domain:worksinprogress.co
100ProofTollBooth
37m ago
IMHO the man who was menaced in his vehicle by armed protestors, and ran over several to escape at the Virginia Charlottesville riot was railroaded even harder, but I sincerely doubt any governor of ours will have the balls to pardon him.
Is this the James Alex Fields Jr. case? If so, I am genuinely curious to get some non-biased background on it. Wikipedia (yes, I know) lays it out as a cut and dry "domestic terrorist" attack.
sliders1234
2hr ago
U-Visas, or Visas for illegals who suffered violent crime in the U.S. has recently come into the news as a gang in Chicago did fake robberies to help illegals get U-Visas. The program was originally designed to help sex trafficking victims. But had already expanded.
https://cwbchicago.com/2024/05/chicago-fake-robbery-visa-scam.html
If I had to guess this gang was probably not the originator of these schemes. And there are immigrant attorneys and NGO’s spreading the loophole.
https://www.injusticewatch.org/project/u-visa/2022/chicago-police-u-visa-denials/
Leftist piece detailing two Chicago cops who were known for denying U-Visa claims. One case in particular caught my eye of an illegals son being murdered in Chicago and then using it to apply the entire family for U-Visas. Basically if you let the gangbanging families into the country eventually junior gets killed and everyone is legal. A lot of the cases sound like antisocial illegal behavior making them eligible for getting U-Visas.
What started out as a nice way to help sex-trafficking victims then turned into a whole institution for getting immigrants legal. And then it turned into let’s just fake the crimes.
Of course this is a prime example of perverse incentives and the cobra effect. Once you start measuring something people find a way to get the incentive in a way that does not accomplish your goal.
It’s also an indicator for why America is becoming a low trust society. As a Republican I see no reason to ever compromise with the left. If you try to do something reasonable like U-Visas or Asylum or money for terrorist attack victims (turning into massive student loan relief) the left will abuse your reasonableness.
It’s also why the right with some help from Trump was wise to shutdown the immigration bill. That which is written on paper isn’t important. It will be abused. Controlling the executive, beauraucracy, and the process is where the power lies.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last year of murder in the shooting death of Garrett Foster, a USAF veteran and BLM protestor. Foster had attended a downtown Austin protest armed with an AK-pattern rifle, and joined his fellow protestors in illegally barricading the street. Perry's car was halted by the barricade, Foster approached the driver's side door, rifle in hand, and Perry shot him four times from a range of roughly 18 inches, fatally wounding him. Police reported that Foster's rifle was recovered with an empty chamber and the safety on.
Perry claimed that the shooting was self defense, that the protestors swarmed his vehicle, and that Foster advanced on him and pointed his rifle at him, presenting an immediate lethal threat. Foster's fellow protestors claimed that Foster did not point his rifle at Perry, and that the shooting was unprovoked. They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident. For his part, Foster was interviewed just prior to the shooting, and likewise expressed hostility toward those opposed to the BLM cause and at least some desire to "use" his rifle.
This incident was one of a number of claimed self-defense shootings that occurred during the BLM riots, and we've previously discussed the clear tribal split in how that worked out for them, despite, in most cases, clear-cut video evidence for or against their claims. The case against Perry was actually better than most of the Reds, in that the video available was far less clear about what actually happened. As with the other Red cases, the state came down like a ton of bricks. An Austin jury found Perry guilty of murder, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Unlike the other cases, this one happened in Texas, and before the trial had completed, support for Perry was strong and growing. That support resulted in Governor Abbott referring Perry's case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A year later, the board returned a unanimous recommendation for a pardon to be granted. Abbott has now granted that pardon, and Perry is a free man, with his full civil rights restored to him. He has spent a little more than a year in prison, and his military career has been destroyed, but he is no longer in jail and no longer a felon.
So, now what?
It seems to me that there's a lot of fruitful avenues of discussion here. Was the shooting legitimate self-defense? To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome? How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
Two points seem most salient to me.
First, this case is a good demonstration of how the Culture War only rewards escalation, and degrades all pretensions to impartiality. I do not believe that anyone, on either side, is actually looking at this case in isolation and attempting to apply the rules as written as straightforwardly as possible. For both Blues and Reds, narrative trumps any set of particular facts. No significant portion of Blues are ever going to accept Reds killing Blues as legitimate, no matter what the facts are. Whatever portion of Reds might be willing to agree that Reds killing Blues in self-defense might have been illegitimate appears to be trending downward.
