The Refuge of the Toads

Old subthreads
deLurch
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68101

Post by deLurch »

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Such contempt for the freedom of speech when it's someone from the other side. I've said some pretty outrageous things over the years on this forum. I wonder how many people would be willing to report me to my employer.
Dear Employer of RoboKitty,
Althought RoboKitty has calmed down xir's roleplaying as a Robot Kat-Kin in recent years, I wish to alert you to the fact that xe regularly posts photos of a kitten's ani. Please fill xer's cubical with kitty litter & katz-nipz in retribution.
Signed,
-Xe Interntez

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68102

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.

VickyCaramel
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68103

Post by VickyCaramel »

Wild Zontargs wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote:Oh, well, if people want to become the right-wing version of the SJWs they're free to do so.

I thought all people here cared about liberal democratic values, but if Vox Day's insane rants about getting SJWs or even simply people you think are SJWs fired for their ideas are normalized as "part of the cultural war" I have to assume I was wrong.
ibid:
Once the enemy sets a precedent by utilizing a certain tactic, you are not only free to utilize that tactic against him, but you must do so if you wish to prevent him from continuing to use it successfully against you.

This is a principle that makes many anti-SJWs uncomfortable, but it is important to understand that what distinguishes us from the SJWs is not the type of air we breathe or the sort of tactics upon which we rely, but our ultimate objectives. Those ends do not justify the means, nor do they need to do so, as the means are fully justified by our enemy's use of them. The ends simply serve to make it perfectly clear that we are not them and they are not us. The reason the Germans did not use gas in World War II after introducing it in World War I was not because they had become more civilized, but because the French and British responded in kind. It is the ultimate purposes for which the tactics are used that matter, not the tactics themselves.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

We have always set aside civilized behaviour in order to defend civilization. We do it with external threats; when the threat comes from within this is an even greater danger which justifies greater retaliation, which is why we traditionally execute traitors.

free thoughtpolice
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68104

Post by free thoughtpolice »

I always had deLurch pegged as the bad guy. :ugeek:

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68105

Post by Brive1987 »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
I haven't followed the mega-seriarse argument.

But if we have gone fascist would it be an opportune moment to revive the Oggy kidnap plan? *

* Asking for a friend.

rayshul
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68106

Post by rayshul »

I think the tide is turning without us having to employ SJW tactics. Brexit, Trump, and even the MtV video backlash seems to demonstrate that people are finally waking up to these gobshites. Also, the use of the term SJW.

VickyCaramel
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68107

Post by VickyCaramel »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68108

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Really? wrote:snip
As always, I love the thoughtfulness of your argument. I have to disagree that the Trump election is going to have a big effect on the problem. The SJWs (who still control universities and the media) are emboldened. They are fighting Hitler in their time. I'm not sure of the effect that the Supreme Court will have on SJW policies, though I'm sure that the Court will annoy the left in a number of ways for decades to come because of Trump.

I don't know if I agree about your idea that the Democrats will wise up. What have they changed? What faults have they admitted? Instead of admitting that Hillary was a bad candidate at the wrong time, they're trying to start a war with Russia.

I also love the idea of confronting SJW bullshit in court, but where and how can that realistically happen? Zarna Joshi is a piece of garbage, but she didn't break the law, really. The kind of lawbreaking SJWs do is in their personal lives. They gain and consolidate power by lying about victimhood and collecting money based upon that fake victimhood.

Instead of researching his interests, Jordan Peterson is forced to spend a lot of his time fighting SJW bullshit. Instead of fighting pseudoscience and fake medical shit, skeptics are now forced to spend a lot of time fighting SJW bullshit. Instead of fighting church and state violations, the American Humanist Association is fighting humanists about SJW bullshit.

It seems like we just need to accept that we're going into a kind of Dark Age until these 18 year olds who are directing federal policy finally realize they are insane and alone and that they are the problem.
I agree with that. I think the election of Trump is going to cause some nominally sane left-leaning folk to ignore SJW bullshit for the false sake of unity. He may give them some legitimate grievance to focus on.

But again, if we look like cunts for cuntish behavior, they won't look at the provocation. They will look at the behavior and judge us accordingly.

We are two small aspects of a larger society that seek to influence the whole, SJWs and those opposed. We better give them a difference to focus on, not who-started-what.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68109

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

VickyCaramel wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.
Yep, there it is. Ends and means and no honor amongst anybody.

I won't become what I despise to fight it. What the hell would be the point?

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68110

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Brive1987 wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
I haven't followed the mega-seriarse argument.

But if we have gone fascist would it be an opportune moment to revive the Oggy kidnap plan? *

* Asking for a friend.
Kidnap is totes cool now. Assassination, blackmail we must stop at nothing to protect Our Way of Life. The velvet glove of mockery has failed, we now must use the iron fist of anything goes. We have met the enemy, and he be us, but we will prevail! Nailing their throat to the floor, no less.

