domain:parrhesia.co
OliveTapenade
4m ago
Oh, I'll happily grant that the term 'cultural Marxism' has referents. When someone like Joy Pullmann says 'the cultural Marxists', I know who she means and what they believe.
I don't think it's quite the same as the Mormon case, because Mormons do claim to be Christians. I don't think Mormons are Christians, but if I say that where a Mormon can hear me, I know they will disagree. So I and a Mormon will have a debate about whether 'Christianity' is the right word to use for what Mormons believe.
By contrast, most of the people identified as cultural Marxists don't claim to be cultural Marxists. In fact, they mostly decry the term and claim that it's a conspiracy theory. Some claim to be (generic) Marxists, but most do not. We might still have a debate about whether 'cultural Marxist' is an appropriate word for what they believe, but the direction of that debate will be different.
If those debates happened, I'd insist on the Mormon/Christian distinction because as a Christian I feel I have an interest in policing the boundaries of orthodoxy - essentially I want to clarify that Mormons aren't affiliated with me and I lend no support to their beliefs, which I consider wrong. I would not, I think, insist on 'cultural Marxist' as a label because it's not a label that achieves any of my goals re: the discussion of social justice or wokist politics. In fact I think it muddies the waters by confusing wokist beliefs with Marxist beliefs, and another term would be more clear.
They would probably then also disagree with being called 'wokists' or 'SJers' or whatever other term I came up with, but we have to use some label, so, well, that Freddie post. You know how this goes.
campfire
8m ago
Posted a few weeks ago about trying to figure out Crusader Kings III. Some 50 hours later, I'm pretty entertained. My first "real" campaign was as the de Bessas in Northeast France, became King after a few generations but got too bogged down by factions and decided to give another character a try. Played as a duke (doux) in the Byzantine Empire, conquered a few Kingdoms (Despots), but massively underestimated how big the de jure Byzantine empire was. Then tried out a count in Skane, a duchy in Denmark, in 867. Realized tribal plays very differently, depends a lot on prestige which is hard to come by. Starting as a count, it can take a while to build up an army that can raid effectively depending on how well your leige does setting up alliances for himself. Remains to be seen how this plays out, but might just start as a Duke in Scandinavia instead.
Fun game, but I'm still shocked how many people have 2000+ hours in it. The core gameplay loop seems like it could get repetitive very fast. Make babies, marry them off for alliances (thanks @orthoxerox for the tip), fabricate claim on county, invade, make higher and higher tier titles, rinse, repeat. Is the appeal to the diehard fans just how many various ways there are to larp? Far more than any of the Civilization games at least.
I have dabbled in the total conversion mods. A Game of Thrones is almost too bespoke to believe, has ever a game complimented a novel series so perfectly? With the Tours and Tournaments DLC you can even host your own Red Wedding. Now there's a bookmark that triggers a civil war after Viserys I dies (the Dance of the Dragons). After The End is very original, set in a post-apocalyptic New World in 2666 where people practice religions vaguely associated with their geographic regions. Nevadans worship UFOs, the people of Svalbard pray to their seed vault, rust belt Americans worship the 19th century industrialists. That said, these mostly seem to just give you different ways to larp. The core gameplay loop is the same.
I've heard CK2 is better but I've tried it and just find the graphics and UI hideous and outdated.
I can still see myself getting 100+ hours of enjoyment out of CK3 though so feel free to recommend specific starts, mods encouraged.
SauntSolaire
10m ago
UHK with a keychron Q0 numpad on the side
OliveTapenade
15m ago
I think this is largely correct, yes. We're dealing with a problem of shifting labels - some small number of people have used the term 'cultural Marxism' to self-identify, but almost none do today, the term 'cultural Marxism' today is used extremely broadly to identify ideas or movements with nothing or almost nothing in common with classical Marxism, and ultimately I think it's become a term that obfuscates rather than illuminates. The term 'cultural Marxism' does not reveal anything useful about the people it is applied to.
