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pusher_robot

PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS

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joined 2022 September 04 23:45:12 UTC

				

User ID: 278

pusher_robot

PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS

0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 23:45:12 UTC

					

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User ID: 278

And "being vulnerable" can, and often does, involve nothing more.

LetsEncrypt only issues domain validation certs. They do not issue code signing certs, and they are not interchangeable.

There is a part where he is checking out his new apartment after getting booted by Huxley, where a random lady wrong-number video calls him while topless.

My first guess was that it meant skepticism of fiat currency.

I wouldn't know. I can basically never remember my dreams unless I'm startled awake or feverish.

Somebody better tell Werner Herzog!

I've found the recent imbroglio with Congress v. the University Presidents pretty interesting due to the somewhat conflicting reactions I've had and just wanted to post some thoughts.

For those not aware, the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard recently appeared before at a Congressional committee on the subject of antisemitism on campus. Somewhat unexpectedly, the video of the hearing went somewhat viral, especially the questioning of Rep. Elise Stefanik, who repeatedly asked point-blank if calling for the genocide of Jews would be a violation of the campus code of conduct, to which all the Presidents gave evasive answers. The entire hearing is actually worth watching, at least on 2x speed.

Some of my thoughts:

  1. Rep. Stefanik has a trial lawyer's skill for cross-examination. Her questioning was simultaneously obviously loaded and somewhat unfair but also dramatic and effective at making the respondent look bad. However, I wish she would have focused more on the obvious hypocrisy of claiming to only punish speech that effectively is unprotected by the First Amendment, pointing out some of the more obvious cases where they elevated things like misgendering or dog-whistling white supremacy to "abuse" and "harassment" while refusing to do the same for genocide advocacy. In fairness however, other representatives did ask questions along those lines, though not nearly as effectively.

  2. The University presidents were either woefully unskilled or badly coached on how to handle hostile questions like this. They gave repetitive, legalistic non-answers and declined to offer any real explanation of their underlying position or how to reconcile it with other actions taken for apparently viewpoint-related reasons. Stefanik was obviously getting under their skin, and their default response to grin back while answering like Stefanik was a misbehaving child was absolutely the wrong tactic. The Penn President came across so poorly that she felt she had to post a bizarre follow-up video to almost-apologize for not appearing to take it seriously while at the same time implying without really saying that calling for genocide might be harassment.

  3. Their performance was especially frustrating because they were taking a position that I basically support: that the University will not police opinions, even terribly offensive ones, but will police conduct and harassment. It's not that difficult a position to explain or defend on basic Millian principles, but they couldn't or wouldn't do it. Granted, Stefanik would probably have cut them off if they tried, but they didn't try. They didn't use their time during friendly questioning to do so, and they still haven't. I want to support them in an effort to actually stake out that position. But--

  4. It's hard not to think that the reason they haven't is because they don't believe it. Actions speak louder than words, and there have been a number of cases of Universities, even these specific ones, taking action against people for harmful "conduct" or "harassment" when the conduct in question is actually just expounding an offensive opinion. "Safety concern" has also been a ready justification for acquiescing to heckler's vetoes against disfavored speakers. I simply don't believe that they believe their policy requires them to allow hateful speech against Jews. I think they are lying, and that makes me want to not support them.

  5. The episode seems to have especially impacted what I'll call normie Jews, who are reliably blue-tribe but not radically woke. On the one hand, I think they have a legitimate grievance against the hypocrisy of how the code of conduct policies are interpreted for some opinions vs. arguable antisemitism. On the other hand, I think it's bad policy to not be able to make antisemitic arguments ever, even if maintaining civility. I don't actually believe that hate speech is violence, even antisemitism, and I don't support their movement to make antisemitism a per se violation. On the other, other hand, the cause of knocking down the prestige of the Ivies and exposing their rank hypocrisy might be worth allies of convenience. On the other, other, other hand, as a SWM I feel like the prisoner in the gallows in the "First time?" meme. You have a grievance at their hypocrisy, but I have a grievance at your hypocrisy. Most normie Jews have had no complaints at all about woke people saying similar or worse things about "white people." Some of those woke people were themselves Jews, and I suspect that if the universities capitulate, it will be by making Jews a special protected class, which would further from the outcome that I want. I've had a superposition of all these reactions going on.

