cared more about the plight of the Palestinians
Well, yeah. Although, I am not without sympathy for Palestinians.
then you have or will care about anything in your entire life
I don't think so. Things and people I care about generally drive my will to survive and provide. I hope this continues to be true, and that I do not ever feel like I am in a position where I have to light myself on fire to mourn the plight of people across the ocean, or demonstrate my levels-of-care about something, or to someone else.
If I'm ever in a position where I need to sacrifice it all to protect people I care about, I hope I have the wisdom to recognize the situation for what it is, and the courage to accept that. I am past the age of dying for convictions that don't have material impact on myself or my family. You might be correct that I never was that age-- I am not so sure about that. If that's amoral, fair enough.
I do hope Bushnell's convictions gave him comfort on his way out. Otherwise, I don't think his convictions did himself or Palestinians any good.
No one lights themselves on fire for The Cause in the privacy of their own homes. Performative is a given.
Efficacy is not always required for self-sacrifice, conviction, and heroism to touch something off in the human imagination. The futile last stand is universal. Does the futility or inevitability of defeat make a sacrifice make it more impactful? People seem to disagree, though every culture elevates stories of both heroic last stands, and futile ones. Of course, even the Jews have their own morbid one.
Still, I have a gut feeling that this act is a perversion of the noble sacrifice. The heroic resistance. Bushnell's display feels like a knock off. Maybe it's just because of my own politics, or because it is a knock-off of a 50 year old protest event. Bushnell was not fighting religious persecution in his homeland. He did not choose death instead of acceptance, or did he? He had options. He did not live in a place or time that would see a brutal war over the following 15 years. No, Bushnell was a safe American. He was as safe as you could be. Like so many Americans, he spent some of his time typing into the void, playing video games, and playing politics online.
Bushnell's act can't be called a LARP, but why does it feel like a LARP?
Maybe the feeling of perversion comes down to my cynicism. There is no Diem to coup here. There is not an Alamo to remember. Insofar as awareness and eyeballs are helpful, it seems like there are maximum eyeballs already. Outside of something wild, like Israel opening up a new front in Lebanon, then everyone is as involved or invested as they're going to be. Maybe America will claim to make the Israelis go home a few weeks early when it happens. There is an Israel filled with Israelis who can not yet say like they will accept living next to a Hamas governed Gaza. Until something in that equation changes, Israel will trudge along accordingly. It is written.
Maybe these things never seem heroic in the moment. The romantic hero aspect has to be earned with time. Although, this doesn't appear to be true in Quang Duc's case. I have to say I cracked an evil smile reading some snide dissident right types. "Yes, of course this man is a hero, my dear leftists. We shall all to aspire to follow in his example." There may be something in that. If this man is a hero, but one we must warn people not to emulate, then why would he a hero at all?
RE: drunk tank story. Nice anecdote. A little loss of freedom with a heavy dose of reality can put things in perspective.
wemptronics
2mo ago
I'm not a huge fan, but I do recall it being lambasted for not meeting expectations or anything alike S1. After reading this thread I looked at the TD sub and it sounds like there's a rehabilitation of Season 2 going on.
From what I saw, it has some more similarities to Season 1 than S2. Season 2 may have had more detective work if not the cultish, supernatural vibes? It has been quite awhile since I've seen S2 and I don't think I will watch again. The shootout was the coolest part.
I recently watched Season 3 and it was enjoyable and interesting. After the noise surrounding S2 it makes sense they try to re-align with S1 vibes. It'd be fine if True Detective didn't follow the S1 formula with each season having its own themes, setting, and tone that aren't all that similar to each other. Big A-list names with acting bonafides, interesting/logical/grounded detective work, some well-written twists, and sure some supernatural flair if they want. Setting aside quality, that sounds neat.
wemptronics
2mo ago
Universal Soldier (1992) was a masterpiece of cinema and the fact it has a 34% RottenTomatoes score is a blight on our culture.
Nobody watched them for the plot.
This is the big issue. From what I did watch, Night Country is not a True Detective series. Had the True Detective name never been attached the critics could sing its praises in peace. They could glorify the importance of its message in a thousand reviews that no one would read. Then, the Prestige TV-cels could have then watched an episode, laughed at it, and never thought about it again.