I don't think I quite agree with the debate about Mormonism and Christianity, because that usually is couched in specific claims about what 'Christianity' means, and what's required for something to be meaningfully 'Christian'. The facts about Mormonism aren't particularly in dispute - Mormons sincerely claim to be followers of Jesus, but they are outside what all historical Christian creeds would have regarded as the bounds of orthodoxy. The issue at hand is simply whether or not one accepts those historical creeds as authoritative.
TequilaMockingbird
16m ago
It is of absolutely no comfort to me that we went thousands of years trying to set woods on fire before we figured out how to roast cities.
Im not suggesting that it should be. I am mearly pointing out that the difference is one of degree not of kind. A man killed by a rock to the head is just as dead as a man killed by a bullet to the head.
cjet79
20m ago
Wedding was otherwise good, and bride seemed happy, so no real complaints. Just selfishly wish the music was better for my dance floor moves.
OliveTapenade
22m ago
Realistically, I think it's just because to conservatives of a certain generation, 'Marxism' is the scariest and most evil word available, so calling everything they don't like Marxist is just a habit. It's equivalent to the way people on the left call everything 'fascism'.
Marxism definitely exists, just as fascism exists, but once the word comes to mean 'the polar opposite of everything I believe, i.e. everything good and right', the temptation to deploy it to describe everything under the sun quickly becomes irresistible.
TIRM
26m ago
Split keyboard. I think holding my hands close together like on a regular keyboard was hurting my upper back.
The Germans were the ones who opened Pandora's Box by bombing civilian infrastructure in the opening phase of their invasion of Poland. Meanwhile the RAF did not start intentionally targeting civilians until the Luftwaffe made night bombing and the targeting of population center official policy in the latter half of the Battle of Britain.
In short, your claim that the British were the ones to "escalate" the conflict is false.
Churchill sucks. He was a warmonger who was terrible at war and failed at everything he tried to do.
I would consider the fact that Churchill's side won pretty much every every war he was involved in to be evidence to the contrary.
He was still responsible for pushing the RAF to terrorize the German civilian populous in the hopes that the Germans would retaliate in a way that would pull America into the war.
This is a very dumb objection for you to be making here. Either Churchill was a brilliant mastermind who played the German high command (and everyone else in the world) like a fiddle or he was a "warmonger who was terrible at war and failed at everything he tried to do". Pick one.
In either case it doesn't adress the issue that the US didn't move against Germany directly until after the Germans started shooting at American ships.
Finally "the Madagascar plan" wasn't even proposed until the summer of 1940. Not only were Britain and Germany already at war by that point but Madagascar wasn't even Germany's to give. Forget Churchill, for what reasons would anyone in the British leadership agree to that plan at that time?
Maybe if the Germans had used one of thier own colonies, or an ally's colony, or tried to cut a deal with the global hegemon instead of declaring war on them things would've played out differently but we don't live in that timeline.
This is a great Harry Potter themed parody of Empire State of Mind. Cadence is perfect, every line rhymes and is a reference to the series. Think my favorite is "Two girls ask about my scar, told 'em I was born with it/ Took 'em to my dorm for a Triwizard Tournament" or "Decked out cauldron, they wonder how I paid for it/ Drive-by on Gringotts leave a goblin on the pavement".
Magusoflight
45m ago
I just pray the cartels don’t get their hands on this tech
The narrative being circulated is that the NYPD “killed a man over a $2.90 subway ticket.”
This can be translated as "this is why America will never look like northern Europe in terms of transit"
Can you understand why I might look toward the decisiveness, the cold competence of a robot cop who’s not afraid of libelous press coverage or administrative leave or criminal charges by an anti-cop DA, and think, “Hell yeah, let’s get some more of that.”
We're getting a head start. This - and not some Brian Herbert Terminator bullshit - is why the Butlerian Jihad happened:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
It would be nice to have a technological solution to social problems. But all this does is centralize power in the hands of people who made things like Google Gemini a mess. You think they can't see ahead to the "imported" racial bias? They called it way ahead of time, and took steps.
