domain:sotonye.substack.com
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3hr ago
There are people like @JeremiahDJohns or @ArmandDoma [1] [2] who are very critical of the far left, but also seem to not understand how Kirk isn't "far right".
TheMotte's idea of far-right and YIMBY twitter's idea of far-right are two non-overlapping circles.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
Ironically I put Clair Obscur on pause when Silksong came out because I got excited by new shiny (and I kind of needed a break). Definitely a fantastic game, but the combat and timing things seems to stress/tire me out more than RPG combat usually does and I have to be in the right mood for it, and can't really binge it.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
I have not gotten stuck yet (though I don't remember the names of all the sub areas in the Citadel, so don't know if I've cleared that one yet or not). Without any spoilers, I'd recommend spending a bunch of time doing sidequests and/or exploring old areas since a lot of new stuff seems to have opened up in the Act 1 areas after you reach Act 2 and do some stuff there.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
I'm mid Act 2, and got distracted by tons of sidequests and new areas in old areas that got opened up by some upgrades I recently got. It feels like the game started pretty linear but has continued opening up and branching more as I go. Very much enjoying myself, even if I'm sometimes frustrated by what feel like unfair difficulty spikes on certain bosses.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
Meh. I can try to imagine it would be funny if you were a leftist and actually believed people it was parodying existed. But comedy needs to be relatable in some way, it requires some level of suspension of disbelief, and all I see here is playing into stereotypes the left has about the right with no bearing on reality.
But even then, I'm not convinced it's all that good even if you did believe the right were crypto Nazis. Like, watch something by Babylon Bee. They do stuff like this all the time mocking the left and even when I agree with them in principle they're not funny. It's very low-brow humor to take something someone believes at a 3, dial it up to 11, and then make fun of how ridiculous and extreme it is at 11. It's not clever, because you're just beating up strawmen.
Milton Friedman was about as liberal as it got but even in Free to Choose he capitulated and said “this is really a family society and not an individual society.” And there’s where the core of liberalism lost the plot in thinking “groups don’t have rights, only individuals do.” The US could use a restoration of clan and tribe in society to the benefit of everyone.
Clannish nationalism is an extremely powerful thing. The most extreme variant today you probably find with the Hindus in India which is the only one able to stand up against Islam in its own backyard. Now tell me how that stacks up against liberal capital? Facebook refuses to ban hate speech in India or deplatform nationalist groups like the Bajrang Dal because it fears for the safety of its staff. It’s the only religion on Earth to retain its Indo-European clan lineages unbroken since the Bronze Age and can put multinational corporations in their place.
Narendra Modi currently holds power over the credit lines in India and subordinates financial corporate bodies to himself. That’s the power of the clan. A healthy society looks like blood over the abstraction of liberal principles. It doesn’t derive family duties from justice; it derives justice from family duties. A healthy society looks like collectivism. The rugged individualist lives a shorter and much more anxious life.
Unless you like having your cities burned down you need something like the clan system. Violent activism that happens to me will also happen to my cousin or fellow Catholic. Your enemies are fundamentally mercantile and will fold the moment things begin to get uncomfortable.
In the Punic Wars Rome was a military society going up against a trading merchant society. Rome won and then burned Carthage to the ground because they were willing to spend both more blood and treasure. The Romans lost 70% of their fleet in a single afternoon and then rebuilt the entire thing. Carthage was more concerned with the Iron Age equivalent of its portfolio. Rome won through strength and force of will, and identity.
There’s been other times in our history where we thought we’ve outgrown tribalism. But growth isn’t inevitable and plenty of signs indicate we’re due for a civilizational downgrade. Systems can only get so complex before they become fragile to the point an unforeseen event pushes them over.
TournamentFishing
4hr ago
I once saw a flat earther talking to students on a college campus. I thought it was interesting how many people walked up to him to argue that the earth is round, and then strung together incoherent or factually incorrect arguments.
