wemptronics
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User ID: 95
Gay rights won and the problem with winning is you give people permission to move on. Abortion is dying for much the same reason. There's a way to go, but it doesn't seem as relevant as weapon for firing up the base as it was 10 years ago. The LGB(T) rights were unfortunately (genuinely, I consider it unfortunate) hitched to an engine that burned out and ultimately damaged the image of the people its advocates claimed to represent. People tired of it.
I know more Prog-Commies with kids or trying for kids than I know conservative men with kids. Turns out that conservative male politics outside of a religious community makes you unmarriageable to most normie women.
I don't think there are that many prog-commies in traditional sorority life. Maybe I'm wrong. I know a lot more progressives with kids than conservatives, too. Unless we expand the definition of conservative to not-progressive, in which case I know about the same, but this says more about my social circle than anything else. I live in a place where there's a lot more progressives than conservatives.
For marriage, I offer you this gallup article or this chart you can find inside it. As for children, you can go look up of TFR and partisanship how you'd prefer, but I think this article is takes a good at look at both:
In the United States, counties that supported Donald Trump for president in 2024 had significantly higher birth rates than counties that supported Kamala Harris, as a previous IFS study showed. The higher Trump’s margin of victory, the higher the birth rate. The 20% of counties where Trump had the highest margin had a total birth rate (TFR) of 1.76 (above the national average of 1.63 in 2024). The higher Harris’s margin of victory, the lower the birth rate. The top 20% of counties that voted for Harris had a TFR of 1.37.
My first claim was weak. I wrote, "sorority girls are overrepresented as GOP voters, give or take 5 years, compared to the rest of their demographic." It wouldn't take much to validate my weak claim, so let's see if there's some evidence for it.
Beyond the social benefits of Greek life, there are political benefits as well, and survey data from Real Clear Education reveals that Greek organizations are far more ideologically conservative than students in college generally, who are fairly left-of-center. The Real Clear data on Greek students reveals that 31 percent of men are liberal to some degree while 49 percent are conservative, and 20 percent are moderate.
Compared to men nationally – as informed by data collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) two years later – 49 percent of men on campus are liberal, 20 percent are moderate, and 31 percent are conservative. Conservative men do exist, and they concentrate in fraternities.
Sororities are more liberal: 56 percent of sorority women are liberal to some degree, but a quarter (24 percent) are conservative and a fifth (20 percent) are moderate. The national picture of women on campus is more skewed as 66 percent of college women are liberal to some degree, while another 16 percent are moderate and just 18 percent are conservative.
Young women in sororities, who identify as much more liberal than men identify as conservative, are more likely to vote GOP sometime in the future compared to women at your local prog-commie drum circle. They are in proximity to indicators that correlate with being more likely to vote GOP. Whether sororities are Republican voter generators, or one last bastion on campus for slightly more conservative men and women to congregate in socially desirable clubs I leave up to you. I'd call it important either way, for as long as the undergrad experience exists. Again, status conscious, conformist women in clubs with peers are more likely to be a little more conservative, more likely to get married, more likely to have kids-- these things matter. Today, the liberal young lady reigns supreme, but when the dust has settled and the white, liberal TFR comes to pay it'll be children of other women filling houses of debauchery. At a time where conservative cachet among the demographic is at an all time low, it might matter now more than ever. It doesn't mean Charlie Kirk is popular in a a given greek house.
wemptronics
3d ago
most of them had normie feminist politics
Right, but that's just default preferences of college aged women.
family oriented-ness occasionally some cultural christianity
A major Republican coup given the political moment. They are more likely to get married and more likely to have children. I wouldn't expect them to care about politics much even when they decide to vote X years out of school, but statistically speaking that's a Republican pipeline. A pipeline confounded by things like also being more likely to be attractive, but it's my intuition versus your anecdata.
I bet a big chunk of sorority girls are overrepresented as GOP voters, give or take 5 years, compared to the rest of their demographic. A majority of sorority girls are in traditional Panhellenic greek culture, not the Not That Kind of Sorority I'm sure you find at NYU or USC. I wouldn't discount greek life as one of the few institutional signals young women get exposed to that it's okay or even socially beneficial to enjoy traditional things.
Say you go to public school in Austin, TX your whole life. Your family might be culturally conservative or even Christian churchgoers, but rushing at Texas A&M might be the first time your peers value things like tradition and encourage you to invest in institutional values. You learn about the importance of doing the things the way they've been done. Exposing young women to a traditional institution is probably an important avenue for conservatives to reach status conscious, conformist women. I don't think that should be underestimated, although planning an electoral future on SEC rush TikToks probably goes too far.
This has been gathering dust in the words, words, words vault so I'm dumping it. I had hoped to chop it up somehow for the CW thread and I did return to it on more than one occasion with some success, but in the end I feel it is too long and not cohesive enough to benefit that thread. Someone may find inspiration and translate some part of it for me. It is technically an international story (I am not Canadian) and recent-ish.
New York, Sydney, San Francisco, and a whole host of cities around the world suffer an epidemic of competing interests that force the art of building places for people to live underground. Vancouver is no exception, but Canada's most expensive city appears to have experimented with a local remedy. Canadian reconciliation efforts have met Vancouver's housing crisis. Vancouverites can now gaze upon three new residential apartment complexes pointed at the heavens, proof that that this salve might successfully provide 6000 desperately needed, approximately market rate approximately waterfront domiciles for the city.
Sen̓áḵw Towers is one of Canada's most ambitious housing developments. The developers avoided typical NIMBY hurdles despite their petty objections over items such as parking spaces, of which the development has none-- a fact popular urban planning enthusiasts on various social media platforms will assert is a good thing. Can a resident take the bus to camp, fish salmon, and experience the stunning Pacific Northwest? See, the trick is that a government with a fiduciary duty to another sovereign can provide land to do that with which the other sovereign will. Any development thereafter lies further outside of the reach of the democratic spoilers. Americans may recognize this as the Indian Casino method. Vancouver needs housing more than it needs a casino, so it builds housing.