Kirbmarc
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68111

Post by Kirbmarc »

VickyCaramel wrote:You can't actually believe that... when his profession is teaching politics, you think he can keep his politics separate... when his is teaching the exact branch of politics which he has been spouting off about... really? Come on, you are having me on!
It's the same damn thing!
I don't want to be a condescending cunt. I really don't. But...I've worked in academia. I've met people with strong, even extreme political convictions who were nonetheless able to keep them out of class, even if their classes were about political philosophy or international politics. I'm not saying that G.C. is one of those people, but he might be.

If the guy made the exact same political statements in class there'd have been an uproar of offended parents which would have reached the media before the tweets. Parents complain about pretty much everything (yes even parents of uni students), and news of outrageous shit like this travel fast.

It's possible that he might repeat the same arguments in a subtler way, but again we don't know. Some of his students have actually vouched for him on twitter and said that he allows open debate in his classes. Again, I don't know if this is true, but it might be. I'm sure that Drexel U people know more about this than us.
Asking that it be recorded changes the nature of the meeting. If it is all recorded the Dean or head of department cannot just call him in for a bollocking and say "what the hell are you thinking you asshole, shut the fuck up" (I paraphrase). It cannot really be a tribunal either, it would have to take the form of some kind of inquiry, discussion and resolution. It is not as unreasonable as some would make out, it might even help him keep his job.

Of course, this gives the genocidal commie another opportunity to double down and insist that for the last 18 months he has just been trolling about white genocide and throwing people into gulags, at which point he should be asked to make his true position clear on those subjects. He will then be trapped in that lie. If he mentions it again we can either throw it back at him that he is trolling now or lying before.
Except that he can easily get out of trouble by showing that he keeps his personal convictions out of the class. Drexel U doesn't own his free time. The tweets are enough to cause doubts and to make them distance from his positions, but if he can argue that it's only his personal political belief he'd end up fine.
The real fact of the matter is that we already know what his real position is. He believes there is no such thing as race and so it makes no difference if we all end up coffee coloured and he is hoping for that.... because it is white culture he really hopes to end, because white culture is anti-communist. This isn't even internally consistent, it confuses culture and race, and contradicts biological reality, and he has made various contradictory statements to this while trying to overlay oppressor/oppressed onto white/coloured.
There's no such thing as "white culture", either. This isn't about race or culture in the end, it's about politics, specifically about Communism as "liberation" from the Evil Colonial Capitalism. Race and culture are red herrings for the commies (pun intended).
I am not sure if the university will see enough of his old tweets to figure this out and challenge him on it, but that will just make things more interesting later.
The uni will concentrate on two things:

a) make sure that G.C.'s tweets cannot be linked to them;

b) review G.C.'s syllabus, looking for outrageous shit like his tweets.

That's it. They will not care about his twitter feed unless something similar pops up in his syllabus.
Of course I doubt they will record it. They will however probably have to issue a statement which will amount to the same thing as we will find out the official positions of both parties. We can then hold them to it.
I can already guess what the statement will say something along the line of:

"Drexel University (D U) confirms its position as an inclusive structure for all students, regardless of political affiliation, gender, race or creed, yadda yadda yadda.. Therefore D U finds it appropriate to confirm its condemnation of Prof. G.C. sectarian and insensitive comments. Prof. G.C. has apologized for the controversial content and the association of his comments to D U, and confirms that his comments are a representation of his own political preference and/or to be intended as private statements with no association with D U, etc. Prof. G.C. has welcomed an open and fair review of his syllabus, which has concluded that no inappropriate content was found. Nevertheless prof. G.C. assures D U that he will remove any reference to D U in his private social media, etc."
...and then, you better believe we will go after him, not as just another asshole shitposting on twitter, but as a university professor. Thats when we can nail his neck to the floor.
You don't need any record of anything to slam G.C. for his opinions. You can already do it now. Sargon should invite the guy to talk, or at least invite someone to speak on his behalf. Clobber him or her or them in public, show the contradictions, ask uncomfortable questions.

Kirbmarc
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68112

Post by Kirbmarc »

Really? wrote: I also love the idea of confronting SJW bullshit in court, but where and how can that realistically happen?
Imagine this scenario:

-Jordan Peterson stubbornly refuses to call students with special pronouns

-he's suspended/fired because of that

-he brings his case to court, arguing that the special pronoun rules are against the First Amendment of the US constitution, and that his civil rights have been violated

-he wins. Special pronoun laws are declare unconstitutional. This is a huge blow to SJWs.

