domain:nytimes.com
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
4hr ago
Long ago I would similarly devour Agatha Christie books, my favorite was Lord Edgeware Dies. Since I read them when I younger, I wonder how much of the social situations went over my head and how enjoyable it would be to reread them now.
FoundViaTwitter
4hr ago
Ok. I won't ask any more questions or make any comments at all for some time, if that's how you feel.
yofuckreddit
4hr ago
I can tell the difference in Sodas. But it's hard to discern how much of that is the aluminum/lining vs glass as opposed to the sugar approach.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4hr ago
You're right! I had to refresh my own memory on this some more and the additional detail that my brain was fuzzy on in the intervening years is the whole disaccharide vs. monosaccharide bit, meaning that because regular sugar is a disaccharide, the bond between glucose and fructose has to be broken, whereas HFCS contains free monosaccharides. I kinda remembered that sucrose took a bit more work by the body to digest, but I was misattributing that to the balance of sugars, which as you're pointing out, isn't really much different than regular table sugar. So to be clear, it's not the amount of glucose vs. fructose itself, the idea is that the free monosaccharides of fructose in HFCS are uniquely taxing to the liver in a way that regular sugar is not because the bonds on sucrose have to be broken before the fructose in regular sugar can be processed by the liver. That's... even more hair-splitting than I remembered it to be!
FoundViaTwitter
4hr ago
Fair enough. Thank you.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4hr ago
What exactly is objectionable about his post?
Primarily, it's "boo outgroup."
Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
BC's post does not even pretend to do the very patient work of contextualizing or steel-manning the position. Rather, the substance of the post is "damn, America sucks, and Americans suck for not revolting." This is also tinged with an edge of consensus building or recruiting for a cause, albeit in a nonspecific way. The parting sentence is particularly inflammatory:
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
I decided against modding it because I don't think it's a significant enough violation of the rules to warrant a permaban, and BC's moderation history has reached the point where other moderators are saying "we should probably permaban next time." But self_made_human decided to go ahead and just add another tempban (proportioned to BC's post history), which seems like a good call to me.
it doesn't seem very different in style and tone from other things I've read over the last week. It's just left-wing and not right-wing.
Assuming you are actually new, I'm going to invite you to not make this a hobby horse. We ban right wing posters for the same sorts of tonal problems, as you and I have discussed. To be blunt, you do not have enough of a reputation here in the community to be credibly assessing its norms. You'd be well served to stay out of the meta, at least initially.
iprayiam3
4hr ago
I do not see how it is possible to read this and go anything other than "Shame on you" at ... the American populace for acquiescing to this. ... This is not the behaviour I would expect of a mature world power like the USA...
Why is it concern of American citizens to live up to the 'expected behaviors' of a 3rd world immigrant to the UK, who is absolutely giddy at the idea of population replacement and takes ample opportunity to say so? You've cashed that card in here too much to try to pull 'shame on you, be better' arguments at anti-immigration anything.
That aside, ok, this story taken at face value sounds awful, and whoever said he had died, should face criminal consequences. Going beyond the scope of the story itself, what is the so what, I'm supposed to be morally shamed into?
...Therefore accept all immigration uncritically, become a 'US is an economic zone globalist', and get on board the program of population replacement? Again this is what you've generally argued for over several years at least across the pond, so if this isn't your main point, you can see how it seems suspicious?
If the alternative moral is, look how bad and sloppy this is!, yes! I agree! It's horrible that we've come to this situation, but it's obviously a consequence of that bad actions of the other side that's created the mess, and the obstructionism against cleaning it up. This is the song and dance that keeps playing out:
The one side that doesn't agree with cleaning up the mess, wants to continue creating it, and obstructing the cleanup, but then use the difficulty of cleaning around this as an argument that the cleanup is being done wrong. It's diningenuous. Grab a broom, admit you're part of the mess, or shut up. Standing in the corner criticizing is seen for what it is at this point.
This is the exact same playbook that played out across any conservative issue on any topic. 'Creating a Dialogue' became a trope when it came to the final LGBT push against religious holdouts. The same side encouraging and creating the dissonance uses the dissonance as an insincere argument of process objection, when its really an object level disagreement. It's sabatage, and the US population is tired of it, especially from foreign globalists.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
4hr ago
I don't disagree as such, and sure, BC has always seemed more than a little interested in baiting, but can you pinpoint what exactly about this post qualifies?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
4hr ago
Granted, I'm not familiar with BurdensomeCount's other posts.
