netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Educational policy shouldn’t be set by “anti-racist” activists who don’t tolerate any dissent.
If that was posted completely in a vacuum, I guess it’d be a violation. In response to a post about Evergreen? I want to say it’s okay, because I don’t know how else he’d refer to the category.
Maybe anti-racist & activist & dissent-quashing is a really small set, maybe it’s even empty, but I don’t think reasoning about it is wrong.
I suppose I’m struggling to figure out how Alex could have been more specific about the group he was condemning.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
It’s a good comic, especially for someone starting college. Fun, funny, and thematically cohesive. I highly recommend it.
It’s also not a rom-com.
Characters comment on how the age gap makes Scott kind of creepy from the beginning. This is not moralist condemnation, because this is a comedy. Scott is being set up as goofy and likable but also pathetic and self-absorbed. From this springs the entire plot.
Likewise, Ramona is supposed to be fun and hot and a walking red flag. Yes, that includes the hair (which you might be misremembering). If you don’t think her look would be catnip to the Scotts of the world, you’re delusional.
There’s a particularly good bit near the end which may or may not have made it into the movie. Scott, during his dark-night-of-the-soul, hits Knives up knowing she used to have a thing for him. “Would you care for some…CASUAL SEX?” It’s awful. Pathetic. Naturally, she’s long over him, and he has to actually figure out what he wants to do with his life rather than paper over it with hedonism.
And that runs directly into the finale—people actually expressing agency. Scott doesn’t pick Ramona over Knives. Knives was never a real option. Once he knows what he wants he actually has to work for it rather than remain in a stasis of rebounds and second choices. Extended adolescence. That’s how Scott completes his arc from a loser to a functional adult. It’s not a rom-com, but a coming of age story.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Whoops. You’re right.
Kind of confuses the original “progressive passive voice” argument, though.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Ban evasion.
Maybe also propagandizing to a larger audience, but mostly ban evasion.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Aren’t the first two of those reversed headlines still passive? The active versions would be “Republicans vandalize Tesla vehicles” and “Far-right protestors shoot/bomb dealerships.”
Active voice is the default. Sometimes editors get uncomfortable blaming a person or group and switch to passive. In this case, I think it’s just the vagueness of the target. Look how Fox is handling it.
Tesla vehicles, charging stations as protestors denounce DOGE, Elon Musk
“A dealership was targeted.” “A man was arrested.”
If this was on MSNBC it would look like they’re covering for the “violent radicals targeting Tesla dealers.” That’s actually the phrase Fox uses in its video—they clearly considered it. But the web headline is relatively tame, because big media companies like to hedge.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Seconding FC.
You are making it very hard to believe that you’re acting in good faith.
But, since another deletion was somewhat predictable:
Is Matt Walsh going to leave The Daily Wire?
For most of his career as a public figure, Matt Walsh was the embodiment of Con Inc.: self-styled "anti-woke", socially conservative (but not in a way that instantly triggered accusations of bigotry), and most importantly, color blind. For him, "America [was] a set of ideas".
Well, something has changed, because Walsh has been steadily creeping rightward over the last several months and the end product of that transformation appears to be here (and here). The impetus for that video was this interaction between Sam Seder and a right wing zoomer.
We're seeing the right splinter in real time among racial lines in a way that it hasn't in many decades. Which side will win out in the end?
For whatever my opinion is worth, I'd like to register that both Seder and the young woman didn't come out looking well. Seder couldn't articulate a response in real time, but his opponent is likewise regurgitating right wing talking points that she doesn't appear to have put a lot of thought into.
Unrelated, but I thought I'd bring it up just because I was going through his Twitter:
Can you imagine if even one Bud Light warehouse was firebombed or even one Bud Light drinker was assaulted during the Bud Light boycott? There would be mass media hysteria and FBI investigations. Yet Tesla facilities and Tesla drivers are being attacked all across the country by leftist militants and the media ignore it entirely. I've noticed this phenomenon among the right (necessary disclaimer: I completely acknowledge that this is true of the left as well, but they're not in power now so it's not as fun to scrutinize them) to boldly assert the truth of easily falsifiable claims. The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim: CNN, CBS, ABC, and my favorite, an ominous report from the Washington Post. This story is obviously being covered - maybe more than it deserves to be - so why type something out you know to be a lie or something that 5 seconds of research would falsify? As someone who might otherwise be open to Walsh's ideas, I can't help but take him less seriously now.
