domain:philippelemoine.com
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1hr ago
condemning the shooting
For the duration of the tweet. Tomorrow they'll be back to explaining how Charlie Kirk rhetoric justifies violence.
I was actually thinking earlier how it's the left-wing version of the "thoughts and prayers" ritual.
While not defending this soldier's conduct, I would put "snipers in a warzone" and "assassinations" in different categories. According to his testimony his decision to shoot the teenager was an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment one, which by definition means it wasn't an assassination.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
...a large majority of leftists I've met in person have not been like Redditors.
See section III of I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:
...half the country.
And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.
It's not necessarily that they're hiding it around you. It could be that you aren't dealing with the full range of leftists.
...I could say that for some people their Reddit use is just them blowing off steam and it's not really representative of their entire personality.
You're kind of damning them with faint praise there.
There is virtually no way to paint him as a 'valid target'. Oh he said things you disagree with? He came into your ideological havens and confronted you directly? Boo fucking hoo get better ideas I guess.
At least one (now former) MSNBC political activist sure tried:
He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.
Edit: Dowd also speculated that Kirk might have been accidentally shot by "a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration" (because that's totally something conservatives do on college campuses, right?).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
I know that you would almost certainly not publicize a video of right-wingers cheering the death of some leftist figure,
Forecasting future behavior of a fellow internet rando is now ... evidence?
@WhiningCoil is definitely dancing with the mod tiger these past few days, but his post of the TMZ video is more than a bare-link and it is important and topical --- half of the replies in this thread are "it's not about the shooting itself, it's about the reactions."
Your comment asserting tribalism is tribalism itself. Or maybe just lower level general antagonism?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
Because there are countless ways to say Kirk wasn't harmless; my tumblr and bluesky and discord feed has no small number of them
From Matthew Dowd on MSNBC:
He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.
(Though, apparently MSBC is firing Dowd for this, which I, for one, find rather surprising.)
When a right-winger does it, they get denounced by everyone.
When a right-winger does it, everyone on the right acts all mystified as to how their constant violent fantasies could have led to violent action. They shift the blame to mental health while half of them snigger behind their hands.
This quote really sums up my experience with the asymmetry here:
My feed is filled with statements from elected democrats condemning the shooting which is obviously good but I have a sneaking suspicion it will all be forgotten when someone named like MyLittleCommunistPony got 100k Likes on TikTok for saying “Good” or whatever
Except that when the tables are turned, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony it's senior Republican leadership. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples would be Trump pardoning J6 insurrectionists. But also Mike Lee claiming the Minnesota assassin was a radical left-winger. Or, uh, Charlie Kirk.
(And all this is leaving aside the reality that right-wingers outsource most of their political violence to law enforcement and cheer from the sidelines)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I'm... happy I could make your day. I suppose it is important to enjoy the small pleasures.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1hr ago
A friend brought it up in the group Discord. He's, let's say "not as left as he thinks he is". But he raised the topic and immediately started with the "was the video AI manipulated to look worse?" And then when that was dismissed all around, worked in a "I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about politics and culture war before we learn in a week that it was a neighbor angry about the trash cans so we should probably just assume that, haha".
And the thing that struck me was that he came off as very defensive. Which is kind of unnecessary because as I said, he's really not as left as he thinks he is.
The other person who brought it up and had something to say was my mother, who cold opened a conversation with "Oh, I guess a Republican died? Boo hoo, thoughts and prayers." At least she isn't entirely gone; she responded like a human to being called out for it, but Christ.
The social media and it's consequences has been a disaster for the Boomer women.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
subfora
Bro, I'm pumped you got to use this word in a sentence.
Bingbong
1hr ago
Hard to imagine a Left-wing figure getting shot with this sort of reaction from the Right. There's just not anybody as strongly divisive enough, and being Left Wing is kind of 'inherently sympathetic' in the sense that you may not agree with them, but also it's hard to hate most Left-wing figures since it's a position originating from an excess of empathy.
Bingbong
1hr ago
Yeah. He'd wandered a little bit off the company line but it's top-tier JOOS posting to suggest that he'd be assassinated for that. The Palestine-Israel nonsense has just broken so many brains in the political discourse sphere.
faceh
1hr ago
That doesn't contradict my point.
Indeed, I would make the same grievance about the Ukraine situation.
My sympathy for Hamas in particular is in short supply since they targeted bystanders/civilians to kick off festivities.
