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naraburns

nihil supernum

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joined 2022 September 04 19:20:03 UTC
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User ID: 100

naraburns

nihil supernum

11 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 19:20:03 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 100

Verified Email

"Ay! Darnell! DeAndre! Get yo' asses out here! It's time to go! Ay, who you is? Where my brothers at? Where dey at? Ay! Yo, I'm talkin' to you nigga!"

I have a hard time imagining a world in which you wrote that without expecting to eat a ban for it.

Optimize for light, not heat. User banned for three days.

Well, I̵ ̴s̷u̸p̴p̸o̴s̶e̷ t̴̮͒ĥ̷͙a̴̦̒t̶̥́ ̴̞̓I̵̟̍ ̷̢͝c̷͜͠a̶̱͗n̷̫̽'̷͖̇ẗ̸̪.̷̢̫̂̍.̷͔̱̏̈.̴̦̳͐ ̸̡̥̪̄o̸̝̅̋́h̸̛̖̗̰̓͗ ̷̤͔̲͑͗G̵̼͒̎͝o̶̯͇͓̓ḋ̵͈̻͈͛̈́, ṋ̴̞̹͉̊̐̀ͅở̴̱̀̎̂͛!̴̖͓̟̬̊̇̓̾ P̴͕̗͚͙̘̏̿̀l̸̥͚͕̺̤̺̙͇̉̉͆̈́͗̃͘̚ë̸̟̘̟́̑̾a̸͈̗̦̟̘̱͓͊̇͋ș̷̱͚͔̤̀̇́͑͜e̶̘̿́͂̋ ̶̬̈́̒m̷͇̓͗͐̔̿̿̚͝ắ̶̲̫͖̪̺́̈͒̂́͜͠k̸͍͔̙̣̰̖̻̩͆e̴̱̤̤͎̟̐̀ ̴̹̪͇͈͚̉̾̈̚i̷̡̖̹͇̤̝͛̽̎̍t̴̻̓̾͠ ̵̭̿ş̶̧͔͖̹̣̃̂̈́͐̚̕ṱ̴̡̜̀͋̉̃̉̃͜o̶̬̹̒͌p̷͍͖̼͔̓̌͜͝!̷̛͉̎́͐̕͘̚

This is obnoxious, don't do this.

You've managed to garner a pretty impressive array of reports (nine so far) including AAQC nominations and "boo outgroup" complaints. The tone of your presentation is... excessively smarmy, I guess I want to say. It doesn't invite discussion. And yes, some portion of that may be the natural result of you Noticing things you're not, on some views, allowed to Notice. But this is not a space where you get modded for Noticing, this is a space where you get modded for not speaking plainly. Don't connect a few dots and then dangle implications, here. Make an argument. Tell us what you think the evidence on offer tells you.

I get modded every time I outright say "These people want to mutilate and sterilize children."

You were most recently moderated here. Let's take a look at what Zorba said about it:

...right now you're drawing a direct line from your opinion of the outcome to what you believe is the activists' intention, and that direct line implies cartoon-supervillain evil.

And is probably wrong.

So either bring evidence or knock it off with that kind of rhetoric.

This does not quite fit your interpretation of why you were moderated. In your case, you stated your view without bringing evidence. This post did the opposite--brought evidence, of a kind, while failing to state a view. The best way to avoid moderation on high-heat issues is to carefully bring both evidence and argument, along with a heap of charity for the outgroup.

some Japanese megacucks

This kind of thing just degrades discourse.

Banned for a week.

If a black comedian had these lines in their act it would be a non-issue.

This is not a comedy forum, though. This is a discussion forum. I'd like to say our standards are "higher" than the average comedy club's, but... let's say instead that they are at least quite different.

The argument was that there’s a communication style among black folks that can be jarring and intimidating to people not used to it, and this was a not even very egregious example.

...phrased in an inflammatory way, and attributing it (as you've done) to "black folks" instead of to specific individuals or even specific groups.

If a white person gave such an example in Polite Society they might very well lose their job over it, but we are supposed to be able to violate those kinds of norms here.

Only to the extent necessary to optimize for light. Just because you're allowed to express your views about racial differences does not mean you are allowed to express them in ways that are unnecessarily inflammatory, uncharitable, etc.

