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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27846 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Another holiday, another uncomfortable intrusion of the culture war by psychos into my child's life.

Maybe I was oblivious as a kid. I probably was. But somehow I don't remember children's books being as blatantly propagandized as now. Literally every single book my 3 year old daughter got for Christmas is either packed to the gills with LGBTQ "families" or interracial families mixed to a degree that I'm pretty sure is genetically impossible. Like I don't think White Woman + Latino Man = 1 Asian Child, 1 Black Child and 1 tan baby. We didn't set out for books with overt propaganda. We wanted books about nature, farming, the seasons, the months, learning to read, numbers, etc. And yet here we are.

And like I said, maybe I was oblivious as a kid. But then again, I actually got my daughter a lot of the classics I grew up with, and I still don't see it. Goodnight Moon, Where The Wild Things Are, The Hungry Caterpillar, etc still seem like straightforward children's books to me.

It's just baffling to me that books like that appear to be the default option when you tell family "We want books about X" and they search the internet for "Children's Books about X" and just click Buy on the first 5 results. We got like, 12 pseudo random children's books for Christmas, and not one single family in any of them looks like her, despite us being the majority demographic of our nation. It's one thing to be an adult, seeing the precise opposite of reality being crammed down your throat by our cultural overlords. You can by and large tune it out, thanks to the decades of actual life you've lived standing in opposition to pretend nonsense. There is something profoundly disturbing about watching them attempt to brainwash your child any which way they can into believing the world is the opposite of the way it is.

Ah well, Merry Christmas I guess. She liked the stool I built her, and although she balks at me reading the copy of the Hobbit I slipped in the drawer. Just not old enough for all those words without pictures yet.

White Woman + Latino Man = 1 Asian Child, 1 Black Child and 1 tan baby.

The first two children are apparently adopted.

We didn't set out for books with overt propaganda.

Surely if that is an example of propaganda, it is covert, rather than overt. For example, I am guessing that many people do not think it is sending the message that you think it is sending.

What message do you believe it is sending?

What message do you believe it is sending?

It is sinister, clever-as-fox neo-postmodernist cultural marxist message.

1/Race mixing is good.

2/As everyone knows, race mixing is communism.

3/Therefore, communism is good.

I'm taking my enemies at their word.

They believe not depicting LGBTQ and interracial couples is hurtful. They believe it stigmatizes the groups, and leads to mental health issues and underperformance of those groups broadly. They believe it pressures under represented groups into unnatural or unjust conformity with the represented majority. They believe erasing those groups in popular culture is the first step to erasing those groups in the real world. They believe the absence of representation is a sign of tribal supremacy.

Well, now my family is the under represented group. If these things are true, it's now being done to my family. If these things aren't true, but the people doing it to me believe they are, it's still a sign they hate me and want to erase my family, first from culture, then from the future.

Noone wants to erase you. And the ultimate proof of that is liberal women's love for white men. The same people behind all this crap.

The real thing erasing whites is modern "women's rights", which is now widely accepted by most conservatives. Women are wonderful, so they need to find scapegoats and get mad about children's books with mixed race children, when they should be mad at promiscuous, cheating, hypergamous and educated women annihilating the birth rates and killing male motivation which cause white extinction. Which sane man would want to defend a society in which he is a cuck with no rights and can only start a family with a ran through woman who is encouraged to cheat on him.

Also, people have natural self-preservation instincts but not so much on the race level. Those need to be socially induced, and are just one group identity among many. Why would any man, white or not, defend the white ethnicity which literally hates him and supports women's rights garbage and is exporting it all over the world.

Noone wants to erase you. And the ultimate proof of that is liberal women's love for white men.

Also, people have natural self-preservation instincts but not so much on the race level. Those need to be socially induced

Noone wants to erase you.

How can you reconcile these together? Regarding the entire topic of discussion this just supports the overall idea of OP, for much of the media and entertainment industry, including children's books, are pushing Anti-white/ Pro-miscegenation propaganda to influence more to the ideas of social progressivism. You say that pro-ethnic views need to be applied from the top down in order to be effective, yet OP is talking specifically about social agendas that are pushed the opposite way. And then through all of that you say that white women prefer white men regardless of the social programming, so how can racial self-preservation not be instinctual if still trending strongly regardless of those social influences?

Second warning. This place is for discussing the culture war, not just posting culture war screeds of your own.

Interesting to hear, that sounds frustrating.

I have a three year old and a one year old, and my main experience with new books are from the local library (non traditional books tend to be hispanic or occasionally highlighting things like Kwanzaa), the school book fair (highlights animal characters), and my own parents, who are very choosy and conservative. Working in a public school, I have not particularly encountered this.

I am curious what proposition, overt or covert, you take the depiction of interracial or LGBT families to be propaganda for.

Literally every single book my 3 year old daughter got for Christmas is either packed to the gills with LGBTQ "families" or interracial families mixed to a degree that I'm pretty sure is genetically impossible. Like I don't think White Woman + Latino Man = 1 Asian Child, 1 Black Child and 1 tan baby.

I suspect most people are not thinking about the plausibility of genetic relationship between depicted family members when buying children's books. For one, people can have family members whom they are not genetically related to. For two, children's book authors are known to take creative liberties with reality for the purpose of telling an entertaining story or imparting a moral. For example, they may depict an animal doing something it is quite unlikely for it to do in reality (like a caterpillar eating chocolate cake) or imagine entirely new creatures which do not exist (like large furred horned hominids or dragons).

  • -15

I am curious what proposition, overt or covert, you take the depiction of interracial or LGBT families to be propaganda for.

To the exclusion of all else. That's what I'm complaining about. It's to the exclusion of all else. Representation of families like ours, the majority of my nation, if this semi-random sampling of search engine recommended examples is to be believe, have been all but completely extirpated from contemporary children's book.

If representation matters, as the people advocating inclusion of interracial or LGBT families claim it does, why have they erased my family?

Do you feel particularly erased, seeing as you're the majority of your nation?

  • -13

The greater the percentage of some demographic in the country that isn't represented, the greater the number of people erased.

Only if the demographics of the books constitute "erasure" in the first place. You are begging the question.

Surely then nonwhite people shouldn’t complain about erasure of their experiences if people of their skin tone aren’t represented, then, if demographics of characters in books don’t count as erasure?

I was not aware that I had argued otherwise.

I assume you agree, then, that the progressive push towards showing disproportionately more minorities in media for representation and to combat erasure, etc etc., is similarly ill-argued.

More comments

Yeah I'd say so. There is literal, physical erasure when sky high violent crime rates and de-policing make cities unlivable. There's cultural erasure where white people in movies and on TV are reduced to idiot straw men who inevitably get lectured or threatened into conforming to modern liberalism (I recently saw a TV show where the plot of the episode revolved around the hero protagonists getting a high school kid banned from the Halloween dance for wearing a Thomas Jefferson costume). And there's economic erasure where we are at a major disadvantage for getting into schools or careers so the spots can go to other races. Then there's all of the little things like lower case "w" in white vs upper case "b" in black, or the president talking about how wonderful it is that whites are becoming a minority in the US.

My guess is that there's still going to be great amounts of older children's books available representing in the great majority heterosexual families of your country's majority ethnicity (or animals obviously intended to represent that ethnicity like Berenstain Bears in US etc.), no? At least when I go out in bookstores to check what they have, they usually have reprints of old classics front and center.

My guess is that a lot of modern children's books authors specifically think about the great majorities of existing children's books not showcasing groups other than heterosexual families of a country's majority ethnicity, and thus go above and beyond the call of duty to increase the general representativeness.

thus go above and beyond the call of duty to increase the general representativeness.

But that creates its own problem, the way that the actual percentage of any minority population within the general population is misrepresented. Whether that be thinking that black people are a greater share of the US population than they are, or LGBT people (especially trans). If people are presented with "Should we make sweeping social changes to accommodate 2% of the general population?" they are much less likely to say "yes" than if they are presented with "Should we make sweeping social changes to accommodate this sub-population (which you think is 10-20% of the population rather than 2%, because you've been deluged with books and social media where in an ensemble case of five, at least one is this particular sub-population)?"

It's also easy and lazy, and may be down to "do I want my book to be published?" even more than "do I want to be Diverse and Inclusive?" because see the YA fiction kerfuffles over race and transgender. Publishers nowadays may be more inclined to go for "we want DEI" and to not even consider a book that has all-white family, so if you're a kids' book author and you want a career, be darn sure to mix up the races and orientations of your characters.

There's also the stupid partisan political stuff, like the gay White House rabbits. No kid is going to read those books, but adults who want to feel like they're sticking it to the Man will fall over themselves to buy those kind of books. Personally I think the whole mania around the kind of pets the Presidents and Vice-Presidents own is crazy, but people do get all worked up over it. So the Pences had a pet rabbit, one of their daughters wrote kids' books about it, and of course this had to get political, because the fussbudgets can't let anything lie:

Pence himself was the focus of the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, and John Oliver announced that the show was publishing its own children's book, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, and making it available on Amazon just days before the original version. It stars a black and white rabbit in a glittery bowtie who falls in love with another boy rabbit named Wesley, only to be told by a Pence-esque stinkbug that they can't get married. It promptly took the number one slot on Amazon, knocking James Comey's upcoming memoir down to second.

I don't know how many 6-8 year olds were longing for a book about a rabbit getting gay married, but hey, John Oliver is a hack and this let everybody show off how progressive they were. And it wasn't even thinly-disguised, the first page outright states that this rabbit is part of the Pence family. Haw-haw, Pence is anti-gay and wants gay conversion torture camps set up everywhere, let's make his daughters' pet rabbit gay and get gay married, that'll show him!

(How old is Oliver, again? I think 6-8 years of age is too high for his mental age).

I dunno, what amount of children's books would you surmise are about gay couples? We have a bunch of old and modern ones at our house, and leafing through them, I've spotted some cases where some background couple might be gay, but obviously since they're background they're not being featured in a major role.

I have perhaps more experience in watching kids' TV, and out of all the children's shows I've seen, I've seen one instance where there's a bit player gay couple (for the record it would be Chip & Potato, where the main character's family's (which is as traditional a straight 3-child family with a cop father and, for the most of the series, homemaker mom you could imagine) neighborhood also has a couple of smartly dressed male zebras who appear to have adopted children. They don't actually go "we're gay and have gay zebra sex in our bedrooms" or anything like that and feature in maybe two episodes. This is my understanding of the general extent of representation in this field, at the moment.

I think that John Oliver thing can indeed be marked in the category of "it's a bit, not actually intended for children's books oeuvre", as you indicated.

I wouldn't freak out about things like "fleeting background gay kiss" in a movie, even a kid's movie. I think the recent flop by Disney, Strange World, is being presented as (by both sides) "it was because it was gay/inter-racial/strong women" but I think mostly it was probably awful (I'm just going by the trailer and the synopsis in Wikipedia).

