wemptronics
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User ID: 95
From memory... for a long time concerns about the CW thread being targeted by admins were elated through security through obscurity wisdom. Once the admin notices came -- and enough examples of subs of similar/smaller size being whacked or castrated -- that was a confidence shot. I do recall one point was that admins wouldn't clarify certain things for the mod team.
Reddit shuts down subs they don't like. Reddit admins gut and replace subreddit moderation teams they don't like. Subreddits change rules, like "don't mention trans issues at all", and similar requests at the behest of admin interactions. As I recall in one of those meta threads there was a mod from /r/PoliticalCompassMemes that chimed in with his dealings with admins and the moderation changes he had to make because of admin requests. Or maybe it was the /r/drama mods, because I remember they offered to host The Motte.
I don't recall Zorba or mods claiming TheMotte was being especially targeted or persecuted. Being targeted wasn't necessary to get dunked on or ordered to change. Somewhere back there it is explicitly said that the decision to move included the fact that Zorba would rather the project end than have to do something like censor all discussions on Topic X. Plenty of people said don't bother or not a big deal to censor whatever as I imagine you've seen from looking through the old threads.
The CW thread hosts holocaust deniers, HBD autists, and that one time that guy candidly admitted he was a (non-offending) pedophile. It's not a reddit friendly space-- which polices content and not just tone. It's not that strange to consider its time on reddit is limited by how long its controversy remains unknown. Even without the details of the admin correspondence or principles, when a place like the gendercritical sub gets booted off the site there's not a lot of confidence that a place like The Motte is secure. Maybe they're less heavy handed now, but there was lots of overt admin actions in that time period on reddit.
Maybe Zorba moved as a big ruse so he could put in a bunch of volunteer work and pay for webhosting. Seems unlikely though?
wemptronics
7mo ago
Seems like you could probably work with the big corporate chains to encourage their employees to testify. A day's wage to have an employee testify should reduce losses that pay dividends, or a tax break for collaboration with local law enforcement & courts on this matter. Ma and Pop shops seem like they'd be encouraged by necessity and a glimpse at actually tackling the problem, but getting them into court for a day might be more difficult.
Either way these things should be made (some amount) easier just by proving they are having an effect. People become motivated when they believe they're contributing to tackling a problem they've dealt with first hand.
I admit even typing them they sound like optimistic "just solve the problem lol" ideas, but it shouldn't be some impossible feat of man to convict thieves. At least if we are looking at a power law, then resources can be focused. That darn constitution and protections do be causing inconveniences. Sad!
I do wish we could figure out real rehabilitation methods for those that could be receptive. We can program people to think and believe lots of things. Norway, Denmark, and Japan all have seemingly more successful release programs. Although, I have read on Wordcel Substacker #300 differences in recidivism may not be as stark as they are made out to be as commonly understood.
This 20% vs 76.6% comparison is particularly egregious as the Norwegian figure is more narrowly defined and measured over a much shorter time frame. The American 76.6% figure above was based on rearrest within 5 years (Durose et al., 2014), whereas the Norwegian 20% figure described the number who received a new prison sentence or community sanction that became legally binding within 2 years (Kristoffersen, 2013). Both figures refer to prisoners released in the year 2005.
Of the American recidivism statistics mentioned in the previous section, the 28.8% incarceration figure is arguably the most comparable in definition to that of the 20% Norwegian figure.2 Thus, when the comparison is closer to apples-to-apples, the difference between Norway and the United States is far more modest.
Norway still releases more young people in their 20's that reoffend less than the US. So, something over there works better. Whether that's ethnic, cultural, procedural, or a combination. Intaking people young and releasing them old will decrease crime, yes. Clara would probably say it isn't fair to keep someone in jail for 20 years after stealing $500 of shampoo (for the 5th or 25th time).
Bleeding heart advocacy might be better aimed at separating the extreme serial offenders (who should remain in jail) at the tails from the less dedicated (but regular) criminal. Instead it appears to all be wrapped together in the general Prison Bad memeplex and abolitionist impulse. Effective parole programs should keep former criminals busy and out of trouble, but they don't do this very well. The profit incentive for a private probation contractor is another, if often overstated, complicating factor in my eyes.
