domain:philippelemoine.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6m ago
My impression is that Last Week Tonight is relevant because it is the Schelling point for a certain type of pro-establishment left person to know what the current thing is.
I agree with that, I'm just not sure if I'd grant that it's satire or comedy.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
8m ago
Private Eye still matters in the UK. It's relationship with the cathedral is somewhat ambiguous, but is more friendly than hostile.
My impression is that Last Week Tonight is relevant because it is the Schelling point for a certain type of pro-establishment left person to know what the current thing is.
Mantergeistmann
10m ago
I know Vanderbilt took that stance, and was probably helped out by a bunch of very unsympathetic protestors caught on security camera violating school rules (you can't force your way into a closed building, and you especially can't physically shove the security guard at the door), which let them crack down and send a message in a targeted, noncontroversial way--or at least, as noncontroversial as anything is these days.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
14m ago
The justification for this ruling was that unstable people listened to Jones, right? So Jones is culpable. I don't even agree with prosecution under "incitement of imminent lawless action," it goes against our entire philosophy of law.
It wasn't a prosecution, it was a civil case. Jones isn't going to prison, he is just being bankrupted. (This wouldn't matter if lying was a fundamental right, but there are centuries of SCOTUS precedent that lying is only partially protected by the 1st amendment). Jones never denied defamation (unreasonably making a false negative statement about an identifiable person who is not a public figure, or "maliciously" making a false negative statement about an identifiable person who is a public figure), which has been a well-known limited exclusion from the 1st amendment right to free speech since the founding*, and damages are set to compensate the people he lied about. The only problem here is the general one that America lets civil juries set damages (vs. the criminal approach where the jury decides guilt or innocence and the judge determines the sentences) and if you irritate a jury enough they will award a telephone number even if the actual damage is an order of magnitude less. (There were 20 victim families, and reasonable compensation for the amount of shit Jones put them through would be low-to-mid six figures per family). But the principle that there are some kinds of false speech where the need to protect real individuals from being lied about has to be balanced against the free speech of liars is not particularly controversial.
If people committed crimes based on Jones's lies, the criminals bear full and exclusive criminal responsibility for their own behaviour, as is right and proper. But civil liability for what other people do on your behalf is the default, not the exception.
It's also why, and you can call it wasted rebelliousness, I consider this as absolute moral mandate to call Sandy Hook a hoax.
Though shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Not a morally complicated question given that these lies cause real damage to real people who didn't ask to have their kids shot by a madman.
* I notice that Trump and Musk have both suggested that Sullivan should be reversed, making it easier to sue for defamation. This doesn't stop their supporters considering them champions of free speech. Everyone on both sides of the aisle understands that malicious lies are a special case.
Corvos
15m ago
When you say she was key, do you mean she was significantly involved in the leadership or funding of Amazon, or do you mean in terms of general love and support?
The latter is generally underrated, but I doubt it was necessary or sufficient for Bezos to found Amazon.
Not knowing more, I would be fine with the wife getting ‘live in reasonable comfort for the rest of your life’ money and I would be fine stoning Bezos for adultery, but I don’t see that divorce qualifies her for ownership of his fortune.
ControlsFreak
33m ago
Ya know, I had that in my mind at one point, and I know I had gotten busy and distracted last night, and I partially forgot it. And yet, I think I still had a point. We've talked here recently about how generally hyperbolic and castastrophizing many left-wing online spaces are (which is why I called that out in my comment). Like, just look at reddit. And then, if a potential normie waltzes into the space (think what's happening with young voters), they see that all this hyperbole is Obvious Nonsense if you've ever touched grass (or, ya know, watched a Pens game with a Republican). But they also learn that if you even think about disagreeing with the hyperbole, it's the banhammer for you. It's radicalizing, one way or the other; either you're radicalized to join the herd and spout hyperbole... or you're radicalized to hate those folks. In captured spaces, the hyperbole just ratchets one way, up ever further. They're not just wrong; they're dehumanizing or threatening your existence.
Honestly, the last thing folks like AOC need to do is quadruple down again with the catastrophic rhetoric. Especially because you're saying this in the process of moving your own position closer to theirs! Simply say what they're actually wrong about and why and how you'd do something better. Tarring everyone who has ever supported anything like what you're moving your own policy position closer to as having dehumanized entire groups of people is just gross and insulting.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
34m ago
His big selling points (to Trump) are that Trump worked with him on Latin America policy in Trump's first term.
