magicalkittycat
No bio...
User ID: 3762
Hot off the Platner scandal, here comes Max Miller one upping him. Max Miller, a Republican who previously served in Trump's first admin and running for reelection as state representative has been accused by his ex-wife of throwing hot water on her, putting a gun to her head, and (potentially) even choking their 2 year old daughter.
She doesn't know for sure as it would have happened behind closed doors, and Miller obviously denies this but CPS investigations did suggest strangulation as possible.
Neither the child’s father, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), nor mother, conservative policy adviser Emily Moreno, admitted to knowing what caused their daughter’s injury or that it occurred while their daughter was under their care. Miller’s primary theory was that the bruising resembled marks from a seat belt. Moreno, who discovered the bruises and took the child to an emergency room, suggested the cause may have been something more sinister. Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn’t rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture. Moreover, a child protection specialist reviewing the incident had characterized the bruising near the fracture as resembling a “handprint.”
And the daughter for some reason seems to be scared of her father, so even if he didn't cause this particular injury it's not a great sign.
“Daddy’s house is scary,” Moreno recounted her daughter saying, according to a Bay Village, Ohio, investigative report relating to the February 2026 injury.
There's also apparently been other accusations against him when he was younger.
Responding to written questions from Moreno’s lawyer about whether Miller threw a girl down the stairs in high school, faced expulsion from college for a violent incident involving a female student, and left Moreno within three days of their child’s birth, Miller—over the course of the domestic proceedings—neither confirmed nor denied the events took place.
Especially when I made an interesting discovery, him being an abuser seems to have been already known or at least suspected in politics. George Santos had previously called him a woman beater during a spat with Miller, because Miller was accused of assaulting his previous girlfriend before that.
Miller, a former Trump White House aide, was accused of slapping his then-girlfriend and Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham in 2020, which she said resulted in her ending the relationship.
and
Politico was more specific in its July 2021 article, recounting—according to three people familiar with the incident—that Miller “pushed [Grisham] against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her.”
And Miller is (or was) a drug user, showing a history of irresponsible behavior.
Records from Miami University police concluded that Miller’s blood alcohol content was under the legal limit, and he pleaded down to a misdemeanor for failing to control the car. “A blood test conclusively established that Mr. Miller was not impaired,” Miller’s attorney told Politico at the time.
However, Mother Jones has obtained further toxicology reports from the incident stating that Miller had MDMA—also known as ecstasy—and Klonopin in his system at the time of the crash.
And there is hard proof that he poured hot water on Moreno, per a recording.
According to the transcript, Moreno is heard saying, “You poured steaming hot water on me, and you’ve also, you, uh, you have been insanely emotionally abusive.”
Miller first said he “didn’t pour hot water on [her] neck.” He then said, “The water incident…I never thought that that hurt you.”
“It was never done to hurt you with intent. It never was done to hurt you, and you know that,” Miller explained.
Again there's no hard proof of most of these (yet at least) but a history of physical abuse allegations throughout his life + drug usage (and lying about it) + the abuse suggesting bruising patterns on his own child + at least one proven allegation, it certainly seems to be leaning towards his guilt.
These allegations haven't reached the general public much yet, but they do seem to having a small effect on his reelection chances already. Not as much as Platner did but the news is still pretty young. Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays by their respective sides and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.
Which is much less own then you think it is, given that there is zero public access to anything that could be evidence, and no reason to assume the site is acting in good faith.
Then that can be said instead of making unproven allegations. They can say "I assume X".
You are again trying to use your vague impressions of a country you know nothing about to wave away the results of a chromosome test. This means nothing you say about evidence existing or not existing can be taken seriously.
We know the Algerian government viewed her as a woman, because despite being intersex they had her competing in women's sports.
Oh dear. If you're going to call people stupid, you probably should make sure you're not going to misrepresent their argument to such a drastic extent. Studios have an incentive to manipulate the coverage of shitty movies in general. The Odyssey might happen to be an escalation point in the measures they take, but otherwise it's just a specific instance of what they do in general.