I don't trust the state to throw up its hands and say, sorry the best we can do is hand out X year sentences to everyone until they're 40. Thankfully this isn't proposed. For the person on their 12th conviction? I don't know what else can be done. Either accept the trade off (more criminals more crime), ship them to Australia, or some Prospera-style project where Progressive Abolitionist, Inc. can run their own rehabilitation experiments.
wemptronics
7mo ago
Had the west stayed out of this, or not gotten involved in Israel, both conflicts would likely be over.
If Israelis had no considerations other than victory at all costs, sure. Maybe they would have wiped the slate clean in 1948. Israel makes a decision to not "end" the conflict, because Israelis will not or cannot end it in whatever manner you have in mind. Yes, there is pressure and considerations from its allies, because it finds value in these things.
If Israel decides to, it can go door-to-door next week and win forever. Arab states might fling cruise missiles at them for some decades, but the US isn't going to invade. Winning forever is too violent, destructive, and unpopular in Israel. Very unpleasant.
They have considerations other than American college students when it comes how to wage war. Like their own voting populace.
Is it better to feed thousands of men into a conflict that is probably going to last until we run out of Ukrainian men to fight it and probably eventually get conquered anyway.
Better for who? It still seems like they will avoid regime change. If you value that sort of thing. Making land grabs a costly endeavor is good, actually. You and I can decide what an appropriate cost is. You say 160 billion and a few hundred thousand slavic souls is too much. It's a lot. But you seem to think that, absent some donated anti-tank weapons and training, this would all be over and pleasant and nice. I don't think this is a given. Russia is paying an insane cost for what it has gained thus far in its endeavor for strategically questionable gains. Ukraine has paid a terrible cost, too.
Ending conflicts the old fashioned way of letting them go to their natural end instead of creating perpetual stalemates that aren’t resolved.
Depending how you define "the old fashioned way" it's easy to land on conflicts that lasts decades or centuries. We don't even have to go medieval. I'm sure if you asked a Prussian in 1872 whether the question of Alsace and Lorraine was settled, they would have said definitively. Lo and behold.
Winning forever with permanent conflict resolution is not the norm. Permanent resolution is more pleasant for those of us mostly uninvolved abroad, but not very pleasant for those getting permanently defeated.
(1) Another Scott Watch. Note: I am not a California resident.
How's about this essay and comments on ACX?
The Case Against California Proposition 36
Scott publishes a guest essay by Clara Collier who argues against California's Proposition 36. Prop 36 modifies California's Prop 47 which increased the value required in crimes such as shoplifting and theft ($950) before qualifying as a felony charge. Readers of this forum should be familiar with the basic story arc here. Prop 47 passed, 2018-2022 came, more compassionate district attorneys were elected, less thieves kept in prison, and policing was softened. Now it is common in the big CA metropolises for stores lock up items like toothpaste to deal with an increase in opportunistic and organized retail theft.
Offenders repeatedly arrested with hard drugs (now including fentanyl) will face felony charges if Prop 36 passes. It allows judges to send presumed dealers or suspects with large quantities of drugs to prison instead of county jail. It carves out some exceptions for mandated or opt-in treatment-- which Clara Collier thinks is useless, because CA doesn't have enough in-patient beds anyway. Collier also shares there's not enough room in prison and identifies Prop 47 as a response to an overcrowded prison population. The money saved from not putting people in jail is spent on various treatment and rehabilitation programs.
No real comment on the efficacy of treatment programs that California mandates through Prop 47. It sounds like they're probably not very effective.
The comment section on this article is lively for ACX. Lots of finger pointing and blame to go around.
As Collier says, California can lock people up for longer, but there's a hard limit for how many prisoners can be housed. I would think this answer would be obvious: build more prisons. Personally, I still think there's a place for work camps and chain gangs for offenders less likely to run off. Probably more personnel heavy, but less structural overhead to build a camp out and dig a well out in the wilderness. Maybe this is an impractical romanticized idea, or it is considered cruel and unusual these days.
There's an additional argument between people pointing out that an increase in prison time doesn't matter if prosecutors don't prosecute. Which became more common since 2018 in liberal cities and was supercharged in 2020. The other side, including Clara, points fingers at police for being lazy good-for-nothings (my words, not hers) that don't do their job right. For me, it is obvious that police who don't expect the criminals they arrest to be punished are less inclined to arrest people. I would expect this to be the conclusion of rationalists who are interested in incentive structures, but I guess there's enough compounding problems, and policing unpopular enough, it can be quietly asserted that cops are bad, or swept under the carpet.
