banned
jkf
1mo ago
Semi-auto rifles (ie. the one thing you need to give authoritarian overreach the potential to cause pain to said authorities; the Right Arm of the Free World, if you will) are AIUI completely banned in useful calibres?
SSCReader
1mo ago
Just to point out the UK does not have a wholesale ban on guns. A shotgun license is pretty straightforward to get. Rifles slightly less so. Handguns are generally banned except perhaps ironically back home in Northern Ireland.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
1mo ago
Personally my preferred gun regulation model is banned handguns and semi-autos, combined with unregulated ownership of bolt/lever action long guns.
I don't follow Python internals as much as I should (except to complain about dependency hells), given how spread out the language is.
From some quick searches, I'd guess you're talking about this official statement (w/ this article actually giving him as the banned coder), with pro-Tim and anti-Tim (maybe?) sample takes?
My gut-check, given this at the center of it all, it looks like it's the pretty standard Code of Conduct spiral, where once a Code of Conduct gets implemented, it becomes increasingly vital to use it early, often, and with steadily lowering bars. Peters is the first guy retired enough and not-autistic enough to pull aggro, but there's people seeing the writing on the wall, sometimes getting aggro at themselves.
But I don't know the community well enough to give more than a gutcheck.
256
1mo ago
Realistic deepfake pornographic imagery is definitely feasible with current technology. A moderately bright person with a decent GPU could probably start churning them out after a week of self-study and experimentation.
I think the reason you rarely see or hear about this is that no company wants to be associated with this content. It's banned on all mainstream platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Twitter. Maybe they fear legal liability, but I think the sheer "ick" factor is already sufficient to dissuade them from hosting it, for fear of reputational damage. So the discussion and dissemination of this stuff happens in private/obscure/sketchy forums.
campfire
1mo ago
I’d like to, there are some topics I have in mind. But where exactly do I post about them? Right now the main threads are focused on culture war, health & wellness, personal projects, questions, fun, and small-scale questions. What if I just want to share my thoughts on an issue without making a top-level post? Or is the bar for top-level posts not actually that high? Seems few people actually take advantage of the ability. Relegating all the top-level posts to one of the weekly threads seems like a holdover from the days of Reddit where it helped us not get banned, but doesn’t seem like there’s much of a reason for it now.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
Because it's totally normal to have different restrictions for activities in different places. I can drive at 65mph on the freeway, but I can't do that in my neighborhood. Is that an argument in favor of a slippery slope of speed limits being reduced to 25mph on freeways? I can park my car in some places but not others. I can punch people in a martial arts gym but I can't punch random people on the street.
Is the slope slippery in any of these cases? Probably not. More likely, there's a schelling point around which things coalesce, roughly speaking.
It was not that long ago, even more recently than the invention of the automobile, that pedestrians had much freer reign in city centers. Now, pedestrians are restricted to sidewalks and zebra crossings and much of the land in cities is given over to cars. It would be ridiculous for someone in the past to say there's a slippery slope towards pedestrians being banned from cities, despite the fact that their freedom was greatly curtailed and in the US we put up unbelievably ugly freeways in some of the most beautiful parts of our built environment. What ended up happening is that the pendulum swung one way, now it's swinging the other. Streets are getting pedestrianized, some freeways are being torn down or buried. So it goes. Looking at trends beyond the past five years makes it clear that the slippery slope happens to have a slippery incline at the end.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
on the grounds that new technologies, by lowing skill floors, allow ordinary people to break unwritten [rules]
I’m not seeing any suggestion that those bans arose from technological instability. Link?
Arguably the Japanese policy mentioned in @Ioper’s link, where relics and art pieces are allowed, but mall ninja shit is banned…except that comes at it from the complete other direction. We disarmed Japan at gunpoint, and they kept to it after we left, but added an exception for cool artifacts.
ThenElection
1mo ago
It was not uncommon for swords to be banned in urban areas or when walking around in public. Sometimes broader attempts were made: the Qin dynasty (ever the innovator in methods of social control) mass confiscated weapons more generally and only allowed agents of the state to own arms. That was comparatively rare, even in China: if you have hordes of barbarians always testing the reach and authority of your state, you need peasants to be able to defend themselves.
2D3D
1mo ago
I don't dislike feminists and feminism as much as many people here, but Amanda Marcotte really comes pretty close to the caricatured archetype of a narcissistic self-regarding man-hating harpy for whom "feminism" means "Everything I do should be celebrated and anything that makes me unhappy should be banned."