Shifting from bailey to motte here. The allegation isn't "they could have incentive to manipulate the coverage" but specifically that the 2019 change by Rotten Tomatoes is active manipulation to hide how unpopular The Oddysey "truly" is.
The issue is that this actual allegation is objectively stupid, and that's why you have to retreat back. It's a motivated claim looking for evidence and couldn't find any, so it was decided that an old change to poll casual viewers (and fix feedback selection bias) would be retrofitted as proof.
Because the public does not have access to their source code, their communications, their frontend or backend., which is how we found out about the other companies manipulating their results.
So in other words, there is no evidence.
It's very easy to conceive of any smoking gun evidence as something mundane, but when someone explicitly says they don't use a particular measures for ranking, and their leaked documentation says they do, a rational actor usually assumes bad faith on the part of the party making the declaration.
So in other words, it's an assumption and not actually proven.
Khelif is highl debated in the same sense vaccines are highly debated, your attempt to dismiss a chromosome test with
"Khelif has XY chromosomes" != "Imane Khelif is a man.", and it's not just hardcore lefties who believe that but also again Algeria a Muslim conservative nation that had Khelif participate in women's sports.
vague assumptions about the culture of a country
You know you can just literally Google how the Algerian government treats and views LGBT people right? Again, they're bound to make most of the people here look like they're woke.
You're the one that brought the "this is what conspiracists say in these other cases, therefore you're wrong argument". If it works one way, it works the other way as well (or, you know, it was dishonest to make it from the start).
Well yes, conspiracists are typically stupid.
Remember, this entire conversation is about a 2019 change to push poll casual viewers being alleged as an intentional manipulation to cover for The Odyssey failing. Five years before it was even in production! There is no other way to put it, this is one of the most retarded arguments ever made, and you are left defending it because people would rather look like a massive fucking retard who apparently think RT can see the future (the only explanation for how the 2019 change could have been knowingly done for a movie in production in 2024) than concede whatever culture war nonsense they've gotten into, because showing "loyalty" to the in-group is worth sacrificing every braincell both current and future.
"Sometimes us conspiracists are right" would be far better suited in a conversation where the argument is not so bad that even the dumbest kid in the special ed classroom wouldn't attempt it. It is simply not reasonable that Rotten Tomatoes switched to push polling casual viewers for the purpose of manipulating The Odyssey review scores.
It's not a greater scandal. Websites secretly manipulating their algorithms / whatever results they present is completely normal now.
If this was true at all, why does the accusation of manipulation against RT have to be so dogshit? If it's normal, certainly there would be better proof than "they started polling the normies"
Ok, let's consider it. In a world where these claims are completely false, I don't expect to see Twitter moderator frontend screenshots getting leaked with accounts being tagged with terms like "search blacklist" or "trends blacklist", and for external tools that check whether an account was shadowbanned to exist, or Google API documentation leaks that show that in their ranking algorithm they keep track of attributes they deny have any relevance (including one literally called "smallPersonalSite".
It's very easy to conceive of them as anti spam bot/impersonation/algorithm manipulation etc measures that you would deploy in order to help hide how fast (and in what ways) you detect them while still not allowing them to deteriorate the typical user experience. This is a pretty common sort of thing in video games for instance, ban waves of cheaters and hackers so they don't know what triggered it.
I imagine basically every single mainstream social media site has such mechanisms (as they are all the constant targets of spam bots and other such malicious use) and thus the existence of them alone doesn't mean much.
Yes, it's a great argument! Whether we're talking about the dual wielding Scottish girl having been sexually assaulted by migrants all along, Imane Khelif being a man, transgender medicine not being based on sound science, and the most renowned pro-trans medical association being fully aware of it, and deliberately hiding the fact, the "It turned out it was true all along" argument is popular as it shows how little regard for facts self-styled "anti-conspiracists" have.
