Funny events in anti-woke world

[Trunkage]

From the article:




It seems more like "Some feminists have turned on pornography" but I guess that's not enough of a clickbait title.

I mean, there has always been feminist who are against porn actors. This is not new. They had them in the 70s. They had them in the 1920s

The only thing I would note is that Mastercard et al are against sex slaves and Pornhub (and probably others) have acknowledged that they have had sex slave videos on their site. I don't know if this helps. Its kinda like how YouTube banned all comments on videos that involved kinds because pedos were doing pedo dog whistles in the comment sections and trying to find out the kid's addresses. I don't know why you punishing everyone because of some absolute creeps. While i appreciate thesentiment, it seems like too much scorched earth going on

 

[tstorm823]

Nobody is asking you to dig up "every wrong thing". You said people were denying it was real- a single, specific claim. Yet you can't find it?

Can't find it? Maybe, but we won't know cause I don't care to.

You're saying here that all investigators, including the Republicans who investigated the laptop, were "deliberately not paying attention". What massive insights do you have, that you know so much better than the professionals who investigated the content?

I'm not saying that, you're just not understanding what those investigators are saying. All the investigators, including the Republicans, agreed that that laptop did not have any significant evidence of crimes or corruption by Joe Biden. Nobody serious has said it lacks evidence of crimes by Hunter Biden, there were emails of drug deals and soliciting prostitution, video evidence in his icloud of some of those crimes... they charged him buying a gun while on drugs, which they know he was from his private correspondence, much of which was on the laptop. The Republicans in the House Oversight Committee don't have anything meaningful to say on Hunter Biden snorting coke and banging hookers, that's not their job, their job was to consider the role of Joe Biden in any of it, and they didn't find evidence of Joe participating in the crimes.

 

[Silvanus]

Can't find it? Maybe, but we won't know cause I don't care to.

What a great approach. Throw accusation -> asked to substantiate -> "I don't care to".

I'm not saying that, you're just not understanding what those investigators are saying. All the investigators, including the Republicans, agreed that that laptop did not have any significant evidence of crimes or corruption by Joe Biden. Nobody serious has said it lacks evidence of crimes by Hunter Biden, there were emails of drug deals and soliciting prostitution, video evidence in his icloud of some of those crimes... they charged him buying a gun while on drugs, which they know he was from his private correspondence, much of which was on the laptop. The Republicans in the House Oversight Committee don't have anything meaningful to say on Hunter Biden snorting coke and banging hookers, that's not their job, their job was to consider the role of Joe Biden in any of it, and they didn't find evidence of Joe participating in the crimes.

Drugs and sex

You were talking about tax evasion. The Republicans were talking about criminal corruption in the Biden administration.

 

[tstorm823]

What a great approach. Throw accusation -> asked to substantiate -> "I don't care to".

I don't care because none of you are ever going to question it again. The "is the laptop a Russian hoax?" game has ended in my favor, I know it, I have nothing to gain trying to embarrass you about it.

Drugs and sex

You were talking about tax evasion. The Republicans were talking about criminal corruption in the Biden administration.

Did you really just give an ironic shocked face response to sex crimes? I understand the situation, I understand that the personal failings of Hunter Biden are not the same as Joe Biden committing treason, but that's not the appropriate response.

Honestly, I really don't understand why people are so insistent on dismissing the truth here. Hunter Biden is a sack of crap. He's a 50-something year old man who made a bunch of money pretending he could sell his father's influence around the world. He blows the money on drugs, porn, and prostitutes, knocks up a stripper (proven by a paternity test) and tries to sue to get out of child support. These are all at this point pretty indisputable, most have been entered as evidence in court. From a reasonable perspective, I don't think this hurts Joe Biden. Lots of people have screw-up relatives, Joe Biden supporting his son through all his missteps is not just relatable, it's biblically moral, he is the father in the parable of the prodigal son.

It is reasonable, given the sort of things Hunter said to people oversees to get their money (things like he was setting aside money for the Big Guy or that he and his father were waiting for a response), for the oversight committee to investigate whether Joe was actually involved. They found no evidence of that, it all seems to be just Hunter. So why do people continue to push back against the evidence? Why do you continue to be so dismissive of it? Why are you defending Hunter Biden? Is it all just to maintain the perspective that Republicans are conspiracy theorists and propagandists?