I remember reading Salon back in the early 2010s when it was Dan Savage talking about whatever degenerate sex act he wanted to do, and Marcottes style was at odds with the prevailing writing style: angry, hypocritical, and honestly just plain stupid. The columns were bitch sessions about why everything bad that happened to them was the fault of a direct male actor, or something vague that ultimately traced back to an ever-expanding-yet-contradictory definition of 'patriarchy'. More men being bosses of company was the patriarchy, while ISIS was something exotic to be pitied. I just checked and her column on ISIS brides had 7 mentions of 'christian', with a total of 3 for 'muslim' and 'islam' combined.
Sadly, Salon, just like Slate and Vice, ended up ditching edgelord degeneracy in favor of boring self-congratulatory emotional indulgences. Everything is the fault of White Man Patriarchy, and in response to the shittiness of White Man Patriarchy I shall document my self-loathing as I try out a Fitness Bootcamp/wilderness scream session, where I am upset the first friend I made in 10 years (a gay activist) tried to hit on me.
She and Valenti (thats the 'I am no longer hot', and 'I drink male tears' lady) are probably the worst examples of hypocritical, boring and frankly stupid feminists who don't even have the grace to be readable or amusing in their staid rants. I also find that their self-portraits are so far removed from how they look in reality that the hypocrisy is something more to level at them, but there is ample reason to despise them without having to launch snide remarks on their presentation.
Quantumfreakonomics
1mo ago
Grok will let you make anything right now.
Okay, not literally anything. Hardcore porn appears to be banned. Still, I am not sure society is ready for a mainstream image model that lets you make sexy pictures of female congresswomen showing their feet.
I am really curious how this shakes out over the next few days/weeks. I am sure that the New York Times and Washington Post hitpieces are being typed right now. Was this level of freedom intentional, or an oversight? Will Elon fold immediately? My guess: he shuts down the ability to generate identifiable people in lewd situations. That is the one thing Americans won't stand for for some reason.
Things have been quiet on the AI front lately, despite or perhaps because of the election. I suspect that the major labs are afraid to rock the boat and risk getting blamed if things go poorly.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
I have despised Amanda Marcotte since before her tussles with the Scotts. She has always been one of the sleaziest, most intellectually dishonest, and just plain dumb feminist writers emerging from the early 2000s blogging boom, and inexplicably she and Jessica Valenti (almost equally dumb and dishonest) became the most successful.
Outside of anecdotes, it's hard to know how common it is for men to control the votes of wives or other women in their families.
This entire article is premised on something that there is no proof happens at all (in statistically significant numbers). Like, I'm sure there are some households with men who literally tell their wives and daughters how to vote, but the idea that this is such a widespread phenomenon that it might actually change an election seems flatly ridiculous to me.
Exit polling data shows a 12-point gap between how married and unmarried women voted in 2020, but a smaller seven-point gap between how married and unmarried men voted. Still, the differences aren't all up to men forcing their wives to vote for the candidate of their choice. Some are due to age and other demographic differences between married and unmarried people.
Notice how she says "The differences aren't all up to men forcing their wives to vote for the candidate of their choice" as if we should just take it for granted that most married women who vote differently than unmarried women obviously do so because their husbands make them.
There's also a whole range of ways men exert power over women that fall short of outright abuse. Educating the public about their secret ballot rights is good, but don't expect it to have a measurable impact on the 2024 outcome.
Indeed, we shouldn't expect it to have a measurable impact on the 2024 outcome. How does voting work where Marcotte lives, exactly? Every poll I've ever been to had very strict rules about not allowing other people to enter the voting booth with you, not even family members, and no way for an abusive husband to "check" how his wife voted. As others have pointed out, if she's really concerned about this, she should be arguing to do away with mail-in ballots (since such a husband really could force his wife to fill out her ballot "correctly" while he watches), but she won't do that because she's dumb and dishonest.
I don't dislike feminists and feminism as much as many people here, but Amanda Marcotte really comes pretty close to the caricatured archetype of a narcissistic self-regarding man-hating harpy for whom "feminism" means "Everything I do should be celebrated and anything that makes me unhappy should be banned."
I can't remember if it was her or Valenti who wrote the article complaining that she was sad that men no longer wolf-whistled at her, and then made it the Patriarchy's fault that this was a thing that made her sad.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
1mo ago
How so? Jamaat e-Islami are a small player and the BNP is more of a lip-service-to-Islam party than an actual Islamist party.
Edit: Also I think Jamaat is currently banned?