Funny then that so many of your examples are still highly debated, even in conservative circles like Khelif. It's so weird how Algeria, a Muslim country with extreme anti LGBT policies to the point that you are probably woke compared to them, does not agree she is "a man".
But yes, this proves all the conspiracy theories are true after all. Vaccines do cause autism, Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel, and a 2019 change to poll casual movie watchers by RT was actually a secret plan by their woke seers to cover for The Odyssey actually failing. In retrospect, they've all been proven because conspiracy theorists have incredible track records.
You're just repeating the original assertion, not explaining why you believe it's true.
If the right can rally around scandals as first world problem as "a beer brand did a promo with a trans tiktoker as part of their plan to recruit more customers" and "the mnm is less sexy" then certainly they could rally around greater scandals. The issue is, those scandals, as silly as they were are at least true. Bud Light did do a promo with a trans tiktoker. The MMM could be considered less sexy.
So if it was real, we can either ask ourselves "do right wingers really care about more jerking off to candy than rotten tomatoes manipulating review scores?" or consider that there's so little meat in the claim that no one can get it taken seriously. I proposed the second, they aren't manipulated just because of a 2019 change to increase poll responsiveness among casual viewers.
I disagree. People claimed that social media was shadowbanning and limiting their them based on their politics, it was called a conspiracy theory, and ended up being 100% true for multiple social media platforms. People thought Google is deranking independent websites, people like you called it conspiracy theory, and it turns out to be 100%, and so on, and so on...
Manipulating algorithms you have power over is completely normal. Your insistence that it would cause any sort of scandal strikes me as extremely naive and baseless.
Or consider that just like the false claims of manipulated review scores, these also lack anything actually substantial to rally around so everyone cared more about sexy candy.
"It turned out it was true all along" is one of my favorite type of arguments however. I hear the same thing from anti vaxxers, how it's finally been proven that they're dangerous and cause autism or whatever else. It happen constantly, 20/20 vision has finally validated all the conspiracies and the microchips that Bill Gates implanted into you are going to activate anytime soon. Ok fine the soon doesn't come, but it's been proven even more now! Yes, your low quality evidence belief is validated by further low quality evidence, but it's clearly not that convincing to the general population. People who have low standards for proof can't grasp why everyone else won't care about their "proven" worries.
magicalkittycat
8d ago
No piece of media is perfect, and that's often not the point anyway. Writers simply don't care about accuracy that much, and they never have, there's a reason why Artistic License is a very common trope on tvtropes. Even things that try to be more realistic feeling often compromise for better story/visuals/gameplay/etc depending on the genre, like Kingdom Come Deliverance. Sometimes even because true historical accuracy feels wrong to the average person.
For example from the KCD tvtropes page itself
Artistic License – History: For the average player, the game is well-researched barring some minor issues. Meanwhile, historians and scholars have commented, criticized, and published studies about it's bigger inaccuracies despite promoting the game as being realistic and historically accurate so much that it has its own section in the Other Wiki. The historical consultant for Warhorse Studios eventually gave a presentation which downplayed the game's commitment to historical accuracy, stating that it's meant to be a game at the end of the day. To note some specific examples:
But that's ok, because Nolan's The Odyssey is aiming to be a movie you want to watch first and foremost. KCD is aiming to be a game I want to play first and foremost, just like the consultant apparently said.
If your goal however isn't the entertainment or sales, but historical accuracy? Then you're gonna get graded way harsher on your mistakes there.
magicalkittycat
8d ago
Rare occurances where for some reason the selection effect of "people who bother to write a review" are more positive than the casual viewer. I imagine it'll be heavily correlated with preexisting large fanbases.
It would be a big deal if actual manipulation could be shown and proven, particularly if it happened constantly and wasn't just a one off like "oh this reviewer got caught in a bribery scandal".
The big issue is that most of the time when people claim to find something like that they're wrong and everyone knows it's wrong and stupid so they get ignored. Like this right here, where the site is alleging manipulation as the bailey and then retreating to "it's just that they're polling the normies now instead of self selected users on the website" as the motte is not going to win anyone over.
