future research should investigate gender differences in patterns and contexts of runaway behavior.
In other words, there is some information available, but for the most part researchers aren't drawing the lines we're drawing here, which is what I mean when I suggest that the statistics on these things conflate a great many complicated and distinguishable events.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Either way, whenever teenage girls or boys run away from home, I'm assuming it's usually done on the initiative and with the support of an older man who's usually interested in her sexually, who may or may not be a pimp in reality.
This is definitely not true. Most runaways are going solo, or with the assistance of peers (including romantically involved peers). Pimps and predators are real, but far from common.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Applying this level of pedantic precision requires also rejecting as false the statement that "smoking causes cancer" because it not every smoker gets cancer or "summers are hotter than winters" because one July was January.
No--it would reject as false the statements "smoking always causes cancer" and "at no point during summer is it ever cooler than at any point in winter." Remember, you did not say "Violating a custody order is itself a sign of irresponsibility," but "no responsible adult would violate a custody order." Pedantic precision is a virtue, here.
The larger problem, though, as was already explained, was your lack of effort to explain and engage. If you want to talk about the "least enjoyable aspects of discussion on the internet" then "people who drop a low effort, single-sentence sneer instead of engaging the substance of your comment with a thoughtful and amicable reply" is not only high on the list, it's high enough that we have rules against it. This was explained to you, and you largely rectified the situation, which really would have been the end of it had you not also continued to defend your overstatement to multiple commenters, in persistently dismissive tone.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
we ought to advise people against it
Sure. What you said was:
No responsible adult would violate a custody order.
This was false. You now seem to admit that it was strictly false, and that what you really meant was something much more reasonable, like "it's an extremely bad idea to violate a custody order." I don't know why you made such an obviously false statement to begin with, unless maybe you were trying to pick a fight. The comment improved substantially when you fleshed it out, but did so by retreating from your original claim.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
EDIT to flush out:
It's "flesh out"--like filling out a figure that began only as bones (i.e. in outline).
Willfully violating a custody order will just get your ass thrown in jail and the custody order enforced and discredit further attempts to challenge it.
Sure, if you get caught in the wrong jurisdiction. But violating a custody order doesn't even have to be willful; often it is the result of a misunderstanding, or an emergency, or just panic. Even responsible adults can panic! That doesn't mean they aren't generally sufficiently responsible to care for a child.
This makes about as much sense as "if a police officer is violating your 4A rights, try to steal his pepper spray". I absolutely am not denying the predicate here: officers do sometimes step over the 4A, just that reacting in that way is straightforwardly counterproductive.
Again: only if it doesn't work out for you. Which it often won't! But there are literally times when your choice is "break the law now, and it will be bad, or don't break the law now, and it will be worse." In that case, it's not irrational or irresponsible to decide that "bad" beats "worse." That's the unfortunate nature of reality. The police are not invincible, the courts are not infallible, the law is not incontestable. I wouldn't, as an attorney, encourage a client to ever violate a custody order! But I can imagine, as a parent, circumstances that might demand it of me.
children who have voluntarily run away with strangers
You have to wonder just what % of such strangers are not pederasts or pedos.
I mean, presumably most of them are. But what does that amount to? The article I linked suggests that more than 95% of "missing children" cases are runaways, but it is not clear what percent of those run away with someone else. If a 15-year-old runs away with her 16-year-old boyfriend, that often seems to get dropped into the same statistical bucket as a 6-year-old getting snatched off the street, or a 12-year-old who gets removed from an abusive home by her own mother or father violating a custody order. The numbers get turned into a narrative of rampant child endangerment, but the reality is more complicated than that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
letting pedophiles run rampant
It feels to me like 1985 all over again.
Thanks to a legal system that often fails to draw (and often fails to even attempt to draw) a distinction between children who have been kidnapped by strangers, children who have voluntarily run away with strangers, and children who have simply been moved by a responsible adult but in violation of a custody order, it's nigh impossible to say for certain how many pedophiles are out there snatching kids... but "run rampant" does not appear supported by the evidence. I am... skeptical, let's say... that the people "working for free to rid their platforms of predators" should be allowed to do that, because I suspect there are many, many more vigilantes (and aspiring vigilantes) out there doing real and serious harm, than actual child-snatching pedos.
Of course we needn't get all the way to child-snatching; simply exposing children to various forms of degeneracy probably has long-term psychological impacts that are worth considering. But the research on this seems to be hopelessly muddied by culture war matters; moral panic over children's media exposure reaches all the way back to Plato (at least!). I expect we are all shaped by the media we consume, but not always in the most obvious or expected ways.
Possibly? Most of the deaths on that list look like interpersonal grudges, accidental deaths, warzones, etc. Robert Stevens (casualty in the Amerithrax attacks) looks like the most recent cleanish fit, to me--but he didn't quite have the political notoriety, I think. @professorgerm's identification of Alan Berg as a candidate looks like a better fit, to my eyes, and even there Berg does not seem to have been at Kirk's level.
The longer I think about this the more I find myself puzzling over the relative rarity of political celebrity without other celebrity (in particular, political office, but also e.g. Hollywood fame). I remember in the early 1990s there was a lot of "Elect Rush Limbaugh" merchandise floating around, to the point where Rush finally had to very publicly say (to the best of my recollection) "I'm an entertainer, not a politician, I'm not seeking office." It's not like there are no people out there who fall into the "professional political celebrity" bucket, but they're so few and far between that it probably shouldn't be a surprise that there aren't a lot of historic examples. Who else is arguably on Kirk's level? Cenk Uygur, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro? It's probably more common at the level of local or even perhaps state politics, but then people who take it upon themselves to become assassins do not generally prioritize "low value targets," so to speak. Well, depending on their level of derangement?
I think both things can be true. If reports of trans and antifa slogans on the weapon are true, then "they hated him because he told the truth" looks like a pretty straightforward explanation of events. And no--of course that's not enough by itself. I think a person has to have pretty significant underlying mental and emotional derangement to go down the path of murder. But I'm increasingly concerned that we have not taken adequate account of the ways in which our cultural approach to politics now channels such derangement. Reading the comments on reddit celebrating Kirk's assassination is doing super effective damage to my hopes for America's future.
More options
Context Copy link