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KingOfTheBailey
17m ago
What is the best way to harden a free software community against the sort of drama which recently engulfed the Nix community? Preemptive bans seem like a recipe for getting called an x-phobe, but letting these people stay and build up numbers results in takeovers. Has anyone seen a free software project's community successfully resist the tactics of the woke left?
sliders1234
1hr ago
No.
The most important parts of our army have dropped out of the army. Masculine males often southern no longer feel they fit in with the military.
Racial resentment is higher now.
A significant portion of the right (and disproportionately our best fighting men) now have a great deal of fondness for Putin or Xi. A masculine Chinese or Russian ruler doesn’t sound that bad to them versus being an adrogenous they/them with no real purpose in society.
On Balkanization - moreso in Europe but you did not have to worry about balkanization when a Swede was a Swede and you didn’t invite in sub Saharan blacks or Syrian immigrants. In the U.S. I think we have fewer big cultural issues with our immigrants coming from the South but they aren’t going to be our sophisticated fighting class.
Blacks in America have never posed a political problem. They are lower class. They have never been a key part of our fighting class. If they rose up against white well violent repression would not be hard.
On the left wokeism and oppressor-oppressed has literally caused a not that small group of Americans to identify with Hamas and take the side of our enemies.
In short if wokeism came from the intelligence community it’s the worst idea they have ever had.
The lefts concern that Putin in 2016 infiltrated our social media to radicalize America against itself plus China weapononizing wokeism on Tic-Tock is far more logical. America is far more Balkanized today than it was in 2008.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
5m ago
called an x-phobe,
Any community afraid of this has no defenses worth a damn.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Eurovision is basically always two steps gayer than the rest of the society, so it's gayer than in the 90s, but it was already gay in the 90s by the 90s society standards. The gayness has never really been a huge hindrance to it being a huge popular spectacle, even many European conservatives are willing to tolerate gay and gender nonconforming stuff as long as the context is artistic expression.
rmtodd
9m ago
Six main novels, yes. I kind of forgot how many side stories are there, maybe I should read them.
Yeah, there's the 6 main novels (Empire of Silence, Howling Dark, Demon in White, Kingdom of Death, Ashes of Man, Disquiet Gods) with the 7th/final one in progress, three short story collections (Tales of the Sun Eater Volume 1/2/3) and three auxiliary stories (The Lesser Devil about Hadrian's younger brother, Queen Amid Ashes about Hadrian on a planet recently freed from the Cielcin, and The Dregs of Empire about one of Hadrian's underlings getting sent to prison after the events of book 5).
TheGodhead
14m ago
Adam Nevill’s Last Days, a novel about a guy in the 2010s filming a documentary about an apocalyptic 60s cult. Really enjoying the writing style so far, it’s entertainingly sardonic without being too cynical.
shakenvac
15m ago
I was shocked at how well Israel did in the popular vote. Not only was their song kinda boring and mid but politics is a huge part of the televote (and jury vote?) and I thought what with public support for Palestine, Israel would get a super low score in the televote.
Possible explanations:
- I have terrible taste in music, the song was actually a banger, but the juries hated it for reasons.
- Joe public's support for Palestine / antipathy for Israel is hugely overstated and in fact most people are still very sympathetic toward Israel after October 7. I am extremely online.
- People are not necessarily sympathetic to Israel, but are massively sick of constant pro-Palestine protests, and this was pushback.
- people felt sorry for 20-year-old Eden Golan constantly getting booed by the crowd.
- The BDS movement to boycott Eurovision was weirdly effective which trimmed off the pro-Palestinians, and consequently their votes.
- Mossad did it.
Thoughts, anyone?
Glassnoser
17m ago
Sure, it’s something we all do unconsciously, but the very act of making it explicit causes problems.
Like what? I agree that it's weird, but I don't see anything wrong with it.
Tanista
22m ago
That's what I thought.
My thinking is they got caught up so easily because they're antisemitic (and can't/won't hide it) and b) no one is really worried about them: "we need to finally get organized" is just a cliche in these circles. It's actually even used by grifters now: Dr Umar Johnson has - allegedly - been building a woke black school forever and keeps complaining about how black people want to talk and not step up and donate.
There are prominent black people organizing or lobbying. Presumably you'd go after them first. But most aren't going to start on a rant about being the real Jews when pushing the NFL.