Related to this topic: Rotten Tomatoes manipulating review scores.
Would be a big deal if true, let's see what the alleged manipulation is.
"Before 2019, RT made you work to rate a film. You logged in, found the page, and submitted. So only motivated fans bothered.
After 2019, RT switched to a "PUSH" system. Ticket apps like Fandango ping you after the show. ONE TAP on 1–5 ⭐, and you're done"
That doesn't sound like manipulation, that actually sounds like a better system. You want to get an idea of what the general public believes, you poll the general public. Push notifications with easy reviews is how you get the casuals to tell you their opinion. Plus it being from the ticket apps means they're all inherently confirmed viewers too which helps to mitigate culture war shenanigans and review bombing.
Most movies having a negative "popcorn gap" should be expected, we know with all sorts of feedback systems that they skew away from normal users and towards complainers and the more friction there is the more the skew tends to be.
I'm convinced that half of movie watchers must carry around a blindfold and earmuffs because holy shit Grok absolutely can not do it. Literally just freeze frame 11-12 seconds in and it is awful. The rowers in the back are all facing the wrong direction and the oars don't even touch the water. He's presumbly at the front of the ship and yet the sail is being blown in the other way, unless he's at the back of the ship in which case the wake is in front. I've also seen claims that the wheel type is achronistic and the armor is a mix of Greek/roman designs but can't confirm those. Although of course it shouldn't be of question anyway here because why is he wearing his armor on the boat?
Either way take almost any complex scene and you can spot these basic and obvious problems. No movie is perfect but if someone is talking about historical accuracy as their goal, it should actually have basic details right.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
I'm sure there are plenty of fakers but I always have to caution against the "I don't see them using it right now so they must not need it" argument. There are plenty of potential issues that can allow for seemingly normal behavior. My aunt is in her 80s and needs a cane, and yet most of the time you were to watch her she isn't really using it, because she's not going a distance or up a hill or whatever else where pain and balancing becomes a meaningful issue. She can walk perfectly fine most of the time. Most of the time. Still needs a cane for the moments where she can't or it's acting up. Likewise you'll see videos online of people in wheelchairs who stand up or even walk for a distance. Not everyone who benefits from a wheelchair is completely crippled below the belt, some have pain issues/heart issues/muscular conditions/problems balancing without something to hold/etc.
That doesn't mean there isn't fakers, just "I don't see an issue" shouldn't be taken as immediate proof of fakery.
magicalkittycat
13d ago
Yeah agree, it just seems like basic political signaling. Shows that he agrees with his supporters that Bibi should be in jail, that his hands are tied and he has no power to do anything despite his best wishes, and any anger and blame should be redirected away from him and onto the federal government.
magicalkittycat
13d ago
The UN is not and can not serve as the world police enforcing what the US wants and thinks is moral on everyone else, because a UN that does it is a UN no more. The only reason it can exist is precisely because it doesn't get involved if any of the major players in the world don't want it to. If it ever did, those major players leave and it becomes yet another generic partnership between allies, which we have plenty of and keep creating more, rather than an international conference between opposing nations which we have a scant few.
The UN's best point is not in forcing our own desires onto Russia or China or India or whatever else, but coordinating with them to achieve the few goals that all of us can agree on regardless of our difference in values.
magicalkittycat
15d ago
Ah yes, you just put the clothes in and press a button. No sorting by colour/fabric beforehand.
For the vast majority of modern clothes in modern washing machines, this is not necessary. Our detergents are a lot better and our dyes stick on way more.
No taking out one load and putting in another.
That's like, a minute or two.
No hanging out clothes (if you dry them on a line outside)
If you don't use the technology then it doesn't save you time.
Or putting them in the tumbledryer (if you don't).
Literally again, another few minutes (honestly probably more like a single minute if not less but let's count going to the laundry room and back)
No putting them away afterwards.