Charitably, Walsh must be communicating something other than the plain meaning of his words. In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I…wouldn’t bet on it.
I’ve written about how my 2012 self thought the GOP would handle Obama’s reelection. Could he have caused the Republicans to rethink policy? Maybe sideline the social conservatives in favor of the Tea Partiers?
When stressed, establishment Republicans lost ground to their upstart populist wing. What would that look like for Democrats? The blue-collar base is either hollowed out or firmly aboard the Trump Train. White-collar workers want the kind of safety net that makes free college look like a bargain. I don’t know what left-populists could do other than throw helicopter money.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I might expect a modern administration to push “race-blindness” or “American exceptionalism.” The latter was, I think, developed specifically to oppose a self-effacing history curriculum. Full-on revisionist history of the “Lost Cause” variety is probably beyond the pale, but I keep getting disappointed when I make predictions.
Twenty years ago we might have seen initiatives for traditional households or intelligent design. Those would be watered-down attempts at cultural Christianity. Thankfully, I don’t think either has traction today.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
In this case, I just defaulted to assuming it was Congressional authority because, you know, “power of the purse.” I’m glad it’s explicitly delegated.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I’m very confused. I feel like we’re all arguing and/or moderating past each other.
To which of the following do you object?
- the “fake news account” Elon quoted was “anti-establishment conspiracy theorists”
- AECTs don’t generate valuable anti-establishment takes as often as Hanania
- Populists (Trump red tribers?) are AECTs
I don’t think Alex actually said the last one. I read his comments as a pure complaint about Elon Musk’s susceptibility to AECTs like this particular account. But you and @Fruck are taking it as a personal or at least tribal attack? What am I missing?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t see it.
Calling a Twitter “fake news account” conspiracy theorists is not smearing the entire category of populists. If AT is playing that game, he didn’t do it in this comment.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
I suspect most internal affairs aren't actually on the radar.
Every now and then an issue bubbles up to the level of perception among the voter base. Some fraction of those make it through the social and political filters until "Something Has To Be Done." Then we might or might not spend diplomatic capital on doing that Something.
The temperature is lower for stable, allied nations like Japan. It's higher for suspected rivals. We have a long history of critiquing combloc countries for their freedom of expression, so it doesn't take much to get a Senator or newspaper bemoaning Russia's treatment of their dissidents--including anyone who uses a rainbow flag.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
LGBFAGMORON
Okay, the "XYZSNORE" was one thing, but really?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
If you think someone is "gaslighting" or otherwise stomping on the rules, report it. This sort of callout is doing no one any good.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Twitter. X? The broader category of short-form social media, really.
Imagine if most government broadcasts came through TikTok. Every day a bureaucrat would smile for the camera and tell you how great the economic forecast looks for today, or that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Then she’d floss or whatever it is the youth are doing. Fifteen seconds total.
It’s fundamentally silly. Unserious. Recognizably low ratio of signal to noise. You could swap out the message and 90% of the video wouldn’t change, because it’s almost entirely style over substance.
That’s X. The actual content of a tweet is of secondary importance. What matters is the style—the snappy phrasing, the correct applause lights. What matters is connecting those things to the right people. Deliver unto your bubble what they were already thinking, and the algorithm shall reward you.
Elon Musk can quote whatever the fuck he wants and people who like his style will gather, insisting he’s “directionally correct.” Then his network gives him all the positive feedback he apparently craves. The amplifier is in saturation. There is next to no signal.
I would like the general public to feel the same way about tweets as they do about TikToks. They are entertainment. Leave the information transfer to a more serious medium.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Reversed stupidity is still not intelligence.
Why not apply this level of learned helplessness to Musk? Surely he’s burning credibility, too.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
We can’t know that resolution would have helped. Maybe he was always going to be like this.
The only solution is randomized controlled trials. Have people take turns beating Musk up, then either have them apologize or not. Survey his opinions at regular check-ins.
If we get the pro wrestling scene involved, Trump might endorse it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
Of course it’s not a serious answer. Social media has near-zero incentive for serious answers. Televised Congressional hearings were bad enough when it came to grandstanding; why’d we have to make the feedback instant?
Twitter delenda est.
I know that’s not actually a practical option. I would like some way to convince the public that it’s not actually important, though.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t call it a “profound rethinking of policy.”
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