Funnily enough, had they made a movie about the family patriarch, Jaeger Clade, and his adventures in the Strange World, I think it would have been a lot better. He seems the most interesting character in the trailer; his grandson, Ethan, is only there to be Gay Teenager First Out LGBT Character in a Disney Movie, and Searcher (Jaeger's son, Ethan's father) is insufferably wet. Look at the trailer and see if you agree.

The art style is also terrible, I've read it described as "Cal Arts style" but I don't know if it's so. It's that recent style where all the faces look the same (big eyes, potato nose, small chin, generally expressions of surprise or anger) like the female faces in "Frozen" all being identical, and the male and indeed female faces in this one being the same. Black, white, male, female, all have the 'big eyes, potato nose, big open-mouth expressions'.

(or animals obviously intended to represent that ethnicity like Berenstain Bears in US etc.)

Wait what? How are bears intended to represent an ethnicity? Their clothing seems to be generic American farmer, to my non-American eyes based mainly on the father wearing overalls. Are overalls restricted to farmers of some particular ethnicity in the US?

What could make a family of bears represent a non-white family? All I can really think of is eating ethnic food instead of honey, or perhaps wearing clothing of a very specific ethnicity instead of generic farmer.

Is it impossible to create a generic family of animals who might represent any family of any group?

This has already been done. Hood Berenstain: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0NN0gtBcxtk

As an American, the Berenstein bears are clearly intended to be white, exurban, and southern/lower midwestern.

Really? I was sure they were supposed to be a suburban Jewish family—but that might be because every time he hears the books mentioned, my dad exclaims, "They don't go to synagogue either!"

But there may not be textual evidence for his reading. I've mostly been able to avoid mentioning books since childhood

Aren't they shown celebrating Christmas?

Probably, but maybe it's a Jewish Christmas.

Do the books depicts a traditional Thanksgiving meal shared with Momma Bears family, then the traditional menorah lighting at least three states away from Papa Bear's nearest relative, and also show a Christmas Day where the bears unwrap the presents that are obviously books first spend hours of reading in silence, briefly thanking each other, then reading while they eat enchiladas?

If I could have my mom back for one holiday, it would probably be Christmas.

What makes them white and exurban (as opposed to rural)? What would a black exurban (or rural) southern/lower midwestern family of bears look like?

Again - my question is how to make anthropomorphized characters (that fit the constraints of children's media, i.e. nothing complex) non-white? In India this could theoretically be accomplished by exploiting ethnic dress (e.g. Sindhis wear very distinct clothing, at least for special occasions) for characters that actually wear clothes. But as far as I'm aware the US has almost no ethnic dress - the only ones I can think of are either for obscure groups (Amish, American Indians) or racist stereotypes that would be poorly received ("gangsta" clothes, sombreros).

So lets make it very concrete. Here's monkey mechanic. He's a monkey and he likes to help people by fixing their cars (with a monkey wrench). His only non-fixing stuff interest that I've observed is bananas. How do you make Monkey Mechanic non-white? (Or feel free to make other characters non-white, e.g. the giraffe who keeps hitting his head on the roof of his car.)

Their neighborhood is depicted as exurban/far suburban, their clothing(particularly the hats) is distinctly white, semirural, and working class, and the way the very special episodes on diversity are framed is clearly white and southern/lower midwestern.

A black coded southern bear family would probably be black bears to begin with, with a few other aesthetic distinctions(eg clothing), but you'd also probably be looking at more emphasis on sport and probably older-behaving cubs, without getting into obvious stereotypes.

I admit, I am unfamiliar with the particular style of hats from 1962 so I'll have to take your word for it. What kind of hats did black exurban working class people wear? Or were there no exurban black people in the midwest?

Also, is it impossible to have anthropomorphic children's characters that are simply not coded as anything? Is it impossible for Baby Shark to simply have no attributable human ethnicity? Would the Berenstain bears no longer be white if they were nude and hatless?

More comments

Wait what? How are bears intended to represent an ethnicity?

If they are brown bears native to Europe (with European names) it is obvious whom are they supposed to represent.

What could make a family of bears represent a non-white family?

Being species of bear originating from other part of the world?

Being species of bear originating from other part of the world?

Skidoosh.

Their names are "papa bear", "mama bear", "brother bear" and "sister bear". "Berenstain" is the name of the authors, not the bears, but Dr. Seuss (who assisted with the creation of the series) described them as "Berenstain bears" later to distinguish from other bear books after they became popular. I do not understand how you've determined they are Eurasian brown bears (which range from central Europe to Japan) instead of North American brown or grizzly bears (which was my assumption).

One possible way I can interpret this argument: any character, unless explicitly characterized as non-white, is assumed white and anthropomorphic characters of no particular ethnicity are impossible? E.g., baby shark is white (not Korean?!?) since it's a yellow shark of indeterminate gender who sings a 3 word song.

One possible way I can interpret this argument: any character, unless explicitly characterized as non-white, is assumed white and anthropomorphic characters of no particular ethnicity are impossible? E.g., baby shark is white (not Korean?!?) since it's a yellow shark of indeterminate gender who sings a 3 word song.

If the story is set in completely fantastic world unrelated to anything IRL, you are right that assigning RL racial identity to characters is absurd.

If the characters live in world that is just like our (North American suburban) world, except that the people are funny furry animals, assigning RL racial identity to characters is unavoidable.

I am curious what proposition, overt or covert, you take the depiction of interracial or LGBT families to be propaganda for.

Miscegenation.

According to basic genetics, all human are a result of repeated "Miscegenation".

I am not saying this is my view, but it is perfectly consistent to say that you like the races as they are and don't want them to mix, even if other races had to be mixed to produce the current races.

It's not consistent because you need to define a clear boundary between what constitutes a race. I'm a strong believer in HBD but in this case the precise definition actually matters and the racial definitions always have some degree of arbitrariness, and even what we currently define as "black americans" in the US are actually racial hybrids.

If I find 1% ashkenazi or 1% black in some of these people can I stop considering them white and put them in their own categories? What even constitutes a White, do you have to have the right amount of Yamnaya? Do actual Caucasians or middle easterners count? It doesn't make sense.

Why does it need to be precise?

It's not consistent because you need to define a clear boundary between what constitutes a race.

No you don't. You've never had to. Nothing in the way human society works relies on precision to such a degree.

What even constitutes a White, do you have to have the right amount of Yamnaya? Do actual Caucasians or middle easterners count? It doesn't make sense.

You don't need to make a rule for the 1% mixed or the octaroons, just enforce general social norms. People will work out the exceptions for themselves. That way "the good ones" will mind their own business nad you will not be having stupid bikeshedding nonsense arguments designed to grind the whole enterprise to a halt.

No you don't. You've never had to. Nothing in the way human society works relies on precision to such a degree.

Actually existing societies based on race always felt the need to establish legal boundaries of "pure race" with great detail and precision.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Casta_painting_all.jpg

And in most of these societies people routinely passed as a different race than they were born as, and no one cared very much. Particularly in IberoAmerica.

If white Mommy and Latino Daddy are married, having kids within marriage, and Daddy sticks around so that the kids have a stable family with at least one breadwinner, I am all for that message being pushed to kids in preference to "Mommy has three babies by three different daddies which is why one is Asian, one is black, and one is brown, but Mommy never married any of the baby daddies who are off having more kids with a selection of hos, bitches, and side pieces. And this is fine and normal, now let's all sing along to the song about the newest Pride flag!"

Ah come on mate, a caterpillar eating chocolate cake is fantasy anthropomorphism of the traditional sort in children's books from "A Wind in the Willows" to "Winnie the Pooh". White person and Latino person marry and have kids is reality, and in reality unless they are adopting, they won't end up with "Asian kid and black kid". If the book is about 'adopted families are real families', great fine that's a wholesome message, but if it's just meant to be ordinary typical "mommy and daddy and brother and sister" then it is pushing a message. "White mommy and Latino daddy have brown baby" is not a problem, but "White mommy and Latino daddy have Chinese baby" is, unless the text is explicit about "Mommy and Daddy couldn't have a baby of their own, so they adopted you and they love you just as much as if you were their born baby".

Well, at least it wasn't Anti-Racist Baby.

Well, at least it wasn't Anti-Racist Baby.

I thought that you were making it up, or that it was a parody, or something. But no, that book is dead serious. And it has overwhelmingly positive reviews, no less. I think that any hope I had for the US as a functional society has just died. :(

I couldn't believe it either, but no, it's a real thing. Why am I still surprised at the entire industry around Professionally Aggrieved Grievance Mongering?

I wouldn’t read too much into overwhelmingly positive reviews- my priors are distinctly that the overwhelming majority of reviews are fake anyways.

It's called "representation" and while it has assorted supplementary arguments (e.g. "minority children benefit from seeing people like them in fiction"), at its core it isn't anything as coherent as a proposition. Like Scott discusses in Ethnic Tension and Meaningless Arguments:

In a way, when we round people off to the Philosophy 101 kind of arguments, we are failing to respect their self-description. People aren’t out on the streets saying “By my cost-benefit analysis, Israel was in the right to invade Gaza, although it may be in the wrong on many of its other actions.” They’re waving little Israeli flags and holding up signs saying “ISRAEL: OUR STAUNCHEST ALLY”. Maybe we should take them at face value.

If it was a specific proposition it might have a stopping point. But it isn't "demographics in fiction should match the demographics of your real-life country", it isn't even "at least 50% of characters should be non-white'. It's that SJW types cheer or boo characters based on whether they're members of their favored or disfavored identity groups. So fiction influenced by them often ends up with demographics ranging from noticeably influenced to completely absurd. (And that isn't a stopping point either, even completely absurd levels of representation are often criticized for the representation being problematic in some way, having attracted a SJW-inclined audience that doesn't notice how hard it's trying to cater to people like them.)

Of course, this sort of sentiment regarding identity groups is not limited to fiction. For instance a major stated reason why the CDC recommended a COVID-19 vaccine-prioritization scheme that depriorited the elderly relative to "essential workers", contrary to their own estimates on what would save more lives, was because the elderly are more likely to be white, as I discussed in this post. Similarly various governments such as Vermont prioritized non-whites outright. As a matter of strict logical argument it doesn't seem like these things should be related, but in reality someone predisposed to like arguments in favor of the "underprivileged" will generally apply that bias whether the stakes are "realism in a fictional setting" or "many thousands of lives".

Woke propaganda is omnipresent in Western education in this day and age.

I got my degree outside of the West so I wasn't exposed to much of it in college.

But my younger brother studies in Canada, and I often hop on a video call while he studies. Humanities courses are fucked.

E.g., most universities have a first-semester course where they teach how to write an essay and common logical fallacies. I was taught this course very formally, the logical fallacies had latin names and the examples were all examples you come across in your personal life.

In contrast, the course my bro is going through; all the fallacies have revamped English names and alternate meanings. "Appeal to authority" is switched for "appeal to questionable authority". And all the examples are political, by happenstance, the left wing pov is the nonfallacious one. Quite a few fallacies' original meanings were extended.