I do agree that following through with prosecution and "clearing" cases matters more than whether something is a felony or misdemeanor. The value in making it a felony is that it should encourage prosecutors and police to go after cases. It is a signal from the people saying, lock these people up actually and felony convictions hold more weight in law enforcement and DA offices. "I have X felony arrests or X felony convictions" is a metric most police and prosecutors will point at as a record, unless your police and prosecutors consider more arrests/convictions as a bad thing. It can be a bad metric for performance that leads to unnecessary prosecutions and pleas, but maybe it's still better than this alternative.
If I were a California resident, and my city left me dissatisfied, I would probably vote for Prop 36 just to send a signal to officials. Deal with this problem. That's pretty much it. I wouldn't care about how ineffective prison is, or impossible it is to jail more people. I'd start with this, then ask for more. The alternative, which Collier advocates, is more of the same. Which, as a dissatisfied resident, would not appeal to me. Then, I'd probably vote for DA's that do stuff like convict criminals and a state leadership that builds more prisons when they're full instead of releasing criminals.
(2) Among the comments was posted this piece by City Journal earlier this year. I had missed this whole story, it is more interesting than the ACX post, and it probably deserves its own post. Maybe you guys already did that.
The The California Racial Justice Act of 2020 is starting to bear fruit for convicts in the California penal system.
"The Act, in part, allows a person to challenge their criminal case if there are statistical disparities in how people of different races are either charged, convicted or sentenced of crimes. The Act counters the effect of the widely criticized 1987 Supreme Court decision in McClesky v. Kemp, which rejected the use of statistical disparities in the application of the death penalty to prove the kind of intentional discrimination required for a constitutional violation."
The Act, however, goes beyond countering McClesky to also allow a defendant to challenge their charge, conviction or sentence if a judge, attorney, law enforcement officer, expert witness, or juror exhibited bias or animus towards the defendant because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin or if one of those same actors used racially discriminatory language during the trial.
The RJA allows convicts that can show racial disparities in sentencing and various other flavors of racial bias. Including one example in the article of a policeman who, claiming that he did not see the race of an individual driver in a car before he pulled it over, where it was argued this could be true-- but still racially biased because of "unconscious" implicit bias.
Judge Cheri Pham wrote, a person could reasonably conclude that Shore “believes certain racial or ethnic groups commit more crimes than others.” (They do.) Just as bad, Shore may not “give weight to statistical evidence that indicates there is an implicit bias against certain racial or ethnic groups.” (Fittingly, Pham earned her J.D. from the Berkeley law school.)
The San Diego Public Defenders Office had sought to prevent a San Diego Superior Court judge from hearing an RJA motion in a homicide case. The judge’s sin? In a previous prosecution, he had questioned the defense claim that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately incarcerated—a claim based on population ratios, rather than crime commission. “There is absolutely no evidence that . . . the proportion of persons in an ethnicity committing a crime must be the same as the proportion of the population,” Judge Howard Shore had said in court. In another case, Shore had questioned whether the criminal-justice system is infected by racism.
I'm open to the idea City Journal is being uncharitable and misrepresentative here, but it seems like California's legal system faces a number of crises. Which, given the statistics of crime and prosecution, is what I would call this trend. Ok, I'm out of steam.
By most metrics, Russia should have steam rolled their way into Kiev and won a victory in a few weeks. When weakness appeared it was an invitation to invest in the years old conflict-- one that the US and Europe had mostly ignored. This investment was also an opportunity to take rearmament somewhat more seriously. Neighbors making land grabs tends to cause justifiable concern among the security minded.
I can understand the frustration with the popular narratives. The overnight consensus that Ukraine, a corrupt and poor state on the outskirts of Europe the West had decided wasn't important enough to bother with a few years prior, became the last stand for Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy (tm). Sure, that's all bullshit and annoying propaganda. Conflicts generate plenty of bullshit and annoying propaganda. Alas.
