daguerrean
2d ago
I have heard variations of this every few months for four years now, it’s always the same. Some random town I’ve never heard of with a population of 300 is about to fall which will cause the entire Ukrainian defense to collapse in a matter of days. Nobody is more consistently wrong than pro-Russian “realist” posters on The Motte. I know nothing about the situation but I know you’re wrong
daguerrean
2d ago
I think the theory generally is that they set Epstein up as a fall-guy who may generally have not been aware of his role and so his behavior actually does accord with just being a "rich lech" not a "Israeli super spy", because in some sense that's what he actually was. Perhaps Epstein wasn't even aware he was running a blackmail operation and his island and plane were outfitted with recording devices without his knowledge. In his mind he was just a rich playboy having fun and mingling with the rich and famous. I think according to this theory Ghislaine was definitely aware of the situation and that she was working with Israeli intelligence. Consider this. Imagine they had used some secret channel to acquire girls. If Epstein got arrested presumably they would start asking the girls, looking into their backgrounds and it would become obvious they were acquired through some channel that would not be available to an ordinary rich lech.
daguerrean
2d ago
Epstein is truly the modern-day Count of St. Germain
daguerrean
2d ago
More evidence for the body cam vibe shift, here is a New Yorker article from two days ago: The Body-cam Hustle Targeting Young Women which seems to be attacking bodycams from the angle of the classic joke “World Ends; Women and Minorities Hardest Hit ”. Of course the article presents zero evidence that youtube bodycam channels are actually somehow targeting women. The article’s subtitle is “Police body cameras were supposed to prevent abuses. Now YouTubers are using the footage for clicks.” The word choice there “supposed to prevent abuses” even carries with it the implication that “we know we told you guys to support these things years ago but we’re changing course now.”
daguerrean
2d ago
gattsuru is an absolute god, I am continually amazed and have no idea how he does this.
daguerrean
2d ago
Remember right after the 2016 election when all liberal media started talking about “dezinformatsiya” lol?
daguerrean
3d ago
We don’t arrest people but we do question them for being “likely” to commit a crime. See the original quote:
Prohibit DHS officers from conducting stops, questioning and searches
Nothing here about arresting people based on ethnicity
I can't say that it's out of the question, but it's extremely implausible
This is why I regard it as pretty comparable to the “Kirk Shooter was MAGA theory.” “SIG lol” as the entire basis for the theory is pretty comparable to “his parents were MAGA” as both are just probabilistic arguments while all the direct evidence we have is contrary. The grey jacket guy didn’t react as if the gun in his hand went off, and he looked behind him over the opposite shoulder. As far as I know ICE/DHS has not even claimed this misfire theory in their own defense, it is 100% cope. As you said, is it strictly possible a misfire happened despite all the evidence? Sure. In the same sense that it’s strictly possible Kirk’s shooter is a groyper chud despite the evidence.
daguerrean
3d ago
There have been extensive discussions of this memory-holing process over the Intellectual Dark Web subreddit.
Do you have any links? Sounds interesting
daguerrean
3d ago
The likeliest explanation seems like it went off as it was being confiscated from him.
I cannot believe I’m still seeing this Kirk-shooter-was-actually-MAGA tier theory in the wild
daguerrean
4d ago
In general I think this class of problems is not dealt with sufficiently by many conservatives. Like, okay, if we take away women’s right to vote, what will be different this time around? We already had that in 1900 and where did it lead us? Here. The same can be said for an all-White society, all-Christian etc. I suppose the argument is something like, “We didnt realize how important having an all-White society was back then so we didn’t jealously guard it, but this time we know and we’ll do things differently.” And I imagine the same goes for patriarchal/Christian/etc. It isn’t a totally absurd argument, but I think it’s lacking. Conservatives at the time definitely understood having a White country was important, they weren’t exactly lacking that information. I struggle with this argument myself as someone that generally-speaking endorses some of these things
Agree with the overuse of the term goth, there’s nothing really goth here. I will note however that there’s sort of a stereotype here that gender ideology is something associated with college-educated coastal elites, and it may be at an intellectual level, but not as-lived on the ground. Walk around Princeton campus and the kids will look normal, they wouldn’t even look bizarre by the standards of twenty years ago. You’ll see much more gender nonconformity at a Walmart in rural Alabama than at Harvard.