For all you know, your cold robot is going to be given an androgynous body shape, will only answer to Xir and, in a twisted inversion of I, Robot, have a built in random factor to save a marginalized body every so often instead of doing the "rational" thing, for equity. It only makes sense. Getting stabbed in the subway is awful. But what about the violence done against black bodies and other justice-impacted folx? It's not an easy equation.
cjet79
59m ago
At a wedding, normally pretty fun for me, but the music ... Ugh.
It's too old. Perfect music for someone born in 1985 but I was born in 1990, and the actual wedding participants were born in 1995.
DJs are important.
The idea that this is some sort of escalation or new and novel threat is frankly just dumb
There are few arguments that make me want to climb up a wall like this one. Intellectually, I know people sincerely believe it. But I still sometimes wonder if I'm the victim of a Ken M-esque troll (if so, bravo)
Nuclear weapons are simply an improvement on our ability to blow shit up. You can tell because they're literally measured by comparison to our previous set of explosives. Nobody is blase about them.
It is of absolutely no comfort to me that we went thousands of years trying to set woods on fire before we figured out how to roast cities.
DoctorMonarch
1hr ago
Just once, I'd like to see a protagonist with a game overlay try to clip through a corner by repeatedly crouch jumping.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I need to figure out where I want to go with the hobby.
Steel challenge is reasonably cheap, and a lot of fun
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
Odd, for some reason your comment was showing up as a child of mine. But after refreshing the page it seems to have sorted itself.
Apologies.
(Note i'm on mobile FWIW)
faceh
1hr ago
Bingo.
Trumps version of the same lie is something like "I've been told that the Teamsters like me a lot. They say over a million of them support me, can you believe that? Enthusiasm like you've never seen, the Teamsters are going to vote for Trump in massive numbers, just unbelievable numbers!"
Shrike
1hr ago
I'm about 99% certain this robot is just a very expensive and fancy remote-controlled car. I don't think this incident has any bearing at all on AI, since no AI was involved.
However, on that note, I doubt there will be tens of millions of robots walking around anytime soon, even if (especially if) they are smarter than people...because if they are smarter than humans it will be much, much cheaper and more profitable just to connect them to the internet and have them do email and managerial jobs.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
Only at this point, with Mickles now having departed the train and re-entered the platform, do the officers pull the trigger, with their backstop being the subway train, rather than the empty platform it would have been had they shot him when they first had the chance.
The platform isn't empty though, there's people on it. You're probably right that the train has a higher density of people, although neither was particularly full. It seems pretty likely that the cops wouldn't want to open fire in a big open space like that. It seems plausible that a bullet might even fly out of the station depending on how it's aimed.
I also like the guy who refused to move from his seat while this is all happening.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1hr ago
I didn’t reply to you, unless you are also @Blunicorn, so I’m not sure what you mean.
No, the robot in OP’s post did not shoot anyone. What I’m saying is that I am not necessarily afraid of the replacement of human cops by robot cops, if it means an improvement in the competence and decisionmaking of police.
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
What does any of that have to do with anything i said, and how did you type all that out in under 5 minutes?
Also are you under the mistaken impression that the robot shot the guy?
What's the line? Our tools have been rebelling against us since the first farmer stepped on a rake?
The idea that this is some sort of escalation or new and novel threat is frankly just dumb. People have been working on ways to kill eachother remotely since the days of Archimedes. It was a major part of his whole "brand". Im also quite skeptical of the claims that they will be "smarter than the smartest human" and or that we will "lose basically every challenge against them" claims.
The blanket play in the video was actually quite smart if clumsily executed, and as you yourself observed, the thing that actually stopped him was getting shot by a human.
You would be correct. As much as we talk up "autonomous systems" the overwhelming majority of systems are not "autonomous" at all, they're "remotely piloted". Anything resembling true autonomy is still deep in the realm of DARPA grants and strictly enforced NDAs.
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