That's the issue. Count has a long time history of trolling and yanking on chains, going back to the subreddit days. He's masterful at making incredibly inflammatory statements with just enough of a veneer of sincerity to pass muster. He's an ur-example of barely toeing the line.
This would serve as a great example. Look the mods, being so heartless and evil, banning a poor participant on the forum for expressing sincere concern about government outreach? It's only when you take into account everything else he's done that it falls through. I'll let someone fill in with a more exhaustive explanation since I'm at work, but in short, this ain't new.
Sending one guy to Guatemala doesn't exclude you from humanity.
Expelling people from the wrong place, from the wrong tribe, is deeply human. It is an ancient practice committed by almost everyone who can and often attempted by those who can't.
The Native Americans massacred civilians in sneak attacks and gruesomely tortured them for being on their land. Uncivilized behaviour but not that unreasonable.
The US has been extremely, extremely generous to non-Americans. You can show up in America and make billions of dollars, wield great political influence. This wouldn't be allowed in some other countries, there'd be methods and attitudes in place preventing foreigners from, say, becoming mayor of their largest city. Mamdani's not mayor yet but he's the most serious contender. America shifting from 85% Openness to foreigners down to 60% is not an apocalyptic, abysmal disaster for humanity or even America.
Xenophobia looks like the wrong people (regardless of citizenship or qualities) being told to get out now - without their property or any legal right of appeal. Or skipping expulsion and moving onto enslavement or liquidation. Real hostility to foreigners does not have courts discussing the issue of 'discrimination of national origin', unless it's to query as to why there isn't more discrimination. Real contempt for foreigners doesn't have foreign aid being cut (foreign aid?), it has warships negotiating unequal treaties and unloading huge quantities of narcotics.
The UK has gone from world leader to third rate power in large part to its immense openness and generosity to outsiders, many of whom end up in social housing, deal drugs, rob or scam. There's a huge DEI structure to patronize and enrich foreigners. They're spending billions of pounds feeding and housing refugees in hotels yearly. Many other countries (still incredibly open by historical standards) would've noped out of that and sent them away or had them dispersed. A country cannot stay at such high openness, openness to the point of self-sacrificing xenophilia, forever. It's an unstable policy and it's not unreasonable for a country under pressure to retreat from such high openness.
FoundViaTwitter
4hr ago
What exactly is objectionable about his post? Personally, I think it's too emotionally charged and credulously accepting of the news story, but it doesn't seem very different in style and tone from other things I've read over the last week. It's just left-wing and not right-wing.
Granted, I'm not familiar with BurdensomeCount's other posts.
felis-parenthesis
4hr ago
The autopsy report found 11 ng/mL of Fentanyl and 5.6 ng/mL of Norfentanyl. The story I've read online (which I'm not qualified to judge) goes like this:
DUI blood test sometimes show that drivers have 11 ng/mL of Fentanyl in their blood. Habitual users build up protective tolerance and can remain functional despite a level of Fentanyl in their blood that would be rapidly fatal to a naive user. The level of Norfentanyl adds nuance. The typical overdose death of a naive user occurs before their body can metabolise Fentanyl to Norfentanyl. The presence of Norfentanyl proves that George Floyd had a protective tolerance and had had a high level of Fentanyl in his blood for a while, giving his body time to metabolize it.
This is a load bearing part of the criminal prosecution of Derek Chauvin. Without Floyd's habit and tolerance, 11 ng/mL is a lethal dose, explaining away Floyd's death and handing Chauvin a get out of jail free card. It is important context for understanding policing in America. The police have to deal with junkies who are high on pain killing drugs at the time of their arrest, putting the police at risk of wild, random violence.
Had the Fentanyl story been pure invention, intended to muddy the waters, then keeping it alive by calling him "Fentanyl Floyd" would indeed be just obnoxious boo-lighting. But it is a vital part of the story. Without it, a nerdy, timid forger is attempting to quietly pass his $20 bill, gets caught and surrenders without resistance. Then he is knelt on and killed for being Black. That is a very different story. Trying to airbrush Fentanyl from the story is waging culture war.
