ilgreven - Tumblr blog

[ilgreven]

A 10-year-old gets raped, then gets put to death because she needed an emergency abortion to avoid dying.

That is what these fuckers want. It's not a byproduct; it's the end goal.

Donald Trump's new interview with Time magazine underscores the bleak consequences of what it really means to "leave abortion to the states."

Faced with questions about whether he’d enact a nationwide abortion ban, Trump has been running around claiming that he thinks abortion should be left to the states—but also criticizing state bans he considers too extreme, like those in Florida and Arizona. It’s a totally incoherent stance: Does he support states’ rights or not? He’s likely triangulating because he doesn’t want political blowback for laws that voters think are too extreme. But in a new interview, Trump blessed the most extreme effort states could take: Arresting women and pregnant people who have abortions in violation of state law.

Time magazine’s Eric Cortellessa spoke to Trump earlier this month and asked him how he’d govern if he wins the presidency in November. The reporter pressed Trump on abortion laws at both the state and federal level, given Trump’s Truth Social video where he seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t support federal legislation banning abortion, but also didn’t say he would veto such bills. Cortellessa wrote that Trump “decline[d] to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk.” So there’s that!

[ilgreven]

"You can't tell me what to do" would be a small problem if it weren't paired with "But I can tell you what to do."

Norms are not morality, but they serve a purpose, and people who instinctively reject both norms and morality are very very dangerous.

@collapsedsquid summed up the current dominant strain of libertarianism as "You can't tell me what to do" (in contrast to libertarianism as "Live and let live") and that really could be the slogan of right-wing groups all over the world these days.

Basic norms that used to govern internal and external politics all over the world are being tossed aside in the name of "You can't tell me what to do" with little or no consideration of what purpose they might serve or what might replace them.

This may explain the appeal of impulsive psychos being elected everywhere, a blatant disregard for norms is the best signal that other people can't tell you what to do.

[ilgreven]

And to hear some tell it, we're in the process of crucifying our Jesus, too!

sometimes America seems so Roman it feels like bad-writing: the wealthy middle class and mass military mobilisation that underpinned its 20th century dominance, the inevitable shift back towards moneyed interests and the rising cost of maintaining the Pax Americana, the rule of the seas that allowed logistical dominance and taking wars abroad instead of fighting on home turf, the unusually heavily armoured soldiers, the entertainment culture, the civic religion, might as well just call you guys TechnoRomans and be done with it

[ilgreven]

Question: who declares what is a "profitable" degree? What happens if a field that was profitable when you entered college becomes unprofitable by the time you leave it?

watching total forgiveness and thinking about the student loan situation in the US. i feel like...okay, so theres essentially three kinds of student loans.

small loans. say, less than 10K. obviously not great to have thousands of dollars in debt but like. fully handleable. you go to community college or whatever. it seems good that we have a system for providing these. dont need loan forgiveness, theyre small loans

large loans for profitable degrees. med school loans, law school loans, etc. these are kind of iffy, because theres a lot of artificial scarcity, and also if you fail out youre fucked. nonetheless, given that we have systems of expensive training for lucrative careers, its good that people with less money can also access these careers. so generally reasonable. dont need loan forgiveness, the career is lucrative lucrative

large loans for unprofitable degrees. loans for philosophy or acting or english degrees at expensive schools. these loans should not be made!!! its bad that we have a system that (aiui) basically guarantees you can get this loan. these loans are unlikely to be quickly/successfully repaid, so then to incentivize people to make them they have crazy interest rates and unusually strong anti-bankruptcy protections. its bad!

anyway. i think a combined mass student loan forgiveness and removal of this last class of loans would be reasonable

[ilgreven]

Joke's on them! I only use Cortana!

[ilgreven]

...she's not gonna fuck you, Don.

[ilgreven]

I mean, she has until...let's see here...

...huh...if she hasn't moved by now, she better have a summer home there...

CNN

—

US Rep. Lauren Boebert’s decision to switch congressional districts less than a year out from the 2024 election could be the key to preserving her political future. The firebrand is competing for the seat in a Whiter, wealthier and more Republican district — a recipe that could help keep the staunch conservative in Congress for another term.

Instead of seeking reelection in the 3rd District, where she currently resides, Boebert set her sights on the 4th District, which is on the other side of the state. The move avoids a potentially challenging rematch with Democrat Adam Frisch, who out-fundraised her through the fall, and places Boebert in a district with demographics and politics more favorable to her election.

[ilgreven]

It could be better spent trying to lure all the students and faculty at Florida state schools back from the states they fled to when DeSantis started on critical race theory...

The attempt by the Republican governor and presidential candidate to score points left many wondering if that state money could be better spent.

Never let it be said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t have his priorities straight.

That’s because his latest decision suggests he doesn’t.

[ilgreven]

The funny thing is, the entity they wanted to "defund" is still going strong. Especially since it barely got any funding from the government to begin with...