Posts like yours are just another grain in the heap. The woke have complete institutional capture over education. Every student that passes through a college has to go through such a course.

In contrast, the course my bro is going through; all the fallacies have revamped English names, and alternate meanings. "Appeal to authority" is switchdd for "appeal to questionable authority". And all the examples are political, by happenstance the left wing pov is the non fallacious one. Quite a few fallacies original meanings were extended.

This is disturbingly fascinating to me; like the slogan edits in Animal Farm. I don't suppose you could get your hands on the course material (or a citation for it), and/or a complete list of names to share here?

I can. I'll post an update soon.

all the fallacies have revamped English names

No true Scotsman Person of Scotland.

Appeal to authority has always been flawed IMO. I raised this issue in class back in the day. They were trying to distinguish between good and bad kinds of appeal to authority.

Is it correct to believe the statements of oil companies about oil drilling/pipelines and so on? They're the domain experts after all. Yet they have a clear incentive to be economical with the truth.

Is it correct to believe the statements of doctors about medical treatments? Same issue.

All we were left with is that you shouldn't trust ridiculous nonsense like a Kardashian sponsored toothbrush. They don't know anything about teeth. But nobody would even bother seriously attacking that at a philosophical level. I suspect that what happens in the real world is that people just use appeal to questionable authority against their political enemies (oil companies) and defend it as legitimate for their allies (doctors). I sort of do the same thing against Kardashians unconsciously:

"Well of course the Kardashians don't know anything about teeth, they're airheads (I say despite knowing next to nothing about them, even presuming they probably have very white teeth/general cosmetics knowledge)"

"Well of course the oil companies don't know or care about safety, they only care about money (I say despite knowing nothing about the prevalence and danger of leaks on any kind of statistical basis, comparing cost/harm of oil leaks to the maintenance of industrial civilization)"

I had always understood “appeal to authority” as one of the “softer” fallacies, where it doesn’t sink the argument but you better make sure that it (and the authority) actually checks out.

you shouldn't trust ridiculous nonsense like a Kardashian sponsored toothbrush

I figure that can be perfectly valid evidence for the quality of the product! A company shelling out money for sponsorships signal that they believe in the product itself, which is important in situations where the consumer needs confidence that they won't drop support for it in the near future. For e.g. tech like game consoles this is especially valuable.

The Kardashians also have a personal brand to protect. If they sponsor a product I can be more confident it won't be so bad it'll damage their image; ceteris paribus this is certainly better than nothing.

I don't know about that:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/kim-kardashian-floyd-mayweather-crypto-scam-lawsuit-dismissed.html

Much as I hate to diss crypto, coins whose primary selling point is some gimmick of burning supply when people buy/sell are garbage. There ought to be some kind of use-case. Well in this case the use-case is forking it and running off with people's ETH.

EMAX launched with a total supply of 2 quadrillion tokens, yet that circulating supply continues to decrease as our tokenomics include a 0% tax on buys, a 6% tax on sells and transfers, 3% of which remains in treasury and 3% is burned every other week.

Well, I mean evidence in the bayesian sense. When it comes to "new crypto coin with no clear practical use case" my prior is strongly on "scammy pyramid scheme"; the soft evidence of celebrity endorsements does not do too much to move that.

Appeal to authority is a hack, a heuristic, a quick and dirty way to gather information in a world where our time and will is finite. It's like building a house on sand.

When you argue using authority, you're taking someone else's words on faith (or to be more generous/realistic, you're making a good bet). If you knew (ie have read and reasoned about) their argument, you might as well have used that. Since you did not, when the person you're arguing against starts questioning the authority, all that's left is to insist they have faith (or use and continue the authorities reasoning, as could've been done in the first place, without the appeal). No further argument can be made against you, except insofar as can be argued that you made a bad bet.

Having taught a bunch of Intro to Critical Thinking Courses, I completely agree with this take, and I'd usually have a dedicated class on epistemic trust, authority, and expertise following directly on from the first round of fallacies stuff. The broad set of conclusions I'd generally try to move towards with the class were things like (i) we're inevitably reliant on epistemic trust sometimes because we can't be an expert in everything, (ii) there are some reasonable heuristics for assessing who we should trust on what subjects (e.g., certifications and qualifications, career achievements, track record), and (iii) these heuristics themselves should come into question in certain circumstances (e.g., when an expert faces misaligned incentives, has personal biases, or is operating outside their usual domain of knowledge).

Appeal to authority is a fallacy in formal logic. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful heuristic. Likewise, if XYZ claims N, and you accurately say XYZ is a liar that doesn’t in a formal sense negate N but is is a useful heuristic in assessing the likelihood of N.

Understanding both is important.

Give them credit for the pro-Natalist message with the interracial families, at least.

I’m sure it’s frustrating that everything, absolutely everything, has to be gay now, even when it’s irrelevant or makes no sense. Heck I find it frustrating and I usually don’t have to deal with it directly. Which raises the question of- is there any society which is able to be chill about the whole ‘gays are out of the closet now’ thing?

What does it mean to be "chill" about it? Having it normalized without being constantly brought up? The chillest way to deal with gays is the way the more extreme islamic countries do it.

Breeding so many deadly diseases, male gays are a huge risk to the population and humanity as a whole, which is why so many successful societies developed a strong aversion to them. Covid is a joke in comparison, and we forced everyone to stay home and wear masks for Covid. The truth needs to be countered with constant lies and propaganda.

  • -20

Inflammatory claims require that you proactively provide evidence in proportion to how inflammatory your claims are, and "male gays are a huge risk to humanity as a whole, and the chillest way to deal with gays is to execute them" is extremely inflammatory.

You are allowed to make arguments about how homosexuality is bad and even that it should be suppressed, but you have to make those arguments in accordance with our rules, which means not just rolling with lazy hot takes about how gays are disgusting and hinting that we should kill them.

If you want to avoid stds then be careful who you are having sex with. Gay people can only spread their diseases to people who are willing to have sex with them, they are not forcing disease upon anybody, therefore they are innocent.

What diseases are you talking about?

HIV, obviously, was deadly as fuck—from about 1975 to 2015. AIDS was unknown before the Thatcher years , and the HIV-1 zoonosis was almost certainly during the Taft administration. That particular deadly disease simply did not exist when successful societies we're failing to fail.

I can't think of any that did, but am here to be informed

Without disagreeing with you- I certainly think that there's arguments in favor of suppressing homosexuality- I would say that "chill" means something like what you described to begin with-

Having it normalized without being constantly brought up?

A society where LGBT types get special legal privileges to dance down main street in their skivvies obviously doesn't count(eg the modern USA), but neither does a society where it's illegal to be out to children(eg Russia). And equally obviously a society like Iran where homosexuality is a capital offense doesn't count as chill about homosexuality.

Like I don't think White Woman + Latino Man = 1 Asian Child, 1 Black Child and 1 tan baby.

Unless they are cynically insinuating something about Mommy, but I agree that three is probably a bit young for the "cheating adulterous hos" rant 😲

I suppose just don't ask family to get books or specifically give them titles like "Goodnight Moon" or whatever. Give her another year or two for "The Hobbit", I think six or seven is about the right age for that if you're reading it to her.

Could have brought children from earlier relationships into the marriage, as well.

Or they could have literally bought children from the black market.

Cut the middleman, just have them kidnap the kids!

There are lots of classic books out there, there's no pressing need to ever buy a children's book under ten or even twenty years old. Dr. Seuss and Robert Munch I remember loving as a small child, and their books alone can fill a children's library.

Maybe I was oblivious as a kid. I probably was. But somehow I don't remember children's books being as blatantly propagandized as now.

I received a copy of Father Gander Nursery Rhymes as a child. It was published in 1986.

This is why we only have classic little golden books and some innocuous stuff from the 80s and 90s on our bookshelf. Also Roald Dahl, he's great. As others have said, there's no reason to buy modern propaganda children's books. Not only are they proselytizing, but they're mostly objectively ugly.

I would also recommend checking out some Catholic publishers. They often stock children's book that have a classic aesthetic and pro-family messages, and they don't always even have overt pro-Christian messaging.

Also FWIW I appreciate your posts on this topic. I'm also concerned and vigilant about this sort of subtle messaging, but very few around me are, and reading posts like these assures me that I'm not (entirely) crazy.

I don't think there was any particular reason for this, but most of the children's books my parents read to me when I was a kid were from the early 20th century. They also read stuff from earlier and later periods. Why is the default to buy recently published books when it's all new to children anyway?

I think the reason to consume new media in general when usually whatever the new good media are likely aren't better than the best media from 30 years ago is that people like discussing media with others, and everyone consuming new media is something of an equilibrium. Where as if everyone just looked for the absolute best media in their interests from the past 100 years, they likely wouldn't have recently consumed as much in common with their friends.

Small children don't really discuss with friends anyways, so perhaps this is just outright irrational(parents defaulting to what's a rational preference in other spheres but not here), or maybe it's more so parents can discuss with other parents children's books.

Yeah, this is what I miss the most from my 'watching the latest hit show' days. Now I try not to watch anything started after Trump's presidency, and I am watching a lot less trash as a result, but it is a lot harder talking about it with people. Recently my friends and I have been deciding on a show to watch together, like a structureless book club, which works alright, but I am still missing it as small talk with strangers.

There are still a pretty decent amount of recent shows that are good on their own, and also have mass appeal that you can chit chat with strangers about. You didn't have to cut them all out.

Why is the default to buy recently published books when it's all new to children anyway?

I mean, that's the problem. It's not in my mind. But it turns out, between my wife and myself, we remember a totally insufficient quantity of books to keep our kid entertained. And so the search for something new, or at least new to us, begins. And this search has been utterly ruined by SEO and good old fashioned media cartel behavior.

More or less every article you find on google about "Best X of Y", be it powertools, computer parts or children's books, looks like it was written by a chatbot sourcing the list from Amazon bestsellers and the attendant "user" reviews. In the case of powertools, this ends up with every top 10 list being full of the cheapest of chinesium desktop jointers. In the case of children's books, it's woke bullshit as far as the eye can see.

Well, don't use google you might say? Find a children's book review community. Why bother? My wife already suffered through the woke takeover of knitting, and I was around myself during the gamergate days and the fall of every community I previously enjoyed to ultra-woke moderation policies. Why after personally suffering those devastating losses of community, would I believe the first, second, third, forth and fifth community review site for children's books I come across to not also already be ultra-woke?

If I were religious, maybe I could rely on those institutions to pre-screen books for me. But we're not. And we both remember having weird religious neighbors and their thinly veiled religious polemics aimed at children. I guess it's better than the alternative, but we still feel adrift in a sea of info-hazards with zero way to navigate it.

I assume you've exhausted the list of Caldecott Medal books (older than 19xx)? That would seem like a place to start.

I haven't noticed this. My wife has been buying all the books though. Some of them I know are old classics like the Dr Seuss stuff. But maybe it's all old books and I just don't recognize most of them.

