In between blogging about fursuit collections, former motte moderator TracingWoodgrains has started to blow up on twitter after wading into an ongoing feud between Steve Sailer and propagandist Will Stancil.
Something in the replies must have really upset him (possibly interactions with a number of replyguys making not-so-veiled threats about what happens to people who associate with bigots or question "lying for the pursuit of good aims"), because he suddenly got really invested in proving that the recent FAA-DEI scandal is real.
After giving up on conservative journalists and deciding to do the legwork himself, he's now posting PACER documents from the recent FAA lawsuit, proving that the FAA HR department sent black applicants a list of resume buzzwords that would get their applications fast-tracked, via the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.
A few hours ago this got the attention of Elon Musk, and Tracing is promising a follow-up, somehow trying to juggle 1L coursework with doing more investigative journalism than the entire conservative media put together. Obviously one of these things takes more time than the other, but I'm sure he'll have a coffee break free for the journalism bit.
One reason I think this could be important is that it's going to paint a huge target on Tracing's back. Propagandists have been claiming that the FAA DEI story was fake, the test designed to favor black applicants never existed, etc. They're going to get very angry at this evidence becoming widely known, and tracing is in a unique position to spread it outside the right wing news ghetto that prevents most liberals from ever encountering facts like these.
I'm not saying it's certain they're going to go after his law school, but he's in a uniquely vulnerable position right now, with very few allies in a position to help him (and probably a number who will suddenly decide he's on the enemy side of the fiend-enemy distinction.) So if anyone is in the position to help if he needs it, maybe start reaching out early.
Unfortunately all of this is getting difficult to follow without a twitter account (I even have one, but they're not letting me log in right now for no apparent reason). It's going to get even harder as Nitter instances die off. If anyone has a reliable account and would be willing to make screenshots, I'd love if you could take over covering the story as it develops.
Edit: his effortpost is now out on twitter and at his blog. I'll copy it into a reply below in case the nitter instance goes down again.
Just a note, this has obvious parallels to colleges letting DEI departments screen out the 80% of applicants before any objective hiring process begins:
they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test.
It's a very effective method of manipulating procedural outcomes, isn't it?
Tyre_Inflator
9mo ago
I was really hoping there would be more of an argument here than "umm yikes, smells like Qanon" but you just completely ignored the whole issue. There's also some impressive irony in flipping between "qanon conspiracy theory" accusations and insinuations of "people worried about privacy look a lot like they have child sex slave dungeons, isn't that suspicious?"
This is exact sort of dismissive "if you have nothing hide, you have nothing to fear" attitude people in the 00s were worried would become common once universal surveillance was normalized.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
But that didn't even work here, as the new "use preferred pronouns" rule shows. It's certainly not going to work anywhere else. The obvious reply is "that sounds like a you problem."
I was quoting from the "Living By The Sword" thread that Netstack said was very different than current year discourse. My point was that it wasn't actually different: the Multiheads were always there in the SSC-sphere, always being assisted by fellow travelers, and the only thing about the discourse that's changed is that they now run the entire country instead of the discourse on tumblr dot com.
The tactics they use haven't changed, the defenses against them are still futile, and the same people still make excuses for them. We're just going through all the same motions with the same meaningless arguments as the overton window slams left even faster.
(Edit: just found out I can link SSC blog comments directly)
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Yeah, everyone misses the vital "it's costless for the oppressor, but infinitely beneficial/costly for the oppressed" framing used to get a foot in the door. It seamlessly transitions to "ok it's costly for the oppressor, but hurting them is actually good", but the initial push always relies on the "simple politeless reducing social friction" argument.
I'm not sure anyone's found a way to argue against it yet, and it's always too late once the rule is established.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
It was never off-limits for the Multiheadeds, was it? They always got to do this. They always got to frame every discussion as "prove to us that you shouldn't be silenced and banned," because it was a useful tactic to waste people's time in fruitless discussions while they took over mod teams and organized NYT hitpieces and violent street gangs.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
He specifically said that calling Charles Clymer a he with no other mark of disrespect is against the rules. Soon that will extend to linking articles that talk about Charle's "deadname," because that's just how this sort of thing works, and because those are the social rules in the indie game dev scene Zorba is trying to gain status in.
If you think that's unlikely, a few years ago the mods were laughing at the idea of the current rules. And look where we are now.
Darwin knows how this works too, and what "rhetorical strategies" to use to accelerate it and claim yet another space for his party.
we need access to this kind of violence. We need to present a credible threat. We need to be able to hurt people. We need to illuminate the everyday experience of humiliation and suppression – by temporarily reversing it if that’s the only way to make people see. The necessity of wielding force, of having some destructive option in the struggle is not overridden by the problem of its abuse and corruption.
What's changed, other than the people resisting this behavior being even more marginalized than they were in 2014? The tactics haven't changed, the vain last stands on hills of civility haven't changed, and nor have the fellow travelers telling the defenders to surrender yet another hill "because it's just the nice thing to do."