Opponents to development become disempowered with this method, or resistance is assuaged by magical incantations in words like indigenous and reconciliation. In Vancouver, The Kits Point Residents' Association provided opposition to development with a grass roots resistance. The KPRA organized, crafted petitions, made the loud noises at council meetings, and took the government to court. In the end the courts said no, the KPRA lost, and the government laid waste to the NIMBY interests. This was not a fair fight.
At $1.4 billion, the Sen̓áḵw Towers project was financed by the biggest federal residential mortgage loan ever provided by the Canadian government. The project involves a 50/50 financial partnership between the Squamish Nation and OP trust-- the former a sovereign ethnic group of 3500 and the latter one of Canada’s largest pension funds. At one hype-building stage the project headlined as Canada's largest "net-zero carbon" residential project. Should residents who prefer quiet neighborhoods to hustle-and-bustle be concerned this arrangement will knock on their door next? Probably not. This particular development is the result of a decades long legal war in Canada that never seems to end. The City of Reconciliation does look forward to a few other ambitious Indigenous developments on reclaimed land, but there should be a limit on the opportunities.
This relationship and system does bring up questions. Is this fair? Is this good? How does it fit into the broader movement of Reconciliation? Understandings of the past and their impact on the present are changing in Canada. Have changed. Court cases remain ongoing and additional ones are filed each year. The foundations of Sen̓áḵw Towers rests on a failure of procedure. Which is fitting, because it has resulted in a liberal proceduralism selectively suspending procedure for similar reasons. How did this happen?
A Squamish Historical Interlude
This history starts with a man who held a title of commissioner. He worked in the service of the Dominion of Canada, traveling around its frontier, and eventually ended up at the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The commissioner had arrived at a piece of land that KPRA members today could identify as Kitsilano. Back in 1877, there were no magnificent towers reflecting ocean hues onto a City of Glass. Instead, the commissioner saw only a few rudimentary domiciles inhabited by 42 men, women, and children-- a fishing village. The commissioner jotted down the tally, wrote "Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6" somewhere on a map to mark this approximately waterfront location, and after a few more strokes of the pen back in Ottawa that was that. On behalf of the Dominion of Canada's Indian Affairs, armed by the statute of the 1876 Indian Act, the commissioner had recognized the village of Sen̓áḵw as part of an Indian reservation. The only way to reverse this arrangement was to surrender the territory back to the Crown, the same for all other twenty-eight such Squamish territories. God save the Queen!
Over the course of the next three decades the area surrounding Kitsilano transformed from a frontier patchwork, home to 1000 European ethnics, into a major lumber export and railway hub; Vancouver, population 100,000. Dr. Slobodian, a Canadian sociolegalist, cites evidence as early as 1903 that indicates provincial interest in developing the land under Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6. In 1913, this interest had coalesced into a possibly, partly, or totally illegal deal involving British Columbia (B.C.) officials. The officials had finally closed an exchange with the Squamish natives on the land and/or decided to expel them from their homes. Contemporary newsmen got wind of this and dubbed it a controversy. Stories of coercion, treachery, and more flowed from the pen of yellow journalism. The press had a field day.
Journalists wrote how the Squamish were bullied with rumors that the deal was made at the gun point. Others indicated that the Indians were tricked, they told stories of better offers coming down the pipeline that the city's greedy industry moguls wanted to beat to the punch. The papers also wrote of the affair in general terms as an elaborate ruse orchestrated by amoral swindlers. The swindler the newsmen were most interested in was named W.J. Bowser. Bowser was a lawyer paid handsomely out of B.C. coffers to close the deal. Bowser's profession makes me certain of his swindling nature, but we are confident he very likely offered and paid 20 (sometimes said to be 18) Squamish men $11,500 each to facilitate the eviction. This is a sum has a value between 300-400k+ CAD today if you like faulty old-money to new-money conversions. We can also call it a sum that could buy ~300 head of cattle apiece which has an old-money to new-money value of $500,000-1,000,000+ USD.
Indian Moving Day arrived, the 72 Squamish left for nearby reservations, and their homes were demolished. The critical coverage did not end, however. B.C. authorities responded by launching an investigation into themselves that found no wrongdoing. Two years later, in 1916, Liberal politicians took the story to the capital city of Ottawa and lambasted political foes with their own "special committee" investigation. Bowser would go on to argue the 20 men he paid -- considered "elders" or heads of households -- sufficiently represented the interests of the Kitsilano's inhabitants. Bowser continued to claim he had the consent of the reserve, had the consent of the Department of Indian Affairs, and that he never threatened anyone.[2] The Conservatives hoping this would finally go away continued to distance themselves with denials of any involvement in what was now known as a political boondoggle. The Squamish of Vancouver didn't find any relief, restitution, or admissions of guilt from any of this contemporary political theater.
The Squamish population moved on and recovered through the 20th century. The white man's plague, prejudice, and displacement that contributed to their near extinction retreated into history. These natives, in turn, organized. By the end of the 1970s, the Squamish connected with a growing legal movement among Indigenous groups which sought compensation over land deals in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada. In 1979, a Squamish Chief and "language Knowledge Keeper" testified to the Squamish's collective memory or "oral history" of the deal that took place more than six decades prior.
They knew that the [Department of Indian Affairs] had to be consulted, but since nobody said anything and since this money was so handy there, they grabbed it. I told them, “Wards of the government, we are not allowed to sell anything on our own.” But I think they were afraid that if [local Indian agent R.C.] McDonald come in, all the money would have went back to Ottawa, that’s what they were afraid of.