Again, another few minutes.
It went from a day of exhaustive and attentive work to barely anything.
In fact, for a while, housework went up because of automation and convenience products. Now instead of one day a week for laundry, you would be doing it every day because now you could change your bedsheets and clothing more than once a week. And now you would change clothing and bed linen and so forth more than once a week, because you weren't dirty and lazy were you?
Unless you have a massive family, you aren't doing laundry everyday. Five shirts, five pants, five underwear would not fill up my washing machine. What a waste. Put them in the laundry hamper and do it in batches like everyone else. We get 3 days worth I would say but obviously depends on the circumstances.
And if you choose to change bedsheets every day then you're overdoing it. That's just OCD.
And now you vacuumed the house every day because you aren't bringing the rugs out to hang them on a line and beat them.
Completely unnecessary unless you're tracking in mud.
Same with this - you do all this because you want to provide a clean, welcoming home for your family don't you? If they get sick (from unspecified illnesses) due to the dirty house you live in, well... what a failure as a wife and mother, yes?
Yeah this suggests you do have some sort of OCD issue going on then with it. It is not ordinary to change bed sheets and vacuum daily.
I know people hate it when I reply to multiple of them with a similar point so I'm gonna stick mainly to this comment to address the common points.
1: "Stochastic terrorism is real, what about X situation where someone calls for the death of another for instance"?
2: "Stochastic terrorism is real, here's some historical events where it has happened"
These two are together because they both get addressed by the same general answer.
We already have a term for such things, it's called incitement. The issue however, and the reason why stochastic terrorism was made up to begin with, is that incitement already exists and therefore has pre established standards and a long history of neutral discussion about it. Those historical examples weren't called "stochastic terrorism", they would have been called incitement. Playing partisan and biased blame games is a lot harder with an established term with established generally agreed upon standards. Any parts that are real are already covered!
That's why stochastic terrorism was made up, it's a very modern phrase retreading old ground because the previous word isn't an effective weapon.
3: "Well what about insert example from group I don't like?"
No, I'm more interested in examples from groups you do like and are a part in. For the general conservative Motte user, we have quite a few to pick from, in part thanks to the president himself. He's celebrated the death of "enemies" such as Mueller, made jokes about attacks against people he doesn't like such as Paul Pelosi, called for the death penalty of "traitors" like with the illegal orders video, and Jan 6 is right there where he didn't just passively take action but actively pardoned people who are on video beating up officers.
There's plenty to pick apart and denounce for a MAGA supporting conservative who genuinely believes in stochastic terrorism.
If you don't like that, Scott actually included other examples you can work with too regardless of your political "side".
Nativists spread fear and mistrust about Muslim immigrants, and then racists go on shooting sprees in mosques.
The #Resistance insists that Donald Trump would destroy democracy, and then various people try to assassinate Donald Trump.
Conservatives spread fear and mistrust about transgender people, and then bigots commit hate crimes against transgender people.
Woke people say the police are racist and brutal, and then other woke people murder police officers.
Socialists call health insurance companies greedy and accuse them of blocking life-saving treatment, and then Luigi Mangione murdered a health insurance CEO.
AI safety activists say that Sam Altman’s AI could destroy humanity, and then a guy threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house.
Liberals said that Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger who was driving Americans apart, and then an assassin murdered Charlie Kirk.
The pro-life movement describes abortion as murder, and then pro-life activists assassinated abortion doctors and pro-choice politicians.
You don't have to use those either, the sky is your limit!
Pick something somewhere of a group that matches your beliefs, and then explain how you still believe it's stochastic terrorism and how you, or your "close allies", have done this terrorism before and are according to the phrase a form of terrorist and you aren't just using it as a tool against "the enemy" and I'll accept that maybe you're the rare one who actually believes in it as a real concept.
And that will still, only apply to you and not the other tons and tons of people who clearly and blatently engage in one sided usage.
And also by doing so, as Scott points out, you might be ironically engaging in stochastic terrorism.