The studio's decision to attach the True Detective brand cashes in a little HBO credibility with some part of their audience, but apparently the viewership was good? I guess there's a market for bad TV on HBO. It is a shame they pulled a bait-and-switch on a fanbase that I assume really really really wants another good season of True Detective, but alas. It ain't happening. I quickly bailed on the series and have no inclination to watch it.
wemptronics
2mo ago
Yes, framing this as uncontroversially wrong is a strategic decision, but it's the wrong one. Really you're carrying water for the extremists of the Murder Is Okay party by framing this as a surprising outcome of their actions and policies, rather than an inevitable and intended one.
Those dastardly murderers.
People need to know just how far the Overton Window has stretched to the left.
I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure why people need to know this to change their mind. I suspect left-right framing is about the fastest way to not change minds, which is why so many people, even those adjacent dissidents like Freddie deBoer, always take the time to say their not-a-conservative mantras. That this is a requirement to have any sort of movement in a rightward direction for progressives may very well be a flaw of their own making, but I do not blame people for respecting the fact it is a reality.
It was predictable that we'd have racial interest groups engaging in racial spoils when we decided racial preferences were a good thing to institutionalize. I mean hey, if the price for increased diversity is every once in awhile some dirty union takes advantage and gets caught, that's a price worth paying. The fact that the Federal government is actively defending a lawsuit about it is unfortunate, but that's what lawyers do, ya know?
The not a problem to actually a good thing pipeline is a problem. Do you have any examples of more effective aggressive methods of moderating progressive beliefs in the past? Practically speaking, dissidents on the left don't keep reach, influence, or stay on the left. 'That's what a conservative would say' is a powerful antibody. If we go back in time 48 hours, rewrite TracingWoodgrains post for maximum effect how would you change it? Who would be the speaker? I'm not a person out there exists that can deliver what you want to happen.
Apologies this is all I have time to respond to at the moment.*
It's not really a lie. If you, as Trace appears to, believe that most liberals wouldn't disagree with his conclusions -- creating a fake ATC exam for black union to cheat on is bad -- then it's more of a strategic framing. Jesse Singal's Signal Boost had the same sort of framing. "Gee, look how legitimate, uncontroversial, yet juicy and important this story is. Shouldn't Real Journalists be covering this very uncontroversial story?"
People like Singal and TracingWoodgrains use the soft, strategic framing, because they think they can walk some Real Journalists, Real Progressives, and so on back to a more honest(?) space. They, probably correctly, assume that journalists aren't touching it, because of the discourse. If there was no National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees involved in the story, and instead was the National Coalition of Italian-American Aviation Employees that cheated the hiring process for ATC jobs, then this may have been front page on the the New York Times 6 years ago. This is a terrible failure for Affirmative Action advocates, so it is needs to stay hidden, but it doesn't have to be that way
If you believe you can change minds for the better, then using a story few serious people will disagree with is a good way to walk the Overton Window a little closer to your ideal area.* Conservatives see this and, understandably, it makes them angry. Media, progressives, liberals, and the rest of us walked -- or were led -- into the political landscape we live in today. There has to be a way to walk and lead towards another place, right?
wemptronics
3mo ago
Is a Palestinian state going to attack Tel-Aviv?
Why not? In your fantasy, the Palestinian position is better, and much closer to victory than they are today. We know to what extent Europeans will go to disarm Arabs and impose a peace. Europeans are not prepared to trade their lives for peace in Israel, and even if they were, then I don't see why they themselves don't become the "rogue state" destabilizing the Middle East. A European force that is willing to occupy and pacify Gaza/West Bank could very well be even more threatening to a power like Iran than the Jews are today. The devil you know and all that.
I don't even disagree that if lasting peace becomes a desirable goal, then Israel's right should have to come to terms with the reality of a two-state solution. It is possible the West could play a role in making this happen, but it does feel as if we are further from this fantasy than we were 20 years ago.