[ilgreven]

Meanwhile, I've had more likes on my posts by actual bots in the past 6 months than I've had over the previous 13 years...

"Bots" is a cover. We know what he's doing.

Woooow. Twitter even locked my account for "suspicious activity" for blocking blue check Musk sycophants, and made me do a "test" to "make sure you're human" in order to unlock it.

Can't wait to see him lose his frivolous lawsuit against Media Matters.

[ilgreven]

Difficulty: It was the same 90 hours that Tucker Carlson tried to get to stick right before he was fired from Fox News...

Prominent conservatives have shared footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, released by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, which one said means the "J6 Committee's violent insurrection narrative has crumbled."

On Friday, Johnson made around 90 hours of January 6 footage security footage available via a committee website. There, he said the remaining 44,000 hours of video, taken from surveillance and police body cameras, would be posted over the coming months, fulfilling a vow he made while running for speaker.

Prominent conservatives have shared footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, released by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, which one said means the "J6 Committee's violent insurrection narrative has crumbled."

On Friday, Johnson made around 90 hours of January 6 footage security footage available via a committee website. There, he said the remaining 44,000 hours of video, taken from surveillance and police body cameras, would be posted over the coming months, fulfilling a vow he made while running for speaker.

Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters stormed Congress on January 6, 2021 in a bid to stop the 2020 presidential election result being certified. The then-president baselessly said that it had been stolen from him via fraud. In the ensuing violence, 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot dead by law enforcement, and over 100 Capitol Police officers were injured. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

A number of short clips from the footage were shared on X, formerly Twitter, where some have received hundreds of thousands of views. Charlie Kirk, head of pro-Trump campaign group Turning Point USA, shared a 37-second clip showing police officers at one end of a congressional corridor and demonstrators at the other, without any apparent conflict between the two. Kirk wrote: "And just like that the J6 Committee's violent insurrection narrative has crumbled.

"The Capitol Police facilitated the protesters passage through the building. The vast majority of J6ers should be immediately released," Kirk added.

[ilgreven]

Revisiting this five years later, there are now Dollar Generals in the two small towns nearest me. The nearest "city" now has three Dollar Generals and a Dollar Tree (the Family Dollar got out with most of the rest of what was once its main business hub, which pretty much died when KMart did...)

And, there are TWENTY Dollar General stores in a twenty-five mile radius of my house. In contrast, there are seven Starbucks (two of which are within Kroger stores) and 18 Subways (three of which are within WalMarts).

When you're out-franchising Subway, you know you've got a problem...

“One Community is Showing How to Fight Back” is Buzzfeed-style clickbait titling crawling its way up the seriousness chain, but dollar stores becoming a central part of the American retail landscape is an interesting story

Of course we’ve been through this before when they were “five and dime” shops; F.W. Woolworth’s “Great Five Cent Store” first opened in the late 1870s when that was the equivalent of around $1.25 today

Looking it up I am charmed that the concept exists in other countries as the “pound shop”, “euro store”, and “100-yen shop”

[ilgreven]

Yes, those dark days when American tax rates for the upper brackets was 91%, and a grim tale of prosperity for the normal white American family. It would be a shame if the little people could afford to do things other than slave away for their corporate masters.

Oh so you mean to say the US economy's over, ok well thanks for the heads up [2 Nov 23]

[ilgreven]

Vegas should have odds on which comes first: Elmo's 4th birthday or Ash Ketchum's 11th birthday.

...Elmo is older than me.

[ilgreven]

"I stand with Palestine" means "I stand with Palestine."

It does not, in and of itself, mean any of the following:

*I stand with Hamas. *I stand with Hezbollah. *I stand with ISIS. *I stand with Iran. *I stand with Russia. *I stand with China. *I stand for Islam. *I stand against Judaism. *I stand against Christianity. *I stand against Israel. *I stand against America. *I do not believe Israel should exist. *I believe Israel got what they deserved. *I believe terrorism is a valid means of political action. *I don't believe a country has a right to defend itself. *I want to kill Jews.

"I stand with Palestine" means "I stand with Palestine."

[ilgreven]

"how is a movement where so much of the verbiage is about "teaching" men so entirely unprepared to teach men how to do anything? Doesn't anybody but me find that completely remarkable?"

Because "teaching" men is a bad-faith statement. They don't want to "teach men not to rape". They just don't want to be raped. They want *someone else* to do this...or for men to get it naturally, which, actually, most men do. The danger is the two groups that *don't* get it naturally are the sheltered types, including autistic men, who don't usually have those interactions and thus never learn enough to get it...and the narcissists and predators who for some reason (wealth, power, their own ego) think they *don't* have to get it.

And women see far more of the latter than the former, so when one of the former crosses the line, they're treated like one of the latter. And how women treat the narcissists is shunning and lumping in with "incels", so they can cease thinking of these men as people and thus don't have to teach them anything. Because the same feminists who yelled "teach men not to rape" also yelled "It's not my job to educate you".