Edit: I know I'm rambling at this point, but seriously think about this: the son of the former US Vice President and future US President was using his father's reputation to get large amounts of money from places like Ukraine and China, the FBI already had in their possession and validated the evidence (laptop) that he was doing this before that evidence went public, the intelligence community instead writes a public letter suggesting it could just be Russian election tampering, the Oversight Committee does their job to find out if the President actually was involved in selling influence overseas and ultimately determines there's not evidence of that, and you still seem to think this is somehow wrongdoing by Republicans.

 

[Silvanus]

I don't care because none of you are ever going to question it again. The "is the laptop a Russian hoax?" game has ended in my favor, I know it, I have nothing to gain trying to embarrass you about it.

Incredible, your ability to declare victory in a game nobody else was playing.

Did you really just give an ironic shocked face response to sex crimes?

When the 'sex crimes' amount to sleeping with sex workers-- an act ubiquitous in the political world-- then you do get an ironic shocked face when you pretend to be outraged about it.

Honestly, I really don't understand why people are so insistent on dismissing the truth here. Hunter Biden is a sack of crap.

Blah blah blah.

Yes, he's a sack of crap. But we're not just sitting here making moral judgements; we're talking about specific criminal allegations, and how they're being pursued/weaponised in the political sphere.

Truth is, his crappiness is nothing particularly outstanding. We have tax evasion, which deserves jail time. We have drug, prostitution, and illegally owning a firearm (which are the extent of what's shown on the dreaded laptop), which are relatively unimportant, and pale in comparison with hundreds of other politicians.

So sure, he's a sack of shit. Perhaps even one-fiftieth of the sack of shit that Donald Trump is. If Republicans want to act as though his crappiness is this massive terrible thing, and his poor moral character is worthy of this pursuance, then what the hell have they been doing for the last 4 years? Why are they completely unconcerned by... uhrm, the entire political sphere, where these acts are ten-a-penny? They rewarded and endorsed this behaviour when it was one of their own. They're screaming bloody murder about some tax misdemeanours and taking drugs and sleeping with sex workers because they're gross hypocrites.

 

[Bedinsis]

​

Uhm, I've already once questioned one news item's degree of relatedness to anti-wokeness and been questioned whether such thread policing is desirable, but still, do you think that China's slump in manufacturing is that related to anti-wokeness? I mean I get the connection, China's human rights records are terrible so them slumping is not outside of events from the anti-woke world technically, but that's not really that closely related, that's mostly geopolitics. Give it a decade or two and we might see similar headlines about India, the world's factory, seeing manufacturing leave for Africa, regardless of what the human rights in the country is.

 

[BrawlMan]

Uhm, I've already once questioned one news item's degree of relatedness to anti-wokeness and been questioned whether such thread policing is desirable, but still, do you think that China's slump in manufacturing is that related to anti-wokeness? I mean I get the connection, China's human rights records are terrible so them slumping is not outside of events from the anti-woke world technically, but that's not really that closely related, that's mostly geopolitics. Give it a decade or two and we might see similar headlines about India, the world's factory, seeing manufacturing leave for Africa, regardless of what the human rights in the country is.

They're screwing up because of their own fucks ups, and I have no sympathy for China, it's government, how it treats its own people and citizens, and how it treats non-Chinese even worse. Especially those born with black, brown, or dark skin. So they can fuck off, and counts in my book. You can have whatever opinion you want on this being anti-woke or not. It counts in my book as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Thaluikhain]

They're screwing up because of their own fucks ups, and I have no sympathy for China, it's government, how it treats its own people and citizens, and how it treats non-Chinese even worse. Especially those born with black, brown, or dark skin. So they can fuck off, and counts in my book. You can have whatever opinion you want on this being anti-woke or not. It counts in my book as far as I'm concerned.

While, on one hand, yes, on the other, if you're concerned with China's people, economic or other problems aren't going to help.

 

[BrawlMan]

While, on one hand, yes, on the other, if you're concerned with China's people, economic or other problems aren't going to help.

Uh-huh.

