Funny events in anti-woke world

Eacaraxe

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It is too soon to say whether Bush or Trump did more damage to the world and/or the USA.
Look, sure, a million may have died in Iraq alone under Bush's watch, but Bush never...shitposted on Twitter. The world may never recover from the sentence fragments and poor use of punctuation. COVID-19 was a uniquely American clusterfuck forty years' worth of declining educational standards, degrading infrastructure and regulation, media-driven contrarianism and polarization, and budgetary cuts in the making. Sorry to say but no President since Eisenhower would have handled it better, given the contemporary state of US organizational competence -- including the stupid-ass shit he said in office about it.

Trump was nowhere near bad as Bush, end of story. To say otherwise is a massive feat of mental gymnastics and historical revisionism. Hell, Trump isn't even a bottom quartile president. People who think Trump is anywhere but mediocre, basic-*****, low-middle of the road third quartile, need to stop watching OAN or open a history book to read for themselves how disgustingly awful some US presidents have truly been, respectively.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Yes, I agree - Chelsea Manning had a vastly better case. But the basic mechanism of trickery and illegality to acquire the data to whistleblow is acceptable - or at least, defensible as long as the case (wrongdoing exposed) is.
If I invaded a business acting as a front for child sex trafficking and freed all the children held captive in the basement, I'd be a big damn hero

If I invaded a business I though was acting as a front for child sex trafficking and tried to free all the children held captive in the basement; and they don't even have a basement...

Doing blatantly illegal shit and hoping there's a crime there to justify it isn't whistleblowing. It's fishing. It's one of those things where you don't get partial credit for effort.
 

Agema

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Look, sure, a million may have died in Iraq alone under Bush's watch, but Bush never...shitposted on Twitter.
Getting half a million Iraqis killed (you are using an extreme estimate) for not very much is certainly one hell of a black mark.

However, a raw casualty count can also be a weirdly superficial way to look at history. The funny thing is, you're clearly aware of the potential shortcomings of doing so, because rejecting such superficiality is the basis of you exculpating Trump for covid-19. Thus, you need only be consistent in your own logic: we do not yet know the damage Trump may have caused, or even the long-term results of some of GWB's actions.

We'll probably have a much better idea in ~20 years. Although I'd admit, my money would be on GWB coming out worse in the long run.
 

Eacaraxe

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Getting half a million Iraqis killed (you are using an extreme estimate) for not very much is certainly one hell of a black mark.
No, I'm not actually. "Estimates" vary because of which deaths are actually counted. Same shit that happens when the fatality count from the WWII Japanese firebombing campaign is strategically under-estimated, whilst that of the atomic bombings is strategically over-estimated.

Those lower "estimates" don't account for excess death rate in the country between 2003-2011, deaths outside AO's or in some cases deaths inside AO's for which the primary cause of death is nonviolent but still attributable to the chaos and aftermath of the war. And none of them account for excess death rate between 1991-2003, during the period between operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, in which the UN imposed belligerent sanctions on Iraq. The one study I can recall that does attempt to incorporate excess death rate opposed to cynical mathematic hijinks within the "half a million" range is the PLOS study, and that was based upon extrapolated self-reporting in a survey, thereby invoking the spectre of (in this case literal) survivorship bias.

In other words, when it comes to Iraq we're not just cooking the books, we're dusting off and nuking them from orbit.

This is a phenomenon of which you're well aware, having participated as heavily as you have in the COVID threads and coming from a self-professed medical background, given how COVID factors into this very conversation. I know you are, because we've discussed this exact phenomenon in the past and agreed on it:

Which is actually the more accurate estimate of US COVID deaths, the 720,000-odd number that only counts deaths from confirmed cases, for which ARDS or complications are the primary cause of death, or the approximately 1.2 million number care of the CDC (720K plus another 460K last I checked) that accounts not just for deaths from confirmed cases, but excess death rate associated with COVID-19 and its impact?

However, a raw casualty count can also be a weirdly superficial way to look at history.
You're right, it is. I'd suggest not inadvertently doing that.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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That's capitalism baby.