I'm not sure what the lesson is there, but it stuck with me.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
4hr ago
· Edited 4hr ago
How do you figure you are not just hearing a Shepard tone of things escalating all the time? It seems to me that your argument is essentially that things have to get worse because the set of grievances can only monotonically grow, but culture war material also has a certain half-life. People are still alive in the US nowadays that experienced far worse political violence than Charlie Kirk getting shot, but events from the '70s and '80s hardly count for anything because their political valence becomes more and more inscrutable as the past grows foreign. Did the Unabomber attack Red consumerism on behalf of Blue degrowth, or Blue academia on behalf of Red RETVRNerism? Was Waco Red police brutality or Blue oppression of religious conservatives? Some fringe groups of course still have categorical answers to these, but even two fringe groups that everyone agrees belong on the same side of the spectrum now will not necessarily agree on the answers.
(Coming up soon: were anti-Vietnam college students Blue commie sympathisers, or the forerunners to Red Putinbots sabotaging our heroic defense of Ukraine?)
(This is also a sort-of response to @Amadan below.)
I've known of it for a long time (and actually learned how to sing it in Italian, a language I don't speak) in my tankie/left-anarchist college days. It's significance would be very well known, way before the show, by leftie academic types I would think. But outside of them, I've also heard it sung in friends and family gathering, in random music shows, for decades, and I'm not italian. It's a very well known song in general. Maybe younger people have had more chances of being exposed to it through Casa de Papel, but it's been floating around in general culture for a long time.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
No disagreement. Allow me to clarify my statement.
- lying is very common.
- It is common because it is, at least in the short-term, effective.
- Both sides do it, and so the rage felt at an enemy's lies should be tempered by the embarrassment felt for those of your allies. Lying is not a good plan for the long-term, but a lot of people, especially in the trenches, are not really thinking long-term.
TournamentFishing
4hr ago
"Debate" is a sport. It's historically connected to honest truth-seeking discourse, but often strays far from it. Twitch illustrates one degenerate mode. Competitive policy debate illustrates another.
Tretiak
4hr ago
Out in the world, life continues. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming. The majority of people are not paying attention to this stuff.
Out in the world, most people are on their phone when I’m walking on the sideway or driving in traffic.
eee
4hr ago
He has literally done events at college campuses with a Change My Mind table in the style of Stephen Crowder at least twice. I wouldn't say it makes up most of his content though.
I find your accusations of bad fatih puzzling. He likes debating things. He agrees to debate people and then debates them. How exactly is he acting in bad faith? Does he edit his videos dishonestly to misrepresent his debates? The whole purpose of a debate is to convince people that you are correct. You seem to be saying that because he does debate for the purpose of convincing people that he is correct is an example of him acting in bad faith. That does not make any sense. If you want to say he is acting in bad faith you need to show something like him representing that he has some goal or purpose, and then acting in ways in contradiction of that. Not that he acts in some way other than you personally approve of.
UwU
4hr ago
As someone who is moderately left-leaning, this assassination also fills me with sadness. I spent quite a bit of time on Reddit in the immediate aftermath getting my share of downvotes telling people he was not a Nazi or a fascist or far-right, and the thinly veiled, and unveiled, elation was disgusting and vile until I had to mentally check out from social media. In the real world, though, people at least seemed to be much more reasonable. I live in a very blue area and work with all blue-tribe people, and when this topic was brought up, the mood was generally of concern and there was not an ounce of celebration. (Though it could just be people I work with know how to conduct themselves properly in a work environment.) Still, I don't know how this country can recover from this death spiral.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
4hr ago
Lying is effective only because it is the supply meeting the civilisational demand created by rejection of what our cringe ideological grandpa called the Litany of Tarski. The Sequences may not have crossed the boundary from looking quaint in a daft way to looking quaint as in ancient wisdom yet, but there are things in there that we would stand to benefit from rereading occasionally.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
I recall the exact opposite, actually. I remember leftists trying to tell her "step aside you old hag" in polite but forceful terms, and when she didn't there was pretty widespread worry that she had screwed them all (which she definitely did lol).
I remember some of that as the reality of the situation set in, but I remember a whole lot more of this.
And then, hilariously enough, they did the whole thing again with Biden.
Tretiak
4hr ago
Not only was Kirk not far-right but the far-right hated him more than the far-left does.
Tretiak
4hr ago
None of what happened afterwards was what I expected at all. Immediately, celebrations, dark ironic pitiless humor, and hideous one-liners with no thought put into them started everywhere. It was official, the Hermann Cain Award logic about when it's acceptable to dance on the graves of your enemies extends about as far as certain leftists want it to.