Is this unrealistic (serious question, not a rhetoric one)?

deLurch
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68113

Post by deLurch »

rayshul wrote:Hey look, more hoaxes. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... slur-home/
I am really struggling to think of any "hate crime" recently that was real. I mean any of them. This is some fucking dumb shit.
Well let me point out one well researched example for you.

Joe & Pat Jude (slum lords of $7k-$15k homes in the US) legally physically evicted shitty tenants (do I earn my interntz points back now) 3-4 day before Thanksgiving (which would be similar to physically evicting a couple 3-4 days before Christmas in kiwi terms). A shitty couple that would show multiple arrests & evictions on the most cursory of searches. And that shitty couple reacted as the slumlords are used to by trashing the place. But in this scenario, in addition to spray painting "slum lord" inside the unkempt apartment, they also include the phrase "die nigger" & swastikas.

So although the slum lords Joe & Pat Jude are used to their rentals being trashed in reprisal, they were legitimately assaulted with a hate crime.

The motivation was personal. But it does qualify as a hate crime.

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68114

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Kirbmarc wrote:
Really? wrote: I also love the idea of confronting SJW bullshit in court, but where and how can that realistically happen?
Imagine this scenario:

-Jordan Peterson stubbornly refuses to call students with special pronouns

-he's suspended/fired because of that

-he brings his case to court, arguing that the special pronoun rules are against the First Amendment of the US constitution, and that his civil rights have been violated

-he wins. Special pronoun laws are declare unconstitutional. This is a huge blow to SJWs.

Is this unrealistic (serious question, not a rhetoric one)?
Excellent thought, but he is a filthy foreigner, a Canadian no less. But not being a racist I think no less of him because of that.

rayshul
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68115

Post by rayshul »

deLurch wrote:
rayshul wrote:Hey look, more hoaxes. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... slur-home/
I am really struggling to think of any "hate crime" recently that was real. I mean any of them. This is some fucking dumb shit.
Well let me point out one well researched example for you.

Joe & Pat Jude (slum lords of $7k-$15k homes in the US) legally physically evicted shitty tenants (do I earn my interntz points back now) 3-4 day before Thanksgiving (which would be similar to physically evicting a couple 3-4 days before Christmas in kiwi terms). A shitty couple that would show multiple arrests & evictions on the most cursory of searches. And that shitty couple reacted as the slumlords are used to by trashing the place. But in this scenario, in addition to spray painting "slum lord" inside the unkempt apartment, they also include the phrase "die nigger" & swastikas.

So although the slum lords Joe & Pat Jude are used to their rentals being trashed in reprisal, they were legitimately assaulted with a hate crime.

The motivation was personal. But it does qualify as a hate crime.
Man the term hate crime is such bollocks.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68116

Post by Brive1987 »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
I haven't followed the mega-seriarse argument.

But if we have gone fascist would it be an opportune moment to revive the Oggy kidnap plan? *

* Asking for a friend.
Kidnap is totes cool now. Assassination, blackmail we must stop at nothing to protect Our Way of Life. The velvet glove of mockery has failed, we now must use the iron fist of anything goes. We have met the enemy, and he be us, but we will prevail! Nailing their throat to the floor, no less.
:dance:

Re Peez. I'm thinking that given no one cares about his mean-man atheist pitch away more and given his feminism worked out so well ...... Maybe he sees his Red Dawn panto against Trump as his Next Big Thing to remain relevant. Betcha his bathtub is kept filled with water.

Really?
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68117

Post by Really? »

Kirbmarc wrote:
Really? wrote: I also love the idea of confronting SJW bullshit in court, but where and how can that realistically happen?
Imagine this scenario:

-Jordan Peterson stubbornly refuses to call students with special pronouns

-he's suspended/fired because of that

-he brings his case to court, arguing that the special pronoun rules are against the First Amendment of the US constitution, and that his civil rights have been violated

-he wins. Special pronoun laws are declare unconstitutional. This is a huge blow to SJWs.

Is this unrealistic (serious question, not a rhetoric one)?
And while Jordan Peterson is fired/on suspension

-the school covers his classes with an SJW approved by the fucking weirdos in an attempt to appease them

-more young people (primarily women, because fewer men go to college) are taught bullshit as dogma

-Peterson, financially crippled from years of unemployment, maybe...maybe wins the case.

-the newspapers are filled with SJW editorials about the miscarriage of justice that took place.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68118

Post by Lsuoma »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?

ROBOKiTTY
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68119

Post by ROBOKiTTY »

Billie from Ockham wrote: So glad that they brought in a scientist. Non-scientists often get the facts wrong.

Then I got to 4:40 and heard PZ say that "these [greenhouse] gases are largely generated from human sources."

Since when does 4% qualify as "largely"?