 

[Gergar12]

I mean, there has always been feminist who are against porn actors. This is not new. They had them in the 70s. They had them in the 1920s

The only thing I would note is that Mastercard et al are against sex slaves and Pornhub (and probably others) have acknowledged that they have had sex slave videos on their site. I don't know if this helps. Its kinda like how YouTube banned all comments on videos that involved kinds because pedos were doing pedo dog whistles in the comment sections and trying to find out the kid's addresses. I don't know why you punishing everyone because of some absolute creeps. While i appreciate thesentiment, it seems like too much scorched earth going on

Well, the problem I have is not that they are going after illegal shit, it's that they are going after the legal stuff too. They are starting to go after Patreon and Japanese media websites. Not of real people, but literally just art.

 

[Cicada 5]

Elon Musk, King of Censorship: 10 Times the 'Free Speech Absolutist' Silenced Twitter Users

Musk says he loves free speech. His track record says different.

gizmodo.com

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Sure, getting frequently bullied and beaten up while growing up a meek nerd in South Africa counts as no rules streetfights.

"I know karate, Jeet Kune Do, taekwondo, and a lot of other foreign-sounding words."

Elon Musk, King of Censorship: 10 Times the 'Free Speech Absolutist' Silenced Twitter Users

Musk says he loves free speech. His track record says different.

gizmodo.com

Musk's definition of "free speech" is everyone being free to voice his opinions.

 

[tstorm823]

Yes, he's a sack of crap. But we're not just sitting here making moral judgements; we're talking about specific criminal allegations, and how they're being pursued/weaponised in the political sphere.

Correct.

Why are they completely unconcerned by... uhrm, the entire political sphere, where these acts are ten-a-penny?

They aren't unconcerned by those things. Many politicians from both major parties (and non-politicians as well) have been sunk by this sort of thing. But to rephrase your question to "what is specifically significant about Hunter Biden", it's not something specifically about Hunter Biden himself, it's two historically significant events:

A) The intelligence community acting to suggest evidence of criminal activity was likely Russian misinformation.
B) The impeachment of the sitting president for mentioning a criminal (who was already being investigated by the IRS and FBI) might warrant investigation.

Consider the actual timeline of events here:

In 2018, federal law enforcement agencies began investigating Hunter Biden, and were aware Hunter was using his relationship to Joe Biden as leverage in overseas business dealings.
In 2019, Trump mentioned bad stuff with the Biden's in the call with Zelensky.
In late 2019 to early 2020, they impeached Trump for what he said to Zelensky.
And in 2020, right before the election, 50 former leaders of the intelligence community sign a letter suggesting that evidence the FBI had already possessed and validated for a year could be Russian disinformation.

 

[Silvanus]

They aren't unconcerned by those things. Many politicians from both major parties (and non-politicians as well) have been sunk by this sort of thing.

And at other times, they've enjoyed the full-hearted and unquestioning support of the Republican Party, up to and including perpetrators of much worse being handed the nomination for Presidency.

You're feigning outrage about what a "sack of shit" he is-- a moral outrage, not a criminal one-- while you've also spent years defending someone fifty times worse, because he wears your colours.

But to rephrase your question to "what is specifically significant about Hunter Biden", it's not something specifically about Hunter Biden himself, it's two historically significant events:

A) The intelligence community acting to suggest evidence of criminal activity was likely Russian misinformation.

Back when these suggestions were made, the laptop had yet to be checked and verified. We didn't know what we know now. What we did know at the time: a legally-blind man, who said he couldn't be sure it was Hunter Biden, produced it; there was then a massive gap in custody; Giuliani's employees, themselves stooges for the Russian government, had it for a lot of that time; lots of the material was as-yet unverified.

You're pretending there was a conspiracy of denial, when in fact they made statements of likelihood based on extremely questionable circumstances.

B) The impeachment of the sitting president for mentioning a criminal (who was already being investigated by the IRS and FBI) might warrant investigation.

Complete bullshit, as you know. The President was impeached for the goddammit crimes he committed.

 

[tstorm823]

Back when these suggestions were made, the laptop had yet to be checked and verified. We didn't know what we know now. What we did know at the time: there was a massive gap in custody; Giuliani's employees, themselves stooges for the Russian government, had it for ages; lots of the material was as-yet unverified.

You're pretending there was a conspiracy of denial, when in fact they made statements of likelihood based on extremely questionable circumstances.