Second, this does not seem to be an example of the process working as intended. If the goal of our justice system is to settle such issues, it seems to have failed here. Red Tribe did not accept Perry's conviction as legitimate, and Blue Tribe has not accepted his pardon as legitimate. From a rules-based perspective, the pardon and the conviction are equally valid, but the results in terms of perceived legitimacy are indistinguishable from "who, whom". As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
This is what we refer to in the business as a "bad sign".
Was the shooting legitimate self-defense?
Yes. Foster had his rifle shouldered with both hands on it. While the barrel was pointed downward (not straight down, but at an angle), Perry in his car was actually below him... and in any case he could have raised the rifle and fired in an instant. Perry's car was also surrounded and being banged on by Foster's fellow travelers at the time. Perry was in reasonable fear for his life.
They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident.
The social media evidence (concerning Perry saying he wanted to kill some other set of BLM protestors) was prejudicial and never should have been admitted. Perry obviously hated them, but that doesn't make him a murderer. Social media evidence from Foster indicating he carried his rifle in order to intimidate, and that he'd blocked streets before, were not admitted.
The claim that Perry "crashed" into the crowd is contradicted by the evidence.
As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
The left never had that trust. The claim that the system is rigged in favor of the Man is a standard leftist one. Now, at least Abbott has finally realized that he doesn't need to act as if institutions controlled by his enemies are trustworthy.
Edit: Apparently they can STILL get him. He still has to face a misdemeanor deadly conduct charge. You'd expect this would be double jeopardy (since the charges stem from the same act), but I think we'll find the courts decide that the pardon wipes away the original jeopardy.
If you want more people 150 years from now you're going to have to grow them in a vat and raise them with a robot. That is just how it is going to be unless you're in some kind of originalist cult in AD 2174.
Well, shit. We agree
Getting pregnant yourself when a machine womb can do it for you will be seen as grotesque and unnecessary.
Yup! And this is why I am Pro-Life on the grounds of future concerns. "My body, my choice" holds some water, but when the robot-womb babies start, there's going to be some portion of the population that wants to reserve the right to unplug (read: murder) because they change their minds 6 months in.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
37m ago
You know, I used to be one of those westerners staunchly opposed to matchmaking, but the more I read about people seemingly unable to match themselves up, and the more I see how, while compatibility is valuable, love and commitment are choices that can build upon even basic compatibility to build a strong partnership, the more I think maybe my preconceptions on matchmaking were wrong, and having external people you trust provide insight on fundamental compatibility can provide incredible value.
But social trust is really the solution to everything. The solution to getting men and women to think of each other as members of their sphere of concern, worthy of respect and consideration both romantically and more fundamentally, is to put them in a community where they know each other and are embedded in meaningful, integrated social networks. I think there's a weird way in which some past societies were more "gender-integrated" than ours, despite having many single-sex spaces.
gattsuru
51m ago
Where how unique it is might matter for California's statutory right of publicity, the state's common-law right is far more expansive. I'll point to White v. Samsung, where this was close enough to trigger California's common-law right of publicity.
((Look at the decision itself for even more expansive stuff: "Here's Johnny" alone was apparently enough for the 6th Circuit to find infringement of right of publicity.))
It's an absolute mess of a standard, and celebrities have marinated in it so long that it's water to them.
Lewis2
16m ago
I don’t know about you, but Budweiser’s a friend of mine.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
I agree, especially given that the video evidence leads me to conclude that Foster did, in fact, point his rifle at Perry.
Do you expect Blues to achieve consensus that their side was in the wrong, and the pardon is a legitimate outcome?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2m ago
To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome?
Close to one hundred percent. The tactic is classic dilemma action, penning people into a position where they must either submit to the intimidation tactics of the mob or become violent against the mob. In either case, the mob organizers like the optics of the outcome - heads they have shut things down and flexed their might, tails and they're the poor innocent victims. No one should ever treat these tactics as "peaceful".
