oats_son
3d ago
I have never seen someone in the wild recommend this author. It's so odd to me that nobody's heard of him around me, because his Flashman series is iconic, and I still find myself thinking of his Quartered Safe Out Here anecdotes (like the one you mentioned, his friend getting cut in half by machine gun friendly fire in the middle of the night, or the one where he randomly stumbled on a Japanese soldier and surprised each other and he unshouldered his rifle and shot him first).
oats_son
6d ago
no one actually holds the opinion that Elon did a nazi salute
Sadly, I am pretty confident that they do actually believe it. I started this thread after an argument I had with my left leaning friends, and they were incredulous I didn't see it for what they thought it was. "I'm not sure what else you need to see at this point," was something said a couple times.
I can't say I don't understand your perspective. But when you are continually insincere, it makes it difficult to tell which actions were actually supposed to be sincere or not. There was a conversation in one of the non-culture-war threads about his Path of Exile 2 claims, and I think it was @cjet79 was holding the possibility that he was trolling people on purpose in that circumstance as well. In that case, I was pretty confident he wasn't trolling. After the last few days, I still think he wasn't trolling in the case of Path of Exile 2 since he deleted some of the tweets that he made at Asmongold on the subject, and trolls don't tend to do that, but I'm no longer as confident. How am I supposed to stick up for someone that purposely complicates my sticking up for him?
I also share something with the left, in that I really no longer like Hitler-staff-name puns or anything making light of that stuff. My dad is a genuine neo-Nazi in most any respect you can think of, and he loves jokes like that.
oats_son
6d ago
It's not proof that the accusations are true. It's proof that even if it was accidental at the time, there is not even an attempt to say it was accidental. The mockery is embracing the move. He's not a secret nazi, but I despise the obvious trolling going on here.
oats_son
6d ago
They already have, and while I do like to sneer, I probably wouldn't view this forum if I thought that that was a productive thing to do. I also don't really like making jokes that extremists enjoy.
oats_son
6d ago
I just saw this tweet he made, and yeah, you're right. I actually seriously regret defending him if he's going to turn around after my unwarranted good will for him and use the language of people that I hate, acknowledging that it was intentional. Absolutely disgusting.
I still don't think he's a neo-nazi, for reasons already said. But I hate this shit. He must hate the left so much that he would purposely use rhetoric that pisses them off. Quickest I've ever been wrong, and I hate it when I'm wrong and /r/politics is right.
oats_son
7d ago
Yeah. I get it. Rhetoric getting increasingly underhanded, and rationalism tried and found impossible/useless, leading to everyone going to their secluded corners of the internet.
But if the marketplace of ideas is truly an antiquated concept, it's only a matter of time until its corpse starts to obviously reek. I don't think that going mad with political war every 4 years and winning half the time is sustainable. I don't know that it's going to lead to literal civil war, but there doesn't seem to be some mechanism for it getting better.
oats_son
7d ago
This tweet, in response to a Charles Weber post calling people saying "Hitler was right" cowards and arguing they should say it to Jews' faces.
Okay.
Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.
You want truth said to your face, there it is.
Which, actually, it's a bit of a non-sequitur/deflection. Who mentioned anything about minorities? Jew Man just doesn't like Hitler was right jokes, redpilling him about how he ruins white relations is not appropriate. You gotta pick your battles when Motteposting about identity group relations at large like this.
“This Post from @breakingbaht has been withheld in Germany, France, Ireland based on local law(s). Learn more”
Dude, your laws are crazy. I am sorry you have to live with that.
For some reason, I am reminded of the porn bans that redditors like to argue against. They say that it's not feasible to ban porn for under 18s. I would have expected their high ideological rigor to similarly oppose these dumbass speech banning laws that can be bypassed with a simple archive.is link. I suppose some of them do, but it needs to be more. Maybe they just don't know the extent of it in Europe.
oats_son
7d ago
That is a solution, but it seems like a pretty bad situation if that's what the solution always is. Is the marketplace of ideas dead? Liberalism dead? Conflicts can only be resolved by vibes based voting against your enemies? I really hope you're wrong. There's so many vibes and so much noise in each election, and it's pretty much a tossup which side wins in the end. "Normal", reasonable people may be the loser in 2028, through no fault of their own.
oats_son
7d ago
That's something that bothers me -- it's pretty much apolitical to submit this framing that he's a Nazi/fascist/whatever and ask if X links can be banned, but to actually discuss the framing is political, so the framing wins by default. It's something we've seen quite a few times by now, but I don't know what the answer is.
oats_son
7d ago
I'm sorry. I got carried away and forgot a thesis, and I even knew it was going to be disjointed, too.