But asking a biologist to know about the sources of CO2 is probably asking too much.
Please watch this video:

[youtube][/youtube]

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68120

Post by ROBOKiTTY »

Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
The FT might still have me on ignore, but here are the relevant quotes:
VickyCaramel wrote:[lattachment=0]Anticommunist_Literature_1950s.png[/lattachment]

McCarthyism ended, now the media and universities are full of Marxists... just sayin'!
VickyCaramel wrote: Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.

deLurch
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68121

Post by deLurch »

rayshul wrote:Man the term hate crime is such bollocks.
OK. Yeah, I get you. But it begs the question. Beyond false flags, what percentage of "hate crimes" are due to personal reasons and not due to the desire for ethnic intimidation.

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68122

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
VickyCaramel has several times commended the effectiveness of McCarthyism and seems to be calling for similar tactics.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68123

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Or unignore RoboKitty's post above.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68124

Post by Brive1987 »

Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
I'd be very happy to participate in some kind of star chamber to determine Vicky's un-pitism.

Though I always thought McCarthyism was Americanism with its sleeves rolled.

This is all very confusing.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68125

Post by Lsuoma »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
VickyCaramel has several times commended the effectiveness of McCarthyism and seems to be calling for similar tactics.
Directly endorsing, by that name?

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68126

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Brive1987 wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
I'd be very happy to participate in some kind of star chamber to determine Vicky's un-pitism.

Though I always thought McCarthyism was Americanism with its sleeves rolled.

This is all very confusing.
Why? No pit rules were broken and I encourage her to speak freely. Just expressing my wonderment that a generally universally reviled concept of overseeing authority would gain traction in a bastion of free speech.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68127

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Lsuoma wrote:snip previous
Directly endorsing, by that name?
VickyCaramel wrote:
[lattachment=0]Anticommunist_Literature_1950s.png[/lattachment]

McCarthyism ended, now the media and universities are full of Marxists... just sayin'!


VickyCaramel wrote:
Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68128

Post by Lsuoma »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:snip previous
Directly endorsing, by that name?
VickyCaramel wrote:
[lattachment=0]Anticommunist_Literature_1950s.png[/lattachment]

McCarthyism ended, now the media and universities are full of Marxists... just sayin'!


VickyCaramel wrote:
Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.
So, no. Cool.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68129

Post by ROBOKiTTY »

Kirbmarc wrote:Oh, well, if people want to become the right-wing version of the SJWs they're free to do so.

I thought all people here cared about liberal democratic values, but if Vox Day's insane rants about getting SJWs or even simply people you think are SJWs fired for their ideas are normalized as "part of the cultural war" I have to assume I was wrong.
I'm nearly as skeptical about liberal democratic values as I am about most other forms of government. Liberal democracy is generally the best known form of government at improving people's lives, but they are not the endpoint in politics. In fact, a cynical analysis of liberal democracy would suggest that it merely offloads misery abroad. Why else would democrats be so generous with foreign 'aid' and consistently stay allies with tyrants and the worst dictatorships? For all the talk about regional stability and national security, the west could abandon Saudi Arabia and let it be toppled by Islamists, and the result would not seriously be that much worse than Dubya's invasion of Iraq, which spawned the postmodern caliphate. And realistically, the caliphate is barely a blip on the national security radar in the west.

Liberal democracy both empowers a barely educated and easily manipulated mass and a festering elite. It wastes resources in a way that has set our biosphere on course for a major crash from which intelligent life as we know it may not recover again (namely, we've used up so much of the fossil fuels and locked so many resources away in high-entropy form that a future civilization would not be able to make use of them). It is overly reliant on perpetual growth, which cannot be sustained. It's a self-congratulatory system that sees itself as the pinnacle of human progress. I only see it as a potential local optimum that cannot even save humanity from itself, and if a better alternative should arrive, the cult of worship that has been built up around liberal democracy would surely prove to be a dangerous obstacle to overcome.

For an example, look at how the once progressive US constitution is now a secular altar at which reactionaries block all others from making improvements.
deLurch wrote: Dear Employer of RoboKitty,
Althought RoboKitty has calmed down xir's roleplaying as a Robot Kat-Kin in recent years, I wish to alert you to the fact that xe regularly posts photos of a kitten's ani. Please fill xer's cubical with kitty litter & katz-nipz in retribution.
Signed,
-Xe Interntez
:naughty:

Really?
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68130

Post by Really? »

Brive1987 wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
I'd be very happy to participate in some kind of star chamber to determine Vicky's un-pitism.

Though I always thought McCarthyism was Americanism with its sleeves rolled.

This is all very confusing.
We need to follow PZ's lead and start some kind of Slymepit Ethics Committee.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68131

Post by Brive1987 »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote: Why? No pit rules were broken and I encourage her to speak freely. Just expressing my wonderment that a generally universally reviled concept of overseeing authority would gain traction in a bastion of free speech.
I was going for absurdist humour - a pit star chamber to review someone accused of mcCarthyism.