SomethingMusic
1mo ago
I believe the polling is accurate. President Trump is uniquely polarizing and is considered the catalyst that got us into the culture war dynamics of the past 8+ years. The central organization points of the 2016 Trump campaign have been banned and ostracized from the internet beyond Truth social, who supposedly has 2 million users and 600k active users (I never tried it, and it seems a pale comparison to twitter or other platforms. Even Gab supposedly has more registered and active users and I haven't tried their site since 2017 at the latest). The assassination was great PR for Trump but also obviously psychologically damaged Trump, who seems a lot more cautious of making public appearances which has been historically his greatest strength. Vice President Kamala's coordination with establishment and new corporate medias has allowed them to block out Republican messaging and boost her "Vibes based" messaging.
This is most represented by her website. Her website is devoid of everything a normal presidential run consists of. Whay are her policy positions? Interviews? Pressers? Tours? Kamala's history as a political radical has been washed from the internet. When is her last TV interview? Presser? Zoom rally? The silence has to be deliberate; anyone position she holds, or historically held, has been scoured from search engines.
President Trump needs more eyes on him for him to sway voters. Vice President Kamala needs the opposite.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
Then there are people like you, who want to drop steaming turds and are constantly infuriated that you're not allowed to.
...Okay, fuck it, the direct approach it is.
While we're on the topic of steaming turds, have you considered that your flair text is one? Every time someone reads one of your posts there's a threat to horribly maim them right above it. I don't know for sure if SteveKirk's threatened to hurt anyone - I haven't read all of his posts and don't have his mod history in front of me - but he sure as hell hasn't made generalised threats against the entire Motte literally hundreds of times.
Seriously, there's an explicit rule here that we shouldn't be more antagonistic than necessary. I find it hard to conceive of a more unnecessary and egregious form of antagonism than your flair text; most Mottizens have never done anything to you and there is no need to antagonise them at all, let alone threaten to gouge their eyes out. You would whack anyone who tried anything remotely close to that - heck, you have - and rightly so; it's corrosive to the board.
I get that you are burnt out from modding a politics board. I used to be a forum mod myself* and got burnt out; in some ways it was good for my sanity when the forum got nuked from orbit by our host. But there are healthier ways to deal with that than firing scattershot threats into the crowd. If all else fails you could even just take a sabbatical; you're not the only mod here and, while you do add value with your modding, the place isn't going to immediately implode without you.
*It wasn't a politics board; it was a stalker board. Among the more interesting modposts I had to make were "please do not urge other members of the board to commit phishing attacks" and "please do not swap advice on how to get away with murder".
EDIT: I've been made aware that this is a quote from someone you banned. Leaving this up, because there's still some merit in the "corrosive" issue and because I'm not in the habit of hiding my mistakes, but I'm significantly less pissed off now.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1mo ago
Ah, I missed that he flamed out. I thought you meant he literally asked to be banned and was very confused since neither his user page nor the mod log indicated he had been.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1mo ago
Long time ago I watched some video on youtube about recreating coca cola. Now I can't find the same video although I did rewatched some that were in my history (not talking about the 3 well known recipes, you tube is full with them).
When a YouTube account gets banned for some reason, all of its videos are burned. YouTube is also pretty free with the banhammer. As such, there's a substantial chance any particular old video on YouTube has been burned.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
The funny thing is that you almost always end up eventually banning the trolls I report (like Tomato), despite taking my reports as an anti-recommendation. It must be terribly frustrating.
You and the people you get in the dirt with usually spend lots of time reporting each other and eventually getting banned. What's frustrating is that none of you think anything applies to you. You crow when your enemies get banned; you shriek indignantly when you get banned, and fail to recognize the pattern.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. I've seen you use this line on far too many good people.
No you haven't. You've seen me use this line on lots of people just like you who think the rules shouldn't be applied to you when you want to shit on people you think deserve it, and who think we should let unfiltered venom be normal discourse.
I think all you're optimizing for is getting rid of "witchiness" as sneakily as you can without making people too upset about it.
There are "witches" who've been posting here for years. There are "witches" who have rarely or never been modded, because they are actually capable of presenting their most extreme arguments in a civil fashion.
If we wanted to get rid of witches, we could have done that.
Sorry to say this publicly, but you and sscreader are two of four regular posters who I completely discount, and would rather not see if blocking didn't disrupt the site experience so much.
Are my feelings supposed to be hurt? Most of our worst actors, unsurprisingly, nurture a deep resentment towards the mods who mod them most frequently.
If you want to call mentioning being the victim of a crime "dropping a steaming turd"
You know perfectly well that it was not "mentioning being a victim of a crime" that I was referring to as "dropping a steaming turd." (Truth be told, I probably wouldn't even modded your OP. I thought the venting was borderline, but mostly generalized. @naraburns thought otherwise.)