I’m not sure how closely you followed his development when his name first began to crop up, but the reaction I saw from a lot of people were very predictable.
And to be frank, I roll my eyes and really get tired of the straight-laced, “you’re better than that,” “act like an adult,” high minded moralizing of unfortunate events. Expressing glee over very unpleasant opinions you have about others means you’re human. Going out of your way to take a shovel and knock someone’s gravestone off sets you apart from everyone else.
… there are even more people out there who will run cover even for this awful behavior…
Pretty much. But I continue to be amazed how anyone gets surprised over this. Do people have that much sheltered of a childhood?
Here's a small collection of everything I've witnessed: They're all bots. There aren't that many of them. They're only online.
This is where I believe you’re wrong. You don’t see this largely in interpersonal interactions because it’s potentially costly and damaging to people’s reputations and “painful truths,” were replaced long ago by politically correct sugarcoating and misdirection.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
4hr ago
leftists tried to reassure one another that she was totally fine, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse
I recall the exact opposite, actually. I remember leftists trying to tell her "step aside you old hag" in polite but forceful terms, and when she didn't there was pretty widespread worry that she had screwed them all (which she definitely did lol).
People were wailing and gnashing teeth about how she should have resigned during a D president while her body was alive and conducting day-to-day activities, because her hubris and that of Blue Tribe's elite structure brought ruin to their tribal works.
Yes, I don't disagree with this.
anon_
4hr ago
So it appears that JP Morgan may have allowed Jeffrey Epstein to continue using their financial services, so of course the Times leads with the most bombastic possible version of this claim. One could imagine an alternative headline like How JPMorgan Conducted its Usual and Customary Business. Probably there are intermediate versions of this headline that are closer to neutral.
Headlines aside, right wing media is picking it up because all the Epstein stuff draws lots of clicks but I'm wondering (and hopefully I'm not alone) whether this is fundamentally about getting upset when banks don't drop unpopular clients even when their relationship has nothing to do with the clients' bad behavior.
That is to say, contra the Times, JPMorgan didn't enable Epstein's crimes in anything but the most useless sense of the world. Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order. It's not money laundering or fraud to pay for underage hookers -- it's child prostitution which is illegal in its own right.
Ultimately where this seems to end is back to a place where banks rightly fear that they are gonna be next on the Times' hitlist because they didn't drop a client fast enough.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4hr ago
It looks like the motte mostly doesn't even know what to say to this guy.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
Notably, RGB was not murdered by a right-wing extremist, and her death had been preceded by a long and appalling spectacle where leftists tried to reassure one another that she was totally fine, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse. This was after she declined to step down during the tail-end of Obama's tenure because, according to her own side's reporting, she wanted her replacement to be appointed by the first female president.
People were wailing and gnashing teeth about how she should have resigned during a D president while her body was alive and conducting day-to-day activities, because her hubris and that of Blue Tribe's elite structure brought ruin to their tribal works.
UwU
4hr ago
It certainly is tone deaf, but it's also par for the course for political discourse in this country. The left hears it all the time after school shootings.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
4hr ago
It would be equally easy to say that e.g. the Groypers on Nick Fuentes' comment section are the "most concentrated and distilled Republican space on the internet", and that it's those people who are determining the flavor of the party.
People claiming it's fair to paint small, hyper-sectarian factions as "the REAL outgroup" would be wrong in both instances.
"I'm the defender and you're the offender. So I'm allowed to hurt you."
"Defender" is literally a category that you count yourself in, that permits you to do things to people outside that category.
Of course. But everyone thinks, or at least can convince themselves that, the categories they are using aren't arbitrary. "I'm not arbitrarily saying that only right-wingers deserve to be shot, I'm saying it because right-wingers are promoting very destructive policies and left-wingers aren't."
Yes, you can fix up the principle by adding "... as long as the categories aren't arbitrary". But once you add that, you no longer have a principle that can be universally applied. You have a principle that can be applied only if you are correct at the object level (about whether the distinction is arbitrary). The whole point of stating it as a principle is that you're trying to apply it to everyone without having to look at the object level.
Also, I am very skeptical of claims of "you are really agreeing to X" about someone who isn't literally agreeing to X. No means no; if their lips say they don't agree, you must treat them as not agreeing, even if they "imply" a yes.
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