domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
zeke5123a
4m ago
Again, the sheer magnitude and location of Biden’s document location suggest a lot of “forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket.” Some of those documents were documents you were supposed to only review in a clean room. Kind of hard to analogize that as “forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket.”
Also this ignores Hillary who pretty clearly had the server to avoid FOIA and then destroyed the evidence under subpoena.
Finally, there seems to be some evidence that NARA and DOJ was trying to entrap Trump.
raakaa
4m ago
I’m not Irish, so take this with a grain of salt. But as I understand it, the Irish have always analogized their situation with respect to the British to the Palestinians’ with respect to the Israelis.
Is it common for Eurovision to consistently have so many LGBT performers? I clicked on a few participating countries' performers and all but one seemed to be in that category. I get that the whole thing is pretty gay but even taking that into account it seemed a bit unusual.
Her decision to participate was controversial, with many figures in Ireland's music scene likening her to a scab worker for not honouring the Eurovision boycott in protest of Israel's participation. She has given multiple interviews defending herself and insisting that she is acting in accordance with her values.
What exactly is it with Ireland and Israel? I know Israel's not exactly popular these days but I feel over half of the public statements I see denouncing Israel come out of ROI. I definitely haven't heard of any other national contestant having to defend their choice to attend the competition based on Israel being there.
Is there a meaningful undercurrent of anti-semitism in Irish society (yes I know anti-semitism isn't definitionally the same as Israelophobia, but they tend to be pretty correlated)? It's not as if there are a lot of Muslims there. Or is it mostly performative political progressivism, like their cousins in Scotland?
Outlaw83
13m ago
Again, because Biden, Pence, and other politicians when informed immediately returned some documents. The problem isn't having the documents. It's an expectation that in a world where there are 9 trillion documents, some classifield ones will get moved, not out of malice or illegal acts.
If Trump had done what Biden, Pence, and others did, there would be no case.
But, when you refuse to work with the agency tasked to get these records, show said records to other people and talk about how they're classifield, and more, yeah, that's worse.
It's the difference between accidentally forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket and running out with a shopping cart full of electronics.
Folamh3
13m ago
Certainly Bambie Thug is nowhere near as omnipresent in the popular imagination as Jedward were. I would put "the celebrity everyone is currently talking about" in a very different category to "the political topic everyone is currently talking about", though.
Outlaw83
16m ago
Normal parties don't renominate corrupt, criminal losers who tried a coup.
Like, the Right had this same argument about Brett Kavanaugh - "see, you'll try to take out any Republican nominee with lies and false allegations.'
Except it didn't happen with Neil Gorsuch, who had much the same background and views. Sure, people attacked his judicial views, but in the way both sides do. There were no allegations of him being a rapist or even some lesser crime, because he hadn't possibly done criminal things.
Don't nominate the corrupt former New York real estate guy who tried to overturn an election and you'll be all clear. Yes, we'll say mean things about him if you nominate say, Greg Abbott, but for what I know, he's done no crimes. He's allied with somebody even conservative Republicans think has done cirmes (Ken Paxton), but Abbott himself is just a right-winger.
faceh
19m ago
What @Felagund said, and historically the killing of a given politician DOESN'T immediately result in the particular outcome you desire occurring.
So unless the outcome you want is literally "X politician is dead" then no rational person would carry out such an assassination in hopes of achieving their end goals.
Outlaw83
20m ago
The part about Boebert is what your described is an underlying reason why we're seeing such shifts in college educated suburbs outside of the other more obvious factors.
Like, I'm sure there have been a lot of right-wing representatives in the past who actually worried about constituent needs - one example off hand is Thad Cochoran of Mississippi didn't need a single black vote to win easily in the state, but nonetheless, he was well known for having good constuent services, even in overwhelmingly black areas of the state, and not surprisingly, while he didn't do fantastic in the black belt regions, he did much better than Trent Lott did who was the other Senator at the time, even pre-Strom Thurmond praise.
Hell, Brian Kemp has passed a fairly strict abortion ban, passed trans laws close to Florida, passed a strict voter ID law, passed the usual tax cuts, and done a lot of stuff I don't like as a left-wing social democrat, but he has a 65% approval rating in Georgia because he said, "nah, Biden won, you weirdos," then he and his Secretary of State easily curbstomped a primary challenge.
The problem for the modern hard-right/far-right/dissident right, whatever people want to call themselves is that there's zero appeal unless you're either a partisan Republican or you're obsessed with the the Culture War issues of the day, but if you're even a somewhat serious person, they all seem like weirdos. Again, I know some won't like this, but look up how AOC questions people in Congressional panels versus Freedom Caucus types. You don't have to like her questions, or agree with her premises even, but she's well prepared and has follow up questions.
Obviously, not every member of the Squad is like that, but the median member of the Progressive Caucus is more serious about actually doing the work of legislating as opposed to trying to get a hit on Fox News or Newsmax than the median member of the Freedom Caucus, and in the long run, swing voters given the choice of having to use certain genders they don't get and some more immigrants speaking Spanish but actually getting stuff done versus chaos, abortion bans, and weird obsessions with issues they've never heard about, they'll back the woke side, even if they heavily disagree.
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
33m ago
Why allow “Antifa” their own zone in Portland? Because when they are doing that they are doing nothing serious.
These sort of reverse arguments are easy to generate (e.g. "welfare is actually bad for the recipients because they become dependent on it", "affirmative action is bad for Black people because people assume they're diversity hires", etc), so barring any actual evidence, it's hard to take any specific example seriously.