How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
As I wrote elsewhere:
Allow us, for a moment, to consider that everyone involved here is telling their truth to the best of their ability. Garrett Foster was a good and decent man that lovingly cared for his tragically quadriplegic fiancée. He was at these protests due to a deeply felt conviction that black people are oppressed by the police and was personally invested in the matter because the love of his life is a black woman. He carried a firearm at the protests because this is his constitutional right and he wanted to protect his ingroup from agitators. Daniel Perry was just an Uber driver trying to go about his business. He got confused because BLM protests occupy streets that one can normally drive down, he made a mistake in traffic, and found himself surrounded by protestors. The protestors were panicky because they're familiar with the widely broadcast Charlottesville story. Perry was frightened because many protests have turned violent. Foster attempted to defuse the situation and move Perry along.
If all of that were true (and I don't accept that it is, but let's run the thought experiment), this highlights why I was so goddamned angry at the people that allowed BLM riots to happen. The above all could be true and we would wind up with one good man's life ended and another good man's life ruined because these absolute donkeys running the show couldn't be bothered to stop BLM from rioting. Take away the riots and there's no need for Foster to arm up. Take away the riots and there is no plausible reason for Perry to be genuinely fearful. But no, we got tacit support from leftist mayors and governors around the country and a bunch of people died because of it. I am never, ever going to forgive these people.
Note - I don't really believe that this charitable view of the two men is accurate, but the point is that it could be and the same thing could have happened because of the context.
In explaining what I don't believe:
I don't buy that either man was basically an innocent bystander sucked into an unfortunate vortex. They could have been, but I doubt it. I think the evidence that Perry really, really hated protestors is compelling evidence that he embraced the confrontation. On the flip side, I have an extremely negative view of BLM and basically just don't believe anyone that says they're peaceful - I think all BLM marches are intimidation tactics and are only peaceful to the extent that people are effectively cowed into submission. Doing anything other than submitting will tend to result in very unpleasant outcomes. My model of these clashes is much more of communist-fascist streetfighting in the 1930s than it is sincere misunderstandings between well-meaning people. I think BLM rioters relish the fight and Perry enjoyed killing one of them.
Nonetheless, like I said, I think someone could take the maximally charitable view and have that be consistent with the known facts of this incident.
The answer to, "so now what" is to aggressively enforce laws for block streets, for false imprisonment, and so on. These aren't legitimate protest tactics and allowing them gets people killed. I don't care whether Perry was a cold-hearted murderer or an innocent victim of the system, the result was an entirely predictable consequence of BLM tactics that have little to do with the individuals in any specific altercation.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3m ago
I haven't seen that fracas, but Louis CK has a similar bit about a woman who was similarly disappointed that he backed down when she pushed him away. As he put it: "are you out of your fucking mind? You want me to rape you, just on the off chance you're into that kind of thing?".
non_radical_centrist
3m ago
There are a couple levels to explain things on, from neurochemical to evolutionarily. Neurochemically, I couldn't say why two birds would end up mating for life- although I will note a lot of species that ostensibly mate for life also "cheat" on each other a lot. Evolutionarily, it happens because both the mother and father of children get more expected gene-spreading value from raising and investing in their children in the niche that species operates in, instead of the father or even both the father and mother ditching the children after birth.
Is your point that lots of partners early degrades whatever neurochemical method the human brain uses to pair bond, making you unable to fully do so when you'd want to? If so, I just want to see some better evidence of it. A more rigorous neurochemical explanation of how that degradation happens, or good stats about how people who've had many partners early in life are more likely to dislike their spouse later in life.
Lizzardspawn
3hr ago
A person with the same name is having onlyfans. And recently it seems that she made claims that biden admin paid her to support Ketanji Brown
OnlyFans star Farha Khalidi claims she was paid by Biden administration to spread 'political propaganda' to her thousands of social media followers
My bullshit detector is ringing that this is someone that tries to become a right wing grifter.
hydroacetylene
43m ago
Totally true. But it seems like high social trust environments could swing it- isn’t Japan having somewhat of a resurgence in third party matchmaking(which is in fact a solution to the issue).
hanikrummihundursvin
44m ago
I see very little of them, especially in the aftermath of Oct 7. I can't say I agree that defenders of past colonialism and the defenders of Israel are basing their arguments on common ground.
Wave_Existence
50m ago
No the company is not “deep faking” you, you just aren’t actually unique
This really gets to the root of the visceral reaction some people have towards most of generative AI. People view their artwork, their voice, their face, as some of the most personally identifying "what makes me be me" features. The idea that there are literally other people that look and sound just like you, or even worse that a computer can emulate it believably, flies in the face of how some people see themselves.
Kindof understandable, many were told from an early age that they were a one of a kind special little guy, and finding out that it was all a polite fantasy would probably be quite jarring.