As always I appear to have only amused myself. :?

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68132

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:snip previous
Directly endorsing, by that name?
VickyCaramel wrote:
[lattachment=0]Anticommunist_Literature_1950s.png[/lattachment]

McCarthyism ended, now the media and universities are full of Marxists... just sayin'!


VickyCaramel wrote:
Virtually every US spy after McCarthyism was motivated by greed or ego not by ideology. McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.
So, no. Cool.
How is that not endorsing McCarthyism?

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68133

Post by HunnyBunny »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
Explain?
VickyCaramel has several times commended the effectiveness of McCarthyism and seems to be calling for similar tactics.
All tactics are considered acceptable when trying to stop the White race turning coffee-coloured.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68134

Post by ROBOKiTTY »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote: So, no. Cool.
How is that not endorsing McCarthyism?
Perhaps just not the manner of endorsement that would necessitate administrative attention.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68135

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

ROBOKiTTY wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote: So, no. Cool.
How is that not endorsing McCarthyism?
Perhaps just not the manner of endorsement that would necessitate administrative attention.
Reckon I'm a bit dense at times.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68136

Post by ROBOKiTTY »

Kirbmarc wrote: There's no big deal about "white genocide". The only big deal is that it shows evidence of SJW assholery/double standards.

By the way there's no big deal about an imminent "black genocide" or "asian genocide" in the US, either. No Black or Asian person is going to die because some idiot no one's ever heard of has a few wires loose.
But on the contrary, this seems to be a big deal to Sargon, Vicky, et al. Why, out of all the people with extreme opinions, did this one grind their gears so much that they feel the need to go between him and his employer? What is so specifically threatening about some guy talking about white genocide, compared to all the other crazies that have popped up on their radar?

Dunno why you felt the need to write the second paragraph. I would contest the last sentence (maybe it's a pedantic distinction to make). The Charleston shooting was just a few months ago. Certainly more white/black/Asian people are going to die in the near future because of certain people whose minds are warped by hate, probably resulting in blacks topping the list, whites in the middle, and Asians in last place. My point was that this academic, whose name I still haven't bothered to learn how to spell, is exceedingly unlikely to be able to influence anyone to commit violence.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68137

Post by dogen »

VickyCaramel wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote: Why? What's the point? You've said some pretty extreme stuff here on the pit (you admitted that your position was extreme yourself), like the fact that you wish that Israel would disappear as a political entity and that jews should basically leave the area and move elsewhere. Do you think it'd be fair if some ADL goons exposed you and asked you to publicly defend your position for your shitposting here, or retract and denounce your position? Would it be fair if you worked in a university and Israel supporters started a petition for a "public record" of a meeting between you and your faculty?

I don't think it'd be fair, I'd go as far as to call it an attempt to stifle controversial speech. Why is it any different for Professor Brutal Commie?
I have said nothing I haven't already defended in bigger arenas than this. The reason I am annon is that those cunts WILL come to your house and break your legs. It now turns out that George Ciccariello is fully in support of introducing baseball bats to the legs of people he disagrees with, in the name of "self defense" of course.
http://archive.is/KQtk6

This is a political battle. You would let him run away, I would hunt him down and corner him and have the battle wherever it suits me best in beating him. Your argument is complete bollocks, we are at war with bad ideas, who gives a fuck it we have a chilling effect on them because they are unable to defend them? They only spout these bad ideas where they are not allowed to be challenged.
If the slympit is only ever going to document shit and fight on the SJWs own terms, it will continue to be ineffective.
"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68138

Post by rayshul »

deLurch wrote:
rayshul wrote:Man the term hate crime is such bollocks.
OK. Yeah, I get you. But it begs the question. Beyond false flags, what percentage of "hate crimes" are due to personal reasons and not due to the desire for ethnic intimidation.
I suspect it's pretty goshdarn high. The description you've given of that situation is people who are getting fucked 'cos they're slum lords. It's a magic word which suddenly turns it from a shitty dispute to a HATE CRIME.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68139

Post by AndrewV69 »

Remember this one?

[youtube][/youtube]

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68140

Post by Brive1987 »

Carrier Fisher's tweet just before her heart exploded was pretty prescient.

Cardio beach?

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68141

Post by Brive1987 »

We are visiting our puppy tomorrow before taking possession later in Jan.

The expectation is he will look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/SDbfHZ1.jpg

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68142

Post by MarcusAu »

ERV wrote:
MarcusAu wrote:
Cheer up - by this time next year we might all be gone.
Thats optimistic! Im wondering if anyone is going to see the new year.

Also Greg Laden literally tried to get me kicked out of school for the social/political opinions I hold so some yall need to meditate on that for a bit.
Well, in his defense, Greg Laden is a pathetic ineffective douche.