The WMD hoax was engineered by Zionists in the American government

Single-issue posting is officially against the rules. Your cooldown on "Jews did it" arguments has not adequately expired, so I'm banning you for three days.

Hmm, would you say someone who exclusively posts about D Day in a WWII thread to be “single issue”?

At some point, sure. Depending on how often they posted about it, whether their posts ever really added interesting information or just flogged the same dead horse repeatedly while showing no interest in entertaining the possibility that they might be mistaken, etc.

This was accusing me, or at least my information, as intentionally false.

While it is possible that you or your sources are lying, that is neither what I said nor what I meant. I suggested that the people I see making these claims appear mostly to be wishcasting, and as far as I can tell that remains true. I don't know if you're a propagandist or just a useful tool to someone who is, but you have shown no interest I can see in discussing the hospital incident with anything approaching epistemic humility--only in spreading a particular slant on it. Either of us, or both of us, could be mistaken about what is actually happening--that's not the point. For purposes of the rules, your problem is that you're not writing in a way that is sufficiently open to that possibility.

Then you aimed to build consensus

No, you apparently don't know what "build consensus" means in this context. I never made any claims about what "we" believe (or should believe), or treated my interpretation of events as anything but my interpretation of events--hence phrases like "strikes me," "I've seen," and "appears primarily."

I definitely have a substantive view on these matters, which I expressed to you previously. But that is a separate thing from the way you have approached your rhetoric here.

Your comment is almost all heat.

I even happen to be in complete agreement with you that critical theorists, with the assistance of corporate media, are 100% gaslighting the American public on these matters. I share your anger about that. But the point of this space is not to vent our anger at one another or at our outgroups. There are times and places for that sort of thing, but this is the space where we try to have difficult discussions with people who disagree with us.

And you were just warned about this, not long after a ban of a day, and a ban of a week. You've got to cool down. This time you get two weeks to do it.

I’m surprised you can get a quality contribution for an empirical claim that you flatly refuse to supply evidence for.

You are welcome to respond to AAQCs, here or elsewhere, but grumping about someone else's award because their comment doesn't reinforce your preferred narrative is obnoxious at best.

I could find zero evidence from any organization that Hamas utilized pre-teen child soldiers in the past decade.

This is a mod-hatted warning, and we generally don't dip into substance on that, but Google gave me this (PDF warning) pretty readily, and it was far from the only thing Google gave me on Hamas child soldiers. I have no particular opinion on the reliability of the sources etc. and I'm not going to get into it with you, but your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly.

More effort than this, please.

Write like everyone is reading, and you want to include them in the conversation. As you've been reminded somewhat recently.

Yes, even Californians. Yes, even your outgroup. While your comment is not entirely devoid of substance, it brings far, far more heat than light. Let's see, last time I wrote:

You do your substantive position no favors by cranking the rhetoric to 11. Your occasional AAQCs only get you so much lenience. It has been a while since your last ban, after which you became a quality-content machine for a bit! But recently your warnings have been arriving with increasing frequency. Let's try another week-long ban.

Two weeks this time, I guess.

Wow, so the ban on talking about Israel even includes sub-comments?

You haven't been banned from talking about Israel. It was just something you are pushing me toward contemplating.

The rest of your comment is sufficiently repetitious, uncharitable, etc. that I can see it was a mistake to attempt to have a productive dialogue with you concerning your bad behavior.

The threats or whatever are so lame.

My apologies. I will just go straight to a ban next time. Cheers.

Just say “fine, there is no evidence of Hamas employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Dean lied.”

There is no evidence of Hamas not employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Does that mean you are lying?

As far as I can see, Dean never specifically claimed that Hamas "definitely employed specifically preteen soldiers within the last X years," where X is whatever you want it to be. At most, Dean made general comments about the fact of Hamas employing child soldiers in the past (which they clearly have) being meaningful to Israel's military reaction (which is plausible, whether or not you would prefer they act differently). You are setting up your own goalposts (not unlike a statistician only writing about terrorism in America beginning January 2002) and then getting annoyed that Dean repeatedly declined to play your game. "Dean won't play on my terms" is not logically equivalent to "Dean lied," and to assert it that way is obnoxious and antagonistic.