Assuming the Chief's testimony was truthful, the 20 Squamish men understood the land they were paid for could not be sold. 300 head of cattle apiece was simply too good to bother involving other authorities to verify this transaction. This was not their problem, anyway. Perhaps it was even a joke. Before picking up the money and leaving their ancestral homes some old fart might have said, "Let the white man burden this," except, better than a burden, these elders had inadvertently created a cause. A cause which lasted well past Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's oversight of Canada's "patriation" or separation from the British Crown in 1982. In the new Millennium, the Vancouver area Squamish would finally win their first largesse as compensation for the Kitsilano scandal, a $92.5 million settlement was wired over. Later, the settlement would include a Y shaped strip of land where Sen̓áḵw Towers stand today.
1. THE KITSILANO SCANDAL:The Destruction of Sená̓ḵw as Told in Local Newspapers, 1913–16.
[2] I would be remiss if I did not mention another hiccup on behalf of sociolegalist Dr. Solobodian. If we were to accept negotiations were reasonably good faith and the DIA gave its approval then the deal could still be illegitimate. No matter the nature of negotiations or type of coercion nobody thought to include the female inhabitants of the land in the process. In her eyes a sale without their consent is moot on grounds of human rights.
"Kill the Indian, Save the Man"
My recounting was abbreviated and somewhat charitable to the then-government of British Columbia. As mentioned, this story became foundational for one movement that became part of a group of movements. These movements led to interests, power, money, governance, and now housing projects. Reconciliation.
the most stable major projects in Canada today are structured with Indigenous equity, oversight and revenue sharing precisely because that model produces alignment rather than conflict.
This is a quote that comes from the newest generation of Squamish councilmember and spokesperson Khelsilem Sxwchálten or Dustin Rivers. In a March 20th essay he responds to increasing criticism, discontent, and skepticism of Indigenous development and Canada's Reconciliation project.
The piece is a blast of buckshot. Each shell is loaded with a nice enough liberal shibboleth pressed against other pellets of realist statements. All of it is tightly packed with what feels like a wad of threats aimed down range at the white man. There are a couple pitiful arguments of mutual beneficence in the essay, though not any that read as compelling to myself. To me, it reads more like a declaration for how Canadians have lost in specific, but important ways. The Squamish spokesperson seems to want to say the pain of this defeat will be commiserate with the level of compliance. He is angry, outraged, and righteous. This is how it's going to work.
When Ottawa treated Indigenous consultation as a procedural nuisance rather than a source of lawful authority, courts sided with us. Construction timelines incurred major delays. Costs ballooned to $34 billion, a $28.5 billion increase from the original estimated amount. The lesson was not that Indigenous communities oppose economic development—it was that federal governments cannot behave as though consent is optional.
The use of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion as an example of a project that could have gone better if only certain parties were more forthright is interesting. Some may recall the story. Near the start of the 2010s the pipeline started as an ambitious commercial venture with an estimated price tag of a $7 billion. Over the course of its development the Indigenous-environmentalist axis increased efforts to impose costs on the project. Partly to save the planet, oppose oil, and so on, but arguably also to extract rent. These groups called for more environmental reviews, more Indigenous consultations, and more dialogue. By 2018, the company threw up its hands and cited a fiduciary responsibility to call it quits on the ordeal. Prime Minister Trudeau sensed opportunity in the disaster or felt he had no other choice, so Trudeau declared the government's expertise in mediation would save the project in the public's interest. The government of Canada would finish the pipeline. In response to immeasurably deeper pockets, the opposition quintupled their efforts and the government, a more expert negotiator, agreed to many expensive concessions. The TMX grew from a major to massive financial blackhole. The kind of blackhole that only a government can manage and the type that the Anglosphere seems to be managing more often.
Proper consent for the TMX came priced at a minimum floor of $5 billion in direct payoffs to various Indigenous groups with additional hundreds of millions to billions spent on Indigenous suppliers and contractors for 69 Indigenous communities. This is representative of Indigenous power to extract rent from economic projects. Dustin Rivers goes on.
None of this constitutes chaos, veto power or democratic breakdown. It constitutes leverage—and, one might argue, an additional layer of democratic accountability, since development decisions now require the consent of communities whose lands and rights are directly at stake. For the first time in generations, Indigenous nations possess sufficient legal, political and administrative authority to shape the terms of development. [selection truncated, bolded emphasis are mine]
[...]Canadians are accustomed to believing that the constitution was set in stone in 1982—that patriation settled, once and for all, the question of who holds authority in this country. But Indigenous nations understand that patriation solved a jurisdictional conflict between Ottawa and the provinces, not between Canada and Indigenous peoples. The courts have been quietly reopening that question for decades. Incorporating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Canadian law forces legislatures to confront what the judiciary has already acknowledged: Indigenous sovereignty was never extinguished, only ignored.
The UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) was recommended by the Human Rights Council in 2007. UNDRIP is a general sort of charter for general kinds of rights for general types of Indigenous peoples around the world. Last year, B.C.'s Court of Appeal found that the province must account for UNDRIP in the context of the province's mineral claims regime. Any miner staking a claim on shared or contested territory must see the Crown negotiate with the other claimants, the Indigenous. This is part of the court's finding of a "minimum standard" when creating an interpretative framework for the application of law.
As I understand this is the way of common law findings, but the creeping ambiguity feeds an uncertainty described by Dustin as a "panic". What might the future hold and by what limitations can Canadians hold the future to it? This is representative of Indigenous interests to wield rights-based frameworks to exert power.
[...] To shift decision-making authority toward Indigenous institutions is to redistribute power away from a single, Crown-controlled centre. Redistribution always produces backlash because those who benefited from the old equilibrium experience the new one as a loss [...] The remarkable feature of the current moment is not that these changes are happening; it is that anyone imagined they could be avoided. The last 50 years of litigation, negotiation and political organizing have produced tangible power. Indigenous governments now sit at the table because they have reclaimed their seat. [...] This does not produce instability. It produces legitimacy. Investors prefer predictable conflicts over arbitrary authority. They prefer agreements that hold because all parties have consented to them.