This is the sort of disingenuous argumentation that causes me to discount what certain people say. Since we're being "sorry to say this publicly" and all - there are people who complain about our moderation who make well-reasoned points about how they think moderation should work and what would be best for the site, and they simply differ with us on the best policies, and have a different vision than Zorba does or a different interpretation of the rules than naraburns or netstack or I do. And that's fine, if unfortunate that sometimes it causes resentment.
Then there are people like you, who want to drop steaming turds and are constantly infuriated that you're not allowed to.
Remember, we also see the reports you write to the mod queue. Especially when you're seething about being banned. You write reports like "Why is it allowed to talk?" and calling us quokkas because we don't ban someone for... posting a perfectly polite, left-wing opinion.
When you make a principled argument, you will be taken seriously. When you just go off about how very angry you are, enjoy the updoots but it doesn't mean anything.
hydroacetylene
1mo ago
I would not have banned you(and it looks like you didn't get banned), but having rules against referring to real people as biowaste while allowing another poster to refer to posters like me as witches who ought to be viciously mocked for our backwards beliefs isn't hypocritical, nor is that poster strictly speaking allowed to do so; he gets in trouble for it all the time.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
I'll be happy to if they promise to follow the same rules. No more crap like "time to burn some witches before they run this town," and I'm all good.
You know he's earned multiple bans and is close to being permabanned for precisely those kinds of posts, right?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
We didn't ban BC for making people angry. We banned him for wanting to make people angry. The original purpose of the Motte includes understanding the culture war, not waging it, and I think that this post was a pretty clear example of the latter.
Even that's not enough on its own. But it wasn't on it's own, since BC had such a long history. What do you do when someone repeatedly announces that he doesn't give a shit about your community norms? When his actions are consistently more inflammatory, more obnoxious than his peers? You start to think about showing him the door. Or, as cjet put it,
The whole Internet is available for trolling, and waging the race/culture war. Start a sub stack, post on Twitter, post on Facebook, go crazy. Just stop bringing it here.
For what it's worth, when "popular" users actively fish for angry, knee-jerk responses, we do ban them, too. FarNearEverywhere is a good example.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
This is a distilled snarl at everyone you hate, conveying no argument or information or anything to engage with. It's just a free-form stream of invective and buzzwords cribbed from your favorite alt-right shitposters, and it's pure culture warring.
It's been a while since your last ban, but when you get wound up, you really get wound up. Banned for three days.
The entire post is just a thinly-veiled sneer. It's not written to invite engagement, it's just written to spit on the outgroup and get a rise our of gullible/impulsive Mottizens. When I see that guy's username I can already predict the thrust of his posts. So I think mod action here is justified.
I do think we have too many right-wing drive-by shitposters, though. I imagine that the only reason they don't get modded more often is simply that they get reported way less. I admit I'm guilty of not reporting them simply because right-wing sneering is merely distasteful to me while left-wing sneering angers me.
I'll start trying to report low effort right-wing sneers more often.
ETA: I might be wrong here, but I think this would only partially fix the problem. The other half is that IME the average educated leftist* is very averse to exposure to heresy, hence TheSchism and the regular flameout posts in the vein of "I cannot in good conscience continue to post in a community that platform $BAD_THING." And so we mostly only have either long-suffering dissident leftists (thank you for your service!) or vindictive leftist trolls who quickly get banned. I think this is a broader cultural problem that can't be fixed without letting leftists police the boundaries of discussion which would defeat the purpose of this place.
*right-wingers are more heresy tolerant because they're bombarded with enemy propaganda 24/7; the polarity was different decades ago
I thought you were proposing this as some sort of not-very-clever Swiftian satire, but reading your posts below, apparently you believe this is a serious and reasonable proposal.
First, not all Democrats are anti-gun.
Second, those who are mostly don't want an absolute prohibition on firearms ownership.
But let's take your straw man at face value: all the people who want guns to be banned are banned from owning guns. Of course they would not agree to this, and the reason isn't because they "don't really believe that banning guns is just and fair." It's because their reason for wanting guns banned is that they believe guns cause violence and banning guns will reduce violence. Obviously banning only a small segment of the population (and mostly people who neither own guns nor commit violence) will not have this effect.
It's a dumb proposal even without bringing up "unfairness" (which, obviously, it would be, because also no one would accept a law like this that applies only on the basis of your registered political party).
Your proposition that somehow this will cause them to "face the consequences/realities of their own proposals" is specious.
Let's turn it around: "Republicans say they want abortion banned. Therefore, we will hereby ban abortion, but only for registered members of the Republican Party. Clearly, this will have the desired effect of reducing abortions, and it's what they say they want. Sound fair?"
You can't make any argument for why that's a stupid idea that doesn't also apply to yours.
More options
Context Copy link