(in fact, one could argue that accusing someone of stochastic terrorism is itself stochastic terrorism! Here in America, we consider it justified to kill terrorists before they can threaten us further. Reclassifying criticism as terrorism implies it is potentially legitimate to apply the same norm to any especially harsh critics!)
Exactly. So it should be even easier for them to stay home.
The exact opposite. The opportunity cost of staying home increases the less housework there is to be done, which just means more pressure to get out there and get a job so long as people want more wealth. And people wanting more and more wealth is a fundamental part of humanity that isn't being changed anytime soon. Automating housework was always going to end up with women getting out of house work. Two earner wealth > One earner wealth is simple, obvious, and undeniable. One has to change the very nature of our species to prevent it.
And we can prove this simply by looking at real world economies. There's not really any country that is civilized and automated that doesn't get the women eventually going out of their daily chores housework and into the workforce. There is not many real world examples where the average woman in the country sits around all day drinking tea and watching TV, they're either too poor to have automation (in which case the women is doing all the intensive and time consuming housework) or they're automated and the women are getting jobs.
The only possible exceptions I can think of are like, the gulf state nations rich off oil and immigrant laborers (and even those aren't entirely fair since we're substituting the housewife work with domestic underclass women work, so women are still working so there's still tons of women working). So I guess if you can get a nation that makes a substantial part of their money off pure luck, with repressive religious dictatorships that enforce their beliefs against their own citizens economic incentives and a super poor underclass that flows in to do work for them, you can get it.
No. Women haven’t always worked. Women have always labored, in some capacity. Women haven’t always had a traditional, 9am-5pm professional vocation,
I think work is a correct term for this, we literally call it "housework" after all. But ok even if we draw a distinction in the terms, so what? Replace instance of "work" with "labored productively" and nothing changes.
And it’s why the arguments that denigrate that the value and labor of the housewife and SAHM never made sense, because when you come home after a hard day’s work, dinner still has to get made and laundry still had to get done; regardless.
But those things are far far easier now, because of technology! Fridges means you don't have to go to the market every single day and the things you buy are way fresher in general. Microwaves and ovens and stoves avoids the hassle of handling and maintaining and cleaning up after the fire. Laundry machines went from spending the whole day tending to clothes, to a few minutes hassle of putting clothes in, switching them over, and pushing a few buttons. Folding is really the only time intensive part of laundry left, and technology is looking to simplify even that.
It's not denigrating housewives to point out simple fact, housework is leagues easier today than the past. That's why people spend tons of money on all those aforementioned machines. Some are so insanely and undeniably useful that even the Amish use them like washing machines
I've written a few times before here that I don't believe stochastic terrorism is a reasonable concept, so it's nice to see Scott Alexander come out with a similar argument in his recent post. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-stochastic-terrorism
And hey, it actually mirrors me quite well!
As I've said before
Of course they're constantly hypocritical over it too, I've never seen a person say "whoops, I accidently committed stochastic terrorism without intending to by speaking negatively about someone to my large audience". Weird how it's only ever applied to others the speaker doesn't like.
Meanwhile he says
The “stochastic terrorism” concept is near-unique in how effectively it can be discredited merely by listing many examples of its use together in the same place. Almost no one supports a blanket prohibition on criticizing of all of these different groups of people. “Stochastic terrorism” mostly gets deployed opportunistically, by people who either are too blinkered to realize that the same argument could be leveraged against their own speech, or who hope you’re too blinkered to realize that.
It's basically the same thing! No one ever uses it for themselves, despite that by the same standards it often could be!
It's hard to add too much to this since I think he covers the general issues I normally would argue pretty well, but I do think he missed something key. Stochastic terrorism breaks a fundamental rule of humanity, we are not a hivemind and people only control themselves. I can not brainwash someone else to kill for me, and I can not brainwash them to not kill either. No matter how similar that person may be to me. They could be my neighbor, they could be a twin, and I would still lack that ability. We are individuals responsible for ourselves.