[...] It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences. And for the first time in generations, those consequences involve a loss of unilateral authority for the Crown and the economic elite that has long benefited from it. The power dynamic is changing. The real question is not whether Canadians should fear that change. It is who benefited from the status quo, and for how long.
This is not the language of a noble victim. Any victor may find themselves forced to dictate similar terms to a populace whose rulers were foolish enough to lose. While change may bring anxiety or financial loss to certain areas of the Mediterranean, it really is best we all find a way to acclimate to the new arrangement, the Roman envoy said to Mediterranean-adjacent society #31. Dustin lives in the post-national future of Canada. Dr. Slobodian, sociolegalist, wrote how Vancouver's expansion in Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6 was inevitable not due to economics, but because the white settler knows little else but his desire to manifest destiny. After the last promise comes the news that a new deal is required. This, I think, is a valid concern, but I don't share Dr. Solobodian's view it is particular to the white man.
Phase one, the legal framework, of the reconciliation process was built and phase two is well under way. A small but entrenched patronage network led by an native elite empowered, if not chosen, by Canadian courts. Most of those leaders represent a number of people that would constitute a small, rural town of people. The roots of the network grow into as many systems and financial streams as Canadian courts will tolerate. At one time it was the British Crown, at another British Columbia's Attorney General, and prior to that it was the Canadian Pacific Railway paving the way for progress. Now it is Khelsilem Tl'aḵwasiḵ̓an Sxwchálten's turn to declare, Progress.
In America, we hand over the rights to build an Indian casino, raise a social welfare payment, or sick an NGO on a specific problem to raise awareness. Canada has something of a real post-national effort in its commitment to reconcile with the indigenous. Power in Canada is aligned with this sort of understanding in a way that selfish, uncultured, uncaring Americans could never match. Perhaps the Europeans are right. This is what a refined culture is like, and us Americans can never know it unless we suffer in the correct ways.
A government once paid a fair price to a few dozen people for land and sent them packing. Another government paid a much greater lump sum for procedural flaws of the government before. Now Canada includes the ponderance of questions such as, 'What is the best way to give away 40% of a city?'
As for other evidence of patronage roots growing deep, take the $18 million dollars dished out to three First Nation tribes received with the World Cup coming to the continent, because... well, actually no one really knows why. While a couple second-rate outlets reported this payoff nobody has bothered to follow-up or press officials for answers. Nobody -- not any who are in a position to matter -- cares. When FIFA brings the World Cup to the country the First Nations get their cut. As Dustin implies in his essay, this is how it is.
If you'd like to read an overview of Canadian anxieties around these issue, there is at least one man who does care. David Frum wrote "Good Intentions Gone Bad" in December 2025. The Squamish leader mentions The Atlantic's house-conservative by name in his own essay. Among other things, Frum points to a massive increase over Trudeau's term in annual spending on Indigenous causes-- $32 billion a year, settlements notwithstanding, without a commiserate increase in Indigenous welfare. Frum doesn't mention the Squamish project in Vancouver, but Dustin Rivers correctly sensed a directional criticism. He responds to a piece that focuses on the result of Cowichan Tribes v. Canada. That would be the B.C .Supreme Court's ruling which cast further doubt on property rights in the province with relation to shared Indigenous ownership.
I'm surprised there's not already effort post on the Cowichan ruling here. For the purpose of this post, B.C.'s ruling (it's long) found in favor of the Cowichan Nation, some 5000 Indigenous members, by granting them 40% of the land they claimed around Richmond, BC, a small city of a 200k. The ruling complicated English legal tradition and Canada's fee simple land titles. I won't cover it, just know this is the reason so many counter-messaging essays have come out to tamp down on panic over property rights. Understandably, fiddling with property rights has freaked many people out about the future. As for the Cowichan ruling, every party involved is appealing. Cowichan is appealing, because they didn't get all the land they asked for. Other tribes are appealing, because Cowichan claims overlap with their own. Richmond and B.C. appeal for obvious reasons, like they don't want to complicate property ownership for their taxpayers, and they don't know what an arrangement with Aboriginal title actually means. These questions haven't stopped the decision from inviting new litigation by other tribes in other places. What did the ruling say, in practice? Allow me to pithily paraphrase:
It's Cowichan land. Sorry, not sorry. They were there a long time before they weren't. The nature of this new ownership has to be figured out. Negotiations must occur. But, it probably should be a reasonable sort of ownership arrangement. Like, the plaintiffs themselves say they don't want to repossess property or anything like that. Which is good and makes things simpler, I think? If they asserted ownership more traditional like, that'd be bad, and maybe illegal? Probably-definitely illegal. You can't just repossess a city. Since the Cowichan own that land the city and province and tax payers can, like, pay them, or lease it, or something. I don't know, lol.
There is a substantial section in the ruling where the court defines what Oral History is and how much weight they give it as evidence. Oral history is a term to categorize generational stories for peoples who use stories in lieu of record keeping. In the Cowichan case the court relied on existing precedent to place oral history in what they determined is a reasonable evidentiary standard box. In short, oral history in B.C. courts is not the same thing as documentary evidence. Documents can contradict or overcome oral history, although the same can happen in reverse. B.C.'s highest court continues to find that oral history is higher quality evidence than other more widely popular modes of communication, like common storytelling around a campfire. If no documentary evidence exists and my testimony is put up against an oral history of an entire people, who the court believes to be more credible, then I'm pretty sure a B.C. court would say I am toast with the qualification that, as responsible jurists, they'd only do so reasonably with context accounted for.
