domain:mattlakeman.org
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Trump announces Ken Paxton as possible AG pick: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/20/donald-trump-ken-paxton-attorney-general/
“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He’s very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he’s a very talented guy.”
This is interesting because 1) Paxton is an aggressive partisan willing to engage in skullduggery, exactly the sort of person project 2025 would want and 2) he’s one of the few people trump has shown loyalty to. Also unlike Greg Abbott, who turned down the VP job, he seems to want the job. Also, last time he was out of office Abbott appointed his own chief of staff as attorney general, so it’s not like that would strip mine the Texas state government of conservative talent.
It’s worth noting that a lot of trump’s policy success from the last admin came through bill Barr, and an aggressive consiglieri in the AG seat is probably what trump needs to be effective.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8hr ago
God.
Paxton represents everything I dislike about this state. Setting aside his little scandal, he’s a shameless partisan who grandstands whenever he gets the chance. Every AG statement just drips with condescension and/or righteous anger at the opposition. I suppose, given our political climate, that makes him a savvy political operator.
While we have various stupid and offensive laws, I can’t really blame him for enforcing them. But I do not look forward to seeing how he operates with a more deadlocked legislature. Especially if Trump is looking for opportunities to get even.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
13hr ago
...assassin's creed series includes other widely disputed historical claims like Benjamin Franklin's possession of a magical golden apple.
Ah, yes, the old pretending to be retarded style of counterargument. I notice this often enough that I started bookmarking examples that I meant to get around to writing up, but it still surprises me when I bump into examples of people that appear to just obviously putting on a show of acting like they're confused about something that's simple and obvious to anyone involved. No one is objecting to Assassin's Creed being fantastical and taking a bunch of poetic license with the source material and content from history. I've played exactly one Assassin's Creed game and included the cinematically awesome leap of faith mechanic - your character, dressed in aesthetic white robes, can climb to incredibly high perches above cities and dive off, covering tons of terrain in a majestic swan-dive before plopping safely into a stack of hay. Helpfully, some physics students ran some quick math on this and concluded that diving a couple hundred feet into a shallow bed of straw will probably kill you.
Of course, this didn't really bother anyone even though there probably weren't very many Arab assassins diving off of mosques into shallow beds of straw. Why not? Because it's awesome. It looks cool, it's a fun mechanic, and it's memorable. People weren't bothered by Ben Franklin having a magical golden apple because it just sounds incredibly fun in the context of America's founding. You know what else is fun and awesome? Samurai and ninja assassins in medieval Japan. Super awesome and super cool, something that much pretty much every male grows up thinking is super awesome and super cool. So, naturally, fans of the game are excited to play out one of the classic settings for awesome sword-play.
You know what's not awesome? Injecting your stupid racial politics into 16th century Japan and then hiding behind "actually, there was a black samurai, and you weren't even upset about a golden apple, so I've gotcha you racist". Furthermore, when someone does that, you can probably rest assured that they're not all that invested in making the game awesome, so it raises your hackles in expectation that you're dealing with people that are more interested in pissing off putative racists than actually making a game cool. Maybe the game will be good and maybe it won't, but pretending to be retarded when having the argument isn't likely to convince anyone.
Tangentially related...
How much should Trump get even, if he is elected? Either choice he makes seems pretty fraught.
Option 1) Play the bigger man. Pardon himself, obviously, and a few limited other people. Beyond that do nothing. This will prevent a wider conflagration in the culture war. Downside: without a tit-for-tat, the left will be emboldened for much greater tats in the future.
Option 2) Do unto him as he hath done unto me. Pursue corruption investigations against his pursuers (many of whom quite deserve them). Go after voter fraud and ballot harvesting. Turn the executive branch against the left in the same ways it has been turned against the right thus far. Upside: When both sides are armed, the chance for peace is higher than when only one side is armed. Downside: The system will probably resist him, and it could provoke a bigger backlash.