It is equally frustrating reading the scattered visions among contrarians and dissidents. A gish gallop of reasoning and geopolitical theories. Might makes right justifications were in vogue, but then so were don't stick your nose where it don't belong. Strength is good, but we shouldn't work out our own muscles, or bother with our own ambitions. Alliances are bad and messy, but the US should embrace multipolarity and not bother with the aims of its competitors and adversaries. Often attached is the idea that the US should staunchly defend its (rarely defined) direct interests and nothing more. Even if those interests were defined and consensus formed, this makes an assumption that staunchly defending direct interests doesn't ever land a sea faring nation in a major conflict half a world away.
I read an underlying current of desire for an aggressive empire that does what it wants and eats when/where it wants. Then I read a longing for a different world with an assumption that a commitment to isolationism doesn't change much of anything except the US spends less money and arms. This assumption is often provided by the same people who say they would very much like to destroy the current globalized order of the world.
I'm not sure where you get the trillion dollar figure below. Isn't it more like 100 billion in aid including equipment when valued at replacement cost? When it comes to weapons systems and the US trading capability for Ukraine I am not sure there's a good analysis of whether this is true. My basic opinion is that when it comes to Taiwan, it is likely this conflict is fought by sea and air, and not with 10 million artillery shells. If China invades Taiwan tomorrow because US has loss its deterrent by donating to Ukraine I guess we'll learn about that. But it's probably more likely the US fails to intervene because of a lack of political consensus/support.
wemptronics
7mo ago
What is best theory for a trade? Trump gets a not-that-bad signal from a known media enemy and Bezos gets tax cuts?
How did it come to be that the LA Times did something similar? That part is strange. As mentioned, the lack of endorsement is more significant than an endorsement itself. I assume a place like the LA Times is far more doomed than WaPo.
A lot of what he writes suggests it is political. Just not in a quid pro quo way. WaPo benefited from one Trump presidency. It could continue to downsize and remain a bastion of resistance for some years, or maybe it can't and that is why this signal has to be sent. Bezos doesn't want to own the bastion of resistance anymore.
Maybe he is tired.
wemptronics
7mo ago
Given events, how does an Israel act upon and within Gaza if its goal is its security and not stealing land?
wemptronics
7mo ago
I had a nice phonepost that got blasted. So this one will be more brief.
Last week we had discussion on the LA Times and Washington Post's decision to forgo an endorsement for the election.
Since then, Jeff Bezos has posted his reasonings in an opinion piece. It is fairly short, but the gist of it is: credibility, principles, and failings. It's a nice little letter that tickles my fancy.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.
Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions.
There are some complications.
We know WaPo is hemorrhaging money. Some 80 million last year. Now on top of that, NPR reports up to 200k subscribers have cancelled. Which is an astounding number. 8 percent of their subscriber base. That's not a good way to make more money.
This is all for the Democracy Dies in Darkness paper. Many years have been spent cultivating a image and brand that appeals to progressive liberals. If there was a newspaper of the #resistance it was WaPo. So, why now?
Jeff doesn't think there's a future in the brand. He bought the paper in 2013. He oversaw the building of this identity. Seemingly, he was fine with it. Now, he sees the numbers and wants to see if there's a different future. I won't make a strict judgment of his sincerity, but the paper's record does make one wonder just what happened if not the whole this memory of an industry is dead deal.
As much as it tickles my fancy to see media outlets struggle with concepts credibility, trust, and take some (minor) responsibility-- I think he is wrong. There is space for one NYT. There is space for a NY Post. There is a small space for a Free Press, and there's space for a leaner probably meaner WaPo. It's going to take much more for me to believe there's even demand for a less righteous, more journalistic WaPo. I'd find value in that, but I'm pretty sure I'd find better value elsewhere.
If the attempt to make a more viable business lines up with his vision of a more trusted media, and Bezos is committed to reform, I wish him the best of luck.
Yup. There is some irony there considering how in vogue collective responsibility is right now for those with a progressive proclivity. Progressives in 20 years will feel no responsibility for a tired, irrelevant movement of yesteryear that, thankfully, didn't succeed. If it plays out that way. People's hearts were in the right place, after all. Until we grow enough time that we can well and truly consider the past as ignorant and backwards as any other.
It's not necessary to scrub the Internet Archive. Unless we get the really bad ending.