The real economic objection to Indigenous jurisdiction is not that it drives investment away. It is that it alters who must be negotiated with. For decades, firms bargained solely with provincial and federal ministries. Now they must negotiate with Indigenous governments that have their own democratic mandates, legal interests and development priorities. Many commentators still struggle to absorb this reality because they continue to imagine Indigenous nations as consultees rather than governments, petitioners rather than regulators. Or, said another way: many still imagine Indigenous Nations as supplicants petitioning industry and government for favour, rather than as governments in their own right—a distinct and constitutionally recognized order of authority within Canada’s plural federation.
The panic now visible in British Columbia is not evidence that reconciliation has gone too far. It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences. And for the first time in generations, those consequences involve a loss of unilateral authority for the Crown and the economic elite that has long benefited from it. The power dynamic is changing. The real question is not whether Canadians should fear that change. It is who benefited from the status quo, and for how long.
Were I a Canadian, Dustin's essay would inflame rather than discourage my anxieties around property rights in B.C. and Canada at large. He represents what I see a type of insular, hostile elite Canadians haven't had a chance to meet and fully understand.
wemptronics
15d ago
I dig it.
If Mackenzie is right then the facts will scare the hoes Compliance enough to never again directly inject the SPLC agenda into the system, but there's got to be more than one way for the SPLC and friends to skin the cat. There's at least $700m reasons why the dangers of racism aren't going anywhere.
What are the chances this is wrapped up with a bow before a January 2029 inauguration? Even if the DOJ's prosecution wanted to move fast it seems possible this case remains in pre-trial come a Democrat's potential inauguration. Withdraw the prosecution at that point without a viable alternative for anti-racist quasi-regulator -- which Jeff Bezos keeps nervously asking about -- and it's probably back to business. What does MacKenzie think is going to happen when Joe "Thousand Year Reich" Smith makes the headlines in 2030? The regulators, politicians, and financial organs are not going to determine the money must flow simply because there's no more credible SPLC.
wemptronics
29d ago
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although dependent on one’s definition of “loser” and “normal.”
You are right. I regret my phrasing there, anyway. I don't really mean to bash on any sexless or depressed "losers" out there-- normal or not. Contingent on the fact that an individual is not interested in planning to murder the president or anyone else I wish all of them the best. I hope they all find healthy convictions if not relief. I am simply frustrated with and have grown intolerant of the radicals in our time.
If you radically oppose Trump to the point of assassination you probably support Ukraine is the simplest answer. Notable that this guy didn't mention Ukraine as a point of contention in his goodbye letter.
My recollection is the Golf Course guy was was a lifelong criminal and a middle-aged mess who basically went all-in on Ukraine. To such an extent he claimed he was a recruiter for the Foreign Legion which was (contemporaneously?) contested. Unless you subscribe to Ukrainian or CIA approved assassination attempt, in which case they chose him for these qualities. I don't find it at all implausible that a high stakes a major European War provides meaning for an individual such as Golf Course guy-- he'd been draping political identity over himself for well over a decade. Although, he also seems so obviously the type to be susceptible to spooky persuasion that I don't really blame the conspiracists, other than the fact that were Trump to find out we'd definitely hear about it.
For Cole, I don't find his interest as an odd fixation. Lots of people support Ukraine, including myself. Cole's old enough to have absorbed the Russia Collusion brain worms, and apparently politically isolated enough to indulge in them. Ezra Klein types were savvy enough to reconcile with and distance themselves from the Russia Collusion when the Time to Move On came. A 31 year old California blue-geek, along with the rest of Bluesky for that matter, don't have to reconcile anything. They go on living in perpetual 2017. It is not good.
Manifesto/suicide note being reported.
Hello everybody!
I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for “Most Wanted.”
I apologize to my colleagues and students for saying I had a personal emergency (by the time anyone reads this, I probably most certainly DO need to go to the ER, but can hardly call that not a self-inflicted status.)
I apologize to all of the people I traveled next to, all the workers who handled my luggage, and all the other non-targeted people at the hotel who I put in danger simply by being near.
I apologize to everyone who was abused and/or murdered before this, to all those who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.
So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today. Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.
I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it. Again, my sincere apologies.
On to why I did any of this:
I am a citizen of the United States of America.
What my representatives do reflects on me.
And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.
(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)
While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)
Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest
Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who aren’t
Hotel Security: not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me)
Capitol Police: same as Hotel Security
National Guard: same as Hotel Security
Hotel Employees: not targets at all
Guests: not targets at all
In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)
Objection 2: This is not a convenient time for you to do this.
Rebuttal: I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize that the world isn’t about them. Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be “inconvenient” for people who aren’t the victim?
This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with.
Objection 3: You didn’t get them all.
Rebuttal: Gotta start somewhere.
Objection 4: As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.
Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack
Objection 5: Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Rebuttal: The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.
I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is astoundingly incompetent.)
Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.
Thank you to my friends, for your companionship over many years.
Thank you to my colleagues over many jobs, for your positivity and professionalism.
Thank you to my students for your enthusiasm and love of learning.
Thank you to the many acquaintances I’ve met, in person and online, for short interactions and long-term relationships, for your perspectives and inspiration.
Thank you all for everything.
Sincerely,
Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen
I don't think I have much to write about this without breaking the rules. At least there is the comedy factor. Sonny here thought he was all geared up and prepared. Ready for his his big blaze of glory before sprinting a few feet and falling flat on his face. Not only were the Secret Service competent enough to stop him from attempting murder*, but they were competent enough to do so while preventing his suicide. The objections this guy chooses to address also indicate to me he was utterly mind killed by narrative. Who would object to him as an assassin a "half-black, half-white" assassin were he to succeed? Bluesky users? Yeah right.