The entire point of capitalism is to strip labour of value. That's what it's been doing for hundreds of years now, until we're at the point we are now where labour essentially has no value whatsoever. Very few of us will ever have any real stake, financial or emotional, in the outcome of our own labour, so why care about it? Caring about your work, worrying about doing the work well, taking pride in your own work, is a scam. After all, it's not your work, no part of it belongs to you. Companies and employers can and will pretend to be your friends, they can try to motivate you by appealing to your emotions and making you feel special, but I think most people kind of know on some level that it's a lie. So why bother? What compelling reason do any of us have to care about doing our work well?
Well yes you have a good point but not quite what I was saying. The comment I believe was about pushing people to look good over be good at the work. It's the idea of how things should work is the meritocratic system rewarding the person working best vs a system that could be argued to happen a fair bit now where the system doesn't care if you're a good worker but if you "look good" for the company and people dealing with the promotions such that "Oh it's our old pal, yeh they've helped us out loads by getting us coffee every morning and coming out drinking with us they're a mate so we want to see them do well" kind of promotions. Vs the "This worker literally exceeded all our expectations and did their job better than any-one before maybe we should reward that level of skill and dedication?". Obviously in the present system the 2nd doesn't happen as much because that would mean moving a worker who'd proven themselves good in a role and losing that efficiency and productivity from said role or department so it would mean they're less likely to be promoted because they're actually good and needed where they are.


Even if that were true. How is that different from other form of labour?

But I don't think it is true. Because ironically, being part of a community means that people do know who you are. If you achieve something, if you invent a new technique or just execute something really well, then other people in that community will notice. Community, even online community, is a very powerful thing. Creating something which other people will see and associate with you can meet a need. Heck, creating something purely for your own amusement and then sharing it voluntarily, rather than being coerced into doing something to make other people money, is a more tangible form of ownership than almost any of the actual paid work people do.
Innovation and creativity.
You write a book you own it until you sell the rights.
You make a film, you own it until you sell the rights (unless you already agreed for a company to fund it in exchange for the rights)
You design a product or create some program you own it (again unless it was made on behalf of a big corporation)
It's more about the idea of the "side hustle" than the core job as such I'd say and the idea of turning the side hustle (speed Running) into a main job.

I mean, I know there's a certain breed of conservative men whose political views have made them so thoroughly repulsive to most women that they can't date or have normal sex lives, but most people have sex, which implies that most people are to some extent sexually desirable.

Like, I feel like what's really making conservatives mad here is the refutation of this weird red pill myth that women only experience physical attraction, and even then only for alpha chads with big muscles and ridiculous jawlines. If someone is successful at speedrunning, that's at least interesting. It's not really surprising to me that people who find the same things interesting hook up, and it probably shouldn't be surprising to anyone willing to give it any thought.
No it shouldn't be surprising but it's a very sort of weird scale. Such that some 3,000 twitter follower Speed runner who holds 0 actual records is some dude whose seen as super desirable while looking like Will from the Inbetweeners with from what I could tell a personality just as neurotic. It's not like he was even a successful speedrunner he was a middle of the pack to lower end of the pack guy. Like fair play to him for whatever he has going for him and maybe me being straight I just can't see what makes him attractive but normally I can at least point to something that would somewhat make him stand out somehow.

Then again I don't get why I've been offered basically sex on a plate before sometimes when I look like the unholy offspring of Peter Kay and David Mitchell so who knows lol.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Speaking of conservatives getting mad, this makes a good segueway into another thing I've always wanted to address about the right and anti-woke types; this notion that, if people disagree with you or call your opinion shit, it's automatically validation and confirmation that you said nothing wrong and that you're "living rent free" in their heads.
I'd argue if it's just disagreeing then yeh it's silly. If it's people going out of their way to deliberately bring a person up to make claims about them or keep bringing up the same arguments without justification or provocation then there is a case for the whole "Living Rent Free" argument. Like lets say as an example writers who still to this day bring up the Mass Effect 3 ending to call gamers who objected to the ending entitled, those gamers are still living rent free in the journalists head because they just can't let go of the that fight even though it's done and dusted now not least because of the change to the ending which was seen as an admission that yeh the ending as it was, it wasn't good. (For those not aware the new additions to the ending show which of your crew survived and a bit about the impact on the universe after, not merely 1 of three explosion colours and a little scene after)
 

Silvanus

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Oh what's that? It's delegated and politicians don't have to know how many doses the country needs? Imagine my shock.
XD

The health secretary will be the one who ensures a consistent supply, ensures the supply chains/routes are functional. It's their job.

