domain:forecasting.substack.com
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
Whether the shooter conceived of themselves
I’m not doing this to pick on you specifically, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to express exasperation at this weakness of English which is laid bare when people attempt to talk about an individual whose gender is unknown or unspecified.
What is the word “themselves” doing here? Specifically the “selves” part. Does this one individual have multiple selves? Clearly not! Therefore, the correct reflexive pronoun — presuming we all agree that “they” and “them” are valid when discussing a single individual — should be “themself”! However, as a lifelong monolingual English speaker, I intuitively recognize “themself” as invalid. Not a word!
Now, apparently there are attestations of “themself” from 1350-1400; however, all of the written usages of this pronoun I was able to find on a cursory search were extremely recent. (Like, from less than a month ago.) It appears that there may be a concerted push by writers who, recognizing the dire need for a standard reflexive pronoun to refer to a single individual of unspecific sex/gender, are trying to make “themself” a thing. And, frankly, good for them! It’s shocking that a language as old and as rich as English lacks what seems to be a basic and invaluable word.
Every time I see “themselves” used to refer to a single person, I want to die. Sorry you had to be the immediate recipient of this rebuke, as you are nowhere near the first to commit this grievous offense, nor will you be the last.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
The unfree villein population of England pre Norman conquest was around 60-70%, and they required the permission of their lord to possess or carry arms.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Whether the shooter conceived of themselves as trans at the moment of shooting seems to be rather complicated.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
3hr ago
In the Minnesota Public Radio News article it was reported as
Additionally, [FBI Director Kash] Patel posted that Westman was “a male born as Robert Westman,” but [Minneapolis Police Chief Brian] O’Hara has referred to Westman as a man and said he could not confirm that Westman had ever changed names.
07mk
3hr ago
Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)
I see a lot of potential insight in this. One pattern I noticed is that the way that some transgender people's understanding of being the opposite sex appear almost nostalgic, certainly childish, and naive. Namely, MTF appear to see being a woman as akin to being a nubile, young, attractive woman, while FTM appear to see being a man as akin to being a high status man. Which are pretty likely and reasonable misconceptions for someone to form at adolescence.
Now, these are common enough misconceptions among non-trans people that it's possible that there's nothing particularly going on there. It's also possible that these misconceptions being so powerful play into making identifying as trans appear much more attractive. It's unfortunate that we lack a credible social science institution with resources to research something like this, since it's had such huge, transformative effects in our society just in the past decade.
Well, i'm not a "hardcore fan" but I somehow found the change to pay $6 for access to non-censored, full episodes. other comments say the same thing.
I think you're just too young and underenformed about the war in Afghantistan. We weren't "nice". We stayed there 20 years killing a ton of civilians. It makes WW2 look nice by comparison.
edit: sorry that came across too harsh. I didn't mean to insult you. I just disagree with your opinion about the war in Afghanistan.
Fair enough I guess -- I can say that this is not a UK usage that has transmitted to Canada anyways.
Maybe the right term now will be "Assault Ax"?
Pronouns being, much like many/most things to do with trans/gender ideology, sacrosanct, is pretty mainstream in my experience in progressive/"woke" culture in America. I didn't pay much attention to it, but the few times I ran into it on Twitter and such, it was common to see people being berated for not using Chris Chan's preferred pronouns, and in general it tends to pop up whenever there's some news of some trans person doing something most people agree is wrong. I also recall seeing a scene from some CW Batman show where a cop berates another cop for misgendering the suspect they're interrogating and kicks him out of the interrogation room, followed by him telling the suspect something like how they might be on different sides, but that doesn't mean he has to be an asshole to him, or something.
Of course, opinions tend to vary, as always, but one of the core tenets of this ideology is the relationship between someone's position on the progressive stack (i.e. oppression Olympics or the oppression totem pole) and the truth of their words or justice of their actions. As a result, in practice, the most extreme views espoused by some individual at the highest point on the totem pole with the least scruples about exercising social and physical acts for enforcement set the agenda. Straight men/lesbian women not discriminating against transwomen in dating/sex or including transwomen as full, undifferentiated members of women's sports teams and their lockers are other fairly extreme positions that seem not that commonly held when talking to individuals in private, but in practice, there's rarely more than some non-committal mumbling and foot-dragging when the extreme true believers demand all of society submit to these things, resulting in everyone having to behave in public as if they agree with those things.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3hr ago
This seems obviously correct to me, and has a ton of explanatory power when considering the motivations of advocates for childhood puberty blockers. There is a subset of the larger trans activist sphere who clearly see puberty as (at least in some cases, for some children) a profoundly traumatic and unwelcome experience. They want to introduce methods by which kids can have more control and more agency around their pubertal experiences, because they assume most kids (and even most adults) are dealing with the same level of angst about it that they are. These people are obviously typical-minding to an extreme degree — the vast majority of people navigate puberty without too much trauma and get over the awkwardness pretty smoothly — but it’s useful to understand their perspectives.
Browser
3hr ago
I mean this is why I wouldn't film an incident like this since it feels like the percentage of it prompting a stabby escalation is greater than the police accomplishing anything
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
There's definitely strong selection bias in effect. The people who aren't hardcore fans are almost certainly not paying money for access.
Funnily enough, I personally think that the war in Afghanistan wasn't violent enough. If you can't solve your problems through violence, you're not applying enough violence. The American brass thought you could win against an insurgency by being nice, and that never gets you anywhere I'm afraid.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
I have heard of Combat Mission before, but haven't had the pleasure of playing it. Looking at it, definitely seems up my alley. I'll see about tracking down a copy, thanks!
