haroldbkny
3mo ago
I don't know much about biblical stuff, but to me, that sounds like the sort of thing someone would say before going on a holy war, or before trying to kill a demon. It reminds me of the Exorcist:
I cast you out! Unclean spirit! In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is he who commands you! It is he who flung you from the gates of Heaven to the depths of Hell!
It sounds pretty threatening to me, but I haven't watched the video, so I don't know her tone.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Good point. I worry that this incident is going to end up like the Harambee incident, where everyone and their mother suddenly claimed to be experts on gorilla behavior and have very clear understanding of the precise limits of a gorilla's strength within a day of the event happening.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
if you have more questions this is quite a fun exchange
Cool, I've got a few more questions.
The people on the board might be 'unaccountable and stupid' but they're still acting on that maximization principle.
I mean, to some extent. There are of course local maxima, and they may be maximizing over the next week. But what about beyond that? The head of that board that releases that statement looks unaccountable and stupid, which should, in theory, reduce others' ability to trust him in future years. Whereas by staying silent, he gets no such potential reputational damage.
If you told me that all boards don't really look beyond 1 week in the future, well, I don't have evidence to contradict you, because in my personal experience, the ones I've worked with have been very short-sighted. However, I would have hoped that there are at least some (hopefully more than just some) organizations that actually think about things on a longer-term scale.
Meanwhile, looking at it the other way, what would happen if a board made no such statement when there's a dead man walking? Does their statement do anything to actually help the situation? By keeping their mouths shut, would they get the best of both worlds, assuming the stock doesn't immediately tank just because they failed to make a statement that they don't actually believe anyway.
Also, talking about Cheatle, I don't think there's any stock involved, so what's at stake for the Secretary of Homeland Security to keep his mouth shut instead of endorsing her?
Moving past the humble brag
Hah, sorry. I guess it is a humble brag, but I think I meant it to be more self deprecating, like how could I have done as well as I have given I have no tolerance for or understanding of company politics. There's a lot of politics going on around me, and I mostly ignore it, somehow.
I'd go on for 3 paragraphs if you're interested
Definitely interested, I'd love to understand anything about this more than I do.
but really it's not a mystery why the board doesn't tank the stock on the off chance the principle survives
Doesn't the stock still tank one week later? And doesn't that make every person on the board (or at least the head of the board) unaccountable and stupid, that they said one thing and reversed so quickly? Couldn't they just say nothing in the meantime instead?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
To press on this further, it just seems strange to me. But I am someone who (despite my years and success in big tech) considers himself to be organizationally illiterate. I get by without thinking deeply about organizational politics for the most part.
Some specific questions: Why would a board make such a statement, if they're just going to retract their support in a week? Do individuals lack foresight? Or are they pressured to do it by someone? If so, who? Are there times when boards make these statements and actually mean it?
I mean, yes, but also no, a person wielding a weapon can charge in and close distance before the bullets put them down.
As seen on Surviving Edged Weapons (on Red Letter Media).
haroldbkny
3mo ago
The fact that they need to state that he has their backing is strong evidence that he probably shouldn't have their backing
Ah, I see, thanks for the clarification! That makes sense.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
That's good to know. I still may not risk it, though, I have pretty low threshold for stuff like this getting to me.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
“woe to him who has the full backing of the board—he is a dead man walking.”
I'm not sure I really understand this. Can you explain it?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
This is quite the thread. I won't watch the video since I really don't want to see a video where someone dies. Depending on how it's shown that sort of thing can be horribly haunting, and I wouldn't expect real police bodycam video to be pulling any punches.
So all I have to go on are people's descriptions from this thread, and I keep going back and forth. People can't seem to come to consensus on whether it's extremely obvious that she was just joking and thus did not deserve to be shot or whether it's obvious she was acting weird and threatening. Same for the timing of the water being thrown vs the shots fired. Then, on top of all of that, there's more philosophical disagreements about whether it's more or less okay to endanger officers, or the degree to which officers should defend themselves.
If the mostly reasonable people here are this split on the interpretation of events, then I'm afraid it'll be 100x worse in the general public.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
Thanks!
haroldbkny
4mo ago
A few weeks ago, someone posted a hilarious podcast-kinda comedy show, wherein someone was talking about how not enough people in some town are dying due to drowning, which indicates an overspend in anti-drowning resources. I can't find it anymore, can anyone share it? Thanks!
haroldbkny
4mo ago
For one thing, Biden is really old, so his covid might not be as mild as most everyone else's. For another thing, I agree with what @Stellula says here. But I also want to add that while everyone knows Covid is not a big deal anymore, I don't think everyone will actively say that. It's not "common knowledge" as Scott likes to talk about. Everyone knows it, and everyone knows everyone knows it, but everyone doesn't know that everyone knows that everyone knows it, or something like that. And as such, it falls outside of the overton window to say that Covid isn't a big deal, and you can get people telling you you're an insensitive monster that's literally killing people if you say that.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I guess. That might not be too different from what I said, in as much as it's something that the conservatives actually seem to want to, and be able to, cancel people over.