Yes after making the post I realized we could just be discussing how bad it is to indirectly assist a group like Hamas by simply being present and providing aid. How culpable are these NGOs for providing more "human shield" cover, propping up governance, in order to heal people in need? Not culpable enough to say no more treatment there ever. Journalists would have a harder time convincing me they are doing good by embedding with Boko Haram to cover their atrocities. In that case, I do think coverage is better than no coverage, but doctors in general have a much stronger claim to do gooder status. Even if their involvement is used to the advantage of bad actors.
I do think they probably shouldn't be running cover for Hamas. They don't need to act as spies, but neither do they need to act as propagandists.** The latter is not proven by my post.
Hmm good question. The International Committee of the Red Cross says
In times of armed conflict, the wounded and sick include anyone, whether military or civilian, who needs medical attention and is not, or no longer, taking part in hostilities....
Before carrying out an attack on a medical establishment or unit that has lost its protected status, a warning must be given. Where appropriate, this should include a time limit, which must go unheeded before an attack is permitted. The purpose of issuing a warning is to allow those committing an "act harmful to the enemy" to terminate such act, or – if they persist – to ultimately allow for safe evacuation of the wounded and sick...
An attacking party remains also bound by the obligation to take precautions in attack, in particular to do everything feasible to avoid or at least minimize harm to patients and medical personnel who may have nothing to do with those acts and for whom the humanitarian consequences will be especially dire
So it should not matter who a hospital is treating, so long as it is merely a hospital, and not on an active airbase launching sorties. So a field hospital in the Ardennes that gets artillery'd because it is on the front line does not qualify for a "warning". A field hospital in the Ardennes that is captured by American troops, so long as they aren't resisting, shouldn't be bombed. This seems mostly reasonable. Some of these international law nerds will set us straight.
FWIW above quote they do not provide easy citations near as I can tell from my phone.
Can we merge Israel-Gaza related posts with the main thread now? The last one is 10 days old. At this point, +200 posts in the main thread should not crowd out other topics.
Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza has gotten a lot of attention lately. The brief siege already has a Wikipedia page longer than the First Battle of Fallujah's. It doesn't yet beat the Second Battle of Fallujah's page word count. Yet. There has been plenty of standard internet hemming and hawing, propaganda wars, and some genuine interest with the ethics civilians stuck in the middle of a war. In case you were worried, the premature babies are safe.
The IDF, which has made public claims that the hospital is used as a headquarters for Hamas operations, released a couple segments of footage since successfully occupying the hospital. One is a video with footage of a tunnel that leads to a blast door around, if not under, the hospital. The second video is allegedly from the hospital's security cameras footage on the 7th of October. One person in the footage is an amputee wheeled in on a gurney; the other hustles on his own two feet, herded by armed men although he could be injured still.
Israel is releasing this footage to try to show the hospital was an active part of Hamas operations. Critics retort well, duh, hospitals are where you take injured hostages people, you baby killers. Critics of those critics say, well how come come they didn't just drop off these hostages at one of the other 6 hospitals on the way back from the border, Mr. Smarty Pants Real Baby Killer? If we get something like the truth eventually, then the wrong baby killers will memory hole it, while the right baby killers will throw it in their face. The war wages on.
Within this context, there's questions about the complicity of doctors and NGO's involved in Gaza. People like this guy and other former doctors have denied that there is any Hamas activity in the hospital. The vibe is that NGO's deny their proximity to Hamas in Gaza, and thus are complicit to some degree. This is just some guy but it's a common type of thread.
My question is more general: if you were a doctor in Gaza, and you knew Hamas operated within your hospital, what is the right thing to do? If you alert the Israelis to the presence of their enemy in your building, there is a good chance you are adding yourself, your hospital, and your patients to a target list somewhere. So, aren't you just putting everyone at risk by ratting out Hamas? Does the degree of the operation matter? Say, if Hamas only showed up once every couple of weeks to get medical attention, standard guard, and bring some hostages for treatment every few years, would you trust the IDF to take that into account when determining what kind of response was appropriate? You know Israel is mad, but they probably won't drop a JDAM onto a hospital and say oops, right? But, if you thought they might do that, and Hamas was operating deep in some tunnel system underground, shouldn't you let the IDF know that so they don't just drop a JDAM on the roof?