Let society make history. Irrelevant, old, and forgotten. The progressive drive and impulse maintains direct connection, but the cause of day in the future won't be directly related. Except maybe transhumanist stuff. It is not as if we can't go read Days of Rage today. Perhaps if conservatives take the cultural reins they can bring up the historical excesses of progressivism more frequently. There will be no introspection at scale and nobody should expect any-- and that is the good ending.
Learning from history is not a commoner's interest, but learned men are meant to know how we got where we are. We are all too great and unique and, for progressives, too sophisticated to repeat mistakes or learn from the inferior past.
If they use some underpowered subsonic assassin setup, then it's possible it could be slow enough to just make a hole an embed in the skull at close range. Most of the bullets in the images look like 5.56 (?), and it's really not the tool for the job. It'd likely not work reliably in the IDF issued rifles (are they mostly using Tavor's still?) as this kind of ammo usually requires a special setup or tinkering beyond what infantryman has in the field.
If there's death squads going around giving Moscow neckties to Palestinian children, then they would probably choose something else. Mossad used to like those nifty .22's. They also probably wouldn't let the kids they just shot in the head get carted off to the hospital. On the other hand, if a child catches a strays, ricochet, or misidentification there's less reason to prevent them from going to the hospital.
Soldiers blasting kid's skulls for fun with their issued rifles on a regular basis seems unlikely given the details in the article if only for the fact there are so many kids going to the hospital after getting blasted in the skull with a rifle cartridge. "44 doctors, nurses and paramedics saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza" with a couple X-ray's doesn't sell me on death squad or even misconduct. It shows me kids have been shot in the head according to some doctors.
The lethal combination of what Human Rights Watch describes as indiscriminate military violence, what Oxfam calls the deliberate restriction of food and humanitarian aid, near-universal displacement of the population, and destruction of the health care system is having the calamitous effect that many Holocaust and genocide scholars warned of nearly a year ago.
I think this paragraph tells me enough about the journalist's sympathies and where her biases lay. Doesn't mean the IDF hasn't had misconduct or committed war crimes. I suspect they have just based on what I've seen make it online. Especially in the early months of the war. But, probably not to the degree, frequency, or relevancy (genocide) that this writer believes.
wemptronics
8mo ago
This is an interesting post that should be dropped on Monday. (Real Monday. That's Monday EST. Not fake Australian Monday's.)
The Banshees of Inisherin Top Gun Maverick
I clearly didn't read the list. I saw both of these and enjoyed them both. Top Gun was, ironically, a breath of fresh air in its formula. That was the normie take and I agree with it.
I enjoyed Banshees. Tragedy, absurdity, and a story told through a dialogue that wasn't convoluted for the sake of complexity. Carried by a pair of actors with a chemistry and history together I appreciate. I also recall it being smartly humored. It kept me entertained and it worked. But, I may well be the cinema equivalent of a midwit, so a slightly different artsy but not-arthouse film might be my kryptonite.
Tár
Is on my list. I'll add Decision to Leave and give Suzume a try. My boomerism typically limits my anime viewings, so my exposure is limited to Miyazaki films (great!)
Initially I intended to highlight "cultural bangers" as a comparison to Falling Down's more humble release, but when I actually looked at the year I just ended up highlighting movies I liked, remembered fondly, or considered significant. Excluding the you-can't-handle-the-truthers (not gonna rewatch to see if I actually would like it as an adult) and Dennis the Menace (nostalgic but not a cultural banger); Into the Line of Fire which I haven't seen in 15+ years, but recall as a solid thriller. The Fugitive I watched a few years ago and it definitely holds up.
If I look at a list of a year like 2022's box office I need to scroll past the top 30 to make a new, equally meaningless highlighted list. The Northman was cool-- down at #55. I imagine I would enjoy Everything Everywhere, but haven't gotten around to watching it. Nor RRR, which I've been told to see, though I am no Bollywood fan.
So, you and your snobbery can eat a big spoon of Free Willy along with your Falling Down takes, bucko.
The cult classic signal boost means movies become memes and, if the meme gets popular, they trend from underrated to overrated. Although maybe that's just how the culture creates consensus in general.
'93 had some real cultural bangers. Looking at the link I clearly missed a a few highlights! Falling Down is lower in the list at #33. Snobbery aside, I appreciate it was made instead of an additional Grisham or Clancy derivative screenplay.