My topic for conversation is that Elon Musk is not a neo-Nazi, it's a frivolous comparison, evidence for him being a neo-Nazi is weak, and even further, there is no unified thesis for accusations of neo-Nazi anymore. Does anyone seriously think Elon Musk hates Jews and thinks they're ruining the country or that they faked the Holocaust? If not, then what makes him a neo-Nazi, other than these articles you're wildly gesturing at?
oats_son
7d ago
So I got into an Elon argument. I said that he's autistic and made an unusual hand gesture to convey the idea he said at the time, which is "my heart goes out to you". I failed to mention Occam's Razor, which is the most obvious to me, and in this case it goes "but wtf would he even gain out of doing a dogwhistle here?" Hitler worshippers aren't worth many votes, even if they did like lip service... I guess you could argue he did it for Moloch and engagement, which seems to be why Trump says all the outrageous things he says.
But I digress. In the incredulous argumentation by the other parties that Elon was obviously a neo-Nazi and this wasn't accidental at all, I was linked five articles that they themselves got from someone else, so for all I know, these are making the rounds in a ton of spaces. I was not satisfied with any of them, but we'll go through 'em, mmkay.
I. Business Insider: Musk Faces Consequences for Calling Antisemitic Tweet 'Actual Truth'.
This was paywalled for me at the time of the actual argument, so I said as such and moved on. Reading it now, I suppose I'm glad it was, since it's more difficult to defend to a normie lib than the others were. If it's paywalled for you, it's about Musk's affirmative reply to this tweet. It's been written about before here, but I think progressives like to apply identity politics to many different groups, but do not appreciate when it's applied to white people.
However, I don't think I agree with its framing, taking such a wide swathe of Jewish groups and then saying that those same Jewish groups are appealing for help from, I dunno, the Muslims? I certainly wouldn't have agreed with it on social media, because it's a Bad Look. I'm not here to say Elon Musk is innocent or anything, in fact, I think he's dumb as hell, at least politically. I just don't think he's a Nazi, neo or otherwise. Certainly some neo-Nazis I know would be happy if he was.
Anyway, I don't think applying group status to white people is a Nazi thing to do, nor is it a Nazi thing to admit that Muslim communities have problems with anti-semitism, nor is it a Nazi thing to say that Jewish groups tend to slam white people because it's safe to do so and because half the time, they don't even mean white people.
II. Futurism: Elon Musk Deletes Nazi Apologist Tweet After Near-Universal Backlash.
The flailing executive deleted a quote-tweet in which he called a Tucker Carlson podcast featuring a Nazi apologist "very interesting" and "worth watching" after near-universal backlash.
In the original Carlson post, which is still live, the ex-Fox pundit interviews purported historian Darryl Cooper, an apparent Holocaust denier who says, among other things, that then-UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the "chief villain" of World War II.
Okay, he shared a Tucker Carlson interview. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he interviewed a Nazi apologist. Okay. I've done that too. I was sent a podcast called Stone Choir telling me about how the Holocaust was faked, and I linked it elsewhere and shared clips of it to mock it. Damn, that's crazy! I've shared Holocaust denial podcasts. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he called it very interesting and worth watching. Well, in Liberalism World, it is not a requirement to dismiss everything someone says just because they're part of a group that is disliked. Certainly, it is not only neo-Nazis who like dunking on Churchill. Slaughterhouse Five bordered on outright saying Winston Churchill was wrong to bomb Dresden, and it even used the inflated statistic of current-but-not-at-the-time Holocaust denier David Irving. I've also seen numerous articles on Lew Rockwell slamming the guy, though frankly, they're anti-establishment to the point of insanity, and certainly not above conspiracies themselves. But Tucker Carlson wouldn't have done the interview if it wasn't going to be interesting to anyone who wasn't a neo-Nazi.
Furthermore, Elon Musk probably didn't even know he was a neo-Nazi when he shared that podcast and said he liked it. How do I know? Because he deleted it. Why would he delete it if he already knew all the facts when he made the post? Occam's Razor, again! Please! But I don't really know for sure, I guess. Whatever, man.
III. International Business Times: Europeans Rebuke Elon Musk's Proposal For 'MEGA: Make Europe Great Again': 'Stay Away From Europe'.