If I were Trump, I'd go with option 1. In reality, I expect him to just do whatever he wakes up feeling like he should do that day with little follow through.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10hr ago
When it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the first two seem to take top billing. Diversity is brought up regularly in the context of affirmative action and quotas, with hot debates about whether diversity is our strength, potentially a neutral value, or even a liability. Equity is discussed in fiscal policy, with questions raised about the relative virtues of desserts, redistribution, and fairness. I rarely hear people talk about inclusion though and even among DEI skeptics, I rarely hear it raised as a point of contention. I get the feeling that this is because saying you're against inclusion sounds just plain mean. Nonetheless, I want to broach that a little bit, at the risk of being mean, since I think rejecting inclusion as a terminal value is necessary for achieving the results I actually seek.
The examples that keep popping up as the most intense culture-war fodder involve trans inclusivity. The most aggressive form of this putative inclusion is including trans-identified males in women's sports, but it's also showing up in places that I would have expected even less. In Wisconsin, we have a group called the Women's Medical Fund that has had the primary mission of funding abortions for the indigent and under resourced. While I am well aware that abortion itself is hotly debated, I am personally happy to grant that the people that are carrying out this mission are intending to provide a service that they think women should have available to them. This is, unfortunately, not an inclusive mission because of the emphasis on women. With a new director, they now have a home page statement:
The organizational leadership of WMF Wisconsin shares a commitment to gender inclusion, and we seek to hold ourselves accountable to supporting abortion access for people of all genders. We are in the process of changing our name to reflect that. As of this year, we have been trying to use only the acronyms “WMF” or “WMF Wisconsin” in our written communications, until we have a chance to do a full re-name and re-brand. However, we recognize this is not reflected everywhere in our website and other materials. We also know that it’s not just about changing gendered language; we need to continue to learn and grow our gender justice practice.
When this was brought up on a local subreddit, the comments emphasize that this was about inclusion and making sure trans men are including as well. While the private organization can do what they want here and it's no surprise to see such an organization embrace the farthest left gender politics of its day, I can't help but see such "inclusion" as actually being rather alienating to women, or at least as a complete waste of time for an organization that surely has bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
This doesn't actually get to the heart of why I think the persistent emphasis on inclusion can be poisonous though. As I have mentioned approximately 37 million times here, I really enjoy running - the physical activity, the competition, the camaraderie of groups, everything about the sport has been great for my life. Many runners pride themselves on being inclusive in the sport, welcoming everyone in, and meeting them where they're at. I agree that this is good! Everyone's got to start somewhere and I want people to feel welcome and to enjoy the sport whether they're talented or experienced or not. Nonetheless, there are aspects of the sport that are exclusive and taking an inclusion-maxing philosophy would be damaging. On a small scale, my club has one night a week that is intended for a faster group; not a hard speed workout or anything, but a fast enough pace (typically 7-8 minutes/mile for about 5-6 miles) that it excludes quite a few people. That filter is still pretty broad, but it does tend to cut down to people that are generally more serious about the sport. This isn't inclusive and that's a good thing.
On a broader scale in the sport, some races have qualifying times to enter. Most famously, most Boston Marathon entries are granted based on qualifying times and the cutoff marks for it are often thought of as capstones for being a solid amateur runner (young men need to run a marathon below 3:00 to qualify, meaning a 6:52/mile pace). I've always been dimly aware that some people don't like that setup, but became more acutely aware of it when the Boston-area running apparel company Tracksmith released a running jersey that was exclusively for Boston qualifying athletes and pissed a bunch of people off:
Diverse We Run, a popular Instagram account that promotes racial representation in the running world, responded to Tracksmith’s apology, writing, “No one is saying we shouldn’t celebrate achievements or have standards. No one is saying a race can’t have qualifying times. The problem is when a brand (or race event, or governing body … etc) claims to be a ‘champion for the AMATEUR RUNNER‘ (ie, ‘for everyone’) in theory, but actually still reinforces exclusion and elitism in practice.”