Agreed. I read a leader managing her club members by pointing at a number of perceived failures that have been brought to her attention. The failures may seem crazy to normal people, but for someone invested in the organization, who cares about the status involved, it probably is sensible enough. A straight forward I'm gonna give you three seconds, exactly three fucking seconds to wipe that stupid looking grin off your face or I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you. memo.
This writer is responsible for a club exclusively filled with young people going through first time experiences. Those young people do dumb things that reflect badly on her organization and have to be taught otherwise. Regularly, I would guess. She probably doesn't have leadership experience to draw upon except for the leadership of the person who previously filled the role. This communication technique and style has likely been optimized for dealing with 19 year old kids that don't know jack shit, don't care about anything but sex and booze, and will repeatedly embarrass everyone around them unless dealt with appropriately. Sororities are filled with the same age range that attends boot camp. Coincidence?
It's not my own leadership style and it might be an exceptionally American context, but I wouldn't write up any psychological profiles just because an internal memo is brash. Keep the brats in line, I say.
Yeah, I suspect the same. Panic attacks, alcohol, or misjudged (intentional) drug mixtures.
I was curious so I did some light searching. It just doesn't seem very common. Especially in the college environment. Here's one article from 2023 about some college kids that went to the hospital. There's no further information, so this could just well be some teens that mixed the wrong drugs, got sent to the hospital, and told Mom they were roofied so as to escape responsibility.
Boston had a bunch of reports on spiked drinks in their bar scene through 2022 resulting in this article. But, even the article says the spike of reports that year wasn't attached to reported crimes. Just more than usual number of people saying they had drugs put in their drinks.
Of the 116 drink-spiking cases reported to the BPD in 2022, only 10 of them involved someone who had a positive toxicology screen for anything from ketamine to GHB and Rohypnol. Cambridge police, meanwhile, wouldn’t share how many cases of suspected drink spikings have occurred in their city, saying only that of the unstated total, one victim tested positive for GHB. The remaining accusers had no chemical evidence to support their claims.
All of this makes finding out what’s actually happening in Boston-area bars, nightclubs, and concert venues even more difficult: Not only is the motive a mystery, but the hard evidence that drink spikings even occurred at all is elusive. Without the easy ability to gather evidence proving they were drugged, many people choose not to go to the police, fearing the cops either won’t do anything or won’t believe them.
The risk of spiked drinks seems overblown and often conflated with intentional recreational drug use. My gut instinct is that half or more of spiked drink reports that involve alcohol are, in fact, excessive amounts of alcohol. The committed, regular binge drinking 20 year old girl is not wise or experienced. She drinks 4 shots instead of 2 in an hour and she might as well be drinking a can of ketamine-GHB soup.
There are sketchy dudes slipping drugs into girls drinks somewhere. If it is as large of a concern as it is made out to be, then they might be the most effective, disciplined population of criminal out there. Perhaps roofie rings are a Greek tradition insulated from the prying eyes of the outside world. The old generation inducts the new generation of rapists how best to take advantage of young women discretely. They have rites of passage, a vow of silence, and pass on their source for GHB or whatever.
The spiked drink may be a narrative prone to exaggeration and moral panic. But, it's still a good idea for young people, especially women, to look out for each other and develop buddy system habits when partying. Which is my guess at the impetus behind it all.
There's no official mechanism that allows removal of a member that doesn't consent. If the alliance is dependent on however the USA feels about a member at any given time this diminishes the value of joining the alliance. The value of the alliance is also diminished by an adversarial member that does adversarial things too. Maybe to a lesser extent.
There's nothing that practically stops all the other members agreeing to boot Turkey out, considering that decision "unanimous", then writing a new rule about removal after the fact. Officially the alliance member needs to consent to removal to leave.
That's all a lot of mess when NATO and the US can just wait out Erdogan and hope the next guy is more compliant. Despite the theatrics and politics they did host support for US through the GWOT. Turkey also hasn't kicked all NATO personnel out of the country recently. Which they did in the 70's as I recall. So maybe they've always been a bit of an adversarial partner in the alliance. The grandstanding, bloviating, and opportunistic haggling is the price to pay for a relatively, if not quite as important as 50 years ago, important strategic ally.