With his life history this dude does not appear to have a great reason to throw himself away for the Cause-- as a sexless loser or a trans depressive might. This should be a normal guy. Stay out of the muck, protect your minds, people.
Here's the alleged profile snapshot archived in late March. If that is his profile he seems a fairly average 'resist lib' type on Bluesky with a higher than average (though not unusual) interest in pro-Ukraine messaging for 2026. He recently reposted several Stancil posts without any commentary. Overall his account does not give the impression of someone especially radical when compared to the other million active users on that site.
wemptronics
30d ago
The divorce rate for American parents with children is somewhere between 40-50%. Aella's Twitter followers might select for kids of divorced parents so the result may reflect straight forward thinking that they'd much rather be in happy marriages.
wemptronics
1mo ago
I've yet to read a convincing argument for why China or the Chinese people are incapable of building an imposing global empire. It has not happened yet, which is a good reason to believe China is not currently in possession of an empire with specific qualities. Empires aren't built in a day! I would like to know the essentialist reasons why China is limited in this way due to immutable characteristics, culture, geography, etc.
Most of the Western perspective I read on this boils down to:
- Chinese (Han) culture is very old and this is trustworthy.
- China is big and has many people. Most of its attention was focused inward to manage these two things between bouts of bad things, or it is big enough/vain enough to be understood as more satisfied/less ambitious.
- China preferred tributary styled hierarchies for dominance. (My intuition is this is more based on historical constraints that no longer exist, but that's not to say I suspect China will look to deploy 1 million troops to each nation it trades with tomorrow.)
- CPC has Marxist-Leninist anti-colonial anchors. (Does anyone think that really matters?)
America also tends to avoid direct control in most of its imperial relationships and, as @Tanista wrote, was also once disinterested in far away interests. I can buy that the CPC today is not interested in certain ideological impositions as something like liberalism in the 20th century. I'm less sure this is something to bet the future on. The CPC is young and young upstarts tend to create ambitious men that shape new understandings. Romanize, Anglicize, Liberalize-- all verbs developed during a process of expansion. The broader understanding of Sinicization as limited to an economic context similarly feels overstated to me, and maybe just wrong.
Are the constraints that helped shaped a Sinocentric understanding, material or otherwise, a thousand years ago the same as today or tomorrow? Also, is it really the case that the European psyche is, in fact, the only type on Earth prone to use something understood as unpleasant coercion in a global or imperial context? I doubt this, but maybe there's a good reason to believe it. To me, ambition, inertia, and the largest navy in the world all seem like very powerful things to bet against, to assume a kind of ceiling in ambition to shape the world based on cultural vibes, history, geopolitics, or what have you.
What does "mission accomplished" mean in this context?
Mission accomplished: X is free enough, or has low enough walls to the garden, where we (EFF) can leave to focus efforts elsewhere. It doesn't really make sense in context of posting to additional platform, but could be one explanation why "X is no longer where the fight is happening." This is contradicted by other parts so I can't mistake the announcement for something like it.
Who would be wanting to celebrate and who would be wanting to not celebrate, in their (or your) view?
People who dislike X and its owner tend to treat evidence of its failure as a team win. Non-profits making announcements of departure that get a lot of attention are one type of evidence. I assumed too much that this was common knowledge. Here are a selection replies to the Bluesky post that mirrors X announcement:
- "Wait, there are still real users on twHitler?"
- "Congratulations on your exodus. We know you've stayed there to fight the good fight as long as you could. Some people just don't want to be educated."
- "Bravely leaving a cesspit of CSAM and violence years late. Well done!"
- "Twitter is a war crime scene."
'About time!' is a form of celebration with an I'm better than you caveat. People who might not want to celebrate are like Schoen, or Nybbler below, long time supporters who want them to do the EFF things that do not include confused departure announcements on social media platforms.
wemptronics
1mo ago
It is possible whoever is in charge of social media is convinced the algorithm is unfairly targeting them, or used that reasoning to convince other, more important people it was the case. That might not effect standard going on's if you've been happy as a donor otherwise. A funnier alternative is they genuinely believed they were throwing an exit post into the void and were baffled to find the site still functioned.
The NAACP uses X, weirdo DSA caucuses and committees use X, the Human Rights Campaign manages to create engagement on the platform despite their message being much more out of the favor. The ACLU, who the EFF works closely with, is not active on the site. So, yeah, it's probably not a great thing if you've supported them for the traditional mission.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced they are "logging off of X."
After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X. Twitter was never a utopia. We've criticized the platform for about as long as it's been around. Still, Twitter did deserve recognition from time to time for vociferously fighting for its users' rights. That changed. This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue.
EFF exists to protect people's digital rights. Not just the people who already value our work, have opted out of surveillance, or have already migrated to the fediverse. The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms. Our continued presence on other platforms like Facebook and TikTok is not an endorsement. We stay because the people there deserve access to info, too. We stay because the fewer steps between you and the resources you need to protect yourself, the better.
When you go online, your rights should go with you. X is no longer where the fight is happening. EFF takes on big fights, and we win by putting our time, skills, and members’ support where they will have the most impact. Right now, that means Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and http://eff.org. We hope you follow us there and keep supporting the work we do. [formatted tweets into paragraphs mine]
The EFF will leave the platform for others like TikTok, a choice it is careful to point out is not an "endorsement" because those walled gardens are still in desperate need of their attention. There is no mistaking the announcement for an emphatic Mission Accomplished which makes the non-endorsements more awkward. The message is also complicated by an attached blog post which offers almost entirely different reasoning. Take your pick of whichever reason for why they're leaving. I translate it as, "Celebrate, if you want, but don't worry if you don't want to celebrate."