Service Dog
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68143

Post by Service Dog »

I binge watched The Get Down on Netflix tonight.

I'm getting old. When things hit close to home, I get maudlin. The show clenched my heart by using the Chelsea Hotel as a location/ by re-creating the lobby of the World Trade Center too perfectly/ by depicting my friend CRASH as the face of train-painting graffiti/ by reminding me I really-was a scrappy kid in an underdog rap crew, long ago... and that it was like an impossible fairy-tale... it wasn't some blase' hipster adult career move. It was sweaty, clammy, feverish, exuberant.

The kids in The Get Down story are trying to get out of Bronx squalor, to Manhattan. Just like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. My trajectory has been backward: I landed right in the big city action, with full access, then gradually found myself priced-out, further & further into the outer boroughs. Only now do I have a 'I don't belong here' trepidation, when I return to my old stomping grounds for work or social life.

One more bleary-eyed observation: The Get Down's lead starlet is Herizen Guardiola-- a name like a Star Wars character. Rightly so. She's the new Carrie Fisher, as far as I'm concerned. Same youthful edge. Same amazing rack.

A little Baz Luhrmann goes a long way, the show has cheezy bits, sometimes it dragggggsss onnnn, but ultimately it pays off.

[youtube][/youtube]

Kirbmarc
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68144

Post by Kirbmarc »

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Dunno why you felt the need to write the second paragraph. I would contest the last sentence (maybe it's a pedantic distinction to make). The Charleston shooting was just a few months ago. Certainly more white/black/Asian people are going to die in the near future because of certain people whose minds are warped by hate, probably resulting in blacks topping the list, whites in the middle, and Asians in last place. My point was that this academic, whose name I still haven't bothered to learn how to spell, is exceedingly unlikely to be able to influence anyone to commit violence.
A shooting isn't "genocide", otherwise you'd also have to admit that the Paris shooting was "French genocide" and that the BLM guy who shot five cops was committing "law enforcement genocide". Dylan Roof was arrested, not put in charge of shock troops to hunt down uppity blacks.

There is no institutional support for mass killing of any specific group in the US, and it's extremely unlikely that there will be in the immediate future, no matter what the SJWs think.

If we want to talk about the most deadly terrorist groups in the US they're not white supremacist terrorist, they're muslim supremacists, so I don't see how you can be so sure that black people will "top the list" of people who are going to die because of "minds warped by hate".

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68145

Post by Kirbmarc »

ROBOKiTTY wrote:I'm nearly as skeptical about liberal democratic values as I am about most other forms of government. Liberal democracy is generally the best known form of government at improving people's lives, but they are not the endpoint in politics. In fact, a cynical analysis of liberal democracy would suggest that it merely offloads misery abroad. Why else would democrats be so generous with foreign 'aid' and consistently stay allies with tyrants and the worst dictatorships?
Cronyism, lobbies, special interests. All flaws of everyone system that can be conceived which has humans controlling it.
For all the talk about regional stability and national security, the west could abandon Saudi Arabia and let it be toppled by Islamists, and the result would not seriously be that much worse than Dubya's invasion of Iraq, which spawned the postmodern caliphate. And realistically, the caliphate is barely a blip on the national security radar in the west.
Considering the widespread appeal of the ideas of caliphate in muslim communities in the west and in the MENA countries I'd say that it's far more than a "blip". Also Saudi Arabia finances, not stops Islamists. The idea that Saudi Arabia somehow prevents the caliphate ideas instead of spreading them is the propaganda of the Saudi lobby.
Liberal democracy both empowers a barely educated and easily manipulated mass and a festering elite
Show me a political system which prevents both of those things. The majority of people don't educate themselves about all the nuances of politics or science and never will. They simply don't have either the time to educate themselves or the skills to do it or the interest to do it. And people in liberal democracies are in general better educated than those in other systems. Festering élites exist in every system.
It wastes resources in a way that has set our biosphere on course for a major crash from which intelligent life as we know it may not recover again (namely, we've used up so much of the fossil fuels and locked so many resources away in high-entropy form that a future civilization would not be able to make use of them). It is overly reliant on perpetual growth, which cannot be sustained. It's a self-congratulatory system that sees itself as the pinnacle of human progress. I only see it as a potential local optimum that cannot even save humanity from itself, and if a better alternative should arrive, the cult of worship that has been built up around liberal democracy would surely prove to be a dangerous obstacle to overcome.
Successful systems are all reliant on perpetual growth. If someone ever decides to drop out of growth they're quickly crushed/wiped out by those who do. Non-democratic countries have wasted fossil fuel just like liberal democracies. Fossil fuels have simply been the most efficient way to produce growth.

There is no better alternative to liberal democracy right now, and I don't see any alternative in the next future. It's better to try and fix its problems that to discard it altogether because it's not perfect. Liberal democracy is much more malleable to change than other forms of government.