I hadn't considered that before. If technical or DIY Discord servers exist they should definitely try to save searchable logs for posterity. Already an entire Great Library has been lost with IRC chats.
Is it acceptable to just lie for victimhood points at this point?
Yes. An example of this has stuck in my mind the past couple months. I was listening to this Bari Weiss podcast on a run. It focuses on the story of Matthew Shepard which was "the most notorious anti-gay hate crime in American history." A national tragedy and outrage of the 90's, so city liberals had so more evidence to deride the experience of small town bigotry. They wrote a play and made a movie about it.
Matthew Shepard was a young gay man living in a college town in Wyoming. He was found murdered and tortured to death in 1998. The narrative of "gay man butchered to death for gaying too gayly" galvanized gay rights advocates for the follow decade. Contemporary reporting very quickly turned to gay hate crime. This podcast is an hour long conversation with author Ben Kwaller who did first-hand reporting in Laramie, Wyoming and research on the murder for a book with a different conclusion.
Turns out that there is a fair bit of evidence and testimony that Matthew Shepard probably wasn't murdered for being gay. Because Matt used and sold meth. He was murdered by a guy he sometimes had meth dealings with, and probably had sex with according to other testimony. The gruesome nature of his murder was possibly not the product of virulent gay bashing, but a meth fueled macabre butchery. Done by a desperate, indebted addict whose life was falling apart. His murderer had not slept or consumed anything except drugs for several days.
In the Honestly episode Ben Kwaller shares recordings of one of his visits to Laramie. Ben (who is gay) goes to some college LGBTQ+ group and interviews them. He asks what the town thinks of the countervailing narrative. He wants to know if they at all consider the implications that their narrative was wrong. One of students says that Ben, the guest and author, should stop asking these questions, because they make him uncomfortable. I won't find the time stamp unless asked, but I can hear his voice say the words "read the room."
The student meant that this is our rallying cry. Think of all the good that has come out of this noble lie. Imagine a world where gays across America didn't believe Matthew Shepard, their avatar, was brutally murdered for being gay. We might not even have gay marriage! We might not have all these vigils and community and influence. Stop asking questions. Let us have it.
"Read the room." I'm not particularly black pilled, but conflict theorists do be winning sometimes.
Now I expended all my typing on a semi-related event. I do appreciate the write up. It's good. But, frankly, I am tired of the mass graves story. I can't draw the energy to care that the NYT finally reported on a story with marginally more integrity than the CBC has ever had. This specific article was written just over a year ago. It has the mainstream framing of the topic in August 2023, which is years after journalists had plenty of reasons to ask meaningful questions about the narrative. I'm sure we have had dozens of top-level mass graves threads in the Culture War Roundup's various forms. It keeps on chugging along.
The mass graves story, and how deep its roots grew into Canadian society, was an eye opener at the time. First, it demonstrated that Canadians had ended any and all resistance to the American culture war waged at their doorstep. Not only did Canada capitulate, but Canada picked up the banner and dedicated itself wholeheartedly to the cause. Progress. Truth seeking doesn't always scratch an itch. People want to prostrate themselves before a greater power. Canada's elite, advocacy groups, certain tribal leaders, and media saw they could leverage that desire for gain. Why not? A new national past time is born.
Canada doesn't really have the same sort of adversarial media presence that the US does, does it? If a few Native American leaders enrich themselves, a few politicians win elections, and some money gets embezzled because we're telling a noble lie, so what? Think of all the good that has come out of this. Read the room.
Not a question, just a commentary. Those can go here, right?
May the Lord bless 200x-201x forum culture. I weep for a future where it is entirely absent.
I recently ran into an issue with an older car. I don't drive it much, but I like that it has real buttons, drives nice, and isn't worth selling. It's not a special car, so there's no living fandom to squeeze for this particular model/year. If there is, then I didn't think to seek it out. There was, however, a treasure trove that was old forum culture. This history saved me some time, pain, and brain cells.
All because a guy 15 years ago had the same problem. He started a thread on this problem. No one else helped or even replied to this particular thread. This was only one man posting his frustrations and thoughts into the void. He tells the void what kind of failure it looks like. A few days later he details his frustration with a diagnosis and troubleshooting. Tried this, no luck. Thought it was that, nope. He tells us about his next plan of action and what it might be if it wasn't that.