America’s weak point is clearly potential civic disunity which could result in balkanization along racial, religious, or cultural lines.
Similarly, it seems extremely weird to argue that elevating racial groups in discourse is supposed to prevent civic disunity along racial lines. When there is a clear direct relationship in one direction and an alleged indirect relationship in the other, I take the direct relationship far more seriously.
hydroacetylene
42m ago
OK, even I have to admit that a luchador and what appears to be a washroom attendant rapping what seems to be Kpop but put through a filter to make it sound like the black tongue of mordor would have improved that video.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
58m ago
The one American who I think would legitimately love Eurovision if he was, for some reason, visiting the event by himself, would be Donald Trump. I won't elaborate further.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
Windows95man has a decade of career as a DJ and a visual artist, he's not really a musician (well, unless you count his DJ career as being a "musician"). His selection was originally quite controversial in Finland as well, I think that it was an attempt to redo Käärijä's flamboyant personality from last year but forgetting that Cha Cha Cha was a legitimate banger by itself. Croatia's entry was Käärijä's true heir this year.
slothlikesamwise
Subway Wizard 🔮
1hr ago
So the idea is that the powers behind the throne use woke discourse to provide circuses to prevent an actual threat to their dominance of American life?
All reports are that the intel agencies aren't insulated from woke discourse and the culture war, so it doesn't particularly work that they float it to protect themselves from attack.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
You didn't read the M from Microsoft in microsoft xbox because it was only in my head.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
The Jedward years overlapped with my time in Ireland. It seemed like they were everywhere and girls would turn up to see them at the mall or a supermarket.
Bambie Thug get similar coverage and treatment?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Could American social progressivism be (in part) an intelligence operation to create “defense-in-depth” against America’s weak points, akin to the cybersecurity or military strategy?
In cybersecurity, valuable assets are hyper-protected with multiple layers of security, so that if any layer fails the others may still hold. The idea being that the assets are so important to defend and attacks could come at any time (and with novel stratagem), so it is reasonable to over-defend it in many different ways. In the military usage, layers of physical defense are established so that one may retreat into another defense upon an assault, ensuring reduced losses and longer periods of defending. Another somewhat ancillary idea is “fencing the Torah” in Judaism. It is so important not to violate a Torah prohibition that “fences” are established to make even the chance violation impossible. Eg, the the rule to not even pick up a tool lest you accidentally use it which would violate the sabbath prohibition.
America’s weak point is clearly potential civic disunity which could result in balkanization along racial, religious, or cultural lines. In order to hyper-defend from that risk, you implement a social operation involving defense-in-depth where the majority constituents must necessarily deny their own identity and engage in ritual ”sacrifices” upon the altar of plurality (from Trayvon to George Floyd). This explains even the whitification of Asians: once they become significant enough to possibly lead to Balkan problems, you enforce the same depotentiation. Notably, it is not enough of a social defense to merely pledge allegiance to plurality, as that hardly changes someone’s psychology. You must actually make it a social ideal so that it is promoted and normalized especially among the young potential rebels, and that is in fact what we see — those most at risk for any potential rebellion are coerced into a Kaczynskian “system’s neatest trick” procedure where their very rebellion helps to solidify state security. Why allow “Antifa” their own zone in Portland? Because when they are doing that they are doing nothing serious. Along the same lines, see how valuable transgenders have been as a layer of defense: millions of conservatives hours are spent arguing against something that has a surprising level of state support, and millions of progressive hours are spent defending something that is historically and intuitively off-putting. Those are hours that are not spent on something actually valuable; transgender stuff is simply the most outer layer of defense against a possible Balkan threat, and if conservatives win there’s nothing valuable lost from a state security perspective.
As outlandish as it seems, I think this is possible. It would be par for the course for how intel agencies behaved historically — well before they had enormous databases of information and AI to help them decide state hyper-protection. We could imagine the team of hundreds of some thousands employed toward this objective at some intel agency: “how do we protect against the most cataclysmic threat for America?” They look at the cost and benefit with history in mind, with WWII’s staggering death toll and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in mind.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
1hr ago
I recommend against the trilogy as from what I recall the “art direction” for the renderings is rather bizarre but the worst thing is that they didn’t relicense the music they used so the in-game radio, one of the best parts, will be missing a ton of content.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Watching all that has convinced me 'Windows95Guy' is the ruritanian version of Bowling for Soup making fun of the superfluous gayness in everything else.
Crowstep
1hr ago
For television the sound engineers did amplify applause and mute the boos which also gives a nice discussion about truth and Orwell etc. It will be very interesting what sound from the audience will be broadcast at the final show today.
From what I recall there was no notable booing during Israel's performance, but lots while the head of the EBU was on screen. I'm guessing they assumed there would be booing for the Israeli entry and planned accordingly, but didn't think that the audience would boo the inoffensive bureaucrat who's technically in charge.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
she is acting in accordance with her values
Considering I have a strong prior that the values of someone choosing to go by 'Bambie Thug' are to garner as much attention as possible at all times...
That could all be true at the same time as every philosemite and zionist vote for Israel 20 times. Since there are very obviously a lot of philosemites and zionists clawing for every straw they can to bundle up in support of Israel in any manner they can. They are not tired of politics.
On top of that, Croatia won the popular vote with a not so gay song. If people were really tired of all the politics then they wouldn't vote for Israel, a country embroiled in a whole lot of politics. In fact, they wouldn't watch a whole lot of Eurovision to begin with. But if they did, they would probably vote for Croatia.
More options
Context Copy link