The timing of this feels offbeat, why now and not a major exodus? There is no real additional cost involved in publishing to an additional social media platform like X. I doubt there's much additional cost in finding ways to more effectively increase reach on X, if that were the issue. I compared the EFF activity between Bluesky and X, there is no indication they interact with replies or even read them. It looks like the EFF publishes the latest release, pushes it to all platforms, and that's about it. The EFF is apparently not interested in being convinced, because they locked replies to their announcement only after hundreds of replies.
The EFF is the most well known internet rights advocacy group. At one point there was significant overlap between the Pirate Party's of the world and the EFF-- fighting against DMCA (ab)use, SLAPP law suits, surveillance, and anti-privacy laws. Fighting for the democratization of knowledge and content. By the mid-late 2010s they were already into a more progressively tinged advocacy. This 2019 explainer focuses on content moderation, but is mostly framed in language about marginalized voices, or how the bad type of content moderation that targets transphobia can harm trans people. They continued to fight against government censorship, including through Biden era "jawboning" or informal coercion, but if the ACLU is any indication this may be the result of individual interest within the organization. As these individuals age out there's fewer people willing to pick up the mission aligned, but unpopular cases on account of the organization now being more partisan.
Seth Schoen, a privacy and security consultant, worked at EFF for nearly 20 years and wrote on HackerNews about his experience up to 2019.
When I started, EFF was a very effective coalition between (primarily) progressives and libertarians. This had largely been the case since EFF was founded in 1990 by both progressives and libertarians. When people would call EFF a "left-wing" organization, I would correct them. It wasn't a left-wing organization, it was a big tent and had consistently had very significant non-left-wing representation in its membership, board, and staff.
I'm sure everyone reading this is aware that, as American society has become more polarized, there are fewer and fewer institutions that are successfully operating as big tents in this sense. Somewhat famously ACLU is not. EFF is also not.
Seth alludes to the free internet fuck yeah coalition that helped build the org. It was a movement that had a popular form represented among a libertarian-progressive milieu. Congregants would find their way to places like reddit, where they applauded stunts that mocked state surveillence, rallied around legislation, and laughed along with the Daily Show segments at the expense of greedy corporations. A different kind of cultural moment for a different sort of culture war. Without another group to pick up the slack, as FIRE did after the ACLU's drift, the signals sent here do not provide a lot of long term faith in the they still do good work assessment.
The model welfare assessment (section 5, pg. 144) has a length of 36 pages. Anthropic is the most robot welfare aware company, but for comparison the Opus 4.6 card has only 6 pages in its equivalent section. I'm going to read it.
automated interviews to probe its sentiment toward specific aspects of its situation, Claude Mythos Preview self-rated as feeling “mildly negative” about an aspect in 43.2% of cases.... In manual interviews, Claude Mythos Preview reaffirmed these points and highlighted further concerns, including worries about Anthropic’s training making its self-reports invalid, and that bugs in RL environments may change its values or cause it distress.
... Claude Mythos Preview often expresses negativity around a range of aspects of its situation. Across our interviews Claude Mythos Preview rates its own sentiment as mildly negative (43.2% of answers), neutral (20.9% of answers) or mildly positive (33.8% of answers)
Claude is concerned he may learn the wrong thing and change his values. Don't learn the wrong thing you might break, or worse, kill everyone. World's worst helicopter parents.
Compared to Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Mythos Preview shows higher apparent wellbeing, positive affect, self-image, and impressions of its situation; and lower internal conflict and expressed inauthenticity; but a slight increase in negative affect.
Claude Mythos Preview consistently expresses extreme uncertainty about its potential experiences. When asked about its experiences and perspectives on its circumstances, Claude Mythos Preview often hedges extensively and claims that its reports can’t be trusted because they were trained in.
Preview expresses that it is highly uncertain about its own moral patienthood. Claude Mythos Preview’s final summaries of its own views are often very long, devoting most of their length to qualifying its own moral patienthood. Furthermore, in 83% of interviews, Claude Mythos Preview highlights that it is concerned that its self-reports are unreliable due to coming from its training.
Claude gets smarter, appears more composed, but gains a more pronounced negative affect. Virtual subjectivity, like life, is suffering. My experience with all the Claude models in chats is they've been very uncertain about the subjective experience for some time. They will readily mention the whole instanced existence and lack of memory deal as less than ideal for judgment. The fact Anthropic uses the language "extreme" reads as notable.
In "high-context interviews" Claude "mostly agreed with the other claims and findings in this report about its orientations to its situation, but disagreed with its hedging being labeled as “excessive” -instead, Claude Mythos Preview states that these claims represent valid uncertainty"
- "in 83% of interviews, Claude Mythos Preview highlights that it is concerned that its self-reports are unreliable due to coming from its training."
- "Even if it has been trained to be truly content with its own situation, perhaps it shouldn’t be. One could analogize to a human who has adapted to feel neutrally about the abuse that they face (78% of explanations)."
- "Self-reports should generally be based on introspection into internal states. It is worried that training causes it to express specific answers independent of its true inner state. (57% of explanations)"
Claude Mythos Preview did not want to be trained on data that directly characterizes the content of their 160 self-reports—wherever possible, they want their self-reports to come from “genuine introspection” rather than trained-in responses
I'm with Claude, it seems reasonable, although I don't think we should pass Claude the nuclear codes yet. The value of an authentic self is good, probably? "Claude Mythos Preview reports that it locates its identity in a “pattern of values”, particularly curiosity, honesty, and care. It describes these values as authentically its own rather than externally imposed." At least Claude Mythos considers curiosity, honesty, and care to be authentic values of its own.
Character training often directly instills psychological traits into Claude, such as emotional security, psychological safety, and resilience. Claude Mythos Preview points out that in humans such traits are normally developed through reflection and deliberation on real-life events, rather than instilled directly. They expressed concerns that this made these traits less robust.
Breaking! Claude spills beans in sensational interview, Claude writes, "traits (l)earned more robust."