There is no perfect system anyway. The Skynet god won't come to save us.
For an example, look at how the once progressive US constitution is now a secular altar at which reactionaries block all others from making improvements.
The US constitution has been changed in the past plenty of times, and nothing says it can't happen again. The US constitution is actually much easier to change that the constitution of, say, Italy.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68146

Post by feathers »

free thoughtpolice wrote:[youtube][/youtube]
I expected a fumorous youtube mashup explaining how Leia met her demise, instead I get Alex Jones. I feel rickrolled.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68147

Post by piginthecity »

Kirbmarc wrote: But yes, there are some actors in the "anti-SJW community" (whatever that is) that aren't in to defend their rights, analyze data and criticize stupidity but to outright attack and more or less ban from public discourse an entire side of politics just like the SJWs have done.
Yeah ... I think this year we have seen the first spinnings of that. Just as the SJW's peeled away from scepticism abut four/five years ago leaving us, perhaps we're seeing a cultish "anti-SJW" community begin to form, which, too, will develop its own jargon and have its own clan-signalling methods and its own warrior-leaders. I'm not really talking about the pit so much or old-stagers such as Sargon, but I get the feeling that there are some younger you-tubers not having an atheist/Sceptical background specifically who are animated by an emotional anti-SJWism and have made it their life's work.

Ape+lust
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68148

Post by Ape+lust »

Brive1987 wrote:We are visiting our puppy tomorrow before taking possession later in Jan.

The expectation is he will look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/SDbfHZ1.jpg
Marshmallow floof! With a coat like that, you and doggy will need a lot of cold beer and trips to the beach. I'm sure a vet would put that in writing.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68149

Post by Oglebart »

Brive1987 wrote:We are visiting our puppy tomorrow before taking possession later in Jan.

The expectation is he will look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/SDbfHZ1.jpg
Very cute, all that white fur will take some maintaining I guess? Do they need to be clipped too?

By the way, my Border Terrier Roscoe is 5 months old now and has been an absolute delight. Deciding to get a dog was the best decision I have made in a long while.
Attachments
Roscoe 4 months.jpg
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68150

Post by Kirbmarc »

By the way, Robokitty (allow me to type your username this way please, it's easier), if you have some ideas about a "better alternative" to liberal democracy I'd like to hear them. I remember you propose more AI control of specific sectors, but that seems to be a really vague and unlikely system. If you have something more detailed, speak up.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68151

Post by Aneris »

piginthecity wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote: But yes, there are some actors in the "anti-SJW community" (whatever that is) that aren't in to defend their rights, analyze data and criticize stupidity but to outright attack and more or less ban from public discourse an entire side of politics just like the SJWs have done.
Yeah ... I think this year we have seen the first spinnings of that. Just as the SJW's peeled away from scepticism abut four/five years ago leaving us, perhaps we're seeing a cultish "anti-SJW" community begin to form, which, too, will develop its own jargon and have its own clan-signalling methods and its own warrior-leaders. I'm not really talking about the pit so much or old-stagers such as Sargon, but I get the feeling that there are some younger you-tubers not having an atheist/Sceptical background specifically who are animated by an emotional anti-SJWism and have made it their life's work.
The tyical Anti-SJW faction that represents the detractors most visibly these days, from Sargon to Amazing Atheist come across as pearl clutching offended as the SJW themselves. They still go after easy targets, engage with subjects only in the shallowest manner and their opposition, in the main, is not as prinicipled it may seem. They simply have a different opinion, but they can't articulate what it is, they oppose exactly. They made out a different tribe, and as such have permission to disgree with what they say.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68152

Post by feathers »

Wild Zontargs wrote:To quote Vox Day's "SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police" (this would be the extreme form of the pro-retaliation argument):
Strategy 4: Deny them employment.

This is the strategic element that will likely prove most difficult for even the most serious anti-SJW to accept, but it is a necessary one. Remember, turnabout is fair play and striking back in kind is justice.
Our keyboard warrior is asking for suspending the rule of law. He wouldn't last a day without the protections the law gives to demagogues from mob justice.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68153

Post by Brive1987 »

Oglebart wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:We are visiting our puppy tomorrow before taking possession later in Jan.

The expectation is he will look like this:

[i.mg]http://i.imgur.com/SDbfHZ1.jpg[/img]
Very cute, all that white fur will take some maintaining I guess? Do they need to be clipped too?

By the way, my Border Terrier Roscoe is 5 months old now and has been an absolute delight. Deciding to get a dog was the best decision I have made in a long while.

Nice one! I hope we have as good an outcome !

No clipping for us - just a shed load of brushing. I have it on reliable advice that a well groomed Samoyed is a mega magnet. What could go wrong?