Some argued that the outrage wasn’t just about the singlet, but larger issues they see with the brand, like its limited sizing options (women’s sizing caps out at a 32-inch waist XL, or size 12 dress equivalent), or its decision to feature predominantly thin bodies in marketing, among other critiques.
...
The running community’s response brings up questions about whether it’s possible to be inclusive in substantive ways and yet still reserve some things as sacred and vaunted, only earned through fast performances.
Can you have it both ways?
Well, I have my answer. Yes, I want to include everyone in the sport. No, I don't want everything to be for everyone. There's nothing wrong with saying, "this is for fast guys", regardless of where you put that cutoff. People rightfully derive pride from putting in the time and work to develop themselves at the sport and it's good that they are able to have symbols, groups, and events that are exclusive.
This gets to my core objection with inclusion as an important value in and of itself, and it's the desire to include everyone in everything flattens people and groups out into boring sameness. It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place. If I embrace inclusivity as a top priority, I lose the ability to select for people that actually demonstrate their interests, merits, and loyalty. The implications of this broaden out at every level - if anyone can be American, it means nothing to be American.
So, the next time you're thinking that you're not a fan of DEI, don't stop with noticing that diversity is a liability, and that equity is about taking your home equity, remember that the progressive conception of inclusion sucks too.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
13hr ago
I think what bothers me is it feels like more and more companies are using inject racial poltiics into otherwise crappily designed media in order to blunt all legitimate criticism because then all criticism can be tarred as racists.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
4hr ago
Jesus. I made the mistake of reading the whole thing. This poor woman was indoctrinated well before her critical thinking was up and running (like most religions, they've got to get you early because it doesn't work once you can think), and internalized all of her mother's insane religious rants. She thinks she didn't because she did little acts of teenage rebellion, but she did. Now she is so fucked up about the whole thing she is doing only fans. JFC... Many woman enthusiastically enjoy sex in a healthy way. This poor gal is mentally ill.
Ironically I feel like we are already past the peak of that particular tactic (I could be wrong). I think that time period where we got a Watchmen sequel series with a Black Dr. Manhattan, and a Lovecraft series specifically about his racism, and Amazon's Rings of Power LOTR adaptation adding in Black elves, dwarves, and Hobbits would be hard to surpass, without straight up becoming comedies.
There's also some funny irony in how Disney's Marvel fumbled (nearly) every move made post-Endgame, such as trying to replace Captain America with a black dude (no hate at Anthony Mackie, mind), to introduce a black supervillain to supplant Thanos as the big bad (maybe a little hate towards Jonathan Majors), and of course their attempt to get audiences engaged with three female heroes almost nobody cares about which was not Black Girl Magic at the box office. I can't even muster up enough interest in that to even attempt to hate it.
It is not working. Maybe they got the message after shareholders attempted a coup.
I would vaguely expect to see a bit less of this particular brand of culture warring in a period where interests rates are higher and thus projects actually have to justify their existence on the basis of short-term profitability.
On the other hand, pretty much every commercial or ad these days still does the Interracial couple thing, almost always black male, white female.
So not sure if I'm looking at the wrong bellwether.
Is there some way to disable the goddamn annoying and completely useless bar that sticks to the top bottom of the screen when scrolling threads here?
On desktop I can use uBlock Origin to just hide it, but that doesn't work on mobile.
sliders1234
11hr ago
What is the dog that didn’t bark here?
They inserted a black character into a Japanese story why? Could they not find a black story tell and have the setting in black civilization.
A fun game would be to get the woke upset that Ubisoft thinks so little of black civilization that they insert black characters into other civs instead of doing a game based on black history.