We've literally just established that politicians don't order resources directly, so that's bullshit.
See above. Fucking obviously they're not on the phone to Frankfurt themselves. But the health secretary does actually have to keep on top of supply levels, yes.



D e l e g a t i o n.
If nobody has any greater authority than anybody else, then nobody has any authority to delegate. Unless the entire country does, through an... election. In which case, you're just electing suppliers instead of representatives.

Which aint representative democracy, but it sure as shit aint direct democracy, either. It's just placing the control over our resources and supply chains directly into the hands of businesses, without even the pretence of someone between us acting on our behalf.

Yet your actual arguments have said the opposite. You can deny it all you like, but you've been saying the equivalent of "I'm not racist, but"
You just have a shoddy grasp of what I'm arguing, and it makes it an easier job to boil it down to extremes. If I were to do the same, I'd keep repeating ad nauseum that you believe people can do no wrong, yadayada. But I know that's a ridiculous simplification of your position, so I don't.

Elected bodies carry a semi-random cross-section of the population they're elected from, by definition. They are equally as rational as the people they're drawn from. If you're saying politicians are statistically rational, then you have to admit the population they're drawn from are statistically rational. If you're saying the population is statistically irrational, you have to say politicians drawn from them will be statistically irrational.
Elected bodies are absolutely not representative of the wider population in every respect. Since it's part of their job to be invested/ knowledgeable about governance, there will be a higher rate of that than in the wider population. It is absolutely not "random".

They are expected to be representative in certain respects-- demographically, geographically, and in terms of interests. And they should broadly be so in those respects, though they usually fail to be.

They'd be allowed to vote, as they do now. But they would have to actually win on policy votes instead of personality ones. The actual race between Trump and Biden was close enough that they nearly won four more years of policy that would have been unpopular, with no way for the people to stop the policies, even the ones his voters hated. If you outsource your decision making, you don't get to complain when the person decides poorly.
Yet from what we can see, the population didn't really care much about the "unpopular" policy that was enacted under Trump. Or, in fact, beforehand.

And direct democracy often acts to prevent the people from being able to stop unpopular policies. Take Brexit, where it became politically toxic to even suggest that we have another referendum on the terms of the deal. The original referendum was, officially, only "advisory", and yet the very act of passing the direct-democratic vote meant that it became a sacred cow. To the point where even asking the electorate again, even on detail, became toxic.


It's ironic that the actual source of accountability in your system is direct democracy. Seeing how they voted is no source of accountability, neither is voting them out at the next election.
Voting them out is no source of accountability...? OK then. You have some strange definitions for things, Phoenix.


You mean what people do now in representative democracy, making this problem not at all unique?
Yes! Only with nobody at all to take responsibility. The buck stops nowhere.

Yes and yes. Generally we're going to be talking about more than a single household with an idea, and there's generally a more formalized setting for discussing ideas (like biweekly meetings or something, depending), but it is largely that straightforward. If you're picking someone to express your ideas to another body, you don't need a bunch of campaign promises and shrewd dealing, you need a guy to go over to the next town with a list. It doesn't need some big set of promises or formalized election, "Hey Bob, can you take this list we made to the next town?" is perfectly viable.
Sounds viable for getting a local lake maintaned, or repairing a road. Not quite so viable for national directions & policies.


A few of them have disgusting ties to governments, but theoretically they aren't appointed by governments and while they can receive government commissions, they are supposed to be self-standing.
They almost always have some kind of privileged position in public life.

If you want to reduce them to the status of businesses, be my guest, but that's a recipe for a corporatist nightmare.

And this doesn't work in direct democracy, because...?
You want to limit the number of referenda there can be every so-often? Or the number that an individual can put forward?

Who's the judge here, what're the criteria? What's to stop the ones about actual important shit like healthcare and taxes getting onto that docket, rather than the frivolous bullshit?