Mantergeistmann
4hr ago
the fact that such a story is even believable speaks volumes
I'll be honest with you, that's one of my least favorite arguments, and says more about the sayer than the situation. "The fact that I'm able to believe something terrible about my outgroup, even if false, is just another indication about how bad they are!" It's tiresome whether it's the Left, the Right, the Orange, the Purple, the Monarchists, or the Revolutionaries. "I may be wrong about this" should be cause for self-reflection about other cases where oneself may be wrong--"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken"--not as an excuse to double-down against the group being unfairly maligned.
After all, if my hunch/info turns out to be incorrect, and the situation as originally presented was 100% truthful, would you say to me (with sincerity) "That's alright: the fact that you considered it believable that the news might be misrepresenting the situation or jumping the gun speaks volumes about how terrible and inaccurate the reporting usually is on these things?"
FoundViaTwitter
4hr ago
five years ago this story would have been seen as too absurd for The Onion.
No, it wouldn't be, and that's the point. I've cited some examples of the Obama administration deporting U.S. citizens.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4hr ago
Our legal system (England) is the most imitated in the world, almost all of the Commonwealth uses something deriving from it.
I mean, in some sense we're all just derivatives of the Romans, or maybe the Greeks. But you complain about American "sovereign immunity" while living in a country that still has a King, and lacks meaningful protection of some very important basic rights. That seems relevant. As I suggested, your post would have been much better to simply focus on the perceived failings of the United States government (which many Americans would agree are many!). Taking the position that the UK government exhibits moral superiority here was an overreach at best, both undermining your point and your credibility.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
4hr ago
"Innocent until proven guilty" might work in the legal system, but the medical one goes by "if you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras".
Please pull the other one guvna', it's got bells on it.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
4hr ago
But our trash legal system is also the most imitated in the world, as when it does work
No. Our legal system (England) is the most imitated in the world, almost all of the Commonwealth uses something deriving from it. Your system is a derivative of ours and as one of the things England actually does extremely well I think it is something our country should take great pride in and not let it be appropriated by some 250 year old pretender.
I miss the old BC,
straight from Canary Wharf BC,
the Alawite rule BC
I hate the new BC,
This shtick got old BC,
Breaks all the rules BC,
thinks the mods are fools BC,
Ahem. Count, the mods are not retarded. I might often be quite entertained by your shenanigans, but they're better reserved for /r/drama, and being occasionally amusing isn't sufficient to let you off.
Hell, I was going to let you off, but then I remembered I have to actually set an example every once in a while, and I took a look at your moderation log. You have that one AAQC to your credit, and a laundry list of warnings, temp bans, and even a perma ban that was cut down because someone spoke up for you.
The second-last entry is "More baiting. Really should permaban him next time."
I really dislike permabanning people. Hate to do it, I'm a bleeding heart that way. I will find a middle ground and say you can sit in the corner for another 60 days, and consider that lenient. In the meantime, you can consider opening a bait-and-tackle store or drying your copious tears with stacks of money, or whatever it is finance people do. Consider this provisional, if the other mods want to extend it, or make it permanent, I'm not going to say a word.
FoundViaTwitter
4hr ago
I've seen one of two reactions online:
-
He wasn't a real "American". He was a foreigner and will always be, no matter how long he'd been in the country and regardless of whatever papers he had. "They all gotta go". (This is a fringe online talking point.)
-
Immigration is so fucked up in this country, especially after Biden, that I can't be bothered to care if mistakes are made. We need to deport as many illegals as possible, and if that results in citizens, permanent residents, and legal visitors being caught up in the net once in a while, so be it.
Of course, these reactions are contingent on the person believing the story is true. I'm skeptical, given the update that @Mantergeistmann provided and the fact that Leon doesn't pattern match the type of person who would be deported to a third country - in this case, to Guatemala rather than Chile. My understanding is that the people who have been deported to third countries - Eswatini, South Sudan, etc. - are people with serious criminal convictions whose home country won't take them back.
By the way, even assuming the story is true, this has happened plenty of times in prior administrations:
Immigration crackdown also snares Americans
A growing number of United States citizens have been detained under Obama administration programs intended to detect illegal immigrants who are arrested by local police.
In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.