Despite the lack of replies, forum guy returns a couple days later to tell the void he has figured it out. He lets Future Strangers know this, because this is what being a member of a hobby group is. You take what you need, then contribute when you can. The next day he posts again: don't forget a new O-ring! Sometimes they rot away and you wouldn't even notice because they'd be missing. Also, in case you didn't know here are the exact dimensions of the O-ring. (Diagrams were maybe not as readily available back then.) It doesn't matter to me that these old parts distributors mentioned are long gone. Amazon is a convenient replacement.
That one other guy, maybe one of a dozen that had the same obscure issue went out of his way to save me time. All for nothing except an extra point on his post counter and, potentially, a feeling that he was helping out the boys that had taught him in kind. Maybe the thread was a natural expression of his frustration. Unlike me, he didn't have an Old Forum Guy resource to draw upon.
Forums still exist. We're typing on one. Even the particular forum I referenced still exists. Much of forum culture has been paved over-- often improved -- with new forum-esque platforms, subreddits, DIY videos, and AI. So many more people helping others selflessly-- or for karma, Instagram followers, Youtube supplemental income, and passing the time. In which case this post is just an appreciation post of the internet. It's pretty sweet. Because calling your mechanic friend for troubleshooting more than once a year is bad etiquette, and putting a car in the shop takes more of everything.
In this case the newer hubs of troubleshooting didn't help me. Old Forum Guy did. Bless his heart. I'll think about you the next time I tap out, Old Forum Guy.
I've recently revisited the the only Cultural Marxism article on Wikipedia after I saw this discussion (again) in the last 30 days. I keep forgetting to ping you. Wasn't it you who used to maintain the Cultural Marxism subreddit? Did that get binned?
In case it wasn't you, you may remember from the /r/slatestarcodex CW thread days: it was a subreddit where someone had tried to collate a lot of older Cultural Marxist materials, since the Wiki page was already shot by then.
wemptronics
9mo ago
I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict.
Do I have news for you. The region is in conflict. Hezbollah and Israel have been in a hotter-than-usual shooting war for nearly a year.
The point to me looks like it is to damage and degrade Hezbollah operations by attacking their communications network. Fear is an element and tool in all conflicts. If you can scare your enemy into using messenger boys on bikes instead of instantaneous, encrypted communications you've made their decision making process much slower. Presumably, the reason Hezbollah has so many pagers is that they moved away from cell phones due to Israeli capabilities and actions.
If you only accept unequivocal victory as a meaningful action in conflict, then there's no point to much of war. Maybe it's true and a sad reality that much of conflict is pointless. Rocket Attack #3019 seems pretty pointless, yet everyone seems pretty dedicated to continue without points.
It's just a terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks typically target civilians. If reports are true, then this attack targeted Hezbollah operatives embedded in the the Hezbollah supply chain. That would explain why an Iranian ambassador was hurt.
Most civilians don't use pagers anymore. Even civilians in the African bush have fancy cell phones with big screens. I'd wager in a place like Lebanon that possession of a pager is so highly correlated to being involved in Hezbollah operations that saying "everyone that has a pager in Lebanon helps Hezbollah" is largely a fact.* Downstream of the pager supply probably includes some doctors, logisticians, and other adjacent support personnel, but it probably it includes a lot of invested decision makers and operatives as well.
- Some professions still use a lot of pagers. For now it seems there are still functioning hospitals, so not ever doctor's pager was blown up.
Are the AAQC's not reviewed? I assumed mods looked at the reports and used discretion to make a cut. Which I guess means the janitor duty thing goes all the way and the AAQCs are only reviewed by the handful of people as temp jannies. But @naraburns is still (thankfully) editing these lists so I imagine they are glancing?
AAQC inflation makes sense in a period of decreased activity, decreased quality, or both. If
jannieswe want to encourage Good Posts to keep coming the gold star is all we have besides uptokes. Which can include bread-and-butter top level posts without big surprises, such as mine there, if the place is lacking them. But to compare my submission to a contribution like Dean's series of comments-- these are in a different weight class with regards to quality, insight, and effort.Yes. Eternal struggle doomed to failure. It's fine.
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