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
I just wish you'd stop doing it in a way calculated to piss people off
It's not calculated to piss people off, it's a space-claiming strategy that works in tandem with Zorba decreeing that "misgendering" is now a bannable offense (sorry, he didn't decree anything, he just reinterpreted the rules so that it has always been a bannable offense, comrade).
It's a tactic to slam the overton window left and step on people's fingers if they try to stop it. And it works.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
And hope the nuclear codes are still 12345?
Yeah, unfortunately you're not likely to get many people going "as a gay paedophile, here's my essential reading list." Maybe @komm-nach-unteralterbach could help if he's still around?
One of the only ones I'm really aware of is the novel Josephine Mutzenbacher, by the same guy who wrote Bambi of all things. It spent a lot of time on various censorship lists and was the center of decades of court battles over the German index of harmful media. It's now unbanned and celebrated by "gender and sex researchers," indicating some changing attitudes.
But there's a host of other stuff out there you hear whispers of, published by the UK Paedophile Information Exchange, the german Krumme13, and apparently every French philosophy department ever.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
I have nothing against maoist tactics. When highpopalorum gloats about how easily it will be to starve and Sarin gas red states, I'm just jealous I can't come up with an equally plausible response against the coastal cities.
Zero-sum eliminationism is the name of the game. You were one of the people who convinced me of that.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
If a movie isn't holding my attention enough to finish it in one sitting, that's usually a sign it's not worth finishing at all. Were you enjoying the movies but somehow ran out of attention span or something? Do you mind saying what generation you are?
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I hope you dive into the censored paedophile books more, because it's the once instance I know of where the left completely wiped their own literature from our collective memory, rather than their opponents'. Der Spiegel has whole issues deleted from their archive because they got ahead of themselves trying to get on the right side of history on the liberation of (sexy) children issue.
It's also topical because a lot of the same logic is now returning to the bleeding edge of leftism under the name of "family abolition," and people should be familiar with it.
Also you really need to read Lolita before you get old. Humbert's vanity and fear of aging and death is fucking hilarious when you read it as a kid, but hits hard once you notice your hair starting to thin...
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Hey, thanks for the quick confirmation. I think it's important when the guy who declared the whole community an irredeemable den of racist deplorables that should be destroyed shows up to start pinning down racists.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
To put you both on the same page rather than anonymously calling Nybbler out for things he said 8 years ago, you are reddit.com/user/895158, yes?
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Yes, the conversation had me trying to remember Land's "Hell-Baked," from one of his lighter meth binges.
You never gain-feed cattle for years, you finish them on grain in a lot for a few months to put some marbling on them. Have you seen grain prices? Even before 2020 you'd quickly go broke trying to raise beef on grain.
And clearing jungle for pasture is a net improvement for animal welfare, because jungles are obscene murder temples of pure agony, while well-tended pastures are grass and flowers and a few voles (if you don't care about insects).
This whole thing gets very silly when you start quantifying it, which is why the people doing the quantifying only ever do it in ways that give the impression of making their moral arguments "sciency"
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
A normal field mouse lives in constant fear of being eaten alive by a dozen different types of predators, and their population is kept in check either by being relentlessly hunted by perpetually hungry overpopulated predators or hideous, agonizing plagues if their population density gets high enough.
The un-hunted deer where I live all caught a wasting disease that rots their brains as they grind their teeth out and and wander in circles. I watched a baby fawn starve to death next to the already-skeletal body of her mother.
Nature is horrifying. Man is kind.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Could they have killed him? Yes. Would they have killed him? From a probabilistic standpoint, I'd give it maybe 1-2% odds at most assuming he was passive/compliant.
He literally said Kyle should have been "passive and compliant" and let the attackers beat him, because he was replying to LotsRegret question specifying "when he was being pummeled by the people later."
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
Thanks for the link. I was having a hard time googling it. (It seems like a lot of twitter and reddit posts are no longer searchable?)
The comment I was thinking of was linked in your first link, here, which was about self-defense and Tracing Woodgrain's comment that Kyle should have just let his attackers beat him as much as they wanted and hope they had the mercy not to kill him, rather than fighting back.
yakultbingedrinker's comment was very similar though.
@FCfromSSC this was the post of yours I meant, which was cited as justification for the schism.
I think even later a strong case can be made against escalating to deadly force. So far, 32 people have died during these protests, four for reasons other than being shot. It's impossible to get a precise count of the number of physical confrontations that have gone on, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect many more than that. Could they have killed him? Yes. Would they have killed him? From a probabilistic standpoint, I'd give it maybe 1-2% odds at most assuming he was passive/compliant.
Tyre_Inflator
10mo ago
I don't think anyone minded the boo-outgroup stuff nearly as much as the folksy hick-lib gimmick coming from a jewish guy whose job is literally "managing family rental properties."
The "don't y'all folx think us rednecks should stick together and Respect Trans Identities" thing got really old.
What is wrong with you?! I just read that whole conversation you had with Gattsuru and you seem completely miserable about the way you engage people, but you never change it!
Do you not see shit like this literally every five minutes? https://imgur.com/gallery/TQCSdED
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