There's ample room for EVERYONE involved to be horrible.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
Are there any places you would want to live where violence along partisan lines is commonplace? If not, why do you think that is?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1hr ago
I am not an expert. But I do like "good" coffee. After trying many things, my suggestion is don't over complicate. If you are going to want more than a cup, get a decent but not overly expensive cone filter drip coffee maker, paper filters, and a burr grinder. Otherwise, pourover is good for a single cup. Grind right before brewing and buy small bags of good quality beans so they are as fresh as possible from roasting. Keep it clean.
Beans vary wildly depending on source and roast. You will definitely want to find a local roaster and experiment with different options. My personal favorite right now is a medium-dark Guatemalan.
As with wine, there is no accounting for taste. I'm sure there are experts who would find what I like shallow and pedantic, and there is supposedly great coffee I don't much care for. But nobody can tell me I'm wrong! What's fun is trying different things and seeing what things you like or dislike have in common. Someday I may try roasting myself, supposedly it isn't too difficult.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
Practically every commenter where? If you're looking at your Twitter FYP that's specifically tailored to you personally to maximize your engagement, which in practice tends to cash out as "that which makes you personally angry or afraid".
Do we even know yet that the shooter was a leftist rather than a random crazy person with no coherent ideology?
Goodguy
1hr ago
Not sure, but pretty convinced of it, since a large majority of leftists I've met in person have not been like Redditors. Granted, that's just another kind of bias, and some might say "well they were just hiding it around you". Maybe, but by the same token I could say that for some people their Reddit use is just them blowing off steam and it's not really representative of their entire personality. It's hard to say.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1hr ago
it's going to backfire on whatever political positions the perpetrator holds
I'm going to reiterate the bit where a right-wing nut murdered two Democratic politicians in July, planned to murder more, and the right just brassed it out and said he was secretly a leftist. Why moderate? What's the point? Who will be swayed by it? Their enemies won't care and won't respect it.
Bingbong
1hr ago
The political violence gap is always going to be atleast partly tempered by the inherent divide in how people see people to the left of them and to the right of them, especially with the current polemic.
Most people on the Right see people to the left of them as overly empathetic but ultimately hearts in the right place despite an impractical belief on the allocation of scarce resources. I believe it's hard to find the motivation for political violence when you believe the other party simply cares too much, or has impractical views that are nonetheless downstream of that. Abortion is one of the few Leftward issues that generated meaningful Right Wing violence, since it's one of the few areas in which somebody on the Right could genuinely cultivate enough ill-feeling.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
1hr ago
Kirk would have been a serious contender for holding Office as well, maybe even higher office, it's a significant blow to the Conservative movement.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
Tenaz
1hr ago
I can confirm it was a trustworthy source. Some Utah state representatives are in contact with the chief of police and were sharing updates in gcs. So, trustworthy, but also thirdhand.
"I'm back. I forgot my drum."
Yes. I think there's a >50% chance that the Debt-to-GDP ratio is lower when Trump officially exits office than it was when he came in.
I had Gemini vibe code this chart of relative changes in debt to GDP over the course of the presidential terms starting from 1966 when the FRED data starts. Of the 11 past presidents (plus Trump I) in the dataset, 5 ended with a debt to GDP ratio better than the one they started with. So knowing nothing about a president at all, we should expect a 45% chance that the deficit to GDP ratio will fall over their tenure. Despite being such a believer in Trump's abilities, you think he's only a little bit better than the base rate in this department.
Trump's first term of course was ruinous for the debt to GDP ratio, but let's let him off the hook because COVID (the massive spike was during Trump's term, not Biden's).
Biden left office with debt to GDP slightly lower than when he came in. Is your prediction here that basically Trump is going to have a similar effect on debt to GDP as Biden did? Not only did Biden manage a modest decrease as well, he was the only guy who managed to reduce debt to GDP by at least 5pp at some point during his term except Clinton! All this without 4D tariff nonsense, but for Trump we have to consider trusting the plan to get the same result, because...?
If we're gonna impoverish people with tariffs, job losses, breaking of government norms, and the rest of Trumponomics, is the best that we can expect simply a replacement-level reduction in debt to GDP? If that's what you consider "a start", you should be singing Biden's praises for giving us that start.
Consider me unimpressed.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Guys, I think I found the suspect.
It's so telling that Strangio had no choice but to admit that to avoid perjuring herself.
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