In this not-so-but-maybe hypothetical, I can't see a good reason why you'd ever talk to the IDF about Hamas being around you. In fact, you might even think it better to deny it and hope the fighters just evacuate before you and your patients get blown to bits. When the IDF shows up to siege you, you try to negotiate the evacuation of the premature babies, but otherwise you keep your mouth shut. When asked, you say you are there to provide medical attention to anyone that walks through the door, but are not responsible for whatever else goes on there. If you talk about Hamas after the fact, then you may get kicked out of the territory and that's just one less doctor around to provide medical treatment. Gun to head, if they find a Vietcong command center under your feet you stick to that story, so you can continue to provide medical treatment to people who need it, at a time when they need it most. This makes you complicit to a degree, but also seems ethical enough for me. What do you guys think?
wemptronics
9mo ago
"At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise... despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)"
Roberts does specifically mention application essays as unacceptable. That does restrict one of the simplest, most pervasive methods universities currently use to discriminate based on race. Although I agree they'll be back in 10 years to decide if something qualifies as "other means" in a new case. That was probably going to happen anyway.
wemptronics
10mo ago
Do Reddit mods actually improve Reddit much?
Yes. I never spent much time on the yuge subs as a user, but I did mod a larger sub for awhile. There's an incredible amount of generic internet garbage that reddit jannies clean up on a daily basis. For the smaller, conversational niche subs (<25-50k users) mods don't make as many mod actions. They still provide an important service. Good mods set the tone and prolong the life of a sub. Up until it grows to maximum reddit velocity and is ruined by reddit growth. The Motte is an extreme example of autistic, niche discussion sub, but its mods were/are necessary to maintain course.
wemptronics
10mo ago
It's been awhile! Adding to the queue of running/cooking mouth garble noise media.
I'll preface this by saying I do not know the details of whatever dumb things Karl said a few weeks ago. Other than what you posted below.
I believe Karl suffers from a simple and severe case of contrarianism. Karl is or has attended Church of Satan stuff, and the Church of Satan is filled with contrarians, skeptics, rebels, and cynics. Out in the world, a contrarian can be satisfied as a supporter of guns rights. There's a litany of false beliefs and memes surrounding firearms to feel sufficiently superior to the masses when it comes to firearm discussion, the Second Amendment, etc.
On the internet, especially in the "guntuber" scene, it's not enough for an uber contrarian to be satisifed as A Gun Guy. The gun guys can be said to be pretty similar to one another. They are freedom loving, right coded, proud rural Americans. To satisfy uber contrarian desires, one must go against the grain. It's the culture he has to set him self apart from as a transgressive guy.
A few years ago Karl would appear to be a principled libertarian or anarchist with libertarian streak. Maybe he always had some edgy takes, but what he shared were principles that could be considered advice-- no matter political leanings. A healthy skepticism of authority and the Feds, high value on self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, and safety/security. Now, he's a culture warrior. It might be the youtube version of audience capture, or it might be a natural progression with Karl filling a niche in the market. These days there is more demand for self-declared leftist/left of center gun enthusiast types. It's the culture war stuff that fills the gaps and allows him to stand out.
I suspect Ian saw this coming years ago. Whatever falling out they had over InRange business wise (afaik they are still friends) I am confident it was around Ian's basic "minimize political stuff, keep it professional" policy that has allowed Ian's brand to explode. They made some entertaining content together, but without Ian to check Karl's excesses he's gone a little kooky.
wemptronics
1yr ago
RE: He Really Does it for Free? Volunteer Janitor Duty.
There's something frustrating about the multiple choice format. An "other" box with text defeats the purpose of efficiency, but mayhaps we could send additional context into the abyss and you can pretend to read them? Mods get the chance to write their reasoning down in a modded comment.
Perhaps I'm just not cut out for the high stakes decision making required for internet discussion moderation.
Can we define "neutral"? In this context I consider a neutral comment as not the best comment, but it doesn't break the rules. It's not a bad comment in that it provides some value to the forum's mission, but to be a good comment it would have benefited from more evidence, information, or clarity. Is this the general intent or is it meant to be a cop out option?