RegularlyExpressed
2hr ago
Ireland - Another non-binary (a woman this time)
This made me laugh (sorry I haven't got anything more substantive to add).
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
3hr 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.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
25m ago
So, what are you reading? (There was another book thread in the Fun Thread here)
Still on Human Action. Also going through Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute, an early and very unusual warning shot against the dangers of the internet. It is a bit haphazard, but also a bit profound, and I wonder why I have never heard of this book before.
To run on automatic is, for the human being, to sink toward instinct, unfreedom, and statistical predictability. It is to give up what sets us most vitally apart from our material environment and our tools. It is to remain asleep in our highest capacities.
Whether our ideals can survive depends- beyond all pessimism and optimism vested in automatic processes- on whether we can consciously take hold of the mechanisms around us and within us, and raise them into the service of what is most fully human because most fully awake. The first prerequisite is to recognize the severity of the challenge.
hydroacetylene
35m ago
Black Hebrew Israelites and 5% nation, most notably.
But I don't think the conservative reaction is the point
The government decided to redefine the social contract in a way that allows it to attack more and more people and institutions as "transphobic" in a way that is basically unavoidable. Because of the moralizing, it was able to do this shockingly fast and with relatively little pushback, even according to activists themselves.
I mean, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to me! Not sure why we need to posit some additional indirect play or benefit.
slothlikesamwise
Subway Wizard 🔮
3hr 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.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
Gorsuch was replacing Scalia, and while they were salty about the Republican Senate with Garland, it was merely a missed opportunity. And frankly, they could read that they had lost that battle enough already that throwing a further fit was likely to be counterproductive with a new president and Republican Senate. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was replacing Kennedy, which represented a real threat to liberal wins on abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights (two of the three have come to pass), among other issues where the right found Kennedy to be "too squishy". They threw out all the stops for the real threat.
Is it common for Eurovision to consistently have so many LGBT performers?
When I was a kid, my memory is that the western European entrants tended to be knowingly, overwhelmingly camp (over-the-top dance-pop songs, garish stage production etc.), while the eastern European entrants tended to be more serious and subdued (mid-tempo ballads accentuated with traditional instrumentation). The audience for Eurovision has always been as gay as they come, but I think it's only within the last decade that many European countries have started consciously leaning into this by submitting performers with the intent of appealing to gay audiences i.e. performers who are themselves LGBT.
What exactly is it with Ireland and Israel?
As a country which got its independence in the last century, the Irish carry around a residual postcolonial sentiment and (rightly or wrongly) see the struggle for Palestinian statehood as analogous to the battle for Irish independence. It may be "performative" in some sense, but the Irish support for the Palestinian cause predates the modern progressive/woke movement by decades e.g. when I was in primary school, every Easter we'd raise funds for the charity Trócaire, who even at the time were outspoken in their support for Palestine. Even many social conservatives are sympathetic to the cause: my mum often tells the story of her father (a devout Catholic who was opposed to the legalisation of divorce, never mind abortion) visiting Israel in the early 2000s and describing how appalled he was by the security checks Palestinians were made to go through on entrance to the state. The Provisional IRA (active in both north and south from the 60s to the late 90s) were in direct contact with the PLO, and even received training from them. I was in Belfast in January, and when driving through heavily Catholic districts of the city (e.g. the Falls road), I saw Palestinian flags hanging from every pub, which were conspicuous by their absence in the Protestant districts. A friend of mine joked that this makes Israel-Palestine one of the most effective shibboleths for gauging someone's religious background in Northern Ireland. Even prior to October 7th, it wasn't remotely uncommon to see Palestinian flags adorning the balconies of working-class council flats in Dublin (October 7th has "gentrified" the cause such that the middle-class houses who were displaying Ukrainian flags for the last two years have now added Palestinian flags, or even replaced them). I doubt it will surprise you to learn that I don't think the alleged parallels between Palestine-Israel and Ireland-Britain really hold water (e.g. to my mind, Hamas leaders have made it perfectly clear that their ultimate goal is the extermination of every Jew from the face of the earth; while I have nothing nice to say about the IRA, they did not have the stated goal of massacring every Briton), but that's neither here nor there.
