domain:moultano.wordpress.com
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
I've definitely heard of PTTE, and I dimly recall reading the first chapter. I'll give it another look, I've been running out of good things to read.
I would have guessed your comment was more of an allusion to Skyrim, from that speech by Paarthurnax where he questions whether it's better to have been born good, or to have overcome your evil nature through effort.
and at best straight up leave.
I guess I should have said "ethnic cleansing" instead of "genocide". Although frankly I kind of find the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to be a cop-out term governments use when they don't want to put boots on the ground somewhere that's looking real genocidal.
It kind of feels similar to the stupid word games of "its not racism against white people, it's just racial prejudice". Like congratulations, you (not you Whining Coil) made up a new word, you're still a massive asshole for being racially prejudiced/not intervening in the ethnic cleansing where children are being murdered.
Anyway, on pogroms, if my government was tacitly allowing low level violence against me and my people I'd feel rather genocided and would be absolutely attempting to leave immediately far away lest it get worse. Which then kind of makes it ethnic cleansing if I get the hell out of the area.
Arguably you see it already in many Democrat run cities.
What?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
5hr ago
Like if the most antisemitic person you'd ever heard of tried to write a story about where the Jews came from, I'm not sure he'd do it any different.
The story of Jacob (re: him and Esau and him and his father) and him being the father of the 12 tribes of Israel is one of the most anti-Semitic things I've ever read.
srf0638
5hr ago
It's been like 2 years for me, I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. Admittedly I haven't gotten around to Hornblower. Mr Midshipman Easy was ok but not the same sort of thing at all.
Based on your other comment, Wodehouse might not be a million miles away from what you're looking for. Obviously lighter, but a good deal of the same spirit.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
I am a little dissatisfied with your implication that he probably didn't say anything bad about her kids
My assumption is that if he did, it would have leaked. As whoever leaked obviously wanted to damage his reputation, and that would me maximally reputation damaging. Therefore, if it existed, we'd be seeing it right now. The photos in that tweet are cropped and presented without timestamps, which is a deliberate choice. So if they're narrative shaping, why wouldn't they include it?
Fair points that it may be a follow up from a verbal conversation, but given the limited context presented to us I don't think I can jump to "he wants to hurt their kids".
I think there is enough to say this person should be canceled out of the political system entirely
Yes
the condemnations I'm seeing are not particularly strong
This is bad and embarrassing for Dems
the comments sections are justifying him, saying that he's far better than the opposing side
I've said my piece on the usefulness of internet comments. That said, republican politicians do have a shitty track record about saying fucked up shit about their out-groups, so to borrow a reddit phrase, "everyone here is the asshole".
As a concerned onlooker, I wish your country would stop flicking each other's nipples and wake the fuck up to the real issues, which are China, the coming wave of climate refuges, and the existing tidal wave of unstainable old people pensions.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5hr ago
A "member" of Annabel's? It is no more of a membership than my "membership" of American Express. They are subscribers with ideas above their station, and Annabel's is a commercial discotheque with ideas above its station.
oats_son
5hr ago
I am worried about this, just not "they're going to start rounding up red-tribers any day now" worried.
This, too, seems like it's a misunderstanding of @WhiningCoil's point. Did you read his original post about pogroms? It's not about rounding people up and executing them, it's about making it clear you hate a class of people, through rhetoric and through occasional targeted violence. Please tell me you've read his post fully before you downplay the fear of a pogrom again. His logic makes sense to me, and it's pretty topical, given current events.
Bingbong
5hr ago
I do think Trump would have been at greater risk of personal harm if he were dropped into the middle of a George Floyd riot than if Biden were actually caught by the Jan 6ers, though. Maybe since it's hard to be like... actively mad at Biden since he's on his final hitpoint.
gafpromise
5hr ago
Sure, and Fox News hosts have recently suggested things like bombing the UN or giving homeless people involuntary lethal injections. You can nut-pick all day long and both sides do it. Both hosts still have their jobs, by the way.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-fox-news-brian-130000750.html
Bingbong
5hr ago
Personally I feel like the Right is more consistent on their level of Macho posturing whilst the Left seemingly divides the world into 'above all reproach, words are violence' and 'MURDER THE NON-MASKER' kinds of rhetoric.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5hr ago
I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.
MTG though, she's something else. I have no qualms with wishing she were out of office and disavowing most of what she says. Marjorie Taylor Greene had an average 24% Approval Rating among Republicans. Most Republicans didn't recognize her name in the poll:
Most who were asked about Greene said that they had no opinion of the congresswoman. Republicans were less likely to be aware of or have an opinion about Greene than Democrats, with 64 percent of Democrats weighing in compared to only 44 percent of Republicans.