Maybe even a second section. Leave the first options as is, good, bad, neutral, aaqc. Then a yes/no to a "does this break the rules." Would complicate how the rating is done. Definitely a fan of the distributed janny work though. Great idea!
wemptronics
1yr ago
"WH" is a personal nickname I have for what can broadly be described as the Deep State. It stands for "Werm Hat."
Okay, that part is a lie. This could not be possible. The WH today could have possibly have strong armed Twitter so long as they had a time machine. Not a good or accurate sentence, yeah.
It seems that mid-high level staff at Twitter made a decision that about half of the company disagreed with, and they argued about it the whole time, and nobody in the Government ever told them to censor the laptop story?
Through any of these communications. Ah-hah!
I don't think we need to get conspiratorial though. The absence of any direct communications does mostly confirm that the decision to censor the story based off the "Hacked Info" policy was kinda-sorta just made up by Twitter employees. We find out in the string of posts that previous implementation of the Hacked Info policy required authorities to say some content was h4x0r3d in order for Twitter to remove it. Had this occurred, and we had Twitter employees citing a statement from the WH as reason for censoring it, we'd have a much stronger case to say it was the result of government pressure with Twitter laundering a false statement.
It sounds like Twitter staff made the decision to censor the laptop story and suspend the NYPOST based on personal political leanings. This was in direct contradiction to company policy. I believe "not 2016 again" was mentioned by at least one exec in these communications. I'd be more willing to cite the thing if it was in a dang news article or substack.
"The first amendment isn't absolute" bit is a conspicuous wink wink, nudge nudge vote of approval. I agree it doesn't exude the air pressure. To characterize it as a coordinated campaign of governmental interference or conspiracy would not be accurate. One thing I thought about after seeing was the Moldbuggian Cathedral essence of it all. When you look at the event as a whole it's pretty convincing. It all worked swimmingly.
Truthful October Surprise smear campaign targeting favored party candidate gets censored by employees of the largest politically relevant social media platform in the world. No direction between between favored party and party loyalists required. My recollection is the "Hunter Biden laptop story = Russian hackers" narrative went on for some weeks as the premier explanation and deflection. The media cover for a Biden win was total, complete, and impressive. So impressive that Ro Khanna thought it was too impressive and not a good look.
Maybe that theory of decentralized coordination can't ever be disproven as a convenient explanation, or we can accept this result as a logical, realistic end in a string in decisions. Of course the Twitter staff wanted to, and then did, successfully censor the story! Why wouldn't they?
EDIT: Tangential, but I checked out of curiosity. NYPost was suspended on the 14th of October. The account was reinstated 2 weeks later on the 30th and Twitter made this announcement.
wemptronics
1yr ago
Small question. Are user reports still semi-anonymous? Do mods still not see specific usernames who make comment reports? I'd never know even if you lied, but I figured I would ask.
wemptronics
1yr ago
Good additions. I believe the "watch your back" quote comes from the godmother once again and the full statement was, "a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus."
I had to watch women's volleyball for this, so I'm riding it as far as I can
There are worse women's sports to watch.
Since the thread only loads five comments at a time (Zorbaaaaaa!) I will do a small, top level update on the BYU-Duke volleyball saga. You can find previous discussion in the thread below. In short, a black college volleyball athlete claims she repeatedly heard bad words during a game with thousands of fans in attendance. Said athlete has some family that amplifies her grievance, specifies the claims, and off it goes to become a thing.
Today, BYU released a statement on the conclusion of their investigation. BYU found no evidence bad words were used, nor could they corroborate bad word usage from witness testimony. BYU formally apologized to the poor chap who was banned from the game.
We also reached out to more than 50 individuals who attended the event: Duke athletic department personnel and student-athletes, BYU athletic department personnel and student-athletes, event security and management and fans who were in the arena that evening, including many of the fans in the on-court student section.
Duke's athletic director also released a short statement:
The 18 members of the Duke University volleyball team are exceptionally strong women who represent themselves, their families, and Duke University with the utmost integrity. We unequivocally stand with and champion them, especially when their character is called into question. Duke Athletics believes in respect, equality and inclusiveness, and we do not tolerate hate and bias.