The anti woke shouldn’t be attacking the cultural appropriation of Japanese culture by inserting Hollywood’s preferred racial balance they should be autistically demanding a black story and accusing Ubisoft of racism for refusing to do that.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11hr ago
How many votes will Robert Kennedy Jr receive in the Presidental election? For the most part, this is treated as silly or just a footnote, but he keeps polling at around 10%. This also isn't even that weird - we all know Perot got a ton of votes, but did you know that in 2016 Gary Johnson got 3.28% of the vote? Looking at state-by-state totals, there's a pretty good chance that Johnson flipped Maine, New Hampshire, and Minnesota to Clinton and almost did the same in Michigan and Wisconsin. At no point do I recall him polling anywhere near as high as RFK and he certainly didn't have the name recognition, which makes it entirely plausible to me that something like 10 million people are going to vote for RFK.
WhiningCoil
12hr ago
At this point, it's impossible to deny it's ideological. And to whatever degree the CEOs of these companies "learn their lesson", the lesson won't be "Maybe it's wrong to be racist towards white people". It will be "What is the most anti-white racism we can get away with?"
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
This poor gal is mentally ill.
Okay. Now you just need to convince women collectively that sex-positive Feminism works fine, actually, and their ocean of complaints and concerns should be discarded. That they shouldn't actually feel like shit when they get pumped and dumped, that the shame and humiliation are all in their heads and sex really is just an idle amusement with zero deep connection to human psychology that should have no consequences ever.
I haven't done more than skimming the article, but she seems to be laying out how she rejected her religious upbringing and went all-in on sex-positivism, and yet still found that sex-positivism didn't actually deliver on its promises. And your argument is... what? That she should have just gone ahead and fucked and everything would have been fine? What about the women who did fuck, and regret it?
faceh
12hr ago
Being faiiiirrrr the entire job of CEO is to try to optimize for exactly how much you can get away with in the name of maximizing profits before people will balk. Forced diversity is not the only way that media products are getting worse.
I find myself waffling between the position of "CEOs are usually coldly logical sociopaths who are pushing the woke ideology because it appears to be profitable and will change up if it ceases to be so" and
"CEOs are just as brainwormed as other lefties and are genuinely trying to push the message where-ever they think they can get away with it."
In full reality, could be a little from column A and a little from Column B, plus unnoticed variables C, D, and E, too.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
4hr ago
Reading femcel accounts/anecdotes are always.... Grating. I hate it.
Did the women in the story suffer? Yes. Is this a suboptimal scenario for most women were the modal experience is getting pumped and dumped? Yes.
It's grating because men are always painted as evil in these articles and it's only the 5% of men they interact with off of the apps being talked about.. No shit lady, what were you expecting?
Seriously? What even is the solution for women here? Expecting agency from them is a non starter, most men applying their agency won't work in this app mediated world, seems to be a coup complete problem.
Well I did more than skim; I would ask you do the same before passing judgement on my analysis. There are some deeply troubling stories in her narrative that don't line up with what I know about the college world, most people I know met their life partner in college and it sounds like she didn't even give it a shot. There are many ways to have a fulfilling sex life, including exclusive monogamy, she was too fucked up by her upbringing to try any of them.
I mean she is doing porn for money now, something went wrong. None of the "sluts" I met in college are doing that, they are all happily married with a few kids, mostly with people they met in college.
non_radical_centrist
4hr ago
The solution is for women to apply their own agency and to stop sleeping with those 5% of men who are dirtbags.
sun_the_second
10hr ago
From the point of view of an average progressive normie playing as a black samurai is awesome and fun, and you're the one who is injecting politics.
bonsaii
13hr ago
One angle I'm somewhat surprised hasn't been brought up much is that this set-up will almost certainly lead to the "problematic" optics of a non-Japanese person running around slaughtering a bunch of Japanese people. Video games are largely a power fantasy so the player character is going to be generally depicted as by far the strongest being. In the best case scenario, the Japanese will be depicted as weak and passive, needing a "foreign savior". I can imagine the outcry on the left would be swift if this were a game starring, say, a European warrior in 15th century Africa.