I think this is basically the intellectually permissive ideology of colleges finally filtering down to Walmart, where it just gets interpreted as a complete collapse of any normative standards or shame. So you get this mixture of mall ninja aesthetics, anime, furries, piercings, tattoos, hip hop/black culture in an unholy combination assisted by algorithmic blending of previously distinct subcultures. Similar to interracial relationships. There may be nigh unanimous support for interracial relationships at Harvard, but you won’t see many except some White/Asian pairs, you see far more at your local Walmart, especially White/black. These ideas are formed at colleges but mostly inflicted on the trailer park class.
You know, separately I want to talk about poptimism and the death of subcultures. I was reading Chuck Klosterman’s book on the 90s (good fun, I highly recommend it) and he was pointing out how “selling out” was a huge concern among indie music fans in a way it isn’t today. In the 90s subcultural fans had an expectation for their celebrities of loyalty to the subculture, of purity, and of resistance to debasement. In the early 2000s for example, hip hop had its own unique fashion that was totally independent from the world of high fashion houses and luxury design And you would have never seen Modest Mouse collaborating with Cam’ron. At some point around 2012 when proto wokeness was emerging, indie music press started to become self conscious that their disdain of pop music was in some ways sexist and racist and they began to notice that the then-popular bearded-flannel-mandolin indie of Fleet Foxes and Iron & Wine was disturbingly White They shifted their ethos from searching for the most obscure music to praising the top-40 hits of Beyonce or Kanye for their racial politics, thus poptimism was born and the end of subcultural gatekeeping. I mean look at the writing credits on Beyonce’s 2016 lemonade, you have former indie darlings like Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend on there, this is like if Jeff Mangum was writing songs for Britney Spears, absolutely unthinkable twenty years ago. IMO aside from the algorithmic melange & capitalistic aspects, there really is a part of the story where wokrness and concerns over sexism/racism/gatekeeping destroyed distinct subcultures
daguerrean
7d ago
The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist
How does the null hypothesis have a place here and why do you get to decide what it is? We aren’t approving drugs here, we’re just trying to weigh two theories, it’s completely unfair to arbitrarily privilege the one you like more.
daguerrean
7d ago
I’m going to be honest I don’t care about who had sex with prostitutes. The only interesting things about Epstein to me are, was he an Israeli spy? Was he murdered? Was Ghislaine actually a reddit mod? I basically take for granted that 90% of men would have sex with everything that walks, given the chance, so none of that stuff is revelatory. Especially men that aggressively seek power/wealth/status, as they say, men only want one thing and it’s fucking disgusting.
daguerrean
9d ago
Excellent comment here. I think the core of this is that essentially Good and Pretti were some variety of normies. When the criminal underclass acts out, it is easy to write it off as them being low-agency and their acting out is part of their general dysfunction. Normies however have the necessary degree of self-control and agency to respond to incentives, social status rewards and authority messaging. So when normies act out you can't dismiss it as a symptom of their general dysfunction, it tells you something about what incentives and societal messaging are directing them towards. By definition, normies are ones who "go with the flow." If you have normies in Minneapolis violently engaging ICE that tells us we have a messaging problem that is much bigger than whatever personal failings or bad judgments these people may have had.
daguerrean
9d ago
While it was a bad shoot the current theory is his gun fired on its own. If be bought a cheap gun that malfunctioned and fired on its own then maybe he doesn’t have a civil claim.
This is basically the same as the left claiming Charlie Kirk's shooter was a Groyper/MAGA/Right and it is similarly embarrassing how persistent this theory is in right leaning spaces. Striking, really
daguerrean
10d ago
- Why is every named person in this article Muslim? Is it really that bad?