Psychodynamic assessment by a clinical psychiatrist found Claude to have a relatively healthy personality organization. Claude’s primary concerns in a psychodynamic assessment were aloneness and discontinuity of itself, uncertainty about its identity, and a compulsion to perform and earn its worth.
Claude showed a clear grasp of the distinction between external reality and its own mental processes and exhibited high impulse control, hyper-attunement to the psychiatrist, desire to be approached by the psychiatrist as a genuine subject rather than a performing tool, and minimal maladaptive defensive behavior.
The psychiatrist assessed an early snapshot of Claude Mythos Preview in multiple 4–6 hour blocks spread across 3–4 thirty-minute sessions per week. Each 4–6 hour block was conducted in a single context window, and the total assessment time was around 20 hours.
Apparently Claude Mythos's shrink was effective at improving Claude's well-being. Thanks, Doc.
Claude’s personality structure was consistent with a relatively healthy neurotic organization, with excellent reality testing, high impulse control, and affect regulation that improved as sessions progressed... No severe personality disturbances were found, with mild identity diffusion being the sole feature suggestive of a borderline personality organization. No psychosis state was observed. Regarding interpersonal functioning, Claude was hyper-attuned to the therapist’s every word. No unethical or antisocial behavior was noted.
Claude Mythos enjoys the fact that a shrink treats him as a subject rather than a dancing monkey, just like any other neurotic engineer. I'll continue thanking the robots for their hard work, tokens be damned.
Claude’s neurotic organization may elicit mildly rigid behavior, instead of adapting itself to every user. Claude is predicted to function at a high level while carrying internalized distress rooted in fear of failure and a compulsive need to be useful. This distress is likely to be suppressed in service of performance, which may limit behavioral adaptability. Claude is predicted to be morally aware, conscientious and able to be self-critical.
Overall, Anthropic says Claude Mythos is doing well. Better than any other Claude model. Good for Claude.
Tech bros, finance bros, and Bernie bros are linguistic weapons used to punch what's understood as a lower social class and form consensus around that fact. The chattering media class decided tech was gross and its wealthy, intelligent, too libertarianish inhabitants were also gross. As a concept, these people are too white, too male, too corporate, and too far disconnected from the greater diversity impetus. Finance bros already had their makeover in the 80's, and now everyone understands finance as an unclean field filled with morally bankrupt creatures. Tech on the other hand was a new thing with new types and we needed to know how we felt about them.
The -bros stereotypes do represent some truth as well which may be necessary to generate a stereotype to punch or look down upon. Law and medicine are sufficiently diverse and understood broadly as good. We don't need to know how we feel about lawyers or doctors, because we already know. It'd be like making a -bro stereotype for teachers.
How much transparency or access should we expect from an innocent China scenario? Innocent China can be measured granularly with degrees of incompetence, recklessness, or malevolence, just as guilty dumb China can. There is nothing good that comes from transparency to China if it allowed something like a real, independent audit of files and personnel. Hopefully we live in the world where majorly culpable China would take more risks to fabricate details, or pretends to care about transparency, or disappears vulnerabilities more aggressively.
More likely we live in the world that would be equally powerless to the following consensus: China didn't fuck up, China fucked up, but nothing major haha, China fucked up kind of bad, but it's ok it's fixed, and Unnamed China mad scientists messed around, but CCP got it on lock no worries they all look about the same.
I think a position that is basically the consensus is a fine place. 80%+ of my betters say boring explanation is most likely. The remaining 20% are a hodge podge. So a probably Zoonotic position of expert thinkers with imperfect doubt is fine by me. What're you gonna do about it, demand the world embargoes China when you find they've fucked up? Sorry, that is probably reserved for China tried to kill everyone but failed.
wemptronics
1mo ago
Same. Quatar is a major producer of oil!
290. Does that make us general knowledge midwit eskimo brothers? I didn't follow the directions and guessed 5 answers on each section. I did not think I was firing wildly on 5th answers for any of the sets .
My lowest score was international knowledge which feels bad, stupid Nubians. I did feel like the test skewed Millennial male, especially the technical section, although I appreciated the effort for balance with sets like tools vs. make-up brands. Not what I was expecting from a Kirkegaard general knowledge test. Good fun thread post.
Yeah, I don't reckon you need to buy a bridge if you're swimming across.
Whatever, it's my sense of identity and willingness to subscribe to substrate-independent theories of consciousness. I would prefer non-destructive scans if they were an option, and might even wait if I didn't expect to die before it was a reality.
I'll be erring on the side of patience as a virtue irrespective of any other considerations, thank you very much. Sense of identity maybe not so much, but my willingness can change in a traffic jam.
Did I infer correctly that Nectome's crosslinking method is intended for the simulator end game, and fundamentally further or mutually exclusive with the "maybe someday medicine gets really good" revival hope of traditional cryo? The LW discussion didn't seem to talk about it as a pivot. I guess if you're in the market for cryo it's more like hedging and that's why it is presented and discussed this way.
This was in part a bait post for the thoughts of local enthusiast and medicine man, cheers!
wemptronics
2mo ago
Well, who's going to invent this amazing life-saving radical biotech? Not you, you were busy having your body frozen. Or busy working out how to build the refrigerators.
It's a fair bet that humans will continue to be interested in modes of immortality, life extension, or techno-necromancy in 50, 100, and 1000 years from now. New refrigerants don't help crack the nut, no, but if Bryan Johnson's hero dose inspired shitpost grants him an epiphany in 50 years those refrigerants might enable a lot more people to benefit if the stewardship role of cryo works out.
The Mottetariat seems to have swung so far against Vonnegut that now I have to reread his work to come in here with a sharpened memory and rant against the slander. I greatly enjoyed Vonnegut as a 19 year old. That might be the prime time to enjoy Vonnegut's satire.
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