My guess is that Jack Black knows he has more at stake then Gass. Black stands to be recast in the inevitable Mario sequel, and lose whatever other acting opportunities he has. Black is probably playing damage control with his own career, for fear that Gass's comments are cancellable, by trying to seem repentant and distancing himself from Gass.
Overall, it seems like this particular incident has given some power of cancel culture to the conservatives again. Which I guess is a somewhat positive development? I'd prefer that no one cancels anyone, and no one weilds that super weapon, but maybe it's better to have both parties have the power to some degree. I don't yet expect that this is a long-term development, but we'll see
My social media is full of leftists who are openly saying that they wish Trump was killed, and they're not going to pretend otherwise. I haven't personally witnessed any level of cancellation or even any light scolding for them from saying this, but of course, these people are not celebrities, just people on social media, and they probably are posting to an almost exclusively blue echo chamber.
I'm also really surprised that we still have no real clues about motive of the assassination attempt released yet (as far as I've seen). This has led to the aforementioned leftists in my circle to chip in their own wishful speculation as fact. I've seen a few saying things like "Wow, it's been confirmed that the shooter tried to kill Trump because he wasn't far right enough. That's hilarious" in response to the info coming out that Crooks was a registered Republican.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I just want those who are preemptively scoffing at the expected Republican outcry against this to examine their reactions to this shooting and try to have the same reaction when it happens to the Democrats. Or vice versa, or whatever. Be consistent or be quiet.
And people in hell want ice water.
I want what you want, too, but I think there's little chance of this event turning down the temperature, or for most people to take this as a moment for self reflection. I think we are beyond that.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
Also highly questionable. Would it have been a bad idea to shoot Hitler in 1933? Stalin in 1924?
This is an interesting line of questioning. Could the situation have been made worse by these actions? If someone shot Hitler dead, would a different Nazi have taken power? Would Nazi sympathy have increased, and the Jews been blamed for the event, resulting in even more pro Nazi sentiment? No one could possibly know what alternate histories would be like.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
it's probably best to buy what you want today before they raise their prices even further beyond the normal election year rush
Is there a typical election year run on guns? Has that always been the case, or only in 2020? As I know nothing about guns, that's not something I ever knew, but even I considerd buying a hand gun in 2020 to prepare for if Trump won (because I was worried that the BLM riots that were already going nuts would soon reach my neighborhood and my home would be in danger if Trump won)
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I've known a few people who knew little about the specific internet subcultures, who at one time or another have cited RationalWiki to me as evidence that Scott Alexander is an unhinged neoreactionary rightist, or some other such nonsense. These people trusted RationalWiki mostly by virtue of its name alone (i.e. "well, it's a wiki that's trying to be rational, isn't it?").
I'm acquaintances with many of these pearl clutchers, so I see what they say. Once an allegation comes out, there's no evidence talked about, no consideration about whether the behavior is actually okay, or which side should be believed, nothing. Just a constant high pitched glee at getting to call these people rapists or villians or "literally the worst". The whole thing basically seems like the thing that the people did wrong was to be noticed, because once you're noticed, no one cares about the situation or evidence. Once you're caught by the eye of sauron, you are guilty.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
Looking at that article, I don't think they make any strong factual claims that can be proven false. They say the clips are misleading and it of context and edited to remove crucial details. That's hard stuff to say "that's factually incorrect". The video clips were edited so some contextual info was lost. "Crucial", and what details are important to the context could vary person to person.
Are they now citing the same clips? If they are, that would be weasley, but I'm not sure if counts as proving they were "lying" before. I definitely think that nytimes and the media in general suck, and they have no scruples, and are probably bad for the world, but I do think that it's very hard to catch them in an outright lie.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
What did NYT say? I really doubt they'd make factual claims that go beyond reporting what other people say.
What did Joe Scarborough say? Once again, individuals actors or outlets would not be enough to fully falsify Scott's claim. There would be to be many, and then it'd end up being a judgement call about how you define "rarely"
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I doubt this would violate Scott's position that the media rarely lies. For that to happen, you would need to show that:
- The media was saying things like "Biden is incontrovertibly in amazing condition and has no cognitive decline whatsoever"
- Many many reputable news outlets would need to say this
1 is necessary for it to be a lie, but as we know, most news outlets wouldn't take a stand quite like that. They'd instead say something like "White House PR team indicates reports of cognitive decline are overstated". There's a few levels of indirection there, that make it hard for us to say that the media themselves were lying. They'd be reporting on what someone else says, and they also wouldn't be saying that he has no cognitive decline, but something far more defensible.
2 is necessary for us to say that the media lies more than rarely. But even if we find some examples where an outlet did something like 1, that wouldn't be enough to say that it's more than "rarely" lying.
You have a point. But there are many variables. Like @ControlsFreak says, I've never even considered pots of water as a weapon, or even throwing them. I have no clue what this particular woman could or could not do. And water can have a weird sloshing effect which fights you when you try to move it quickly.
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