The more I think about it, the more I think something like this is key. If Trump is self-aware, he knows that making nice to Mexico is a key part of a southern border policy that actually works. (Mexico doesn't want non-Mexican illegal migrants to the US to be stuck in Mexico, but they have a choice as to whether they keep them out of Mexico in the first place, or try to hurry them into the US.) And he knows that the person who is hands-on responsible for that needs to be not-him.
If the main job of the SecState in a Trump admin is to keep Mexico onside so they support rather than sabotaging US immigration policy, Rubio would be a good choice.
justmotteingaround
47m ago
The election doesn't effect the argument not to agitate against Swift. If it was a bad idea prior, its a bad idea now.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
54m ago
sexual jealousy towards especially black men. It's a pretty constant genre of pornography, and a common cultural watchword
It's not about dating and forming relationships, though. Pure animalistic sexual attraction.
DradisPing
1hr ago
I think the question is do Rubio's past foreign policy statements come from his ideology or is he just going with the flow given the people around him? He has some opinions about Latin America but I think for the rest of the world he'll just run with Trump's view.
His big selling points (to Trump) are that Trump worked with him on Latin America policy in Trump's first term. Also the Republican Senators will confirm him without any fuss.
mrvanillasky
1hr ago
Book of pook, a pre manosphere red pill sorta book was written by this Shakespeare but who argued the same, that romance is a sin that makes men less manly and cites romeo and Juliet as an example with verses.
mrvanillasky
1hr ago
Evolas sex life looked like that lol, he would rail feminists. I should try this political kink too 🤣
DradisPing
1hr ago
He was one of the more effective pro Trump voices in congress after 2021, and it looks like the DOJ took a run at him.
What they had on him was a crypto guy invited Gaetz on his yacht, afterwards Gaetz venmo'd him $900 and the crypto guy venmo'd two women who were there the $900 split between them. The problem was they couldn't turn that into a federal crime. Even as a state crime they couldn't prove the women were prostitutes or that Gaetz knew the money was for them.
Sending a friend money to cover party expenses isn't a crime. Sending money to a girl you just had sex with to buy herself a present isn't even a crime. It's a bit sleazy but pretty common among the party yacht crowd in Florida. The crypto bro was being threatened with charges and would have been useless as a witness.
So the DOJ leaks facts about the case to the press along with rumours that the girls were underage. They were published March 30, 2021.
Shortly after Gaetz is approached by an ex-military type who claims he can make the charges go away with a donation to a "veterans group". The guy was probably a fed and paying him off would have created federal charges that the DOJ could prosecute. However Gaetz reported it to someone he knew at the FBI instead so that went nowhere.
Basically the DOJ was leaking rumours for 18 months until they admitted there would be no charges. The press is still running with innuendo about it.
But we're approaching 4 years and it seems like the put up or shut up point has passed.
DOJ staff are typically institutionalists and will always circle the wagons to protect the DOJ.
But Gaetz would come in with a personal interest in investigating bad behaviour by the DOJ. They wouldn't be able to try to shame him into hiding things to protect the institution.
For Trumpists that's his big selling point. He's not likely to be highly effective in getting things done at the DOJ but he'll be eager to fire problem people even if it nets him bad headlines from the NYT.
For anti-Trumpists who support the shadier things the DOJ has been doing he's a nightmare.
For people who don't believe the DOJ does anything shady, he just looks like a poor candidate and they want someone more dignified.
Gaetz rubs a lot of people the wrong way because he looks like the rich kid villain from an 80s movie. That's probably not too far off the mark, only as an adult he went to DC and found out people there love to shit on his hometown. So he basically had a heel-face turn where he wants to defend the people of his city against DC.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
Notably, there is no reason for including men.
You can make an argument regarding "mother is unable to breastfeed because dead/mastectomy following breast cancer; father can't arrange a wet-nurse and thus tries to do it himself". It's a shaky argument, but it's an argument.
It is impossible for a man to give birth.
The consensus IIRC is that:
- you can implant an IVF embryo in a man's abdomen and it's capable of attaching to something (abdominal pregnancy - in women - and placenta percreta prove this);
- you can presumably take it out again via surgery, as with an abdominal pregnancy in a woman (and live babies from the latter are known).
The reasons nobody's done it are:
- nobody knows what the different blood chemistry of a man would do to the fetus;
- Placenta percreta and abdominal pregnancy are extremely dangerous due to massive bleeding and/or organ damage, and here you're talking about causing them on purpose
- post-WWII medical ethics are too restrictive to allow something with such extreme risks as this without medical necessity, and I don't see how this could plausibly be medically-necessary
- Mengele and Unit 731, who would totally have tried it anyway on Jews/Chinese, were out of the picture by the time IVF was actually achieved.