According to the NYT Opinion team

That is not a trustworthy source, on my read. See? Two can play this stupid game. It's better if they don't, so that is why I'm telling you to knock it off. If you don't like the evidence provided to you, you can say, "well I'd prefer to see something clearer/stronger/whatever," but you cannot follow the comment to an AAQC roundup and start shitting on the process. It's obnoxious.

Just make a special rule on TheMotte that posters aren’t allowed to criticize Israel too much.

I'm not getting after you for criticizing Israel. I'm getting after you because you are grousing about someone else getting an AAQC, and you're doing it by breaking rules about charitable reading, responding to what people have actually written, etc. You're also attempting to rules-lawyer both that post and my moderation, which is obnoxious. That it also happens to be your hobby-horse topic is simply context. You even pulled the stupid language games trick here--"my last top-level post" throws in a completely unnecessary qualifier to determining whether you're a little too focused on something for the community's comfort. It attempts to set the goalposts in the place most beneficial to your preferred outcome. I'm not stupid; I can see what you're still doing, even after I've told you to knock it off.

I understand that it would not be a pleasant experience to put effort into making a top level post trashing Israel, only to have someone with a long history of excellent posts on military matters come along and utterly eviscerate your work--and furthermore, to do it to the overwhelming approval of the audience. So I'm actually gritting my teeth and being extra patient with you about this: stop it.

Is the goal to know the man better? Assuming you're shtupping his daughter, he may prefer to keep you at a healthy emotional distance. I think "the standard" is avoiding each other whenever possible, and at Thanksgiving watching football in the same room without ever making eye contact.

I recognize that our new, purportedly "emotionally healthy" age would suggest you bond, say, over shared hobbies, or perhaps by sharing your individual hobbies: fishing, shooting, drinking, or for the higher-brow castes having oblique political or religious discussions. This is plausible too, though the closer you are in age to your in-laws the more likely it is to stick. On the other end of the extreme, if you have a poor relationship with your own father, some fathers-in-law seem to enjoy a kind of paternal surrogacy, especially if they have only daughters.

This is objectionably low-effort. Don't post like this please.

I was thinking, gun to my head, I'd rather my daughter was molested by a catholic priest (unlikely as that is, being a girl and all) than fall in with your ilk.

Your first comment got a lot of reports, which opened a mod conversation about whether to ding you for it. One mod said "not bannable, but warnable," another said "not even warnable." I tended to agree that it was not a great comment, but that it ultimately fell on the permissible side. The meta-moderation system agreed with me on this. However the low-quality responses you've generated certainly lend credence to the inclination toward moderation there.

This comment, though, fails the test of "write like everyone is reading, and you want to include them in the conversation." In particular, "your ilk" is a quintessentially antagonistic framing; we're here to engage with ideas above people, and watch our tone in preservation of content.

It's preposterous and totally insane. But that's what you sound like.

And this, of course, is worth moderating all on its own.

You do your substantive position no favors by cranking the rhetoric to 11. Your occasional AAQCs only get you so much lenience. It has been a while since your last ban, after which you became a quality-content machine for a bit! But recently your warnings have been arriving with increasing frequency. Let's try another week-long ban.

I think that glazing an individual user in this fashion in a modhat comment is inappropriate and reflects badly on the moderation.

I think what you're saying here is that my explicit endorsement of Dean is a bad look and makes you feel like you might not get a fair shake at some future point should you disagree with the wrong person. If I have understood you correctly, then you have failed to understand the foundation, or the moderation system, or maybe both.

I am not an impartial arbiter tasked with tone-policing the forum. My task is to cultivate "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." To that end, I wield exactly one carrot: AAQCs. I have two sticks: warnings and bans. Community sentiment (via reports) drives both. The community also has a small carrot (upvotes) and a small stick (downvotes).

This is a reputation economy: the more carrots you have, the less likely you are to get the stick. As we often remind people: that does not mean carrots are a perfect defense against sticks! But for example a user with many carrots might get a warning where a user with no carrots would get a ban. People who contribute to the good of the community are deliberately favored. We have never made the slightest secret of this, but everyone has to learn it for the first time sometime, so maybe today is your day.