Greene is more important to Democrats to show how crazy Republicans are, than she is to Republicans who largely don't think about her at all and when they do agree she is pretty crazy.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
The progressives have a pretty astounding stranglehold on the culture in a lot of places
I hate it, that's why I am here!
it's pretty scary if the sites where they're dominant start to turn violent.
I am worried about this, just not "they're going to start rounding up red-tribers any day now" worried.
WandererintheWilderness
5hr ago
I mean, if that's your concern, "shitlib" wouldn't exactly invite less left-wing pushback.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
the free AI detectors don't ping
FYI they are really bad if I recall correctly. Although they are improving.
The ones in this paper did well though, but they may be paid.
oats_son
5hr ago
Yeah, I know what you mean. I have a friend that complains that /r/AirForce is incredibly unrepresentative of the Air Force as a whole, and yet, everyone looking at reddit sees it and thinks that's what the Air Force is like. But those people coalesce from somewhere. The progressives have a pretty astounding stranglehold on the culture in a lot of places, and it's pretty scary if the sites where they're dominant start to turn violent.
oats_son
5hr ago
I respect you for conceding some points here. I am a little dissatisfied with your implication that he probably didn't say anything bad about her kids, but I understand that sometimes it takes some time to come to a conclusion.
We don't know what he didn't say, only what he did say, and since he agreed with her when she said what she did about kids, that's a pretty good indication that he said something pretty bad. The pretty bad something could have been farther in the text history and couldn't be found easily. The pretty bad something could have been something spoken vocally and not recorded. Regardless, I think there is enough to say this person should be canceled out of the political system entirely, but the condemnations I'm seeing are not particularly strong, and the comments sections are justifying him, saying that he's far better than the opposing side.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5hr ago
"inciting genocide (what a pogrom is)"
Perhaps you should read the previous comment of mine I posted about how pogroms are not the same as genocide. Not ever, not once, not in any historical context. Pogroms have very low fatality counts compared to genocide. They are not organized. They are a roiling low level amount of violence against an ethnic group that the state alternates between turning a blind eye to, giving slaps on the wrist over, and occasionally inflaming with their rhetoric and permissiveness. The goal is to get the ethnic group to be demoralized, be too fearful to participate in public life, and at best straight up leave.
Democrats are absolutely capable of that. Arguably you see it already in many Democrat run cities.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
I'm not saying it's meaningless, I am just saying that internet commentators are not a representative sample.
In my experience as a Canadian living in Toronto, the Toronto/Ontario/Canada subreddits are all wildly out of touch with the median citizen who lives in any of those three areas. This is most evident in the sentiment towards elected officials versus their electoral results.
By some quick math I did a few years ago, /r/Toronto actually has one of the highest "# of subreddit subscribers"/"city population" ratios in the Western world, and yet literally any comment section in /r/Toronto is laughably out of touch with the views held by the median human who lives in Toronto.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
I would never vote for him after these comments. They are gross and inappropriate, but in my opinion do not meet the standard of "inciting genocide (what a pogrom is)" or "wanting all republicans dead".
If he did in fact say those children should die, he should be punished by either legal ethics standards boards, the Democratic party, the law, or all of the above.
I am suspicious about what exactly he said regarding children, given that if he said something spicy, you'd think it would have been leaked like these other texts? I am assuming whoever leaked this selected only the snippets that made him look the worst. So I am weary of conjecture here.
I don’t think it’s cynicism as a belief as much as a genetic type we’re talking about. Subclinical sociopathy is the most important thing our culture selects for after intelligence. The cynics in question are acting out their genes and not a philosophical belief they cultivated, because our schools and culture do not really teach cynicism, but teach that fairness and equality and goodness and philanthropy and so forth are objective values.
For every choice in youth which influences the chance of mainstream successful, the sociopath has the edge over the healthy-minded individual. Has a reading in English class triggered an intrinsic interest in the author and a desire to read more? You’ve clogged your mind and schedule with a distraction, while the sociopath continues to gun the next reading assignment. Did your grandma die and it had a big impact on you because you were close to her? Again you have worse odds. Are you, as a normal person, unwilling to a create brazenly false life event? The sociopath beats you on every college essay. Do you make a friendship with someone less fortunate, and in accordance with every moral belief system allocate energy and attention to their wellbeing? This might spell the difference between a B+ or an A. When you had to play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no 2 for a music performance, does it take you on an emotional adventure that leaves you stunned the rest of the night? No Stendhal are you, you have a calculus test tomorrow. Do you have religious inclinations which require talking to the Divine or reading virtue-inducing works that don’t leave a measurable result? You’re screwed. Do you feel guilt at the state of the world and does it compel you to learn about it? Your sociopathic competitor has no such compunction.