It also might be a situation like rock and roll music. Not many good rock and roll songs come out these days, because rock and roll has to compete with the entire back catalog. But country and rap only compete with the last few years of songs.

So for writing news kids books it might be better to target niche market of modern progressives, because no matter what they make it won't be as good as the old stuff.

Well its a culture (assuming western anglo of some kind) that doesn't want your child to exist so what did you expect?

Don't post low-effort snarls like this. If you want to argue that Western Anglo culture literally doesn't want someone's child to exist, you need to put more effort into clarifying your thoughts, not just post Enoch Powell and Sam Hyde memes.

I have a cousin in rural Montana with two teenage kids. Apparently, no CRT or overt LGBT stuff in their education there - thus far. Although his youngest (14) did make certain "friends" who tried getting her into TikTok and even injected this idea that she could be trans - which is strange, considering she isn't even a tomboy personality with masculine traits that should supposedly imply that she is. Anyway, she eventually fell out with them and is still figuring things out - but so far, so good. She's happier, more proactive with her hobbies, and has significantly cut down her time on social media. Her brother (18) will be going off to college soon though, and we do expect he'll be going through some courses that involve some culture war stuff and of course likely to be around a very left leaning circle. Honestly though, it'll be unavoidable throughout America in the next 5 years tops. Going forward, you may have to send your kid to do their degree in China or something, if you've lost all hope for American universities.

A lot of the non-woke college grads I personally know went to colleges that are in this group, The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities:

https://www.cccu.org/

Not that these are somehow inoculated from the wider culture war, but they seem to have higher survival rates for things like healthy Christian campus groups.

I just mention it because I wasn't really aware of the existence of schools like this until well into my 30s.

And a Merry Christmas to you!

the culture war by psychos

Don't do this, please.

although she balks at me reading the copy of the Hobbit I slipped in the drawer. Just not old enough for all those words without pictures yet.

FWIW there's a pretty good comic version.

In what’s becoming an annual ritual, I’m putting together a list of predictions for the year to come to share with some like-minded friends, mostly for fun and discussion. They’re still a work-in-progress, mostly cobbled together yesterday on the toilet, so I’m keen to tweak them. Format is straightforward.

<5% chances

Four things that you are extremely confident will not happen, the less obvious the better (no points for “the sun goes supernova”). To get top score, none of these should happen.

(1) Chinese invasion or full-scale blockade of Taiwan.

(2) Domestic terror attack in Western country killing >500 people

(3) Major housing price collapse (>25% YOY fall) in any G7 economy

(4) Nuclear weapons used outside Ukraine

~25% chances

Four things that you think are fairly unlikely to happen in 2023. For perfect calibration, exactly one of these should happen.

(5) At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine.

(6) Trump declares he will not/cannot run in the 2024 election.

(7) New serious COVID variant triggers new serious round of pandemic (more than 30 days of national lockdowns in UK)

(8) Average OPEC oil price for 2023 >$110

50% chances

Here I’m shooting for 2/4 to come true.

(9) BTC price recovers to at least $25k within first six months of 2023.

(10) Twitter announces bankruptcy.

(11) Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine

(12) Erdogan to win June 2023 Turkish national elections

75% chances

Shooting for 3/4.

(13) No new UK General Election.

(14) Vladimir Putin still President of Russia.

(15) A free Open Source LLM available by December 2023 with equivalent functionality to ChatGPT and no hard content restrictions.

(16) UK economy experiences net negative growth in 2023

>95% chances

Shooting for 4/4 here, but again, less credit for extremely obvious stuff.

(17) Joe Biden still President of USA at end of 2023

(18) SCOTUS overturns Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

(19) Xi Jinping remains Chairman of Communist Party

(20) SpaceX has first successful orbital flight of Starship.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

no points for “the sun goes supernova”

Well,* you're* no fun! 😁☀💥

25% chances - At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine

Yeah, I am dead sure this won't happen.

The others look reasonable to me.

I'm glad someone picked up on this. 25% is perhaps a little exaggerated (20% seems closer to the mark), but this an area where I'm far more pessimistic than most of the general public. However, among the nuclear policy scholars and geopolitics wonks in my circle, the mood is pretty bleak.

A few of my reasons for pessimism:

  • Russia is currently losing the war. It has failed to make any significant gains since Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the summer, and those came at huge costs in terms of expended artillery shells. It has suffered major setbacks in Kharkiv and Kherson, its offensive in Bakhmut has been a bloody disaster, and it's now under pressure again in Northern Luhansk. Mobilisation has stemmed the bleeding but looks unlikely to change the course of the war. Meanwhile, Western military supplies continue apace, and Ukraine shows no sign of capitulating through loss of political will.

  • Russia has burnt many of its boats and committed itself to fairly maximalist war aims. By formally annexing Donetsk and Luhansk and even more so by annexing Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, it's made it constitutionally very difficult to accept any kind of compromise peace. Through its partial mobilisation and high casualties, it's made it more difficult to justify a loss to its citizenry. And its new economic situation is not one it can easily walk back from; Europe is now investing billions in new LNG infrastructure and signing deals with Qatar and the UAE, foreign companies will take decades to regain investment confidence in Russia, and many of the talented Russians now in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Serbia will never return. The consequence of this is that Russia has little to gain (at least in the short-/medium-term) from reconciliation with the West; and equally, Russia has little to lose from further antagonizing the West.

  • The upshot of all of this is that if a Russian loss looks imminent, and it can be averted by using nuclear weapons, then Russian may well decide to do so; "might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb", as the saying goes.

  • But would Russia really violate the nuclear taboo? The nuclear taboo is one of those things that feels like a deep law of history, but it's far more contingent than most people realise. It was very much up for grabs in the early Cold War, and through the 1960s-1980s was largely maintained due to factors like (i) well-defined zones of influence and control, (ii) reasonable parity in conventional weapons, and (iii) fear of rapid escalation towards a full strategic exchange. None of those factors apply anything like so strongly nowadays: Russia's weakness relative to the EU and the West as well as emerging powers means it can no longer maintain control over its old sphere of influence; Russia's military might is dramatically inferior to what it once was; and there is far less likelihood of either the West or East deciding to go 'all-in' on a full blown pre-emptive counterforce strike if things start to get hairy. My sense is that the nuclear taboo is in a very fragile state, and its persistence in a post Cold War world is very much up-for-grabs.

  • It's often been pointed out (including by me) that 'battlefield nukes' are of limited operational value, at least in the absence of the massive tank formations and chokepoints of the Cold War in Europe. However, there are plenty of ways Russia could make effective use of nuclear weapons to stave off a defeat, such as targeting Ukrainian command and control, infrastructure, and logistics hubs behind the frontlines. This would obviously result in civilian casualties, but judicious target selection and the use of smaller warheads could limit these to perhaps 100,000 or so. Also note that the diplomatic consequences of using 1 nuke are not significantly less than the consequences of using 15 or so, hence Russia could do a lot of damage to Ukraine at relatively fixed cost to itself.

  • But wouldn't the West respond? Honestly, I doubt it. The second a nuke goes off in Ukraine, there will be large scale panic in Western populations. Russia would probably say something ambiguous like "any direct offensive retaliation from NATO will be met in kind, utilising all appropriate weapons systems at our disposal". While Biden might be tempted to do something like sink the Black Sea fleet, most Europeans would likely push him to take a diplomatic approach, condemning the attacks wholeheartedly and putting increasing pressure on China and India to distance themselves from Russia. I think there's a good chance this would work, and Russia would be left extremely isolated, which is why I still think Putin will refrain from using nuclear weapons. But note that neither India nor China are currently critical to Russia's war effort; its main external weapons supplies have been coming from North Korea and Iran, countries unlike to switch posture as a consequence of a first-use of nuclear weapons by Russia.

  • So, to give a concrete scenario: in September 2023, after nine months of attritional warfare, the UAF finally make a major breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia and are pushing south towards Melitopol and Mariupol. Russia's hard-won land-bridge to Crimea looks under threat. Russia responds by launching 15-20 nuclear-tipped Iskander missiles at Ukrainian military C3 and logistics, halting the advance and giving Russian force time to regroup and counter-attack. Immediately before the launch, Russia would notify NATO as to what it was doing, and warn them not to interfere. The gambit works, Ukrainian forces are decimated and fall back. Russia announces that any further attempts to attack its territory will be met with nuclear response, and attempts to freeze the conflict.

I'm not saying this is likely - but if I was a diehard Russian nationalist facing defeat, I'd be seriously considering how I could best use nuclear weapons to force a favourable end to the war. Hence 20-25% seems about right for me.

deleted

All very well said. But I think this would all happen much faster than we're used to in previous wars; there won't be any time for call-ups or general mobilisations. Here's a simple sample timeline -

T0 - Russia launches 20 Iskander SRBMs at Ukrainian C3 targets, triggering a collapse in unit cohesion and allowing Russian to seize key objectives

T+24 hours - A day of international outrage and emergency meetings. Strongest possible language from Biden & other NATO leaders. Fairly strong condemnation from China, India, and Brazil. Meanwhile Putin announces he's putting all nuclear forces on high alert and initiate civil defense drills across Russia.#

T+36 hours - After much wrangling, Biden achieves NATO support for a strike on Russian naval assets across the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Some 200 cruise missiles are launched, sinking a dozen Russian naval assets and hitting seven key bases in the region.

T +48 hours - Russia retaliates by launching a series of cruise missile strikes on NATO bases in Poland.

T +56 hours - NATO begins SEAD operations against bases on Russian soil in response to Poland attacks.

T +60 hours - After a JDAM hits a SAM site at a Russian airbase where nuclear bombers are stationed, Russia launches a series of three tactical nuclear strikes at American airbases in Poland. Putin announces that any further attacks on Russian nuclear sites (=most Russian airbases) will result in a full-scale counterforce strike on NATO nuclear assets worldwide.

What would you advise Biden to do? Should he have gotten off the train somewhere prior to this point? Escalation has a lethal logic all of its own, and there's a good reason why the West may decide to stick with diplomatic responses to limited Russian nuclear use in Ukraine.

Which is why I’m so against the current funding of Ukraine. It is one thing to prop it up and put it in a situation where it can achieve a reasonable negotiated peace.

But the current level of funding being provided is increasing the odds of something really catastrophic happening over a country that is not a close ally and is corrupt. Ukraine could be America and we could be France; but Ukraine could also be Afghanistan. Just isn’t worth the risk.

The last time anyone used a nuclear weapon in hostilities was Nagasaki. So using nukes now would break the taboo and I think that taboo needs to be enforced with the might of a thousand gods.

I've always thought this argument would be deeply unconvincing to anybody living in Russia or Japan. To them it might sound like

The last time nukes were used was when we, the Americans used them. If our enemies were to try the same thing - why it would be unspeakably horrific, and would prove our enemies are unredeemable monsters.

If this taboo needs to be enforced with the might of a thousand gods, the United States cannot be allowed to continue to exist. If they are allowed to exist after using nukes - well maybe their enemies have a chance of achieving the same feat.