I actually didn't even see a need to defend this one. He said Make Europe Great Again? Okay? Who gives a shit?
At the time, it felt like the baffling extension of the sentiment on /r/europe lately of "Elon, stop interfering in our elections, we're going to ban X if you don't." To which I call them vile hypocrites! Certainly no one cared if Biden or Harris or whatever establishment liberal institution endorsed whatever establishment liberal institution in Europe. Why is Elon any different? Leave Elon Alone!
Now, I see it was supposed to be a point that he's imperialistic or something, and the article compares saying MEGA to some rhetoric Viktor Orban used once. This is kind of a Trump situation for me, in that I don't really take him seriously. Who the hell would want Europe? Besides, MAGA has been memed to death at this point. And Elon likes memes.
IV. truthout: Elon Musk to Host X Event Promoting Neo-Nazi AfD Party Ahead of German Elections.
I feel like it's worth mentioning at this point that some of these links are pretty questionable and are only being talked about because they're with the right people. This sounds like a left wing tabloid? Have any of you heard of this site? Who the hell uses it? Anyway...
Mega-billionaire Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X, plans to hold an online audio discussion on the platform with the leader of a far right German party, amplifying the party’s fascist and neo-Nazi ideology.
The discussion between him and Alice Weidel, a leader for Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the party’s candidate for chancellor in the February 23 snap elections, will take place”very soon,” a spokesperson for Weidel said, indicating that it will “definitely” happen before the elections. The German-based newswire agency dpa reported that the talk between Weidel and Musk would occur on January 10.
Musk signaled his support for AfD in mid-December, writing in a post on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” He also penned an op-ed in a German newspaper last week, describing the party as the “last spark of hope” for the country.
That sounds pretty bad! At least, it does to me. But I know from reading here and elsewhere that the AfD only made the headway that it did because it is basically the only party that doesn't support immigration and that people trust to stop the immigration, and possibly even "Auslander raus!" them. And to me, since that's the only thing I really know that the AfD supports, Elon Musk may have endorsed them based off of that alone. Or he may have wanted to signal boosted them since he saw other right wingers signal boosting them, and didn't look at their signal boost critically at all.
Whatever the case, I haven't actually heard him say what he likes about them, other than say that they're the last hope of Europe -- which they very well could be, if you take immigration as a serious issue (which people do, or the AfD wouldn't be where it is now). Frankly, I don't think Musk actually probably agrees with all their stances, because if they're actually far right, then they probably disagreed with his H1B stance pretty vehemently. You don't get a whole lot of white supremacists or xenophobes or Jew haters say that we need to import more engineers because Americans aren't good enough.
V. NBC News: Before Trump, neo-Nazis pushed false claims about Haitians as part of hate campaign.
You actually have this article to thank for this long wall of text. There was just too much to rage about and talk about with just this article to leave this post unwritten.
The day after the presidential debate at which former President Donald Trump spread a false story about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of the national neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, took to his Telegram channel to take credit.
Pohlhaus, a Marine-turned-tattoo artist known as “Hammer” to his hundreds of followers, wrote Blood Tribe had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.”
Members of his hate group agreed. “The president is talking about it now,” a member wrote on Gab, a Twitter-like service popular with extremists. “This is what real power looks like.”
Whoa! You mean to tell me that far right wingers were the originators behind the hateful Haitian rumor that Trump mentioned during the debate? Are Trump and other right wingers like Elon and Right Wing Twitter really sanewashing the hateful screeds of skinheads on Gab and Telegram that aren't even visible to normal people?
Trump’s line at the debate was the culmination of a weekslong rumor mill that appears to have at least been amplified by Blood Tribe, which has sought to demonize the local Haitian community online and in person. The debate drew more than 67 million viewers, according to the media analytics company Nielsen.
As with most rumors, the beginning of the baseless claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield is hard to pinpoint, but Blood Tribe undoubtedly helped spread it.
Oh, they didn't. Actually these are just some crazy assholes online who probably just fed into a preexisting narrative. Good God, man, I thought we were onto something interesting.
This is actually fucking incredible coming from NBC News. Tying Trump's talking about this to this random far right group that talked about the same thing is one of the most tenuous connections I've seen in a news article. It's a very "Trump drank water, so did Nazis" news article. This may even have gotten modded on The Motte. "Ah," says NBC News Commenter Amadan, "it appears you're trying to tie the actions of a reprehensible group to some mostly unrelated group in order to make statements about the mostly unrelated group. Stop it! You're better than this! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!"