- Logistically how do garbage men strike for a year? How are they paying their bills?
daguerrean
10d ago
I still don’t understand what mean girl behavior is other than policies you disagree with. I could easily frame any leftist figure as engaging in equally mean girl behaviors from my POV. Obviously ii understand your broader point, if he were literally advocating for the government to start throwing trannies into gas chambers then I agree, the distinction between this and doing violence directly would arguably be quite thin, but I don’t think he was doing this any more than pro-immigration activists are doing White genocide to me, even if I disagree with then
daguerrean
10d ago
Right, but I think we have a carve out where advocating for harms through government action is acceptable. If my friend advocates the government raise taxes on me by $1000, I should tolerate this civilly, but them advocating for a criminal to mug me and steal $1000 is very different, even if the end result to me is the same.
daguerrean
10d ago
You started all this by saying “Devil’s Advocate”, so do you really believe it was fair to kill Kirk or is this still just a provocation to prove a point? Because it is sounding like genuine belief
daguerrean
11d ago
Not surprising. If let’s say any physical contact with ICE has a 0.1% chance to turn out deadly by accident, it is most likely that anyone that dies is someone who has rolled those dice many, many times. You see the same with ordinary deaths in police encounters like Floyd
daguerrean
11d ago
I almost always get the exact dead center on these sorts of quizzes, and I did again here. I feel unless you go into the test saying to yourself "I want to get as [BASED/COMMUNIST] as possible!!" it is hard to get anything but centrist. Most of the statements put up for agreement are so absolutist that there is only really one reasonable response.
daguerrean
11d ago
What kind of questions would you be interested in seeing on a survey for Motte users? They can be serious thoughts on political issues, or just any fun random thing you want to know. I will certainly post the results after
Okay, I feel obligated to defend myself. I don't really find anything objectionable in doing things your wife enjoys for the sake of the relationship. It was just that post in particular that gave me a vibe that this man has no agency or convictions while his wife is a shrieking harpy calling the shots in the relationship. The other thing is, he is talking about basically dedicating hours every day of his vacation to standing outside protesting in Minneapolis in January, there is a point where it crosses over from being kind and accommodating to your spouse to being a doormat. You should do things your spouse wants to, but IMO you should also feel comfortable saying "Go by yourself, I don't want to do that." Now granted, my wife doesn't really go out, so the extent of this for me is watching reality shows I don't care for. I usually just go to daguerreotype-related things myself without dragging my wife along. I don't understand why some couple feel the need to do everything together.
I also think protests are a bit different. I think protests are supposed to imply some level of personal conviction that going to a museum doesn't. In that sense a protest is maybe more similar to attending religious services. And going to daily protests in the winter in Minneapolis is like the equivalent of attending years of church services you personally think are BS because your wife likes them.
You know, in one of your linked comments you had a list of 700 questions which I enjoyed, reminds me I've been meaning to make a survey for Motte users which I should post.
This won’t be particularly substantive but hopefully it’s enough to avoid a mod-slap. Apparently a group of women customers accosted staff at a Minneapolis yoga chain and berated them for not having some sort of ICE signage up (presumably a “No ICE allowed” sign, as if ICE agents will be stopping in to do yoga).
Here is an article.
Here is a direct link to the viral TikTok in question
The video’s author is Heather Anderson, 51, essentially the archetype of the wine mom, the core demographic of the latest frenzy. She appears to be an elementary school teacher and host of a podcast Belonging in the Classroom which presents itself with this description:
Of course this dovetails nicely with our discussion of another winemom-cum-podcaster, Jennifer Welch and her open calls for Republican blood. In all seriousness, psychologically speaking, what on Earth is going on with 50 year-old women right now? Have Democrats effectively weaponized Karenism?
The incident reminds me almost exactly of scenes that we saw in 2020, like this similar incident you surely remember of diners being surrounded and screamed at for not raising their fists in solidarity with BLM..
There is much endless discussion of peak woke, but to me it feels almost exactly like we are back in 2020, if not for the historic cold weather of the last few weeks and general time of year, I imagine it would be nearly identical.
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