I never said that. I explicitly said you don't have to have elections to have democracy.
This is true. But if you're deciding on somebody to do a specific job, by popular vote, then yes, that's an election.
 

AnxietyProne

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Alright, @Dwarvenhobble (I've taken you off ignore), @tstorm823 , I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Justify THIS shit. Find me a pro masker/pro vaxxer as bad as this and I'll walk off this forum for good. I will never darken the Escapist's doorstop in any way.


Find me some other people calling random people war criminals and sues them for millions. Do that and you can claim victory over me permeant like. Consider me Carthage and my earth salted if you do that.
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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Alright, @Dwarvenhobble (I've taken you off ignore), @tstorm823 , I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Justify THIS shit. Find me a pro masker/pro vaxxer as bad as this and I'll walk off this forum for good. I will never darken the Escapist's doorstop in any way.
I'll do you one better: Screaming that mask and vaccine mandates for children are like rape- in front of children.

 
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BrawlMan

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I'll do you one better: Screaming that mask and vaccine mandates for children are like rape- in front of children.
The people screaming that shit, obviously have never been raped, nor have anyone personally they know raped. Those people can be dragged to hell or thrown in to a Saw style trap, and I would have biggest smile on my face right now.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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Alright, @Dwarvenhobble (I've taken you off ignore), @tstorm823 , I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Justify THIS shit. Find me a pro masker/pro vaxxer as bad as this and I'll walk off this forum for good. I will never darken the Escapist's doorstop in any way.


Find me some other people calling random people war criminals and sues them for millions. Do that and you can claim victory over me permeant like. Consider me Carthage and my earth salted if you do that.
Best I could manage would be Kevin Smith on an isolated hiking route double masking.
or the push for a while to get people to wear 3 masks I think it was.
Vaccine wise maybe the people who are in favour of the blow dart vaccinating people method?
 

AnxietyProne

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Best I could manage would be Kevin Smith
Did he threaten to sue minors and random school employees? Did he go into a store and call people war criminals?

Vaccine wise maybe the people who are in favour of the blow dart vaccinating people method?
Assault by blow gun does not match bringing people up on charges based on Nuremburg, which include death, not to mention his constant threats to destroy people's lives directly. Not bringing your A game here, Hobble.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Did he threaten to sue minors and random school employees? Did he go into a store and call people war criminals?
No he got mad that he ran into some-one in the middle of no-where hiking without a mask.

Assault by blow gun does not match bringing people up on charges based on Nuremburg, which include death, not to mention his constant threats to destroy people's lives directly. Not bringing your A game here, Hobble.
Hey I'm on the side of wear the damn mask lol. My game is kinda of "Yeh the Anti-maskers are fucking nuts to an impressive level. I won't say the extreme people on the pro mask side are as extreme but there are some taking things a bit far too but not to quite such a degree.

I mean if you want the more weird stuff I could point to some of the super insane tweets about people who had isolated their kids into separate rooms from the start of lockdown and were sliding food under the door only letting them out to use the toilet.............. but I suspect (or I fucking hope) those were joke accounts or people taking the piss.
 

crimson5pheonix

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XD

The health secretary will be the one who ensures a consistent supply, ensures the supply chains/routes are functional. It's their job.

What's that? It's not up to the legislature like I said because it was so blatantly obvious that it was delegated that it wasn't even funny? Color me surprised. Let's not forget that this all started because you said people would have to vote on the number of doses to buy, when that doesn't even happen at all, and I'm taking your word on this that the health secretary even has a direct hand in such matters and not a broader "hospitals are reporting shortages, I recommend renegotiating with suppliers" kind of information reporting.

See above. Fucking obviously they're not on the phone to Frankfurt themselves. But the health secretary does actually have to keep on top of supply levels, yes.
Yes, the work is delegated. Shock! Horror! I was right the whole time!

If nobody has any greater authority than anybody else, then nobody has any authority to delegate. Unless the entire country does, through an... election. In which case, you're just electing suppliers instead of representatives.