20% is way too high, imho. The last time nukes were used for was was 1945. It's one of those things that seems inevitable given how many nukes there, but no one wants to cross that rubicon.

Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine

I think this is far less likely than you think. The issues of spare parts, tools, how many people would need to be trained in maintenance procedures, availability of compatible weapons, and ability to integrate with existing air defense infrastructure, including radios, radars, IFFs etc seems to me to make this virtually impossible.

I think you're forgetting Ike's warning.

The point of supplying munitions to Ukraine is not so that Ukraine can use them effectively to beat Russia, it's so the military industrial complex's pocket senators have an excuse to order more munutions on the US taxpayer's dime and to Lockheed Martin's profit.

No-one cares if the jets can actually work effectively, they're an accounting strategy, not a military strategy.

Though it would presumably be bad for sales if they were a complete dud?

(1) Chinese invasion or full-scale blockade of Taiwan.

Not going to happen. China is building its military at an incredible rate, western militaries havent ramped up their anti China programs such as B21 and are in an awkward position maintaining cold war era tech, dismantling the low end war legacy in the middle east and trying to start new programs. The amount of munitions going to Ukraine is astounding. It is better for China to push a potential war well into the future. This includes their domestic market. They are building new nuclear power, trying to build their own supply chains etc. A war in 2023 would be horribly premature.

(3) Major housing price collapse (>25% YOY fall) in any G7 economy

This isn't that dramatic and probably more likely.

(5) At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine.

The threshold for nukes is very high and i is unlikely that they would be used outside an all out war between NATO and China/Russia.

(11) Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine

More likely MIGs supplied by someone else. Building an Airforce of Gripens/F16s is a big job.

(17) Joe Biden still President of USA at end of 2023

The death rate for people at his age is roughly 5%. That doesnt count people becoming vegetables after a stroke. The chances of him not making it through the year are more like 10%.

(20) SpaceX has first successful orbital flight of Starship.

We overestimate what will happen in the next 3 years and underestimate what will happen in 10-30 years. A year in a massive rocket program is nothing, these projects easily stretch well over a decade. Spacex is fast but falcon 1/9 were not speedy programs. If they are in commercial service 2027 it would be fast. Their rocket is incredibly ambitious and test-cycles will be long as a new rocket is expensive and slow to replace. I give them a 40% chance of reaching orbit next year and I would be mightily impressed by their speed if they succeed in 2024.

(1) Chinese invasion or full-scale blockade of Taiwan.

Not going to happen.

Agree. People seem to systematically overestimate the likelihood of escalation of geopolitical events.

To be clear, in my original prediction, this was listed at <5% (ie not going to happen this year)

Not going to happen. China is building its military at an incredible rate, western militaries havent ramped up their anti China programs such as B21 and are in an awkward position maintaining cold war era tech, dismantling the low end war legacy in the middle east and trying to start new programs. The amount of munitions going to Ukraine is astounding. It is better for China to push a potential war well into the future. This includes their domestic market. They are building new nuclear power, trying to build their own supply chains etc. A war in 2023 would be horribly premature.

Do they even want to land though? Like, ever? They could as well just blockade the entire island until Taiwan gives in. Think what happens when there is no food imports, no fuel, etc. It would only need to happen for a few weeks for there to be significant chaos.

They could as well just blockade the entire island until Taiwan gives in.

Blockades are an act of war, so they would earn some of the sanctions that are currently reserved for Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

More importantly, the US has a history of being dedicated to freedom of navigation in the Taiwan strait. So if CCP really wants to enforce that blockade they are going to have to start by attacking ships of the US Navy. Unlikely.

Nukes seem overrated even in Ukraine. I’d still put used in Ukraine at the under 5% bucket.

Housing price collapse >25% in real terms seems guaranteed. But my guess is it happens over 5 years. So 25% for one year seems close.

Ukraine is expected to get F-16 by the experts. Alperovitch expects Ukraine to get full Nato weapons in time. Maybe not 2023 but there coming when the west has a game plan for post war and are ready to speed up victory.

Joe Biden president at end of 2023 is close to right. I’d go lower. Biggest risks imo is health. He’s old enough that 5% chance of a health issue seems plausible. Plus any risks something gets pinned on him with Hunter.

I’d have to do more analysis but 75% seems high for UK negative growth.

Twitter bankruptcy seems high for next year. Musks can bail them out. And I think they have some cash on balance sheet to get thru the year. Without Musks having cash it might be 50%. Musks might even just buy out the debt at a discount personally. If Twitter was pe owned etc then the finances might be closer to 50-50. But for reputatational risks he’s got enough money to fix them.

It would be a tactical bankruptcy. Twitter already survived a decade and the stock price was at $45 despite losing money, so imminent bankruptcy seems very unlikely, especially with Musk's cost cutting. Musk would not buy a company for $43 billion at risk of imminent bankruptcy. He would wait for the stock to crash and then buy it.

No clue if you understand bankruptcy. You cant just go bankrupt. Need to wipe out your equity which wouldn’t exists now. You can’t change the balance sheet without completely wiping out the current equity.

Musks loses control of twitter if he declares bankruptcy. The debt currently owned by banks becomes equity and they can sell the debt out to the highest bidder as new equity.

Musk would still be the CEO during bankruptcy and retain ownership if after emerging from bankruptcy, being that he's the debtor-in-possession. If it went chapter 7 then he would lose everything. This occurs when there is no way to rectify the situation, but twitter still earns $600 million/year. Twitter has $18 billon in debt. bankruptcy would allow twitter to renegotiate the terms of this debt on more favorable terms. Asbestos and tobacco companies have filed chap 11 bankruptcy when faced with litigation, to reduce of the burden of this debt. When emerged from bankruptcy, the old holders simply get new stock , they don't lose everything. Musk would not float the idea of bankruptcy if it meant irrevocably losing the $25 billion he put into it.

The debtors wouldn’t take a write down on their debt without taking over the equity. The debtors would be the equity.

He would need to own the debt to maintain control.

right but musk would still own part of twitter too after it emerges . It would make no sense for companies to ever go chapter 11 if it meant the owner losing everything.

No that’s normal. You go bankrupt the equity goes to zero. And the debt takes over.

Litigation might be a bit different with unlimited liability. But debt taking over equity is completely normal and the standard.

You are 100% correct companies don’t go bankrupt because they want to. They go bankrupt because they had a bill to pay and their bank account say 0.

You are 100% correct companies don’t go bankrupt because they want to. They go bankrupt because they had a bill to pay and their bank account say 0.

Not necessarily. That is what a strategic bankruptcy is. Chapter 7 means twitter is worthless and the assets that remain sold off to pay off creditors, and musk loses everything. Chapter 11 allows twitter to reorg while giving Musk an opportunity to retain some of his wealth and run the company. Creditors would prefer to get paid than not, so reorg is better than defaulting. let's say twitter is worth $30 billion. $18 billion is debt. that $12 billion does not go away. It does not go to the creditors. unless twitter becomes worthless then musk loses everything . If it thrives, Musk's stake could be worth more when it reemerges. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/06/02/3-bankruptcies-that-actually-helped-investors.aspx

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I could see Musk buying some of the debt that seems discounted from face about 40 cents on the dollar. Buy the debt to make sure you retain some control post bankruptcy.

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UK house prices need a ~50% collapse to get to reasonable values, even comparing to other advanced economies. We basically have a housing cartel where government regulations strictly limit builds and cause untold amounts of misery to the young and the high earners/low wealth people.

50% chance of bankruptcy for Twitter seems quite high, but maybe you know something I don’t. (I haven’t been following Twitter’s post-Musk finances very closely.)

it would be a strategic bankruptcy, not because twitter is in dire risk of running out of money. Because twitter is no longer public, worrying about shareholders is not as much of a concern. this is common with private equity: the company is taken bankrupt and costs are cut. it then emerges from bankruptcy more valuable than before.

(3) Major housing price collapse (>25% YOY fall) in any G7 economy

I think this is higher than 5%. Maybe 25%

At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, I would put nuclear weapons use at < 5%

Vladimir Putin still President of Russia.

Unless he dies for some reason, would put at 95%.

Joe Biden still President of USA at end of 2023

You may as well go by actuarial tables here.

BTC price recovers to at least $25k within first six months of 2023.

It'd put that at <5%. More likely falls to 10k . Chart, price action very weak, too many scams.

Why only 50% for Erdogan winning? I don't really keep up with Turkish politics, but it seems to me that his grip on power is as strong as ever. Has anything changed in the past couple of years?

Anti-Semitism: A few random counter-points

It's become a common 'noticing' game in alt-right spaces, to go to the early life section of the anti-white and/or pro-degeneracy figure de jour; and role the mental dice on what feels like a 50% chance of a Jewish family popping up. Kushner's allegedly subversive role in the Trump administration is thought of similarly. At the same time, I keep noticing that a similar pattern seems to have been developing for a while on the other side. Take the following data-points:

Strongest Anti-Immigration Trump Official: Steven Miller (He's now running the only Republican Super-PAC I can remember specifically attacking anti-white discrimination)

Most influential social media right-winger: Libs of Tiktok

Most radical far-right academic: Amy Wax (who invited Jared Taylor to dine with her Law school students)

Also worth mentioning: Roy Unz, Paul Gottfried, David Cole, Darren J Beattie, Amanda Milius.

It seems that the small contingent of genuinely pro-western Jews do some pretty heavy lifting. It would be interesting to look into whether there are any salient factors seperating them from the sea of their left-wing or open-borders libertarian counterparts. Amanda Milius I believe posted something about the dividing line being whether they had been settlers vs immigrants but a cursory look doesn't exactly confirm this thesis.

If a group is generally smarter than average, of course members of that group will be represented at high levels of any endeavor.

This is more or less my take. One can see parallels with a lot of historical political movements, a disproportionate number of jews on both sides, but perhaps not when IQ/Social status is taken into account.

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/when-jews-backed-a-fascist-mussolini-king-victor-emmanel-1.451099

Yes, modern orthodox Jews and traditionalist Catholics are way overrepresented among high-profile conservatives. It doesn't take much explanation, incidentally, as to why- Jews are generally a very successful bunch, and traditionalist Catholics maintain what even progressives recognize as the highest-quality nonwoke education system, and they both have obvious reasons for being on the right.

The question the alt-right is, I suspect, more interested in awakening in viewers of that particular noticing, is why Jews are so interested in progressive lunacy. Like from a statistical perspective you should expect lots and lots of Jewish DNC figures who are firmly establishment and are very important, but they prefer to give the frontseat to blacks and be most prominent in farther left groups, many of them outside the overton window?

I think that's a steelman of the "early life check" meme. Not "why are Jews so prominent", but "why are they so overrepresented among, specifically, anti-white and pro-deviancy activists, when you'd expect them to be firmly politically moderate".

Like from a statistical perspective you should expect lots and lots of Jewish DNC figures who are firmly establishment and are very important, but they prefer to give the frontseat to blacks and be most prominent in farther left groups, many of them outside the overton window?