This recent post by @dagny-hasshtaggart brought up some feelings that aren't really related to the original point being made.

One of the reasons "nerds" think through social theory in these systematic ways is because nerds are pretty much by definition people who do not have strong instincts in this area.

If you are good at, say, mathematics, you will have these "eureka!" moments; you'll just suddenly understand how to go about solving what was previously a knotty problem, and, if asked to explain how you got there, may have trouble explaining it other than that "the thought comes when it wills," as Nietzche said.

Some people don't tend to have nearly as many of these "eureka!" moments, and they probably struggle with math. Perhaps they need a lot more instruction to understand math than some other people, and maybe they will never achieve the deep understanding that allowed some few mathematicians to transform society.

Nonetheless they probably can learn some basic, or perhaps even fairly advanced math, if it is laid out systemically?

But people really rebel when I suggest that social behavior might work the same way, that a person without the instinct for it might nevertheless learn to get along well enough through directed practice.

In fact, I feel that right now society believes two things simultaneously:

That the social norms and niceties of traditional society are no longer morally justifiable or even practical on the base level, and society must engage in a radical reinvention of its social norms;

Social behavior exists only as a kind of eruption of pure instinct, and cannot really be taught as a skill; success in the social realm depends entirely on preconscious processes that aren't subject to rational thought or systemization.

And if you think that it would be incredibly disconcerting and difficult to believe both of those things at the same time, then congratulations on getting my point and thank you for coming to my ted talk.

When I talk about mainstream pop feminism, like I did below, I never know whether to include my personal reasoning. On the one hand, personal examples bring things into the concrete world, on the other hand, I feel like the sympathy I get, (Which I appreciate, but I have other issues besides just feminism) sometimes gets in the way of something that I deeply want other people to understand.

Which is that the kind of mainstream feminism espoused by your favorite podcaster and retweeted by your friends and repeated on tv shows is even more schizoid about this stuff then most of the rest of society.

This is a movement that (I have recently been reminded) spread the hashtag #TeachMenNotToRape a few years back and which is also, in my experience, completely and utterly at a loss when confronting a man who says, "I'm scared to express sexual desire because I don't feel like I know enough about consent to be sure that I'm actually getting it."

The reason you want heuristics, or rules, or whatever, is that they let you reason about unfamiliar situations.

Like, say I see an attractive girl at the bar and go over and ask for her number, and she feels creeped out by me. Almost everybody I've talked to says, "Well, you can accept those feelings with grace and respect them, but you can't take responsibility for somebody else feeling creeped out, that doesn't mean every woman you meet in a bar will feel that way."

But on the other hand, say I see an attractive girl in headphones riding the bus with me, should I go up and ask her for her number? Well, most people say, "Well, no, in that case most women would be really irritated and even creeped out, and since you can predict that you have a responsibility not to act that way."

The reason some nerd might want more than that is because, you can't make an exhaustive list of every situation, right? If I'm on a cruise ship or a see a cute cosplayer at a con, is that more like the bar situation or more like the bus situation?

Here's a conclusion I came to about ten years ago,

"Well, allistic people have a magical instinct that lets them know when those kind of expressions of attraction are okay and when they aren't. The reason I don't know which is which is because I'm autistic. And since I really don't know which situation is which, the only respectful thing to do is to never risk being wrong. But that shouldn't matter right? Because Women Like Sex As Much As Men Do(tm) so eventually, since I'm going to parties and hanging out in really progressive spaces, women will ask me out pretty often and then I won't have to take those risks of hurting people."

This is where my allistic, feminist friends just grab the bridge of their nose and have to go, "Well, no, it doesn't work that way, I mean, those are things that I say all the time and you should still believe them, just not in this context, so-"

And that just kicks the can down the road, right? Now my new question is, "How do I tell the feminist advice that every guy should follow apart from the stuff that's meant for like, the alpha male creeps but not for me? And isn't it still really really dangerous for me to mistake one for the other?"

At which point they try to fob me off onto a therapist because I'm obviously a hopeless case.

And I guess I have two points:

The first is, how is a movement where so much of the verbiage is about "teaching" men so entirely unprepared to teach men how to do anything? Doesn't anybody but me find that completely remarkable?

Second, the thing that unites a ton of counter-feminist movements is not "men just want an excuse to be sexist" nor is it that those movements are "more logical" except maybe in the very limited way that they are concerned with collapsing that schizoid mental state where men must, and yet cannot, be taught.

They offer heuristics and ideas that allow men to make systematic sense of the parts of the world that they do not otherwise instinctually grasp. This can be done in a positive way which looks honestly at the world or in a deeply toxic and negative way based on completely untrue premises (e.g. radical inceldom) but I'm not convinced it can be done at all in the context of mainstream feminism.

You can't tell people that they need to go elsewhere for instruction and then be surprised and offended when they do so!

[ilgreven]

I wonder how many of these planes are called UFOs and alien spacecraft because "airplanes can't hover!"