ThenElection
2hr ago
I got a wife by changing my strategy, and we make each other extremely happy, so the outcome was definitely net good for us. And I'm 90% confident that continuing on my previous path would have ended in actual suicide.
In the end, I'm not going to martyr myself, or advise anyone else to martyr himself, to satisfy an imagined set of rules the vast majority of women don't even themselves follow. Make it even 25%, and I'd reconsider.
hydroacetylene
31m ago
Greg Abbott figured that out a while ago. He’s also trying to take over the administration of Travis county(where it took place), although it’ll be a while before he gets it done.
07mk
34m ago
Surely we can develop better norms for [social stuff]
Regardless of the specific issue, I'm rather skeptical of this possibility. Perhaps we could imagine better norms which, if people followed them, would create a better society or a society that at least suffers less from this one particular problem, but that's just a creative writing exercise. Whether we could develop better norms in the sense of actually directing norms and enforcing them in society in general in such a way that they solve the problems they're intended to solve without introducing worse problems (or negating the solution in some other way) is a different question.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/look-whos-getting-that-bank-settlement-cash-1472421204
Most of the deals give double credit or more against the settlement amount for every dollar in “donations.” Bank of America’s donation list—the only bank to disclose exactly where it sends its money—shows how this benefits liberal groups. The bank has so far given at least $1.15 million to the National Urban League, which counts as if it were $2.6 million against the bank’s settlement. Similarly, $1.5 million to La Raza takes $3.5 million off the total amount of “consumer relief” owed by the bank. There are scores of other examples
https://rtp.fedsoc.org/paper/improper-third-party-payments-in-u-s-government-litigation-settlements/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/doj-give-leftist-groups-cut-b-settlement/
Obama is a Chicago politician, and US politics is now Chicago politics, shaking down entire sectors of the economy to fund their machine politics. Trump ended the policy rather than using it to fund the right, and now Biden has restarted it to keep leftists swimming in cash. As if they didn't get enough of it from the billions handed to them in 2021.
ResoluteRaven
1hr ago
Here's my response to a previous iteration of this question. In general I think people here underestimate the diversity of gender and sexual mores across cultures, perhaps because the people who make such claims are usually progressives they assume are full of shit. In Southeast Asia, the traditional culture did not disparage and in some cases even celebrated crossdressing (although these ladyboys were still considered men in other contexts), and this provided an entry point for the Western LGBT movement to infiltrate and transform it into a facsimile of itself.
So the question, then, is how we create the social conditions so that women feel empowered to give that "no" and men feel compelled to respect it.
You've got to create a consent culture. If most women positively responded to very fastidious requests for explicit consent and respect for hesitance or rejection, men would go for it, every bit as much as they would start walking everywhere on their hands if that's what women wanted.
But, having spent too much time in the wild, women generally hate it when you ask for explicit consent; I've been told multiple times that I ruined the mood by asking if it was okay if I kissed her. Instead, there's a set of implicit rules that men are never explicitly taught but are expected to learn through repeated failed attempts. Underlying all of that is still the goal of discerning real consent, but obscured by social games. (This isn't something that comes up nearly as much in gay culture; if you want to fuck, you can ask someone if they want to fuck, and it won't affect your chances either way.)
So long as that's the landscape that heterosexual men have to navigate while dating, there will still be "consent accidents" where the man mistakenly misreads a signal, and there will still be men who take advantage of the ambiguity to get what they want but excuse it by feigning confused signals.
WhiningCoil
3hr ago
Maybe. If all you are trying to do is get as much sex as you can, fine. But this happens in other context too.
This happens after you've been getting to know a woman for a few weeks, and there is some ambiguity about whether this is going to be friends, or more. You feel like you click on every level, and one night you get your shot to take things to the next level. But you mistook her playing coy for earnestly saying no, and you failed your audition. Now she has the ick and you are permanently friendzoned.
Is it fair? No. But, and I don't have statistics here, if you decide to cut off every woman who does that from your potential partner pool, you've probably just axed 90+% of otherwise well adjusted women. Because in the experience of everyone I've ever spoken to, some degree of overcoming resistance to prove how attracted you are to a woman is expected by both sexes.