Which aint representative democracy, but it sure as shit aint direct democracy, either. It's just placing the control over our resources and supply chains directly into the hands of businesses, without even the pretence of someone between us acting on our behalf.
No, this is not that hard, delegating duties is not inherently anything like an election.

You just have a shoddy grasp of what I'm arguing, and it makes it an easier job to boil it down to extremes. If I were to do the same, I'd keep repeating ad nauseum that you believe people can do no wrong, yadayada. But I know that's a ridiculous simplification of your position, so I don't.
You have actually taken things to an illogical extreme, repeatedly.

Elected bodies are absolutely not representative of the wider population in every respect. Since it's part of their job to be invested/ knowledgeable about governance, there will be a higher rate of that than in the wider population. It is absolutely not "random".
It's not actually part of the job, point out where that's required.

Yet from what we can see, the population didn't really care much about the "unpopular" policy that was enacted under Trump. Or, in fact, beforehand.
Polls say you're wrong.

And direct democracy often acts to prevent the people from being able to stop unpopular policies. Take Brexit, where it became politically toxic to even suggest that we have another referendum on the terms of the deal. The original referendum was, officially, only "advisory", and yet the very act of passing the direct-democratic vote meant that it became a sacred cow. To the point where even asking the electorate again, even on detail, became toxic.
Toxic to who? Who said there shouldn't be any further referendums on details, people or politicians?

Voting them out is no source of accountability...? OK then. You have some strange definitions for things, Phoenix.
If you've seen speaking fees politicians get for sabotaging policies, you can't possibly look at former politicians as having recieved anything like an accounting. Recalls can be since you can remove a politician before they can do damage or save some policy/ies. Prison is ceretainly accountability if they've broken the law somehow. Letting someone get paid to ruin everything, and then get lucrative jobs later advising future politicians on how to ruin things is not accountability.

Yes! Only with nobody at all to take responsibility. The buck stops nowhere.
The collective society takes responsibility. And since people like to point to biannual election results as the failure/triumph of society, you only get to disagree with me if you say voting isn't important.

Sounds viable for getting a local lake maintaned, or repairing a road. Not quite so viable for national directions & policies.
It absolutely is.

They almost always have some kind of privileged position in public life.

If you want to reduce them to the status of businesses, be my guest, but that's a recipe for a corporatist nightmare.
They are, theoretically. Strictly they're generally non-profit organizations who either survive on their own or through government funding, and in either case nothing need change. Apart from clearing out the toxic NGOs.

You want to limit the number of referenda there can be every so-often? Or the number that an individual can put forward?

Who's the judge here, what're the criteria? What's to stop the ones about actual important shit like healthcare and taxes getting onto that docket, rather than the frivolous bullshit?
Well there's nothing wrong with filtering spam, easy one to deal with. Clearing out duplicates and establishing rules on not putting the same referenda up sequentially.

This is true. But if you're deciding on somebody to do a specific job, by popular vote, then yes, that's an election.
And you don't have to do that.
 

AnxietyProne

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No he got mad that he ran into some-one in the middle of no-where hiking without a mask.
Then that does not qualify.
No he got mad that he ran into some-one in the middle of no-where hiking without a mask.


Hey I'm on the side of wear the damn mask lol. My game is kinda of "Yeh the Anti-maskers are fucking nuts to an impressive level. I won't say the extreme people on the pro mask side are as extreme but there are some taking things a bit far too but not to quite such a degree.

I mean if you want the more weird stuff I could point to some of the super insane tweets about people who had isolated their kids into separate rooms from the start of lockdown and were sliding food under the door only letting them out to use the toilet.............. but I suspect (or I fucking hope) those were joke accounts or people taking the piss.
Then it looks like I'm staying

 
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TheMysteriousGX

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...okay, so active shooter drills are fucked to begin with, but I honestly cannot fathom the need nor desire for gender segregated shooting shelters.
 

Mister Mumbler

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Chimpzy

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Here's one for Anti-woke world

Why even keep boys and girls separate to begin with? Seems like a rather arbitrary and pointless thing to do in an emergency. Like, if some crazed dude with a gun is roaming the school grounds, does it really matter who is huddling down with who?

What, are they worried being in a potential life-or-death situation + teen hormones will get them frisky?
 
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