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Walterodim

Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t

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User ID: 551

Walterodim

Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t

0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 12:47:06 UTC

					

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User ID: 551

...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.

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.

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.

I know people who regularly get offered a Tesla "upgrade", both on Hertz and Avis.

I noticed this while renting a car for a group trip recently, that it was cheaper to get the electric vehicles in comparable price ranges than the internal combustion engine vehicles. I can only imagine what unholy set of federal subsidies are encouraging this behavior from rental companies.

On the Fourth of July, I run in American flag shorts while listening to Rick Derringer's Real American.

But seriously, I just lack any meaningful ties to an ancestry or heritage other than American. I have British ancestors that got here 400 years ago and German ancestors that started coming in the 1800s, but pretty much none of them in the 20th century seemed to have done much to maintain any ties to the old countries. We're just a very American family and I'm good with that.

It's less surprising when you look at the professions in Congress. The majority of these people have done their level best to never spend a single day of their lives producing any good or service that anyone would willingly purchase.

Across the board, Butker's sin is holding up a mirror. Yes, most women would be happier supporting their successful, loving husband than drudging through a fake email job. Yes, you're a bad Catholic if you support the commission of grave sins.

It might be cooler if he were a tight end, but he's arguably one of the best kickers in the game with three Super Bowls.

Even this part has had a pretty funny element, with dumpy, unathletic haters suggesting that being a kicker means he's not very athletic. In reality, he was a D1 soccer player at Georgia Tech, indicating a high level of dynamic athleticism and conditioning. He's also one of the most fashionable guys in the league (google "Harrison Butker suits" for examples).

The problem with this formulation is that Y isn't banned unless done as part of X. In this case, what's illegal is not the wearing of a mask, it's wearing a mask to conceal one's identity. People may do Y, but they can't do Y in furtherance of X. To concretize other possible examples:

  • There is a law against loitering in front of the mall, unless you're wearing a funny hat. The exemption for funny hats is set to be removed. Are funny hats banned?

  • You may not drink alcoholic beverages at the park, with the exception of beer. The beer exception is removed. Is beer banned?

  • Carrying a firearm to intimidate others is illegal, but firearms in holsters are exempted. The exemption is removed. Are firearms or holsters banned?

Yeah, but he's a 29-year-old elite kicker. He probably has $40 million left on the table with a normal career trajectory.

My favorite story of the day is an intersection of old Covid drama, current protest drama, and a healthy dose of TheMediaRarelyLiestm. Per the news headlines, NC Senate votes to ban people from wearing masks in public for health reasons:

The North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public for health reasons, following an emotional debate about the wisdom of the proposal.

Republican supporters of the ban said it would help police crack down on protesters who wear masks — which some lawmakers called a growing concern, saying demonstrators are abusing Covid-19 pandemic-era norms to wear masks that hide their identities.

Now, I will certainly admit to having a great deal of contempt for people that are still wearing masks and having immediately experienced some schadenfreude, but as someone that just doesn't really trust the media to rarely lie, I thought I had better go check what the bill actually says. As it turns out, what the bill does is strikethrough a temporary exemption that had been added as a Covid-era protection:

SECTION 1.(a) G.S. 14-12.11 reads as rewritten: 19 "§ 14-12.11. Exemptions from provisions of Article. 20 (a) Any of the following are exempted from the provisions of G.S. 14-12.7, 14-12.8, 21 14-12.9, 14-12.10 and 14-12.14: 22 (1) Any person or persons wearing traditional holiday costumes in season. 23

(2) Any person or persons engaged in trades and employment where a mask is 24 worn for the purpose of ensuring the physical safety of the wearer, or because 25 of the nature of the occupation, trade or profession. 26

(3) Any person or persons using masks in theatrical productions including use in 27 Mardi Gras celebrations and masquerade balls. 28

(4) Persons wearing gas masks prescribed in civil defense drills and exercises or 29 emergencies. 30

(5) Any person or persons, as members or members elect of a society, order or 31 organization, engaged in any parade, ritual, initiation, ceremony, celebration 32 or requirement of such society, order or organization, and wearing or using 33 any manner of costume, paraphernalia, disguise, facial makeup, hood, 34 General Assembly Of North Carolina Session 2023 Page 2 House Bill 237-Fourth Edition implement or device, whether the identity of such person or persons is 1 concealed or not, on any public or private street, road, way or property, or in 2 any public or private building, provided permission shall have been first 3 obtained therefor by a representative of such society, order or organization 4 from the governing body of the municipality in which the same takes place, 5 or, if not in a municipality, from the board of county commissioners of the 6 county in which the same takes place. 7

(6) Any person wearing a mask for the purpose of ensuring the physical health or 8 safety of the wearer or others.