Damn, it was a pretty common take.
The user said something like he’s fine with adults doing whatever they want to do, but encouraging kids into trans stuff was a bridge too far for him, and that’s why Democrats lost his support.
Two years ago, AOC didn't have pronouns on her Instagram profile, and when called out on it by rabid wokeists, she quickly apologized and put them in. It will be interesting to see if she will make a similar about-face here or if the pronouns are gone for good.
If she took them down, she's probably prepared to tell anyone calling her out to pound sand. But I don't think it will even be necessary, it's really starting to feel like this election result knocked the wind out of the Blues.... which I don't quite understand, it wasn't really a landslide so I don't see what warrants a repudiation of their old strategy, Trump didn't manage to take away power from them in his first term, so I don't see a reason why they should fear that this time around, and yet it seems like they feel the need to fall in line somehow.
Rosencrantz2
2hr ago
What about that do you find funny? (I'm not even certain that I get it.)
mdurak
2hr ago
Fake news as usual, unless you believe the AP or those they interviewed are in on it.
MartianNight
2hr ago
Two years ago, AOC didn't have pronouns on her Instagram profile, and when called out on it by rabid wokeists, she quickly apologized and put them in. It will be interesting to see if she will make a similar about-face here or if the pronouns are gone for good.
It's worth noting that she also changed her job title from “Representative” to “Congresswoman”, which could be viewed as either a return to sanity (it's okay to call women women again, rather than forcing gender-neutral terminology) or as a way of doubling down on her gender identity as a way to distinguish herself from the evil male majority. We'll see.
DradisPing
2hr ago
I don't think there's much to be gained from attacking pop stars. Anyone who takes their political takes seriously is already voting Dem.
MartianNight
3hr ago
The O. J. Simpson case comes to mind. He was acquitted of murder in a criminal trial, but was successfully sued in civil court. Copying from Wikipedia:
In 1997, the jury unanimously found Simpson responsible for the deaths of Goldman and Brown. The Goldman family was awarded damages totaling $34 million ($64 million adjusted for inflation), but as of 2024 have received a small portion of that.
So if actually murdering two people only results in a $64 million fine, how in the hell is Alex Jones liable for $1,1 billion for spreading admittedly-hurtful conspiracy theories? He didn't do direct harm; he just said stupid and hurtful shit on the internet.
I'm basically a single-issue voter on this issue of identity.
Fair enough, there are issues that move me this way too. But I think it's important to recognize there are valid reasons why either side won't drop everything to get your support. It's a very limited set of circumstances where a one-issue voter gets to exercise influence.
This wing can actually win primaries/elections in very left-leaning areas; for example, they are going to be running San Francisco as of the recent election
I don't think I heard of this. Who won, and what are they planning to do for meritocracy?
On the other hand, the anti-hereditarian meritocrats on the Republican party, like Ramaswamy, seem to get slaughtered in primaries.
And then they get appointed to high positions by people who win them... what's the problem?
I'll give a line: better for the country than the median citizen in some measure combining ability to assimilate and ability to contribute.
I don't think it's the ability to assimilate that's the problem, because that's actually pretty high for most people. The problem is that there is next to no pressure to assimilate anymore, the very idea of putting such pressure is seen as deplorable, and higher immigration will necessarily lower that pressure even more.
Given how dominant US culture and values are globally, it shouldn't be very hard to find a huge number of people making this cut.
It would still imply mass deportations, wouldn't it?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
It's funny how fuckingfascists is clearly a sincere left-wing operation - not a hint of anime.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3hr ago
I don't encounter this as much as I might in an English-only environment (though I am sometimes in those), but I find and have always found that a sense of humor works wonders. Even if you don't change anyone's mind, at least you've made someone laugh (even if that someone is only yourself.) I can't script your situations obviously so this advice may be useless to you, but generally I wouldn't take such jibes particularly personally. There's a whole ethos taking this kind of I'm With Stupid (and stupid is Men) as some kind of norm, but also women may have been through any number of situations that may have embittered them or otherwise turned them shrewish. Take the high (and humorous) road if possible.
Child killers don't normally end up in civil court, because suing someone serving a life sentence isn't lucrative. But I assume that juries would be even more likely to award a telephone number against a child killer than they are against someone who runs around defaming grieving mothers.
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