site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You might be thinking of Darrell Edward Brooks Jr -- you will note that there is not a picture of him in the Wikipedia article, and For Some Reason nobody has heard nearly as much about him deliberately driving his own SUV into a Christmas parade and killing several as they have about the Charlottesville guy. (who killed one person in a hostile crowd of counterprotestors, arguably semi-accidentally)

I remember this, the infamous "a car" which drove into a Christmas parade. Cars typically have drivers, don't they? Did a self-driving car experience a HAL-9000 moment?

Was that a deliberate attempt to kill pedestrians (terrorism) or just complete reckless disregard in the heat of the moment? The degree of premeditation wasn't clear to me from what I read of the press coverage at the time.

There was also the 2014 incident at SXSW that killed 2 and injured 23, although that seemed to be reckless disregard while fleeing police, rather than ideologically motivated.

Not sure if it makes a difference to me in terms of the relevant criminal punishments, but it seems like it would be relevant for trying to categorize similar events.

It appeared to be both. He'd just had some violent confrontation and was likely in a state of mind where he just wanted to break things (and children and grannies), but also he drove through parade barriers with people waving for him to stop, and on video both swerved into people and sped up into them.

I didn't follow the trial livestream, but seem to recall testimony indicating that he was deliberately swerving at people trying to get out of his way (also IIRC there was no police pursuit until after he drove through the parade?) -- seems more like 'going postal' than terrorism to me, but well beyond reckless disregard.

(with the additional spice that the Waukesha Christmas Parade is probably the whitest thing ever, so if one decided to go postal on white people specifically it would be a sensible target -- I don't think 'hate crime' enhancements were pursued though?)

will note that there is not a picture of him in the Wikipedia article,

Edit history suggests that it's a licensing issue. If you can find a photo with an appropriate license you should add it.

It seems like a mug shot meets the criteria in other cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mug_shot_of_Donald_Trump

This image has an extensive licensing section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_mug_shot.jpg

That seems extremely unlikely -- there are numerous mug-shots, as seen on many news sites (including one linked in this very thread).

What is the licensing issue with a mug-shot?

"Wikipedia editors make up excuses to justify ideological narrative shaping on hot-CW related topics" on the other hand... would not be a big surprise to me.

What is the licensing issue with a mug-shot?

The licensing issue with the previous photo appears to be that there was no license on it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=355493040

Yes, police departments do not typically license their mugshots -- this does not mean that they aren't in the public domain.

Mugshots probably don't even meet the requirements for originality. It's a low bar, but it's not zero.

It is not generally the case that works of state and local governments are public domain.

State and local governments usually do retain a copyright on their works. 17 USC §105 only places federal documents in the public domain.[11] However, laws and/or court decisions in some states may place their work in the public domain.

Even if the photo in question was in the public domain, it's still required to indicate this on the photo (example). Having no license on a file is not the same as having a PD license on it.

The equivalent article for Charlottesville uses a the work of a newspaper photographer who literally won a Pulitzer for it -- reduced in resolution, relying on fair use I presume. Does WM really think that the Waukesha Sheriff's department is more likely to sue for infringement than an actual news photographer?

I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy, but I would suspect that likelihood of being sued is not a consideration when evaluating if a photo should have a license attached or not.

As far as I can tell, the policy is very simple - photos must have a license. Happy to be corrected if I'm overlooking some policy details here.

The Charlottesville photo he mentioned has no license submitted with it, only excuses for why it's fair use.

More comments

I wonder if the dudes that used to upload pictures of their semen submitted them with an accompanying license.

This is the go-to excuse wikipedians use when they want to memoryhole something. They also used it to attempt to delete the Trump Raised Fist photo. Of course, this is just a pretext, as the solution is widely used on wikipedia: reduce the resolution of the photo.

This photo continues to exist, so it seems that in this particular example the tactic is not working.

They still tried it and it appears to be working for Brooks...

There has been pretty well documented examples of the politicization of wikipedia. Why would it be different, in this case?

It's not "working" because the trump photo deletion attempt is for "invalid fair use" rather than a lack of a license. That's a totally different argument, and sure, I can believe that it's not always applied in good faith. A license being totally absent is pretty black and white.

For those who don’t know, this guy’s trial got live-streamed. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. He represented himself, made a gigantic fool of himself, and constantly interrupted the proceedings with insane legal theories. The best part was the judge couldn’t do anything about it. Normally you would hold somebody like that in contempt of court, but this guy was already in jail, and already facing down almost certain life without parole. Holding him in contempt would have done nothing except delay the inevitable, so everyone had to just sit there and take it for weeks.

He was a black supremacist sovereign citizen. I suspect, based on police statements that sovereign citizens are a major threat but also the relative lack of sovereign citizens in the news, that these ideas go together very frequently,

The judge did plenty, though granted him a whole lot of leeway. Eventually he ended up having to attend the trial from a separate room via videoconference so that he could be muted when he wouldn't behave.

This was a fun watch. The guy was a Soverign Citizen, and a small corner of Reddit went nuts with it. "Estoppel" became a catchphrase. I just checked and it's actually still quite active: https://old.reddit.com/r/DarrellBrooksJr/

“Grounds?”

I still audibly chuckle every time I hear the phrase “subject-matter jurisdiction”.

It's hilarious how some websites light up his picture as much as possible in an attempt to make him seem white.

RIP my retinas