The strikethrough in the quote is the only exemption eliminated by the change. The actual text of the criminal statute 14-12.7 is:

§ 14‑12.7. Wearing of masks, hoods, etc., on public ways. No person or persons at least 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood or device whereby the person, face or voice is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter, be or appear upon any lane, walkway, alley, street, road, highway or other public way in this State. (1953, c. 1193, s. 6; 1983, c. 175, ss. 1, 10; c. 720, s. 4.)

The other sections say essentially the same thing, but for a few other contexts. The core of these is that it's illegal to use a mask to conceal the identity of a wearer in public places. The Covid-era text was being used as a way for people to conceal their identities and use the health carveout as a shield against the plain meaning of the law by playing the Taylor Lorenz card. In contrast, no, little old ladies going to medical appointments scared out of their minds and wearing N-95s aren't going to be stopped by police, because they're obviously not attempting to conceal their identity at health clinic.

One might be inclined to explore whether this is one of those rare media lies or whether they didn't quite technically lie, but I don't personally find that a terribly interesting game to play. Instead, I think the interesting thing to consider is why Democrats are so strongly opposed to this. I can see a few options, none of which are mutually exclusive. In roughly ascending order of badness:

  • They simply don't understand the law despite the plain text reading that indicates that the exemptions are only relevant in the case one that has actually violated the criminal statute in the first place. In being so confused, they think eliminating the exemptions really is banning people from wearing masks.

  • Distrust for Republicans runs so deep that despite the text being clear and obvious, they think that villainous right-leaning prosecutors will start filing charges against people that have done nothing other than go to their chemotherapy appointment with a mask on.

  • They don't really think there's anything wrong with the reversion, but they see it as a good opportunity to call Republicans fascist grandma-killers.

  • Support for protestors concealing their identity while behaving badly actually does run strong with some on the left and they see keeping the easy loophole of everyone just being able to claim it's for their health as a very good and important thing to do.

To me, these all make my opponents sound very bad! I don't think they're actually uncharitable though and suspect that some would just outright articulate the second and fourth options above as their rationale. For my part, I'll pre-register my prediction that the statute will only be used against people that are actually committing crimes, not against random mask enthusiasts that are otherwise doing nothing wrong. If I turn out to be wrong, it's time for some introspection.

giving puppy-dog eyes and saying this is just a paperwork crime and no one was hurt won't buy you a cup of coffee before you get absolutely reamed in all the least fun ways

Not to be melodramatic, but I am once again reminded of Solzhenitsyn:

If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm?

But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these dis placements in our universe, and both· the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience, can gasp out only: "Me? What for?"

And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer.

Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somer sault from one state into another.

We have been happily borne-or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way-down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a'thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to pene trate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous num ber of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but none theless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.

That's all there is to it! You are arrested!

And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblike bleat: "Me? What for?"

That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality. That's all. And neither for the first hour nor for the first day will you be able to grasp anything else.

Except that in your desperation the fake circus moon will blink at you: "It's a mistake! They'll set things right!"

When you're hauled in front of "Judge" Darkeh who articulates her spitting contempt for the American Constitution, the rational expectation would be that you're about to receive justice in a pretty similar fashion to what those victims of the Soviets received, but few of us ever learn that lesson, instead clinging to the hope that eventually there will be someone that sets things right.

Say whatever one will about the very online right, the Longhouse is a useful lens on politics.

If we step out of the realm of absolutes and extremes, I think we can say that a preference for some degree of chastity in a partner is real and good, or at least a perfectly legitimate preference. My personal belief is that women who have had a large number of sexual partners tend to be emotionally damaged and are probably not going to be good long-term relationship choices. Preferring someone that has a more normal history seems just fine to me.

On the flip side, like you said, it's worth noting that just getting someone that has a fairly normal history isn't actually sufficient to tamp down the gnawing insecurity about the past. There really is a part of the male ego that many of us have to vary degrees that just wants to be the fucking best, period, completely unthreatened by those losers in the past. But then if they were losers, that devalues her! This whole mental spiral is just wildly unhelpful, so addressing it internally is worthwhile. Addressing it also doesn't mean completely throwing away the healthy alarm bell though - if you notice that someone really did hook up with dozens of guys, yeah, there's probably a problem there and it's good to not just smash that feeling.

Like so many emotions, the emotion has value, but needs to be balanced. Righteous anger is an appropriate response to some situations and a poor response to others. The correct approach to righteous anger isn't to try to eliminate it, it's to understand its origins and make sure that it's only triggering when it's actually appropriate. Likewise for the old green-eyed jealousy - you should feel like guarding your partner, but you can't take it to the extreme of getting all weepy because you're not the first partner a 25-year-old woman has had.

The current SC is not exactly shy about overturning precedent

Big disagree. I know the current zeitgeist is that this is a super radical, extreme court that sweeps away precedent with the flick of the wrist, but the court I actually observe is very moderate, with a Chief Justice whose most salient characteristic is his desire to direct the court towards the narrowest rulings possible on any given case. When I read or listen to oral arguments, I certainly don't get the impression that any of the justices think that there's no reason to think about precedent.