American teen mistakenly deported to Colombia returns to Texas
naraburns
nihil supernum
4hr ago
All in all as I learn more about the Law as it is in both the UK, other systems like European Civil Law and the US, I am slowly being drawn to the inescapable conclusion that the American legal system, for all its grandiose self professed claims, is a steaming pile of shit.
On one hand, I substantially agree. Our legal system has always pretty much always been "trash," if "trash" means "governed primarily by politics and judicial self-interest rather than reason or the rule of law." That is just judicial review in a nutshell, to say nothing of our deference to bureaucracy, including "law enforcement." The old Ben Franklin saw about only a virtuous people being capable of freedom seems to be true!
But our trash legal system is also the most imitated in the world, as when it does work, it seems to work better than any other in history. Its failure modes are... still being explored, I suppose we can say. I would even so rank our legal system well above that of any nation that jails its own citizens for making bad posts on social media. Ironic, given the heat of your own post here! America may get many things wrong, but we're not the only ones.
(Aside: your post has been reported as both "boo outgroup" and as "antagonistic." I think you do bring some unnecessary heat and smear the not-very-specifc group "Americans" a little too liberally, but I will chalk it up to reflexive participation in long English tradition. Partly because your next ban is very likely to be permanent, and I don't feel like this particular post quite warrants it. But it's probably worth noting that the whole substance of your post, including a significant portion of your maybe-even-genuine outrage, could have been expressed pretty easily without either the heat or the jingoism.)
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Just finished Master & Commander. It was very good! I found the writing style a bit slow to read, but it was a page-turner all the same.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5hr ago
I have no idea why you're still allowed to post here.
The forum is undoubtedly better with his presence. In the words of Hitchcock, “the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture”.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
5hr ago
Interesting. Lets wait and see where things settle down. But honestly, the fact that such a story is even believable speaks volumes about the situation on the ground, five years ago this story would have been seen as too absurd for The Onion.
Fair question. The line between a passionate, strongly-worded argument and trolling can be blurry, and if this post existed in a vacuum, without any knowledge of Count's antics, it would have been unobjectionable. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. The problem isn't the topic: it is the user, the pattern, and the presentation.
To put it plainly, trolling isn't just about what you say, but why and how you say it. The goal of this forum is to "optimize for light over heat." Trolling optimizes for heat, exclusively. Count does occasionally provide light too, but in the same manner that lighting your house on fire helps find the keys during a blackout.
Breaking down this specific post:
Performative, Over-the-Top Language: The post isn't structured for discussion. It's a screed. Phrases like "total emptiness of its own fundamental depravity," "steaming pile of shit," and "apply for readmission to the human race" are pure flamebait. They're designed to provoke outrage, not invite reasoned disagreement.
Deliberate, Gratuitous Antagonism: The constant, almost comically exaggerated praise for the UK system versus the condemnation of the US isn't a good-faith comparison. It's tribal button-pushing. "august by American standards, by our standards there is terraced housing within 5 minutes walk of me that is older" is a perfect example. It adds zero substance and exists only to be condescending and get a rise out of American readers. It's a classic "Boo outgroup!" move.
Now, the crucial part: context.
BurdensomeCount has a long, long history of this exact behavior, for which he has been repeatedly warned and banned. His schtick is to take a kernel of a real argument and wrap it in layers of aristocratic, elitist, and often racialist provocation. You can see it all over his comment history (make sure to sort by negative votes):
He isn't arguing to understand; he's arguing to provoke, to feel superior, and to watch the fireworks. He knows exactly which buttons to press. This latest post is just his standard formula applied to a new news story: find a legitimate grievance, crank the rhetoric to 11, lard it with condescending UK-vs-US bait, and serve it up to see who bites. And people will bite, they will get mad, while Count laughs away or engages in performative denialism.
In short, he's not engaging with the culture war; he's waging it, which is explicitly against the rules of the thread. He's a "masterful" troll in that he's very good at it, but that doesn't earn him an indefinite pass.
I like Count. He amuses me, like a monkey that is very good at flinging shit. He also annoys me and tars other migrants by association, coming off as immensely entitled, ungrateful, and willing to bite the hand that feeds. But that is a personal stance, and not what he's being modded for.
His mistake is to assume that the Motte runs like an actual court of law. While this particular comment wouldn't sway a judge, Lady Justice might be blind but I'm not. We know Count.
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