I've never gotten the feeling that Ireland is an antisemetic country (the most famous novel to come out of the country has a Jewish protagonist; there's been at least one prominent Jewish elected official in my lifetime; there was a Jewish guy in my class in secondary school who was far more popular than I was). If there had been scenes similar to London or Sydney over the last six months (e.g. rabbis getting harassed on the street, mass crowds chanting "gas the Jews"), I imagine I would have heard about it. There aren't many Muslims in Ireland, but thirty times as many Muslims as Jews according to the 2016 census, and the ratio is probably even more skewed now. Even the numerous pro-Palestine protests that I've seen seem to be principally attended by native white Irish people rather than first-generation Muslim immigrants.
zeke5123a
2hr 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.
hydroacetylene
4hr 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...
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
The Irish are incredibly pro-palestine because they metaphorize it to their treatment by the British.
It's worth noting that the people's favourites were, in order:
- Croatia (an energetic, rock-adjacent anthem written in broken English)
- Israel (a standard Euro-ballad that was originally called 'October Rain', forced to change by the producers)
- Ukraine (a vaguely ethnic, vaguely religious ballad with light effects very reminiscent of bombs)
- France (a minimalist love song by an established French singer with an impressive voice)
- Switzerland (the jury winner)
The juries came with a similar list, but put Switzerland much higher, and gave very few points to Israel. So either Israel's song was great, and the juries were biased against them, or it was meh and the public were biased in favour of them. Also the juries love a man in a skirt.
Other highlights include:
- Finland - A comedy song by 'Windows95Guy' which involved him running around on stage wearing nothing from the waist down, his skin-tone pouch strategically blocked by scenery a la Austin powers.
- Ireland - Another non-binary (a woman this time) seemingly trying to summon a literal demon.
- UK - A gay guy sings while buff male backing dancers gyrate on eachother. Somehow not the gayest entry this year.
- Audible booing every time the head of the European Broadcasting Union appeared on screen (for letting Israel compete).
- Several coded anti-Israel statements from national representatives (ostensibly talking about peace and love).
- Plus lots of 90s throwbacks, obscure ethnic instruments and young women in Beyonce-esque bodysuits.
Altogether a fairly standard year for Eurovision.
laxam
41m ago
This wisdom is why the South is currently the most patriotic part of the country instead of a hotbed of political terrorism and separatist ideology.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
48m ago
Living in one of the rare other countries where soccer isn't the main sport, there really seems to be a something ostentatious about the way anti-soccer Americans go out of their way to talk unprompted about just how much they don't care about soccer and how un-American it is etc. that you don't really find here.
I suppose it's a culture war thing but even then, a self-aware person would at least consider that it really is then the culture war that's at fault, moreso than the game itself.
I am a utilitarian, numbers matter to me. The main difference between gitmo and the gulags are the scale. Now, I thought gitmo was an abomination when it was first established by GWB and I think the same to that day.
We have two options to compare these systems. One is to count every act of state violence against members of the population. Of course, this puts us in morally ultra-relativist territory: "Some states have the death penalty for murder, rape, gay sex, criticizing the party, theft, not bowing deep enough, apostasy, listening to enemy radio stations, arson. All of these serve to keep the regime in power, therefore all of the acts forbidden are morally equal as forms of political dissent." Or we could claim that some of these acts are intrinsically more political than others. States not (at least in principle) punishing murders leads to a bad equilibrium (feuds), so almost all states at least notionally have laws against murder on the book.
But even if you count the whole US prison industrial system as pure repression, by the numbers I would gladly pick the US over the 1940s USSR even through a veil of ignorance where I materialize as a random citizen. And that is before we even go to the indirect advantages of having less repression, like
The version I could agree on is 'every system of government has a minimum of repression it requires to stay in power'.
Some governments deal out too little repression and are overthrown, like the Weimar Republic.
But a common feature of the more repressive governments is that they overdo repression. Almost no organization ever declares that its mission is accomplished and disbands itself. The secret police is no exception. There will always be someone who is the first to stop applauding after Comrade Stalin gives a speech, some intellectual who is the least aligned with the party line.
And some ideologies are more accepting of repression than others. A communist who declared that the class struggle is over, all the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries are defeated would have to answer uncomfortable questions about when exactly the communist utopia will become reality, while in a liberal democracy a lack of life-or-death conflict should be the default state.
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