Even as someone who feels like "problematic" gets overused, I'd say those optics are more than sub-optimal. I remember having a conversation with someone about a similar potential issue arising with the God of War series, which sees former Greek solider Kratos slaughtering a series of mythical gods (first the Greek pantheon, then the Norse). We were discussing whether it would be difficult to continue the series beyond European pantheons while keeping Kratos as the main character because it just seems like the optics of a white guy traveling to Japan, India, and Mexico and killing a bunch of their local gods would be harshly criticized as a narrative faux pas in this day and age.
I'd be curious to know how positions on the two series correlate. If people were largely basing their opinion on "principle" I'd expect the largest groups to be:
1.) "It's a video game. I don't care if it's about an African guy killing a bunch of Japanese people, or a Greek guy killing a bunch of Japanese gods."
2.) "Optics are bad. I'd prefer a story set in Japan to star a Japanese samurai and I'd prefer a story set in mythical Japan to star a Japanese character."
Does anyone here fall outside of these two and if so why?
non_radical_centrist
3hr ago
I mean she is doing porn for money now
Is that an actual bad outcome? She earns far more money than she would using her degree. If it's solely as a result that it'll be harder for her to find a job or a man after she ages and Only Fans doesn't work for her anymore, what'd go wrong with changing society not to hold Only Fans as a black mark against her?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7hr ago
If I were Trump, I'd go with option 1.
Why? What successes have come from previous iterations of this option? Why do you believe it would deliver superior results versus prosecuting the culture war to the greatest extent possible?
SteveKirk
8hr ago
The thought of Paxton prosecuting the Tides Foundation the same way this administration prosecuted the NRA is wonderful, but will he be able to get the staff and bureaucratic whips together to do it?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10hr ago
Who is his audience? Covid warriors?
I predict less success than Johnson. The libertarian bloc surely benefited from running against a populist and a Clinton. A protest vote against the current choices isn’t going to look like RFK.
Seriously, I don’t know anyone IRL who supports him. That’s not true for the libertarians, who apparently adopt streets (?!) near me.
In a more formulaic and low stakes corner of the culture War Ubisoft has announced "assassin's creed Shadow". The series is known for offering open world exploration set in various historical locations and times from the Nordic to ancient Egypt. This installment is appearantly a popular fan request in being set in fuedal Japan.
The culture War angle is that the game has two main characters, a female assassin and a disputed historical black warrior named yasuke. Now I haven't played one of these games in over a decade and am not particularly invested in this title but the response has been a fairly clean case study in marketing by controversy and I think it might be worth dissecting.
In my corner of the web I first learned of the game's existence from the preemptive "man, racists right wingers are going to hate this" posts. And indeed if one looked it was not hard to soon after find right winger racists filling their niche in this tired dance. One can always find bad takes that isn't what is interesting about how this kind of thing develops.
A trap seemed to be set, I don't know which end first broached the topic of "historical accuracy" but because it took the form of what legitimate criticism might look like the culture War quickly fell into a groove of progressives defending the historical existence of yasuke being a real samurai and pointing to other popular media depictions of him as well as pointing out that the assassin's creed series includes other widely disputed historical claims like Benjamin Franklin's possession of a magical golden apple. The anti-progressive backlash is in a hard place because I think there is something legitimate there but the shape of the discussion is not condusive to making the argument.
I think most of the anti-progressive front probably doesn't have an issue with a black sumurai in a game made by people they trust to have making awesome games as their first master. There's something itching in the back of the head of the backlash crowd that the reason we have yasuke isn't because a black guy in Japan makes for interesting segments of blending into crowds but because the people making the game have an anti-majoritarian view. The same thing that gave us yasuke is what motivates someone to put on a "fuck white people" shirt.
This is a feature of the culture War I'm seeing more and more. Proxy battles that few people care deeply about but have features that make them better or worse to do battle on. This game seems like favorable terrain from the woke angle and it's tempting to just give them it but I understand the impulse to fight on the terrain anyways.
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