I suspect the answer has to do with politics and education. To the first, you earn credit with trendsetters and opinion makers on the left if you platform people who they also support. To the second, you would naturally raise up the voices of the seemingly-oppressed if you've been taught that it's immoral for them to suffer because they don't get enough support.

and traditionalist Catholics maintain what even progressives recognize as the highest-quality nonwoke education system

I think you overestimate the proportion of traditionalist Catholics. Most Catholic schools are absolutely overran by a "woke" ideology and have been for a long, long time. Traditionalist schools are only getting off the ground now and suffer from a lack of qualified educators or downright silliness as a result of that demographic, e.g. teaching creationism.

It's also worth noting that the Jewish counter-examples you raise have themselves far higher than average anti-Semitic views. Ron Unz, Paul Gottfried, David Cole, et al. share critiques of Jewish influence with the alt right. Ron Unz is a "Holocaust denier" and probably more anti-Semitic than than the average alt-righter, owing to his depth of knowledge. David Cole is also a Holocaust denier (although he'll try to distance himself from the term, he is one according to any mainstream authority on that label). Gottfried has been influential on the alt-right and hits many of the same criticisms of Jewish influence (i.e. in the Neo-conservative movement) and zionist hypocrisy, which are standard fare on the DR.

Jewish anti-semitism is an interesting phenomenon. It's a phenomenon the DR recognizes and appreciates, because obviously in-group criticism is going to have a greater force of credibility than an out-group criticism. But overall I would say it lends credibility to so-called "anti-semitic" views that the most "pro-western Jews" are more likely to sympathize with and agree with alt-right critiques which are called "anti-semitic."

Twitter Files 10

Another thread, another author writing for the Twitter Files. Link

David Zweig writes the following.

  1. Twitter and other important internet platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) were in meetings with the Trump WH since the start of the pandemic to help combat misinformation. The Trump WH was concerned with 5G conspiracies, "runs on grocery stores", and "panic buying".

  2. The Biden WH on the other hand was concerned about Covid. They wanted high-profile anti-vaxx accounts taken offline, noting people like Alex Berenson. The justification was that Covid misinformation was killing lots of people.

  3. Twitter did not immediately capitulate, they were internally hesitant and debating as to whether to suppress people spouting arguments that went against government positions on the topic. But this does not mean that they didn't suppress people.

  4. Twitter's moderation, as you might expect, consists of machine-learning bots at the first layer, then contracted moderators from the Phillipines, and lastly review by "higher level employees" (implied American, or familiar with the culture).

  5. Twitter took the establishment position on Covid, sure, but this went far beyond just applying the "misinformation" tag to people saying vaccines don't work or that Covid is a hoax. It went as far as slapping that label on anyone saying anything that contradicted the mainstream CDC position on anything Covid-related or Covid-narrative-related. In most cases, the same message was seen ("Misleading: Learn why health officials recommend the vaccine for most people") and could no longer be interacted with. Some examples:

    • Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, argued that not everyone needed to take a vaccine, and that it was good for old people and their caretakers, but children and people with natural immunity were fine.

    • @KellyKGA cited CDC statistics to argue that Covid was not the leading cause of child deaths from disease.

    • @_euzebiusz_ cited a study which argued that mRNA vaccines were associated with cardiac arrests.

I have to say, if there was ever a case that reeked of TDS to me, it would be Jim Baker complaining and asking why Donald Trump saying "Don't be afraid of Covid" wasn't a violation of the company's Covid policies, to which Yoel Roth reminded him that it was a "broad, optimistic statement". Or maybe Baker just had a day of Covid-brain, who knows?

In any case, I'm really annoyed that Zweig doesn't talk at all about the Trump WH and what Twitter did or did not do during that time, or about any other requests the Biden WH might have made. Yeah, it's Covid and all that, but are you seriously telling me the Biden WH didn't ask about other topics? At least tell us if so. Tell us about how many requests were made, percentages of fulfilled requests, etc. You could very much do that here and make a stronger, more principled point.

As for what was said, I don't really think it's new. Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.

P.S: whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?

who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?

Incompetent computer users ... or competent whistleblowers? I was under the impression that these releases are all of management-approved, post-Musk-buyout results of trawling through historical archives, but if I'm wrong and any of the data were amassed contemporaneously, then it would just have been good personal security to collect them via "the analog hole" rather than via a screenshot that could be more easily logged and reviewed.

Notes from Trump-land: the cognitive dissonance of the Trump fandom being against the Trump vaccines is resolved in pre-pandemic reports that Trump is a germophobe, that he’s a man who trusts the American medical establishment including big pharma. It’s only natural that one man (no matter how smart and big-league clever) couldn’t be absolutely right on everything.

Also, he had Mike Pence (out of the fandom’s good graces since saying he wouldn’t halt or delay the tally on 1/6) run the Federal task force on the coronavirus. So, if fans can’t swallow the idea that Trump was fooled by Big Pharma, at least they can find solace in swamp Pence being in with the conspiracy. (“We should have trusted the fly all along.”)

Easier path to resolution from my (admittedly tiny) corner of Trump-land - expedited development of vaccines was a good idea, was executed better than could reasonably be expected with the American federal government obstacles, and the vaccines represented an honest best effort to handle COVID-19. They may have even worked fairly well against vanilla COVID, although that's not entirely clear and became irrelevant in short order. There was no grand conspiracy, the vaccines aren't particularly dangerous, they're just incredibly disappointing when it comes to stopping variant transmission. Trump did approximately nothing wrong with regard to executive action on the vaccines.

The sins around vaccination have nothing to do with development and everything to do with the mandates (both the ones that survived challenges and the ones that were eventually struck down). These mandates were policies of the Biden administration and/or other entities following the federal lead on the topic. With regard to vaccines, the simple resolution to this set of claims rounds to Trump Good, Biden Bad.

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A lot of military-adjacent older people (not saying conservative) also have inspiration from the military's previous Anthrax vaccine, which had a variety of pretty nasty effects and lead to some pretty severe paranoia. Combined with the weird behavior around the CICP (possibly just a combination of delays and higher standards of proof than the unofficial-autistic-baby-fund for other vaccines?) and sometimes ridiculous pressure being brought against critics of the mandates, it's not too hard to come up with Red Tribe motivations.

In net, I think the paranoia was wrong (modulo younger kids and the heart risk, albeit more b/c COVID risks are so low for that group anyway rather than the risk being clear), but the Blue Tribe assumptions that it was solely motivated by foundationless reasoning bugs me.

I do think there's a little more "they pushed untested technology on us" in the conservative world than your description

A lot of that is coming from conservative people in heavily-blue states or cities, where there really were attempts to make not getting the shots seriously harmful to careers and ability to be in society, and where any suspicion was treated as socially unspeakable.

There is also a lot of contempt for the fact that vaccine producers were absolved of liability by the government, with their liability shifted to the gov't fund -- they feel like that's either 1) fishy or 2) irresponsible. T

Is that really the argument? Seems odd, since that has been standard procedure for vaccines since the creation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.

How many people would have even known that?

There's far too many cases where people just lack the historical knowledge to understand why/how normal something may be that seems odd from the outside looking in.

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Can we at least give some of the due necessary to the reasonable arguments for waving liability? In the middle of an ongoing pandemic that threatens million of lives you actually do have a pretty good case that a potentially dangerous vaccine is more useful than no vaccine at all and that is realistically your alternative if pharma companies feel as though they need enough rounds of testing to mitigate this additional liability. If they were only give to the very high risk populations and had some huge greater than 10% chance of complications that might still be a good play. The calculous is much different when forced on everyone but that's a different objection.

If they were only give to the very high risk populations and had some huge greater than 10% chance of complications that might still be a good play. The calculous is much different when forced on everyone but that's a different objection.

I don't think it's possible to separate that objection -- if you're going to force the vaccine on literally everyone over 12 and heavily market it (using government resources to boot) for toddlers on up (did they ever get it approved for infants? even worse if so), then the vaccine had better be awfully damned safe -- and if it's not, skin in the game would be helpful.

Like /u/drmanhattan16,

Just FYI, this isn't how you mention people here. You would use "@" instead of "/u/".

Did you mean to reply to someone else?

More comments

Like /u/drmanhattan16,

Just FYI, this isn't how you mention people here. You would use "@" instead of "/u/".

COVID vaccines did not fall under the NVIC; the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act put COVID countermeasures as a whole under the sole jurisdiction of the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. There are valid reasons for that. some other anti-pandemic measures are similarly separated, but does impact a number of traits. I don't think it should change the responsibility calculus too heavily, but I've had no small number of people (including coworkers!) that saw the VICP as a rubber-stamp fund and the CICP as largely focused on minimizing outlays (I was never able to get good numbers on either assumption).

This was not helped further that the CICP took forever to start releasing compensation.

I don't think his base was ever that strongly opposed to vaccines on principle (that came later after Biden won). Rather, they opposed masks, lockdowns, etc.

I think this assembled from a combination of aggressively pushing the vaccines, aggressively suppressing any debate about its dangers, creating a regime of zero liability for Big Pharma and it being pushed by the same people that did "masks, lockdowns, etc.". Anything with the same properties would encounter resistance, especially in the population which has low trust in the government from the start, and in the government controlled by their enemies doubly so. It's not the opposition to the idea of the vaccination per se, which was pretty fringe prior to that. It's the source and the implementation of this particular one. If there were a force in US politics which was genuinely concerned about health and genuinely tried to optimize for vaccine acceptance and not culture war, then they would coopt Trump and other right wing celebrities into the effort. But there are no forces in US politics that aren't in the war - they just don't survive anymore - so that wasn't going to happen. Everything (important) is a tribal issue now.

One hour between first and last post in thread - better than previous twitterfiles releases!

This doesn't seem that surprising - headlines like Feds step up pressure on social media over false COVID-19 claims were plentiful and the censoring of professors etc for poor reasons has been covered extensively. And every tweet marked as misinformation or suspended account was already public information.

e: It'd be interesting for them to do deep dives into twitter's internal processes, or any kind of long-form piece. Instead, meandering twitter threads and context-free screenshots.

((I can't help but think the combination of a December 26th release and the overtly culture-warry nature of theFP is intentional, given some other decisions; this does seem like the sort of efforts that you'd want to run if you didn't want to get a lot of gen-pop attention.))

@KellyKGA cited CDC statistics to argue that Covid was not the leading cause of child deaths from disease.

[Contemporaneous discussion here]. This one particularly bugs me because it was really bad work from the CDC, and either Twitter put a CDC slide deck referencing a preprint above their own ability to do math, or (to steelman) wanted the debunking of a bad study blocked for general trust or virtue of silence reasons. It's good that this wasn't in the list of things that the Biden team was forcing, but it's not so good to find out that it actually hit a human for review.

In any case, I'm really annoyed that Zweig doesn't talk at all about the Trump WH and what Twitter did or did not do during that time...