This already exists in the form of, e.g., Unitarian Universalism. It has not been hugely popular. I think there are a couple of reasons for this that similar proposals generally run into as well.

First, its teachings aren't different enough from intuitive "be nice" ethics to have any point. People who even think about the idea of ethical living generally do not need such basic levels of guidance, which makes the enterprise little more than a social club. But demanding more is too exclusionary or too "irrational", and therefore left to the other churches. I think that being exclusionary in at least some ways is critical to fostering a bond and creating a sense of actual belonging.

Related to this, the entire idea of religiosity without contradicting material existence is oxymoronic and counterproductive. The thing that people with a religious void feel they are missing is mystery, an insistence that there are some things that are beyond our comprehension, that are above and beyond us, forever. The peace that religion offers is from knowing that you don't have to think about it or justify it, you know and believe it without thinking. You cannot replicate the things that religion offers without offering undoubtable truth, but this is something that materialists cannot really bring themselves to do.

Another problem is that organizations without an unshakable grounding in text or canon will be highly vulnerable to entryism and taken over by activists. We saw this precise thing play out already in the Atheism movement, which tore itself apart when activists started trying to add political planks to the Atheism belief framework. Wishy-washy "be excellent to each other" churches will quickly succumb to the exact same issues simply because activists are more motivated than people who are there to sing hymns and pat each other on the back about how moral and ethical they are.

If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities.

One possible explanation is that they don't believe the election authorities wish to cooperate with them in good faith. For example, look at what cooperation with the FBI got John Paul Mac Isaac: they sandbagged the case, seized his property and refused to give it back, tried to deny claims that he was cooperating with them, and tried to intimidate him into silence.

But a lot of similarly brainless beat-em-up action movies have been released with women leads over the years, often with better objective craft and quality overall, and male audiences have generally rejected all of them.

Like what?

There are a lot of misses, but I'd guess that most of them are due to a dynamic where the producers start out with the goal of making an action movie that women will be interested in watching. They then start my casting a lead woman and usually other supporting women, but also change it in other ways such as making these women hypercompetent, degrading the other male characters, or focusing on themes and topics that would be of particular interest to women specifically. It's not really a surprise when men turn out to be less interested in these movies that are after all not for them.

You say that like it's a good thing, but it isn't.

Normies get their news and opinions from sources that are downstream of it, a lot of time. George Floyd and the response to it has to be a central example, I would think. Tik-tok lefties may be a minority of the population, but if they start evangelizing to normies in real life, and get mass media backup for their evangelizing, that's more than enough to create false beliefs in an outright majority.

  1. The size of the Supreme Court shall be permanently fixed at 9 members. All Presidents are guaranteed one appointment per term. If there is no vacancy during the term, then the President may vacate any single judge to create a vacancy at the conclusion of the Presidential term. If there is more than one vacancy, the President may appoint additional interim justices who will automatically be vacated at the start of the next Presidential term. [EDIT] The Senate may veto permanent appointments by a two-thirds majority. Interim appointments may not be vetoed.

  2. The House of Representatives shall be expanded to 1,000 members, with additional districts being added proportionally. The House of Representatives must conduct its business in a way that allows members to participate without being present in the chamber. Members shall be required to maintain residency in their district, spending no less then 50% of the calendar days per year there.

  3. Birthright citizenship shall be granted only to children where at least one biological parent is a citizen or resident having legally remained in the country continuously for a period of at least 3 years. Children may have no greater than two biological parents.

  4. The non-state district of Washington, D.C. shall be formally dissolved and the land de-annexed to the original states from which it was obtained. Congress may designate property within the current district to remain federal enclaves immune to state jurisdiction.

He wrote a whole book so it doesn't seem like the silence intimidation worked very well. What property was seized, are you talking about the laptop?

So, no harm, no foul? Government abuse is fine so long as the person persevered in any case?

What reasons would TTV have to believe that election authorities in Arizona and Georgia would not cooperate with them in good faith?