Sure, selective enforcement is a concerning aspect of any potential criminal law, but this is also a fully general complaint. I don't want to protect right-wing rioters or left-wing rioters as a matter of principle though - it's the rioting I object to, not the political positioning of the rioters.

I'm not sure how to bridge our different reading of the statute, but I don't agree with that summary at all. The text there [emphasis mine]:

§ 14‑12.7. Wearing of masks, hoods, etc., on public ways. No person or persons at least 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood or device whereby the person, face or voice is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter, be or appear upon any lane, walkway, alley, street, road, highway or other public way in this State. (1953, c. 1193, s. 6; 1983, c. 175, ss. 1, 10; c. 720, s. 4.)

This seems really clear to me that intent aside, the effect needs to be concealing the identity of the wearer. For example, the proverbial immunocompromised patient going to a hospital - we know they're not concealing their identity because their actions require the people they're interacting with to know who they are! It's true that determining whether someone's "face is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer" requires some degree of interpretation on the part of police and prosecutors, but I think that's just an unavoidable part of criminal law. The change here isn't actually a change to the need for contextual interpretation, it's just removing health as a fully general exception.

If someone wanted to take the principled stance that you should just be allowed to conceal your identity, I think they could probably make a pretty reasonable case for that, but it would be a pretty different argument than what we see the legislators and newspapers running with.

I would agree that in my example that funny hats at the mall are now banned. What I wouldn't say is that funny hats were generally banned. You can wear your funny hat to a lot of places! You just can't do it at the mall anymore. In the mask case, people that have some actual medical reason and aren't concealing their identity shouldn't really bump into much of a problem. The one area of overlap that I could see this actually being a thing is someone that insists it's medical getting into a conflict with a business-owner that just hates masks and wants them to take their stupid mask off. In the hat analogy, I would think it was weird if someone was super pissed about the funny hat change when what they really don't like is the loitering rule at the mall.

B&R is the only podcast I actually pay for and I'm grateful for the work the hosts and researchers put in. Thanks @TracingWoodgrains and best wishes in all your future endeavors.

I beat you to it by six minutes!

But yeah, to me, this is about as blatant of an example of the media often lying as you're going to find. Any attempt to rescue this from being an example of the media often lying is going to rely on the most pedantic possible reading of the text of articles while completely ignoring the titles.

Should I fix myself? No, it is the women who are wrong.

Could be true, but probably not very useful advice.

FWIW, this isn't why I don't talk about Ukraine. I don't talk about it because it seems like a morass of propaganda to the point where I haven't been willing to try to do the work to understand what's closer to the truth. Maybe I'm wrong and it's actually quite legible if I were to dig in, but right now, it doesn't seem like a good tradeoff for me.

While I am sure that there is some antisemitism, I'm annoyed by this being the standard for whether people that are trespassing, camping illegally, detaining others illegally, and so on are worthy of condemnation. I really don't even care whether what the mostly peaceful protestors are on about, whether I agree with them just doesn't actually play into whether I want them to knock off the nonsense. If you're trying to camp in a park, cops should show up and inform you that you that you're not allowed to do that. If you insist on doing it anyway, they should arrest you and remove your stuff from the park. The idea that the basics of evenly enforced law are up to whether the scofflaws are antisemitic or not is absurd (and plainly anti-constitutional).

Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."

Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.

Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

Yeah, they did that - it's right there!

I don't think it's a good post, but it's a fine area of discussion, everyone is already familiar with the basics, and the bar to ride the ride shouldn't be that someone has to personally have a novel take. Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia or quoting the New York Times would not improve this post.

Thanks for the corrective, I sincerely appreciate the effort and want to improve my mental model of what people are thinking. The biggest change I would make in my framing is updating the fourth item to be significantly more charitable.

As a bit of pushback though, if the explanations you're offering are the positions held, I don't see what the reason would be for making the argument about the health provisions. If it's an important right for people to be able to conceal their identities, why not focus on that instead of whether there should be narrow exemptions? If the problem is vagueness, that should be addressed directly.

For the record, I am not particularly trusting of police, either individually or institutionally. My position on this doesn't really on police being the rigorously honest thin blue line, it only goes as far as noticing that I can't think of any parallels for something like claimed negative impacts of repealing this exemption. Again, if the concern is that people should be able to conceal their identities and not allowing them to do so is an abuse of state power, I can easily get into the mindspace of sharing concerns and trying to figure out what to do. I just flatly don't buy that the change to statute is criminalizing anything that actually has anything at all to do with health.

Seth Roberts, inventor of the diet, experienced this weight loss when traveling and drinking unfamiliar sugary beverages, not exactly a health food.

I want everyone that posts about how they lost weight on vacation to post their step counter with averages outside of vacation and on vacation. My own experience is that I just walk a lot more on vacation, like an average of 10,000 steps more in a typical day, with peaks much higher than that. Unsurprisingly, this burns a bunch of calories. So is it magical European sodas, or did he just walk more?