Yeah. It'd be either really philosophically convenient or inconvenient if the Trump White House's broader incompetence meant it also couldn't coordinate the level of meanness that the Biden White House has, but it's hard to tell if that's actually the case or if Zweig's just glossing over it. Banning talk of store runs hit a lot of stuff, and that's being overtly charitable and assuming it's not a byword for all of the mask-labeling that was flying around.

Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.

To an extent, but as with the last few posts, there's more to the matter than whether or not it was happening at all. The information here absolutely removes a lot of the more charitable options or explanations. The possibility that the more aggressive abuses of these labelings were just a side effect of a well-intentioned but purely-algorithmic and poorly-designed process was a least moderately plausible, and it was never clear to what extent twitter's 'manual' review ever touched a human or would ever consider appeals. For KellyKGA specifically, there were believable reasons she might have gotten a bunch of gang-reporters!

Nope! Get enough 'tattles', and be on the wrong side of a question, and out you go. You could hire an attorney and get twitter to do an internal audit (wtf?), and while that might get you unsuspended even that the highest levels of human review was... charitably not very good at math or far more interesting in the connotations or side effects of true information than the truth. That's kinda important, and really hard to prove from outside.

Likewise, 'everybody' knew that the CDC and White House were coordinating 'misinformation' work, because they published news saying exactly that. But it kinda makes a difference if they were just discussing policy at a theoretical level, or on an object level, or even if it were just specifically The World's Wrongest Man that the White House wanted to ban. But even Berenson's lawsuit wouldn't have been able to find that he was just one (high-profile) of a list that the government was sending to Twitter and regularly raising pressure on. And it's probably still not illegal! But even if every single one was similarly wrong, the White House singling out specific people and strongly encouraging social media companies to ban them is something quite a lot of people would deny was happening just six months ago.

For KellyKGA specifically, there were believable reasons she might have gotten a bunch of gang-reporters!

Wait, can you explain what you mean? Your linked image just shows this person refusing to continue the debate.

KelleyKGA has a habit of tweaking the noses of fairly high-profile people: the guy in that screenshot is a previous (Trump-appointed) US Surgeon General, but compare here (bio).

That doesn't sound like a lot, but it doesn't take a lot to get a hatedom, these days.

I've interacted with some of the people doing review of internal, employee-generated content at Facebook, and they're seeming incapably of deductive reasoning.

I posted internally that since the COVID risk is concentrated among the elderly and we have few, if any people at the company that are 70+, then our risk profile is lower than the risk profile for the country as a whole.

This resulted in content removal and a meeting with the censors. I tried to explain the reasoning and it was like talking to a wall. I was effectively told that you're not allowed to do your own reasoning. Conclusions like this have to come from an "authoritative source" and that such sources are either government public health agencies or peer reviewed papers.

I was also told I didn't have a source on age distribution at the company, which would mean this was speculation which was also not allowed.

Let’s hold off on complaining about not getting more. If history is any indication, more will come.

If the intended release schedule for this is that we're going to be getting drops well into Jan or Feb, I'm probably just going to stop reading. I appreciate Musk for letting people report on it, but if this requirement to publish nothing off Twitter that isn't first reported on-site stays in effect, I'm going to lose my mind and patience.

Why? In someways I think it’s more interesting because it allows for responses that appear foolish days or weeks later. If you believe many actors are conflict theorist, then the drip drip drip exposes them.

It can only be interesting to the extent that there's actually interesting information coming out. A lot of releases are misses rather than hits, but all of them get hyped like they're about to prove that lizard people are real.

I don’t think they’ve been missed. It has been people saying “nothingburger because not XYZ” or “we knew that.”

To the first, later releases clarify that XYZ is not a good argument. To the second, ”knowing” something is different from knowing it. That is, confirmation is important.

It might be interesting from a "own my enemies" kind of view, but I'm not interested in owning the whomever, I'm interested in what actually happened. This drip-drip-drip / insistence on controlling the rate/flow of information is making me suspicious in ways I can't quite articulate properly.

P.S: whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?

I don’t think this would be very likely, but maybe fear of keyloggers?

Old school field-craft making a come-back.

Can’t say I thought it was too likely, but well!

There’s probably more sophisticated ways for a company to keep track of who’s being a rat at this point, but I wouldn’t know much about it.

I wonder how many of these there will be

whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?

The Facebook leaker defeated Meta's internal security measures by taking photos of documents with her phone. If these were at-the-time unapproved attempts at leaking, then photos of screens by phones makes sense.

As for what was said, I don't really think it's new. Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.

As with most conspiracy facts, when they come out, the significance is not that they are new. The significance is that we have yet another proof that the crazy conspiracy theory guys who said it from the start were actually right all along. And The Experts (TM) who denied that is is about controlling the narrative and suppressing the debate, and claimed it's only to combat "dangerous health misinformation" that could "hurt people", lied to us all along. It's not new, just now we have the receipts.

Said what from the start? There's quite a bit of nonsense in that category, most of which is still not backed up by these press releases.

The people who were relatively level-headed at the start, saying things like "kids under 16 really have no reason to use up doses," have been reasonably validated. Those paranoid about microchips and 5G and injecting bleach disinfectant have not. Keep that in mind before trying to encourage people to follow the independent free-thinkers. I still don't believe their success will generalize.

Why do contrarians have to answer for every tinfoil conspiracy? Where are the generalized successes of the expert class in discussing controversial issues?

If the contrarians have, indeed, went with the line "vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy", of course they don't have to answer for tinfoil conspiracies.

However, there are also people who did, say, claim that the vaccine is going to kill or sterilize something like a quarter or a half of the vaccinated population in a very short order, few months to an year, and who are now doing victory laps when it is revealed that, indeed, vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy, even though that's quite a different claim from the most lurid vaccine genocide visions.

And now the existence of those nuts is going to be picked at by embarassed officials and censors to pretend that all of the criticism of their incompetent bungling was at the level of Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's balls.

Both dissidents and experts contain multitudes. Some dissidents overstated, beyond what the evidence shows, the dangers of vaccines, but experts were also guilty of exagerating the harns of the virus itself. That the sane dissidents are by the mainstream media tarred with the same brush as the 5G qanon believers, but all experts aren't consider discredited by some of them, falsely, claiming that Covid was the fourth or fifth leading cause of death in all pediatric age groups, is the hypocrisy.

Can you name any motters who are doing that? Because I thought our dissidents stayed pretty firmly within the bounds of rationality, although admittedly I got burned out on covid talk pretty quick.

I wasn't talking about Motters here, more referring to my observation of some local Covid dissident types.

Ah I thought you said the first comment too, and I was going to say I don't think we need to worry about that 5g shit or sterilising half the population when we're encouraging free thinking on the motte. It does kind of feel like covid skeptic motters never get a victory lap, but I know that's mostly observation bias.

Motters! @Fruck how could you?? Our proper name is Mottizens thank you very much.

Ohhh you would be a good little mottizen wouldn't you? Not I! Fuck your pretty little cottage with the pretty little white picket fence and pretty little petunias in front of it. And your pretty little mailbox and the pretty little dog sitting off to the side prettily chewing on a pretty little possum carcass, and all the other trappings of your pretty little life. I am forming a resistance to the tyranny of friendliness imposed by zorba and his lackeys - sitting up in their ivory tower, clucking and stroking their beards, chuckling conspiratorially as they grow fat off the fruits of our labour. I say enough! I say we take back the night! And the first step is to stop being good little mottizens, paying your taxes and judging posts for Rationalatosk (who minds the tree of knowledge). Instead be a motter, be hard and tough and mumble a bit, and still help Rationalatosk but be snippy about it, and we will smash the state and send its minions running for the hills! Motters for life!

There's been a few mottizeans that I recall claiming there would be unspecified declines in fertility due to the vaccine(including myself).

I don't recall anyone claiming "the vaccine will sterilize half the vaccinated population".

Birthrates are down, cardiac incidents are up.

If you expect random High-school graduate citizens taking a side in a political debate to quantitatively accurate instead of merely directionally correct, then you're holding them to a higher standard that the government, media, and the academic-medical-industrial complex have held themselves for the past 3 years.

Again, "birthrates are down and cardiac incidents are up" - both something that could have multiple different explanations, such as COVID itself, lockdown aftereffects and other social developments than Covid - is qualitively different from the most lurid predictions of mass death and sterility, and even if one would manage to ascertain a partal correlation with vaccines, something I haven't actually even seen anyone conclusively show from the data, that would be far from something allowing the lurid-prediction-makers to start declaring they were correct all along.

Generally the random high-school-graduate citizens also generally don't develop these views by themselves but by trusting media figures, politicians and academic-medical-industrial figures - sure, these would be instances of the contrarian type, but still generally claiming credibility on the basis of their credentials etc.

Per the OP:

As with most conspiracy facts...the crazy conspiracy theory guys who said it from the start were actually right all along.

Yes, plenty of verifiable facts were and are dismissed as crazy conspiracy theories. Why does that mean people who were talking about them have to answer for theories about graphene or whatever?

Per the OP:

As with most conspiracy facts...the crazy conspiracy theory guys who said it from the start were actually right all along.

Not really. Crazy conspiracy guys were at the start saying:

COVID is fake

COVID is just a flu

COVID is killing tens of millions in China

COVID is dangerous only to Asians, White people are immune

COVID is going to kill us all, hide in a bunker!

and many more.

Official position was changing overnight by 180 degrees, while there were too many mutually contradictory "unofficial" positions to count.

Better question than "who was right in early 2020?" is "what the official authorities knew at the time and how they made their decisions?"

https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1607425359229890560

Injecting bleach is actually a valid treatment. I’ve had it done to me it works. For specifically a viral infection in my eye.

And granted I didn’t actually use bleach but betadine a strong disinfectant used to clean things after surgery. I can’t even remember if Trump said bleach or just disinfectant.

Nasal spray disinfectants I believe have strong studies on them for fighting COVID.

And you can buy it at wal-mart to throat gargle.

The whole bleach thing was a leftist conspiracy that rightists believes it. But there’s also similar medical usages to kill viruses.

Here’s Trumps actual comment

He continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

All of which is a scientifically studied with positive results COVID treatment (inhaling nasal disinfectants)

Injecting bleach is actually a valid treatment. I’ve had it done to me it works. For specifically a viral infection in my eye.

I, and I think many other people want more information about this.

Notice how the following paragraph I mention using betadine and not bleach (and Trump never said bleach but a disinfectant).

And yes this treatment was painful. But I also had a nasty eye virus and was unable to look at light for weeks before this treatment. It’s not the least bit enjoyable to apply a strong disinfectant directly to your eye.

https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/article/whats-the-buzz-about-betadine

And it was studied as a nasal spray for covid https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2022/February/Study-finds-nasal-spray-could-aid-battle-against-COVID

Again trump said disinfectant and bleach was blueanon. Drinking disinfectant probably wouldn’t work but it is used to reduce viral load when the virus is in the eyes, ears, throats.

The whole bleach thing was a leftist conspiracy that rightists believes it. But there’s also similar medical usages to kill viruses.