Are you asking, theoretically, or are you asking me if I know personally of specific reasons they believe this? I don't have first-hand knowledge, no. But I have personal first-hand experience with this sort of thing. I personally witnessed election malfeasance as an independent observer. Ultimately, I did nothing with that information for several reasons: A) I had no physical evidence. I knew what I observed but that's all that I had. I had no ability to corroborate my observations. B) The police and elections commission were involved. The same people that I could complain to. Did I expect they would seriously undertake efforts to investigate themselves of wrongdoing? No, I did not. C) Without physical evidence, I would actually be vulnerable to a defamation claim for taking my observations public. I would at a minimum be subject to the smears of people far more powerful than I am and who would be motivated to deny any wrong doing.

So, I know something was done improperly. I know nobody cares. I know that most people can't fight city hall.

Also on Wheel

People stop thinking 'trans' is a thing and it's illegal to call someone by different pronouns than they were born with?

People stop thinking 'trans' is an identity and instead an unfortunate mental illness. Relatedly, mental illnesses generally are viewed as undesirable, both practically and socially.

We go back to having white men be 70% of characters in all entertainment media, and another 25% are white women with zero character traits beyond 'sexy and horny for the main character'?

I would settle with characters roughly in proportion to population, as opposed to the gross over-representation of minorities we see today. In particular, race-swapping characters and even historical figures would require justification beyond "representation matters". Media that appeals to characteristically male fantasies should be permitted to exist on its own terms without its creators being subject to harassing accusations of sexism.

We all agree that actually women and minorities are genetically more stupid and incapable than white men, and stop giving them jobs that earn more than a subsistence wage?

We agree that differences exist and that unequal outcome is not itself proof of discrimination. We explicitly reject equal outcomes as a reasonable policy goal.

Do you have any reasons to believe that TTV would have felt similarly stymied?

Not directly, I'm simply reasoning by analogy.

If TTV is inadequately equipped to do something about the fraud they claim to have uncovered, is there anyone who is?

No, I've thought since the beginning it was a futile effort because much of what is alleged would require the cooperation of the accused to prove. If it's rigged, there's basically nothing that can be done from the outside. It's hopeless, as an outsider, to force accountability.

He's funny

You're right, you wouldn't expect any different from the campaign and the partisans. The difference was the way the media treated it, the nauseating network of "fact checkers" and "journalists" who willingly, even gleefully participated in the smear job. It was no campaign worker but a "journalist" who used the debate forum to harangue and "correct" Romney's facts - erroneously! It was not just the Obama campaign and the DNC that mocked Romney for saying that Russia was the top geopolitical foe, it was also newspapers, magazines, late-night shows, and even straight news programs. What the Romney stomping clarified is not that Republicans would be subject to completely unfair smears from their opponents. It clarified that the media was also an opponent, and one so powerful that it could not possibly be defeated without attacking it directly. That is what Trump was not afraid to do, and that is why he won.

I expect pedophilia and bestiality not to get normalized because kids and animals don't actually want to have sex with you, there's an actual victim there. I expect that the future will normalize a lot of things I find weird or upsetting but which don't actually harm anyone on net, which is how I see the trans movement.

Here's a mechanism: AI-generated (or hand-drawn) CP doesn't actually have any victims. No actual person is harmed on net, except by very legally tenuous chain-of-causation. By your logic, banning this is unreasonable. However there are fairly obvious paths by which the legitimization of CP which doesn't harm anyone leads to increased tolerance of CP generally, and increasing exposure and tolerance (in the lack-of-disgust sense) to the idea of child sex as a concept.

It should be apparent by now that Garland was not the middle-of-the-road moderate he was painted as in the media. Nothing stopped Obama from nominating someone more palatable to the Senate.

Just a virulent bronchitis, I think. I and everyone I know got it, and the cough persists for weeks if not months.

I agree, I think a lot of people are serious denial about the degree to which these opinions have broken social media containment and bled out into the real world. I'd guess mostly because of TikTok, but that's just speculation.

This sounds like a failure of academic research. In a case like this where you know the results could be hugely valuable, i.e., profitable, there is no shortage of venture capitalists who would be interested in properly funding the research at least to the point where its value could be proven out.

See, in the twist cap situation, I would always lead with, "may I offer a suggestion?" When they inevitably agree, you're now offering solicited advice. You've engaged them in asking for your help, which makes them inherently more open to accepting it. "Don't offer unsolicited advice" doesn't mean "speak only when spoken to." And of course etiquette always takes a back seat to actual danger.