Yes, I will freely admit that this sentiment is coloured by the circumstance that I cannot stand this particular user.

I appreciate the candor, so in turn I will freely admit that your comparing moderation here to Putin's Russia gave me a good laugh. It also helped me to calibrate on your sense of proportionality, in a way that was probably not beneficial to your aims.

Are you kidding?

Posing rhetorical questions in the second person is not against the rules, but it is very often a sign that you are dropping into an antagonistic rather than productive conversational pose.

You can't remember basic political happenings from a year ago? Is the dissonance between what you're told to believe and what actually is just so great that your mind starts to paint over things?

These in particular are standard issue hollow accusations; they seem routinely applicable to basically everyone, and are equally routinely dismissed with "eh old news." So if you actually want to talk about relevant past events, you should put in the effort to specify which events you find most relevant, why you find them most relevant, and how you think that matters.

In short, none of the questions you asked appears to be a solicitation of actual information or in furtherance of discussion. You're just being performatively incredulous at your outgroup.

Don't.

I apologize that it has taken this long to respond to the reports on this comment, but the mod team discussed it and is very broadly of the view that this is a terrible post. It's antagonistic, primarily, but also stuffs a lot of words into other people's mouths. It doesn't discuss the culture wars, but merely wages them. And this will be the sixth time you're banned for it.

I entertained the idea of making it something long term, like maybe 90 days--we used to do a fair number of those back on the subreddit. But some mods suggested a permaban, and it seems nobody could think of a good reason to not permaban you. So, that's what I'm doing.

On a similar note, a 2015-esque 4chan meme posted yesterday got 15 million view on Twitter.

I would be very interested in a high-effort response to the highly memeable reply, "Impressive, very nice. Now let's see the Muslims."

Jews (and, in particular, Ashkenazim) are certainly overrepresented in a lot of interesting places. But my impression is that this is surprisingly true of many minority ethnicities and religious groups--almost as though having a mainstream upbringing results in a milquetoast adulthood. Or, alternatively, that being heterogeneous to the modal citizen of your country is quite naturally going to result in placement at one of the bell's tails. Whatever the case, "look at all the Jews in high government office" is a classic cardiologist problem.

This is borderline consensus building, and well over the line of needing to bring evidence in proportion to the inflammatoriness of your claim. Don't post like this, please.

Be kind, don't weakman... I'm a little conflicted because it's presumably healthy for the Motte and adjacent spaces to be introspective and self-critical, but we're still a group, the rules still apply. "Poking fun" is always risky business under the rules anyway, but the criticism you've assembled here barely rises above the level of pure, vapid sneer. Allowing that it also applies ("often") to you doesn't really change the fact that you're essentially framing certain behaviors as low status without effortfully addressing the relative merits of those behaviors. I appreciate that you refrained from literally calling out neckbeards and fedoras, but even so what you've mostly succeeded at here is just textbook nerd-bashing. So, please don't do that.

adoration for murderous, rapey barbarians

Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat. Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

Women love a killer

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.

This post is actually a pretty clean example of exactly what we don't want people posting, here. I am familiar with the evidence I would expect you to provide in support of each of your claims, but you didn't actually do so. And even if you had, your rhetoric simply comes in too sweeping and too hot. The tone is all wrong; you're not discussing a culture war topic, you're waging culture war.

You've stacked some AAQCs which have somewhat shielded you, but the number of warnings for low effort booing on your account is getting cumbersome. This time it's a three day ban.

A number of users have reported this as "antagonistic" and I rather see their point. We've talked about your trolling before, and while I can appreciate its artfulness, even gentle sneering constitutes objectionable disdain.

You are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. Or, if you prefer--you're not venturing into the lion's den, you're just another lion. I don't know if you and I have had this particular discussion before, but I've had it with many others: I will always enforce the rules more strictly when the target of criticism is this space and the people in it. That doesn't mean we can't be self-effacing and self-critical, but it does mean that such posts require maximum charity and effort. This post doesn't really cut it.

Expecting historical literacy from a college-educated progressive is like expecting fluent latin from a duck.

Do I even need to tell you why this warrants a warning?