At the time, someone pulled this quote from the article, only copy pasting the bolded part:
In response to a request for comment sent to Pohlhaus, Blood Tribe said in an email that it stood by its claims and that it would continue its activism, “making sure” Haitian immigrants “are all repatriated.”
I didn't even know who that was referring to, but I could tell that it was a horrible quotation. Why are "making sure" and "are all repatriated" in quotes, but "Haitian immigrants" is not? Because "Haitian immigrants" not being in quotes tells me that that was substituted into the original, and I really don't trust these journalists to make determinations on what the original author was saying. Maybe they could have linked the original email? It gets my hackles up, because the original could have been talking about asylum seekers in general, which is very much not a neo-Nazi thing to say. But it turns out I didn't even need to make sense of it, because Elon Musk is probably like me and has never even heard of Blood Tribe.
To cap it all off, making racist, baseless remarks about foreigners is far from being exclusive to Nazis. Dude, take any country on the fuckin' planet. That's how widespread it is. It goes higher than the ADL ever knew. Nazis have gone global.
I really thought NBC News was onto something here, but they blew it. But it's okay, because I'm better than NBC News. Where they failed to make the point, I will try to make the point that I wanted them to make non-frivolously.
I liked the Inverse Florida article about Hamas loving tumblr people for making the very excellent point that a lot of center left rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane left wing people. I am somewhat afraid that the center right may be similar, and their rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane right wing people. But I don't have any evidence. So I guess I'm actually not that much better than NBC News. Then again, at least I'm asking the question instead of just suggesting it.
Do you think that that NBC News article was closer than I give it credit for? And do any of you think that Trump or Elon take cues from people farther right than them? If so, why?
oats_son
13d ago
Anyway, this case has been discussed before
Damn. I expected that something on the front page today would have been news today. The other case I thought was also waiting on 2 ultrasounds was probably the exact same case. Ragebait lives on eternal.
Another abortion case (edit: this article is is based off of and links to a lengthy ProPublica article on the case) finds its way to the front page of reddit. To its credit, it's not the ragebait that the "mother-fails-to-go-to-hospital-after-days-of-heavy-bleeding-caused-by-abortion-pills" seen recently.
The expectant mom had woken up on the day of her baby shower with nausea and vomiting, which turned out to be a deadly infection.
But she had to plead for medical assistance, with doctors waiting to perform two ultrasounds to confirm her fetus had no heartbeat before they would intervene.
Wait, what? Two ultrasounds? One ultrasound confirming no heartbeat wasn't enough? The article heavily winks that it was all due to that crummy heartbeat law:
Experts told the publication that there was ‘no medical reason’ to make Crain wait for two ultrasounds before taking action to save her.
But wait a minute, what does the law itself say? Per Wikipedia:
Section 3 of the Act requires a physician to test for a "fetal heartbeat" (or "cardiac activity") before performing an abortion and prohibits abortion if a "fetal heartbeat" is detected. The only exception is for when "a physician believes a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance." The term "medical emergency" is not defined in the statute.
Okay, sure, it's a little vague on what emergencies are. But I think you could pretty easily argue that a deadly infection is a medical emergency. Especially after you already have one ultrasound confirming no heartbeat.
As the article says, this is one of two cases where someone died upon waiting for two ultrasounds. At what point is this medical malpractice that has little to do with abortion laws? I have to wonder if the doctor is an activist doctor that is morally opposed to the heartbeat bill and is willing to let people die to further the cause. If someone's on the brink of death, you should treat them, legality should be an afterthought. But to wait for two ultrasounds, it seems like saving people was the afterthought here.
Edit: They also turned her away for sepsis without treating her, as The_Nybbler points out. Hmm, seems like abortion laws aren't entirely the reason for her death. You kind of have to treat people for that instead of just shrugging that you can't kill her fetus and then send her home. In fact, maybe the sepsis caused the fetus to die? But they missed that it was sepsis.
oats_son
21d ago
Have you ever heard of "homeschooling pods"? I think getting into one of those would be one of the easiest ways to get pretty much all of the benefits of public schooling's socializing your kids.
oats_son
21d ago
Yes, I am interested in what you consider to be quality posts.