I often quote Reagan on this.
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."
Reagan of course was speaking against the idea that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because "society" but the logic works the other way around too, society should not be held responsible for the criminal. The lawbreaker is the one who makes the choice to break the law.
Stochastic terrorism is just another part of one sided demand for the "enemy" (those who the speaker disagrees with) to mind control other "enemies" from bad behavior, and to blame them when they fail to do so.
This is something I've also argued before. https://www.themotte.org/post/2899/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/360516?context=8#context
I've been speaking about this type of issue since I was an older teen seeing Gamergate get called a harassment campaign because a few people sent death threats going "Hey that's not very fair, the large majority of people aren't engaged in threat sending just because a few did! In fact it could even be just one insane people sending several".
I said it about the 2023 pension protests in France "Hey, there's a million people marching you can't expect every single one to be completely moral and good. You shouldn't point to a person being bad and use it to blame the others there"
I said it about Jan 6th "Sure a few people were violent and those ones deserve to be locked up, but your average protestor didn't engage in a crime and it's unfair to say that they're a violent group"
I said it about police during BLM (the large majority of cops do not engage in killing innocents) and about BLM protestors (the large majority of protestors did not engage in looting or arson or other crime).
I've said it about Xianjang and the Uyghurs, I've said it about both the population of Gaza and the population of Israel (most of them are rather peaceful on both sides), I've said it about Russia and pushed back against calling their population orcs despite that I support Ukraine in war and think we should aid them way more!
And I'll keep saying it about other groups, like trans people now. People don't deserve blame for things they don't do, and they don't deserve blame for happening to share group/geographical area/etc with someone who commits violence. Especially because of the Chinese robber fallacy, but even without it.
magicalkittycat
15d ago
People who are actually of extreme value to intelligence and centrally important to some kind of secret organization don’t get arrested after being the target of an impossible to hide FBI investigation for years, subject to hugely public legal proceedings, and then die in allegedly mysterious circumstances in a Manhattan jail, before their lover / accomplice is sensationally also arrested and subject to years of public proceedings and media/public outrage that pressures congress into releasing tens of thousands of related files. They just die, quietly, and a few lines are written about them in newspapers. “Epstein died some years after serving a brief sentence for sex crimes. There were embarrassing photos of him with Prince Andrew. He died in his sixties in Paris of heart failure.” Fin
That could be true, but it's also rather unfalsifiable. Are there known examples of this happening we can point to? Well no, given that their success would be a secret after all. So it could be the case that all the intelligence connections just die silently, but it could also be that they don't just off people either.
We might see it happen in the failures, where someone almost died and then whistleblows. But I don't know if there's many of these.
magicalkittycat
15d ago
If you want me to be absolutely maximally clear in every way and say something like "Let us suppose for the sake of discussion" instead of just saying the normal thing that normal people say, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna say the normal thing that normal people say. And you should read it the normal way instead of engaging in bad faith.
The world was and is naturally very cruel. People died (or at least suffered from) starvation, disease, the elements, etc quite often. Most of history was not a place where even the surviving young children could get away without helping out with the crops or other chores, yet alone the able bodied adult women. The world was not kind enough for freeloaders.
Women worked. They did not work a traditional job, but they worked. In the peasant times, women milked cattle, tilled fields, managed crops, kept chickens, cleaned, made clothing (especially necessary at the time where minor scratches and infections could kill and no A/C or heating), hauled water, picked fruits and vegetables and various other tasks.
Many of those tasks are no longer relevant thanks to economic and technological innovations. We've gone from a time of vast malnutrition to vast overnutrition in the western world, having everyone grow their own crops and milk their own cattle is ridiculous now. Even the tasks that do remain like cleaning or cooking are made significantly easier now thanks to technology. Laundry is no longer a chore that one sets most of their day aside for. Things not only make less dirt (imagine the difference between a sooty fire and the modern oven for instance) but cleaning chemicals are also more efficient and don't take as much to make since they're also done by technology now.