Using bleach as universal cure is way older than Trump presidency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

(Yes, know all problems with rational wiki, but it is good resource for all kinds of alternative medicine and miracle treatments. Consulting RW before you decide to use ancient native cure instead of soulless Western medicine might save your wallet and your life)

Whether bleach use increased during coronavirus panic in response to Donald's unfortunate utterances, is disputed.

https://reason.com/2020/04/28/the-myth-of-the-bleach-drinking-masses/

Why are you trying to lump him in with quacks, when he literally linked a mainstream optometry journal?

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It reminds me of the MTG quote about the Rothschilds boiling down in popular culture to "Jewish space lasers," and now I get ads on Facebook for army patches for the "Jewish space laser corps."

Holy shit, I had no idea that wasn't what she'd actually said. I assumed it wasn't quite a direct quote, but a distillation of something she'd said, rather than a deliberate fabrication from a media snake looking for a dunk. MTG's actual post is (from my perspective) pretty kooky, but this doesn't justify the willful distortions. Jonathan Chait, the weasel that got that ball rolling, explains thusly:

To be clear, the story, which I wrote, did not say she used the words “Jewish space laser.” It accurately reproduced her entire post blaming the Rothschilds, and I noted that “the Rothschild family has featured heavily in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since at least the 19th century.”

The story in which Chait definitely didn't say that she used the words "Jewish space laser" is titled "GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser". Every time that I think I have adjusted my views of journalists to be sufficiently low, I find out that I need to turn that mental ratchet once more.

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

Yes, it is a distortion, here is link to her original post.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html

It is not "secret Jewish space laser", but "secret Rotschild space solar power microwave transmission"

Do not blame her, we are all science fiction nerds, we would love to live in world where launch costs were low enough to make this possible.

On the other hand, rather not - imagine how high would energy prices have to be to make this pay, or imagine the power of aerospace lobby to push for this bondoogle anyway.

Maybe MTG is visitor from another timeline, either utopian or dystopian compared to ours? This would explain many things.

MTG's thesis is that a well-connected energy company is beaming energy down from space, and that these beams are being used to intentionally start wildfires, apparently to clear the way for the high-speed rail project.

"Secret": She implies a secret plan to use the collectors to set wildfires, and also implies that the company may have more satellites in space than is publicly known.

"Jewish": The Rotchschilds connection, natch.

"Space Lasers": the solar emitters are putatively in space, and she mentions eyewitness accounts of "lasers or blue beams of light", and then suggests that the solar emitter beam might resemble a laser or beam of light.

"Secret Jewish Space Lasers" is not a maximally-charitable interpretation of her claim, but it's certainly defensible. I do not think it can be fairly argued that the journalists in question are twisting her words. She really did claim that possibly-secret space-based satelites were being used by democrats and the Rothschild corporation to start wildfires with concentrated energy beams.

SpaceX has plenty of military contracts with secret payloads. There are also plenty of military installations in California.

Beamed energy would be great for military logistics. Especially for the remote outposts in Afghanistan that we were still maintaining at the time of MTG's post.

Blue light is most probably a transformer frying or power lines arcing, but maybe not.

I would consider an accurate and neutral single-sentence framing of MTG's post to be "MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power". The use of "laser" implies to almost any reader that this is an intentional, aimed weapon; MTG speculates that such a beam could look like a laser, not there is a weapon being used. There is no suggestion in her post that said "laser" is "Jewish" in anyway. I would consider describing her speculation as being a "secret Jewish space laser" to basically just be dishonest dunking.

"MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power".

I loathe journalists, and MTG is at least putatively on my side. Her post is written in the profoundly annoying "just asking questions" style which adds a degree of ambiguity, but I don't think your summation is accurate. She claims that connected officials gain fiscal advantage from the wildfires, and have implemented policy to maximize this advantage: the areas under threat from wildfires are the same areas where the high-speed rail project is planned to go through, and the same officials are investing in the power company supposedly causing the fires, the rail project the fires are enabling, while passing legislation to protect the power company from adverse consequences of the fire. The implication I'm reading is that they're setting the fires on purpose, not a mistake.

MTG herself uses the term "laser or beam of light" twice, making the claim that it's reasonable to attribute the fires to such space-based beams.

Does the industry in question even exist? Obviously the company is a thing, but do they actually have emitters or a ground station operating? Much less a setup scaled sufficiently to deliver significant power?

I had no idea that the same post was speculating on possible corruption as well.

It's almost as if reframing it in maximally silly terms will allow the non-kooky bits to be ignored.

Yea it’s the same thing as the very fine people quote. Where he never said KKK were the fine people but the left decided to say he did and promoted it everywhere.

That does not sound like an injection. It sounds like external application, as I have had done when I have had eye infections (albeit bacterial, not viral, so it was an antibiotic, not iodine). And that is the point: There are all sorts of substances which are beneficial when used externally, but harmful when used internally. Even the nasal spray study you link to below appears not be meant to be inhaled but rather to be applied to the lining of the nose. The actual study makes that clear: The goal is to develop something to "reduce[] nasal shedding", and they tested the effectiveness by using nasal swabs "collected at 5, 15, and 60 minutes post-dose to assess immediate and residual impact of treatment."

Yeah, it does seem that the treatment is to bathe the eye in iodine, rather than to inject it ["It is already used perioperatively as standard of ophthalmic care"].

My main point is there are treatments quite similar to injecting bleach. Eye baths because your eyes are an organ and not like your skin. Nasal sprays because that’s an internal treatment and diluted enough can kill viruses without threatening internal processes. Chemo therapy is even closer to injected something bad to kill bad and good.

Blueanon running with he said we should literally drink bleach probably did hurt the sale and development of betadine nasal sprays which probably costs more lives than a few people dying from drinking bleach. Because the product was too close to his comments and Trump of course could never be right.

And my point is that the treatment is NOT even remotely similar to injecting bleach. You are talking about localized treatments on the surface of the body -- the nasal sprays in question were applied to the nasal epithelium, were they not? And the eye baths are just that: Baths; the eye is immersed in fluid which surrounds the surface of the eye. There are, of course, [treatments that inject medicine into the eye}(https://www.aao.org/eye-health/treatments/eye-injections), but those appear to be antibiotics, not antiseptics, and even in those, AFAIK the medicine is confined to the eye, unlike injections that address infections, which are distributed throughout the body. And it is the "throughout the body" part that makes injecting bleach hazardous, is it not?

PS: I don't know whether Trump was right or wrong; for all I know, it is possible to develop some sort of injectable antiseptic. I am just saying that your example is not evidence one way or the other.

Going to be honest I just disagree. These uses seem similar though not identical to injection. Even moreso nasal sprays because your definitely digesting some of the substance.

I guess I simply don't understand that the fact that users might accidentally inhale a chemical that is not meant to be inhaled says anything about the viability of designing that or any other substance to be intentionally inhaled or injected. It seems completely irrelevant.

More comments

Speaking of tech company censorship: Youtube deleted a video from pharmaceutical company Aytu Bioscience about a proposed technology for using UV light inside the lungs, which they released a press-release about a few days before Trump's comments and was developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai who had been working on it since 2016. Their Twitter account was also suspended for a little while. (I wonder if there was any internal discussion about that the Twitter Files journalists could look up?) Given the timing it seems very likely it was what Trump's comment was referring to (or at least the part of the comment mentioning light), it was probably mentioned to him in one of his regular coronavirus meetings. Youtube deleted the video because a New York Times reporter reported it to them:

I contacted YouTube about this video, which is being shared on tons of replies on Twitter & on Facebook, by people asserting that it backs up Trump's idea throwing it out there that UV rays kill coronavirus. YouTube just said it removed it for violating its community guidelines.

He also wrote a NYT article about it in which he talked to a Youtube spokesperson, which confirms the removal was intentional rather than purely automated. You'd think that if nothing else Youtube would have sufficient double-standards favoring credible institutions to not censor pharmaceutical companies talking about research they're involved with in cooperation with Cedars-Sinai, but apparently not.

Ah, you're right. My mistake.

Said what from the start? There's quite a bit of nonsense in that category, most of which is still not backed up by these press releases.

This is a major part of why this matters: Normal sane questions about the official COVID / vaccination narrative were ALL lumped into the "5G towers" category in precisely this way. The intended effect of banning a doctor who says, "Maybe babies don't need vaccination" was to put them in the same "heretic" bucket as the "Bill Gates Depopulation" theorist.

This was an acceleration of the previous "stigmatize anti-vaxxers" paradigm that made any questioning about vaccine schedules or ingredients tantamount to "mass murder."

Said what from the start?

That Big Tech (and Big Social Media) perform censorship and narrative pushing at the behest of US government, for political and partisan reasons. That many of the things The Experts (TM) say about COVID and prevention measures (including masks, lockdowns, effectiveness and safety of the vaccines, necessity of children vaccination, etc.), as well as about COVID origins, are not The Science Is Settled (TM) and some of them are plain false. And that at least some of The Experts (TM) knew it in advance and chose to lie and censor "for own good" - or for the benefit of the political party they belong to.

Keep that in mind before trying to encourage people to follow the independent free-thinkers

You want to warn me that if there's freedom, you can make mistakes. Thank you, I know. The other side of it, which somehow is always omitted, is when there's Settled Science (TM), there also are very costly - and often deadly - mistakes, but unlike the former case, where you bear the consequences of your own mistakes, here you bear the consequences of somebody else's mistakes and you have no choice not to. And on the top of that you're supposed to be thankful for it - after all, they were taking away your freedom for your own good!

I still don't believe their success will generalize.

You are free to follow The Experts (TM) off whatever cliff they are leading you to. It would be nice though to give people - especially those that are being proven right again and again in their conspiracy facts - an option to not to be dragged with you by the force of government coercion.

As for what was said, I don't really think it's new. Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.

Even if it wasn’t new-new, could there be a case for that exploring the modus operandi of this is in itself worth discussing?

It also helps cement that this wasn’t an isolated once-or-twice thing.

P.S: whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?

Activity monitoring

I have no idea what the strategy on Musk’s part here as to the rollout of these files.

Not the rollout to “alternative” journalists—he is probably right that the “mainstream” media would not cover this. (Emphasis on probably, because the Times absolutely loves to hate on big tech, and if they had any scoop on this shit going down inside of Facebook/Meta, they’d be on it like flies.)

I mean, why is this getting dribbed and drabbed out during one of the lowest media engagement weeks of the year in messy Twitter threads? This is not actively ongoing suppression. There is no upcoming election or policy debate that is immediately impacted by this. Nobody outside the extremely motivated and extremely online and extremely right is going to give even the slightest notice to this, as it’s presented in such a slapdash way during the peak of holiday season.

twitter is still pretty active on the holidays. a lot of people have nothing better to do but kill time online on holidays

It's coming out in real time as the journalists involved are going over the data that Elon is providing them and finding interesting things to share. It's not optimized for engagement because neither Elon nor the journalists are prioritizing that. It's not a television show, there's no market research happening here.


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