Which is about as close as you get to "we will not contest the conclusion of the investigation" in a PR statement while making sure people know you hate racism, still support your athletes, etc. This is a case we've seen before. It did not garner quite as much attention as the Covington case or Smollett case, but follows the same path as them. I do not have much to add, because I'm not sure there's a lot of light here. If there is a way to cool off the culture wars it might start with interrupting the racism-to-national-story pipeline.
One interesting thing. I do not believe we saw the alleged perpetrator's name get released on the internet. BYU immediately put security in the relevant section after Richardson's claim. Eventually security targeted a UVU student and removed him, but BYU has since apologized to him. Perhaps this is evidence we are learning? The crowd may have helped in preventing his identification online or his purported disabilities protected him to an extent. Maybe all it took is one reasonable person in the chain to decide to keep his name under wraps until things had been confirmed. If so, kudos to him or her, because there's an alternate time line where some poor kid with a mental disability gets publicly shamed by Twitter mercenaries.
This aspect may have been the product of the media seemingly being disinterested in investigating this story. Alternatively, the media may be past all that jazz in these types of cases. If I were an editor Nick Sandmann's lawsuits would have some impact on how I treat these stories. Perhaps they realize the juicy headline is enough rather than the public shaming process. Hey, that'd be something. These types of cases are pure culture war all the way down. An army of online I Told Ya So's will continue to clash with the Of Course They Said Nothing Happened vanguard and Racism Is Still A Big Problem Anyway main line of infantry. So it goes.
The best I've seen so far has been this BYU fan/alumni doing extensive research on the subject. That twitter user also cites some investigation done by this college sports outlet. The TLDR is that not a single person who was in attendance, nor a single person who has gone through the dozens of hours of footage -- including the police -- has been able to verify any racial slurs were used at the game. Not any fans that were there. Not any of the coaches. None of the players. Nor the visiting talent scouts that were seated in the relevant section of seats.
It's very likely the spectator, who was banned after the game, was not yelling slurs at players. He was not even at his seat and, at one point was on his phone, during the times when Richardson claims to have heard the slurs. This is all visible in footage and nobody sitting around him has claimed to have heard bad words. Apparently that fan is autistic not that it is particularly relevant. Poor chap.
One charitable theory that sounds plausible is that Richardson misheard "COUGARS" as a slur. Building on that, another theory is that Richardson got boxed into doubling down on her claims after her Godmother (running for political office) publicly made the specific claim that Richardson 'was called a nigger every time she served.' In the above Twitter thread he does post the footage of all her serves.
Personally, I do not fully doubt that Richardson thought she heard some no-no words at the time. In retrospect, that reflects more on her and her perception of BYU than anything else. While it's possible it was a cynical, pre-planned stunt that still sounds crazy to me. I guess there is no real cost in doing so? Especially if you were certain that no real questions would be asked. All the rest of it, the story, the narrative, the coverage, and national attention is a little sad, but unsurprising. The best investigative journalism on this case was done by some random fan who merely could not believe the story. The fact this would be a national story at all, even if her claims ended up being true, is also a little sad, but unsurprising. Some autist at volleyball game yells mean words and gets banned. So what?
TL;DR: A big nothing burger. Demand for racism continues to exceed supply, etc. Into the memory hole it goes.
EDIT: Highlighting this quote from Richardson is a little culture warry, but I think there's genuine value in recognizing that her beliefs likely contributed to this story going national.
They have already done so. POTUS administration has used messaging to suggest support is conditional, begging restraint, etc. For example, the reporting after Iran strike on Israel, it was widely reported afterwards Biden had talked to Bibi and said the US won't participate in any retaliation. "Take the win." Coordinating an impromptu air defense network between several regional partners to down Iranian missiles and drones is not lukewarm support. It is exceptional support. I don't think the general public is aware or cares about these kinds of details. It was also support defensive in nature which I guess makes it less useful to activists to point at.
It is unclear exactly what Biden could do to satisfy this arm of his party without ceasing all financial and military support for Israel. A politically isolated or more desperate Israel is probably not a better Israel for Palestinians to live next to. Nor would it be better for America to have to deal with and it would likely increase domestic pressures on Biden. So signals for restraint and (probably) coordinated public messaging is about all POTUS is willing to do. It is an election year after all!
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