I spent my 20's raging at the banking system post 2008 bank bailouts, refusing to participate with my money in a corrupt and fraudulent investing markets... only for nothing to happen. In my 30's I decided I wasn't going to be the only chump not getting mine, and now I have a seven figure net worth. Likewise, I spent my 20's expecting women to be honest, straight forward, and exercise agency. I had zero success. Needless to say in my 30's I changed strategies.
Some systems just aren't worth raging against. The rules may not be fair, but unfortunately we don't get to change them.
WhiningCoil
5hr ago
Witnessing what my friends went through, as well as living through my own batch of lackluster dates, I wondered if I should just wait to have sex.
The idea felt odd. And boring. I wasn’t religious, nor did I have my sights set on a diamond ring. So I wasn’t scared of hell, nor a future puritanical husband. “What are you waiting for?” people would ask me. I’d ask myself as well. I didn’t have the gall to admit that I was sort of waiting on my gut to tell me when. It felt like a cop-out. I knew gut feelings were wonky moral compasses– afterall, that semester we were reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in class, and learning how Huck’s gut feeling of guilt for abetting a runaway slave is shaped by the social mores he’s been exposed to. That was also the year the media littered the term “implicit bias” in basically every headline,27 to unmask rampant racism and sexism in institutions. Suffice it to say, gut feelings were not in season.
Now estranged from the sex-positivity I once adored, I do believe there is a right and wrong time to have sex. I also believe that your sexual footprint does affect you, for better or for worse. And I think a lot of girls are having sex at the wrong time. All these beliefs are fundamentally at odds with the principles of sex-positivity, which beats out any notion of right or wrong sex, other than via the consent-yardstick.
A proper feminist should make prescriptions not off some optimistic blank-slate, but from these basic phenomena: girls are more agreeable, more susceptible to manipulation, cognitive-sexual overload, and sexual blueprinting. They are more likely to be pressured into the receiving end of violent porn fantasies, lied to about STDs, addled by sexual regret, and victim to partner violence.
Anyone who turns a blind eye to this epidemic and eggs on young women to carelessly leap into bed with guys in the name of female liberation, is grooming girls with a flashy, pink glove.
Instead of working against the culture of rampant sexual coercion, pop feminism basically just serves as a bottom-bitch.
Everything old is new again, isn't it? It's fascinating watching someone think out loud, going round and round and found in a neurotic spiral for 30,000 words.
When I tell people that I’m opting out of having sex, I get told a lot of things. That I’m prudish, wasting my “prime,” overthinking it, a control-freak, or even pathological.
I mean, both can be right.
It's fascinating, going through this bizarre, alternate reality hellscape of sexual relations. Absent is even a single person in a monogamous relationship. Not even a single one. How is that even possible? You don't know one single person in a relationship? You don't even know of one? This reads like some sort of speculative fiction where relationships have been outlawed.
Then again, I'm married. I've been with the same woman 15 years. Apps were brand fucking new right when I met my wife, old school dating websites being the standard. In my 20's I remember a lot of people in turbulent relationships. Or the weird friend groups where it seemed like everyone had tried a relationship with everyone at some point. Those were bizarre to me. It was rough. I know a few guys who opted out, and just couldn't take women's high expectations, sociopathic behavior and imperious attitudes anymore.
Maybe there really are just two breeds of men. The ones depicted in this article, who somehow get these broken women to throw themselves at him, and everyone else who these broken women take their trauma out on.
I can imagine how the experience of dating has deteriorated greatly since I was active. But the reality of this article where a monogamous relationship is literally not an option for anyone, and doesn't exist at all, seems a bit extreme. It seems more like cope to justify sex work and/or trying to rebrand as some sort of "intellectual" e-girl.
She'd be better served deleting her entire internet presence.
If I've learned anything, it's never, ever post your violent fantasies online. Not on Facebook, not on Twitter, not on Reddit, not on Discord, not even on Signal with people you trust with your life. Somehow the feds will get ahold of them the moment you protect yourself from their foot soldier, and then it's off to the rape cage with you.
It's probably off to the rape cage with you anyways, but being hoisted by your own petard in the media just adds insult to injury. Your very seriously injured colon.
IMHO the man who was menaced in his vehicle by armed protestors, and ran over several to escape at the Virginia Charlottesville riot was railroaded even harder, but I sincerely doubt any governor of ours will have the balls to pardon him. The state stripped him of his lawyer, introduced prejudicial social media posts, and recorded phone conversations with his mother, and then quietly sentenced him to life in prison.
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