Maybe you could have two different sections of quality contributions; ones that got a lot of AAQCs (and didn't break any rules and weren't too egregious, like how you choose them now), and a separate "Mod's Choice" section. In particular, there's a lot of awesome life advice I see in Wellness Wednesdays, and I remember being disappointed one didn't make it. But I've never been one to nominate them myself much, anyway.
oats_son
22d ago
I don't disagree with you, but some reckoning with reality is in order if you live in Texas and a significant amount of Spanish is being spoken around you. Spanish has pretty much always been useful there, hasn't it? At least as far back as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", anyway. It's a question of is's and oughts. Yes, they should learn English, but they probably won't. Or they do know English and are speaking in Spanish alongside it for other purposes besides being forced to do so. It's a free country.
oats_son
22d ago
I'd just like to point out that you can still learn Spanish! It's pretty close to English. You might even like the exercise if you've never tried to learn a language before. You might even find that a low skill level can go a long way. I understand that it sucks that it has been incentivized to the extent it has in your case, but you do live in Texas, after all.
oats_son
22d ago
Seriously, great work. Not just in quitting alcohol, but in writing this up so that you can remind yourself of all the benefits of quitting and all the reasons you quit in the first place.
5-8 drinks every 24 hours is alcoholic level. Most men I know who like alcohol seem to drink at least 2 or 3 every night, probably more on weekends. Even that amount seems excessive to me. An expensive habit, isn't it? I don't drink much, but the price is one reason why I want to cut down even more on beer drinking in 2025.
And to co-opt your thread: what does The Motte think about moderate drinking? One glass of red wine a night for heart health and cholesterol and whatnot. I must say, I am skeptical and have been skeptical for a while now. Those were longitudinal studies, and it could have been that the type of person to moderate their drinking to just one drink a night is also doing other healthy stuff.
oats_son
27d ago
Yes, specifically this part gave me that impression:
co-founders who didn't have the best direction or execution and justified it all by believing that their ideas were top shelf and extremely unique which they weren't.
oats_son
27d ago
Also am I simply known as the Indian guy here lol.
I can't speak for the whole Motte, but to me... One of them!
I have a friend who is a linguist, so presumably, there's something there to enjoy. But I understand the feeling of thinking someone is highbrow, then realizing that they're no better than anyone else you know. It's a very bitter feeling.
oats_son
27d ago
You know, when I made that post, I did not know you were Indian. You probably know more about "applied linguistics" (learning a language) than I do, given your English proficiency. But I don't know if I would like linguistics either. Good on you for finding out.
When I browse /r/languagelearning, I see ESL speakers saying that it's hard to learn a language. I think they never count English, for some reason. Maybe because English was forced upon them? Maybe because the motivation to learn English was much greater than whatever they're trying to learn besides English?
oats_son
28d ago
Don't many comedians come from broken homes? Maybe Asians have less broken homes and don't feel the need to put themselves on the line in front of a crowd every week.
oats_son
1mo ago
I was checking on the status of Israel's various wars today and found this article.
UNITED NATIONS — When Israeli troops captured a demilitarized buffer zone along the border with Syria, they violated a 50-year-old ceasefire between the two countries, the United Nations warned Tuesday.
“The presence of the Israeli Defense Forces in the buffer zone is a violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The agreement “needs to be respected, and occupation is occupation — whether it lasts a week, a month or a year, it remains occupation.”
Israeli leaders announced plans earlier Tuesday to keep troops in the buffer zone for the foreseeable future.
"I can't believe that America would violate a treaty that they made with Tsarist Russia in 1905," quips the USSR.
I fail to see how this is not the best play for all parties possible:
- Israel is guaranteed this slice of the pie if Syria devolves into chaos
- Syria doesn't have to worry about quelling chaos in that area for now
- Israel can give it back free of charge if things stabilize in the rest of the country
- Israel can keep it if the government is clearly permanently collapsed
Or maybe it's bad in some way I'm not seeing? What do you guys think of this?
oats_son
1mo ago
I don't have any experiences with these things, but going to the gym together seems like a great way to find time to socialize with each other while you get your lifts in. I saw lots of couples when I was going to the gym a few months ago, and it seemed like a great way to spend time between sets.
If she's on the treadmill, then it's a bit different, because if I'm exercising hard on there, I won't be able to talk. But I second CertainlyWorse's advice on building a habit for her. If you go to the gym yourself, it should be easy to schedule something and shift the time around a bit.
What is wrong about the academic understanding of human taxonomy? Is there something false within the out-of-Africa theory?
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