The sociopath wants power and control and dominance and is insensitive to any emotional distraction or guilt or empathetic concern. A healthy youth ought to be distracted by things outside of school as a natural byproduct of their curiosity, inclinations, and sense of social purpose. There are people like Fields Medalist June Huh who are simply deselected out of the upper echelons of society despite being exactly what we want in our all of our key positions:
Huh applied to about a dozen doctoral programs in the U.S. But because of his undistinguished undergraduate experience, he was rejected by all of them save one. In 2009, he began his studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, before transferring to the University of Michigan in 2011 to complete his doctorate.
To hear him tell it, he doesn’t usually have much control over what he decides to focus on in those three hours. For a few months in the spring of 2019, all he did was read. He felt an urge to revisit books he’d first encountered when he was younger — including Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and several novels by the German author Hermann Hesse — so that’s what he did. “Which means I didn’t do any work,” Huh said. “So that’s kind of a problem.”
When he was 16 years old and in the middle of his first year in high school (which lasts for three years in South Korea), he decided to drop out to write poetry. He was something of a romantic. “I could literally physically cry after listening to good music,” he said. He wrote about nature and about his own experiences. He planned to complete his masterpiece in the two years before he’d have to attend university. “So that didn’t happen,” he laughed.
That poetic detour has since proved crucial to his mathematical breakthroughs. His artistry, according to his colleagues, is evident in the way he uncovers those just-right objects at the center of his work, and in the way he seeks a deeper significance in everything he does. “Mathematicians are a lot like artists in that really we’re looking for beauty,” said Federico Ardila-Mantilla, a mathematician at San Francisco State University and one of Huh’s collaborators. “But I think in his case, it’s really pronounced. And I just really like his taste. He makes beautiful things.”
Mathematicians were also impressed by his demeanor. His talks at conferences were always accessible and concrete; in speaking with him, it was clear that he was thinking both deeply and broadly about the concepts he was working with. “He was ridiculously mature for a graduate student,” said Matthew Baker, a mathematician at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After Baker met him for the first time, “I was just like, who is this guy?”
According to Mircea Mustaţă, Huh’s adviser at the University of Michigan, he required almost no supervision or guidance. Unlike most graduate students, he already had a program in mind, and ideas about how to pursue it. “He was more like a colleague,” Mustaţă said. “He already had his own way of looking at things.” Many of his collaborators note that he’s incredibly humble and down-to-earth. When he learned he’d won the Fields Medal, “it didn’t really feel that good,” Huh said. “Of course you are happy, but deep down, you’re a little bit worried that they might eventually figure out that you’re not actually that good. I am a reasonably good mathematician, but am I Fields Medal-worthy?”
Obviously there’s a spectrum between a June Huh and a Sam Bankman-Fried, and June Huh is like the comical ideal. But there are probably June Huns of other social/cultural roles that we just have no way of finding and selecting. I mean, in math and programming, you can trivially prove that you have the skills, but this is harder for anything involving political leadership and the humanities.
edit remembered that a good example of this is PirateSoftware. YouTube has endless analyses for anyone unfamiliar. But for those familiar: his lying and scheming made him the top streamer in the world for a while. He used his supreme reputation to attack the pro-consumer initiative Stop Killing Games. He benefitting personally from attacking this initiative because it ingratiated him with big business, and he has no empathetic tie to the common man / consumer. Our political class is awfully like PirateSoftware.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
Responded to you in a different comment but fair enough. In my first read I was just looking for direct calls to violence in his texts, so gross quips about "pissing on their graves" didn't really meet the bar for "inciting violence" in my opinion.
I am concerned about his references to their children though. That is too far. Although weird that it's not included in the leak if he did say thing about them, because that would be way better leak than this is currently.
Quantumfreakonomics
5hr ago
We don’t have the context. We don’t know why Jay Jones thinks Todd and Jennifer Gilbert are “evil” and “breeding little fascists”. Going on priors, it’s probably not a very good reason, but we don’t actually know that.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
Sorry I was looking for / focusing on calls for violence specifically, I got rather anchored on the "Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead" and "This is how Pogroms work."
I think the rest of his comments are in extremely poor taste, but I don't think saying gross things is comparable to inciting basically genocide. I wouldn't vote for someone who says these things, but saying "I'd piss on someone's grave" =/= "we should organize mob attacks on Republican communities".
The fact he mentioned their kids is heinous though, it's weird that if he was wishing harm/death on those children it wasn't included in the screenshots as that would be a much more salacious leak. If he was threatening children I hope he is sued, potentially disbarred(??) etc.
Recently finished The Secret History after @FtttG recommended it (although he was just the most recent of many to do so). Definitely had a few weak points, but overall an enjoyable read.
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