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
3hr ago
That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something. Does their mental illness spring from a form of arrested development occurring at the puberty age? Could it have to do with a failure on behalf of those around them to reinforcement and affirm the biological changes that happened at this age? Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)
2rafa
3hr ago
The union has a veto over the style guide that no doubt mandates specific pronouns (or at least a big say in it), and I highly doubt the style guide has carve-outs for sufficiently evil criminals.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Are you familiar with the Combat Mission series? Real time with pause (…and turns), small unit tactics, obsessed with hardware, semi-autonomous, models the limitations of command. All the features you’d expect from a milsim in a strategy game. Has campaigns where you have to preserve your assets; I don’t know if anyone has made ones that let you progress in tech.
I have my own submission for the dream video game question. Maybe I’ll write something up for Friday.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3hr ago
There was a suicide note written in plain English, and a journal/diary written in mostly-English but Cyrillic script. I wouldn't' call either a "mainfesto" though both provide a window into the motive.
zoink
3hr ago
It was probably "the shooter was assigned male at birth". I was surprised at any acknowledgment.
Totalitarianit
3hr ago
I hear NPR say he was born male yesterday.
Do you remember if they said "he was born male" or something like "the shooter was assigned male at birth"? I know it's a small distinction, but NPR flat out saying "he was born male" seems uncharacteristic. It would be a welcome surprise.
BahRamYou
3hr ago
From what I've seen, the episodes on their platform are way darker and more serious. Also the people that leave comments there tend to seem very serious like "yell yeah! Truth! That's how it was!" So I'm a little concerned that maybe most of our military vets wish the war in Afghanistan was much more violent...
Yeah, for sure it's intended for an audience of ex-enlisted. And yet it's still weirdly captivating to me as someone who was never in the military at all. It seems like Generation Kill is from 2008, so that's still... not so modern, compared to this. A big theme in this is the role smart phones and social media have had on the modern military experience. Not to mention women and gays.
edit: one thing that jumps out at me from watching this is how young most of the characters are. Typically they enlist at age 18, and then get out as soon as possible. So a typical marine now would have barely even been born when that movie came out.
WandererintheWilderness
4hr ago
Well, you've turned the "shooter" from your first cop into specifically a cop, which already changes the odds a bit. I do agree a cop who'd shot her would have better odds at the trial than a civilian who'd shot her in self-defense, which was where my mind initially went.
Still, I just don't think that that's realistically how it would go. Forget the legal risks - cop or not, nobody wants a twelve-year-old girl's death on his conscience. And, more cynically, nobody wants to be known for the rest of their life as the guy who killed a twelve-year-old girl at point blank range. Unless she's actually coming for your jugular right now, I just don't think you pull the trigger. Come to that, I'm pretty sure someone drawing a gun would be enough to make the girl drop the hatchet; we aren't dealing with a berserk druggie here.
tl;dr, it's not so much "the shooter would walk free" that strikes me as particularly implausible so much as the assertion that "in the US she would have been shot". It would certainly have been a more likely outcome than in the UK, but it doesn't scan as what would inevitably happen, not by a longshot.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
4hr ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE or maybe https://youtube.com/watch?v=rRm0NDo1CiY, I can't decide which one is better.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
Oh, I was a fan of the series, at least back when they were putting full episodes on YT. I'm not enough of a fan to pay for their bespoke platform. I know quite a few vets, and they heartily endorse the show, most of the jokes have a generalized kernel of truth to them.
Wohlfe
4hr ago
I think the target audience is very important here, these shows strike me like exactly the kinds of stories fellow enlisted dream up and tell each other based on a mix of harsh reality, dark fantasy, but mostly just blowing off steam that you can only fully understand if you were there. By far the most accurate portrayal of modern military life in a warzone I've seen is Generation Kill, highly recommend it if you're interested in this kind of thing.
I'm not a vet, but I made some effort to follow the war in Afghanistan as closely as possible for much of its duration. My understanding is that the Afghan war was quite bad.
The "winning hearts and minds" aspect appears to have been aimed primarily at American hearts and minds, not Afghani ones. That is, the goal was to persuade Americans that they were winning Afghani hearts and minds so the mission could be sustained, as opposed to actually winning Afghani hearts and minds. When the Afganistan papers leaked following the pullout, my understanding is that this was more or less confirmed by internal documentation; the leadership and administration had no idea how to actually win the war or what that would even look like, and so they defaulted to "what can we do that will look good back home?"
The Taliban appears to have had what amounts to a durable public mandate throughout the war, and there is at least some argument that they were in fact the good guys, to the extent that the term applies to a place as alien as Afganistan. They'd ruthlessly suppressed opium cultivation and the practice of Bacha Bazi, ie organized rape of young boys, to give two examples of concrete moral issues; the factions we sided with were, from the accounts I've heard, enthusiastic proponents of both. I've heard numerous accounts from vets about how they were ordered to not interfere with drug cultivation, and how they were told to ignore what their Afghan "allies" were doing in their barracks on the weekends.
I would argue that the higher-up officers were in no sense "correct". They were essentially running a scam, whereby they ordered the low-level soldiers to do highly dangerous, exceptionally pointless and often quite evil things in pursuit of meaningless bureaucratic objectives, shoulder to shoulder with "allies" who were frequently moral monsters, and not-uncommonly on the enemy's payroll. On top of that, they're soldiers, not policemen, and their entire training and corporate ethos is based around breaking things and killing people. They're a hammer, and most of the things around them are nails, and some of the things that aren't nails probably ought to be... This was not an environment that encourages deep ethical analysis and carefully regulated restraint.
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