Right, we didn't know what we know now. We didn't. We are not the intelligence community. We are not the FBI, who had the physical laptop unaltered from before it got anywhere near Giuliani. We are not the IRS, who were referred the laptop about financial crimes. We are not the US Attorney's office in Delaware who was investigating Hunter's lobbying and finances in 2018. I'm not going to criticize you for questioning it at the time (at least until Hunter admitted it could be his real laptop on television), or even the news media who plausibly may not have been informed in the short term. What's not plausible is that Hunter was galivanting around the world for years wielding his dad's name to get money from foreign oligarchs, like the Burisma connection that began in 2014, and Jim Clapper, who was in charge of the CIA until 2017, could honestly sign off on a letter calling evidence of Hunter's wrongdoing potential Russian misinformation.

In their letter, they say "we do not know if the emails are genuine or not"... a year after the FBI already had the laptop, which was already a year after multiple law enforcement agencies were already accessing Hunter's records from different sources than the laptop. There were so many people who could say confidently "yes, the laptop is really Hunter Biden's, it was really dropped off at the computer repair shop." Yet it took years for this to actually play out publicly, and people don't even know it has.

https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HHP_May2023_KeyResults.pdf

Page 43, from just last month:

41% of people and a healthy majority of Democrats still believe the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. Because of that letter.

 

[Gergar12]

Elon Musk, King of Censorship: 10 Times the 'Free Speech Absolutist' Silenced Twitter Users

Musk says he loves free speech. His track record says different.

gizmodo.com

He's an egotistical billionaire, he didn't build Tesla his engineers did.

 

[Absent]

Musk's definition of "free speech" is everyone being free to voice his opinions.

It's everyone's actually. Whenever someone gets all absolutist on sacrosanct free speech, you can be sure it's about the current taboos in freedom of expression. That is, about allowing the sort of discourses and propaganda (the "hate speech") which historically lead to the most drastic restrictions.

The whole "culture war" plays on that. People who scream about cultural critique (via "oh noes we aren't allowed to say anything anymore" claims) are hellbent on silencing said critique. Their "oh noes we won't ever have a male protagonist in any film/game ever anymore ever" outcries are always an outraged reaction to one film or game daring to feature female protagonists. And, yeah, also republicans yapping about free speech while purging libraries and dreaming of autodafes everywhere...

In practice, from what we see in our societies, the intensity of the "free speech" warcry is inversely proportional to the likelihood of desiring free speech.

 

[Silvanus]

Right, we didn't know what we know now. We didn't. We are not the intelligence community. We are not the FBI, who had the physical laptop unaltered from before it got anywhere near Giuliani. We are not the IRS, who were referred the laptop about financial crimes. We are not the US Attorney's office in Delaware who was investigating Hunter's lobbying and finances in 2018.

All of whom also had to contest with the missing chain of custody, the unverified nature of the majority of the data, etc.

In their letter, they say "we do not know if the emails are genuine or not"... a year after the FBI already had the laptop, which was already a year after multiple law enforcement agencies were already accessing Hunter's records from different sources than the laptop.

And you'll know that even after those investigations, the emails used by the Post as the basis for the accusations remained unverified.

You're complaining that they made an accurate statement, because you would prefer them to assume guilt of a political opponent before they have knowledge.

 

[Kwak]

Right, we didn't know what we know now.

Which is what? What is the recent revelation that changed everything?

41% of people and a healthy majority of Democrats still believe the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. Because of that letter.

No, because of the way it was reported.

That night, Natasha Bertrand of Politico wrote a story about the letter, with the headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The rest of the story, however, was less definitive, with a subheading saying the former officials "signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story," and noting in the story body that the letter said the information in the Post story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a February 2023 analysis, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote "that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who signed the letter, told Kessler, "There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five" of the letter. Politico stood by their report in a statement to Kessler.[74]

 

[tstorm823]

Which is what? What is the recent revelation that changed everything?

The most recent and definitive is the testimony of Gary Shapley, who was head of the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden in 2020:
"In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden's Apple iCloud ID. When the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes."

No, because of the way it was reported.

That night, Natasha Bertrand of Politico wrote a story about the letter, with the headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The rest of the story, however, was less definitive, with a subheading saying the former officials "signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story," and noting in the story body that the letter said the information in the Post story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a February 2023 analysis, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote "that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who signed the letter, told Kessler, "There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five" of the letter. Politico stood by their report in a statement to Kessler.[74]

Both things can be true at once: the reporting on their letter can be a distortion of what they said, and what they said can be dishonest and politically motivated.