Traditional women's work has just been largely automated away. For a short period of time some of the middle class women were in a social situation where working a job wasn't expected but the housework they would have traditionally been doing was also largely gone, so they got to spend more of their days doing stuff like watching soap operas or whatever. But the time of the lazy do nothing housewife was short lived, and it was always going to be short lived. The economic incentives and advantages to having two productive earners instead of one + parasite is clear and obvious. People with nothing to do will be given something to do, they will be productive as well. The world wars accelerated this, but it was always going to happen as long as people and families value money. It can not be reversed unless you change this fundamental desire for wealth part of humanity, good luck.
magicalkittycat
15d ago
You did not propose a hypothetical.
Look dude I pointed out to you already where I said assume, and at least to my knowledge and all the ways I've used and seen it before, an assumption implies and in many contexts requires a hypothetical. I've never seen a person say "Let's assume X is true" about a claim they know to be true, it is always one that they are not sure about it.
As Google says for the definition
To assume is to take something as true without proof or evidence
To me, it must be a hypothetical then, cause proof and evidence would make it not hypothetical anymore and as I said above, I've never seen "Let's assume X" in any context that isn't theorizing.
That wasn't what he was asking for at all. He was asking for your priors, not the content of the truth of Vance's statements. That would give important information ('why are we forced to guess?' and 'why is this important to you, much less the conversation?') That is certainly within the possible, if you weren't so evasive about it.
My priors are I don't know! I think Israel likely had some connections to Epstein, and thus Vance might be saying something true here (even if you or I believe he often lies elsewhere) but I don't have anything to prove it, cause I don't have access to all of that.
I can't tell you which way is which cause I don't know. All I can do is give some hypotheticals, which is
If we assume this recent statement is true from Vance because we assume he isn't lying to our faces, then what could that suggest? Well, Mossad and Epstein both want/wanted involvement in Iran, so that could be something they utilized. And we know that the Trump admin is currently wanting to hide something that's still covered up in the Epstein files, so presumbly it has links to him or his allies. Thus within this hypothetical we can propose the possibility that the coverup and Iran war are connected in some manner, and that perhaps Mossad uses their connections to coerce (or at least push a little) on the president for his unpopular war.
If people want to explore the alternative assumption where Vance is lying, they can go ahead and do so. What they shouldn't do is blame their inability to properly read on me proposing a hypothetical
Speak plainly.
No, I wouldn't be forced to guess about what you believe if you actually stated what you believe. I wouldn't have to guess, because I would assume you were attempting to honestly represent your beliefs.
You are demanding the impossible, I can not know what is and isn't truthful in Vance's statements. I do not have access to the full unredacted information. I can only operate in the hypothetical and I addressed Hypothetical 1: He is being truthful here.
That's why if you notice a key part from my statement
Now as we can all assume that just like Trump,
I will not make bold claims like "Vance is definitely lying" when I can not know that. But I can analyze some possible conclusions if we assume Vance is being truthful, like many assume about Trump's statements, then what does that possibly imply?
"Speak plainly", how about you bother to read instead? I did speak plainly. I plainly said it was a hypothetical assumption! The word is right there.
No, they can't. Not inside the same argument!
Again even if we flip the assumption around and observe the hypothetical where he is a liar, it doesn't tell us what parts are a lie and what is truth.
Yes I think physically abusing a child if true is worse than physically abusing an adult if true. I'm not giving out bonus points just cause the abuse of adults was sexual. Hurting children is a one up.
It's been proven now, there is a recording of Miller and Moreno talking about it.
Now he contests any intent on hurting her, and he contests it being at her neck, but it's clear he understands what she means by "poured steaming hot water on me" and refers to it as the water incident. Maybe he's telling the truth about intent, but pouring steaming hot water on anyone outside of a complete accident is a bad look IMO because at the very least he's ridiculously careless.
More options
Context Copy link