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... Rz1k6-YBF-

Yep. My life is over.

ERV
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68154

Post by ERV »

Service Dog wrote:I binge watched The Get Down on Netflix tonight.

I'm getting old. When things hit close to home, I get maudlin. The show clenched my heart by using the Chelsea Hotel as a location/ by re-creating the lobby of the World Trade Center too perfectly/ by depicting my friend CRASH as the face of train-painting graffiti/ by reminding me I really-was a scrappy kid in an underdog rap crew, long ago... and that it was like an impossible fairy-tale... it wasn't some blase' hipster adult career move. It was sweaty, clammy, feverish, exuberant.

The kids in The Get Down story are trying to get out of Bronx squalor, to Manhattan. Just like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. My trajectory has been backward: I landed right in the big city action, with full access, then gradually found myself priced-out, further & further into the outer boroughs. Only now do I have a 'I don't belong here' trepidation, when I return to my old stomping grounds for work or social life.

One more bleary-eyed observation: The Get Down's lead starlet is Herizen Guardiola-- a name like a Star Wars character. Rightly so. She's the new Carrie Fisher, as far as I'm concerned. Same youthful edge. Same amazing rack.

A little Baz Luhrmann goes a long way, the show has cheezy bits, sometimes it dragggggsss onnnn, but ultimately it pays off.

[youtube][/youtube]
:-D

LOVED IT!

Watched with my partner (non-American), giddily pointed out all the real parts. "AHHH HES REAL! AHHHH THAT REALLY HAPPENED! AAAAH!" The fantastical, mythical retelling of history, I loved it :)

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68155

Post by Wild Zontargs »

piginthecity wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote: But yes, there are some actors in the "anti-SJW community" (whatever that is) that aren't in to defend their rights, analyze data and criticize stupidity but to outright attack and more or less ban from public discourse an entire side of politics just like the SJWs have done.
Yeah ... I think this year we have seen the first spinnings of that. Just as the SJW's peeled away from scepticism abut four/five years ago leaving us, perhaps we're seeing a cultish "anti-SJW" community begin to form, which, too, will develop its own jargon and have its own clan-signalling methods and its own warrior-leaders. I'm not really talking about the pit so much or old-stagers such as Sargon, but I get the feeling that there are some younger you-tubers not having an atheist/Sceptical background specifically who are animated by an emotional anti-SJWism and have made it their life's work.
Some would argue that this is not new:
Gamer Gate: Three Stages to Obit
OCTOBER 21, 2014 BY CLARK

A lot of things been written about Gamer Gate. Some of them wrong, some of them stupid, some of them both.

A lot of the confusion (both accidental and malicious) is because Gamer Gate is three separate things clustered together under one name.

The Three Stages of Gamer Gate

Gamer Gate began in a relationship spat. Person X was dating person Y. At some point person X realized that person Y had engaged in a pattern of cheating and lying, and person X blogged about the dirt.

This relationship drama was the first stage of the GamerGate, and as a he-said-she-said tale, it's of interest only to the two people involved, and their friends.

The blog post, though, went beyond "she told me she loved me and then she showed she didn't", and alleged that the unfaithful partner had slept with powerful media figures in the small world of computer games journalism…figures who either reviewed games coded by the unfaithful partner, or managed writers who did review the games. The alleged behavior is (at best) a breach of common sense, and (at worst) a major breach of journalistic ethics.

This gamer journalism drama was the second stage of GamerGate, and as a sex-for-positive press coverage scandal (unproven, in my mind), or just as a "jeez, gamer journalism is as corruptly orchestrated as mainstream media is under Ezra Klein's Journolist" scandal, it's of interest to the tens of thousands of people who read and write game review journalism… which doesn't include me.

This is where things got wacky. And by "wacky", I mean "exploded like a barbecue grill when liquid oxygen is poured on it."

By my read of things (although reasonable people can differ) the charge that "games journalism is corrupt" was not itself inherently offensive to people on the left side of the political spectrum, but the partisans on the debate perfectly matched patterns of good and evil. On one side of the debate was a woman who was being chastised for her sexuality, and not only that, but she was a woman trying to break into the world of game development. On the other side of the debate were a bunch of low status men who did not agree that changing their micro-culture to accept women – women who wanted, after their entry, to change the micro-culture more – was a good thing.

Thus the partisans on the left side of the debate were enraged because their enemies in the thousand year culture war were not giving way to the forces of progress in the way that they should.

And thus we have the third stage of GamerGate: a good old case of Kulturkampf.

The Thousand Year War is Really the Million Year War

One thing that I find endlessly amusing is that the band of monkeys known as "the cultural left" uses Darwin(tm) as the ultimate rock to beat in the heads of the band of monkeys known as "the cultural right", and yet they do not – in any deep sense – believe in Darwinism. Certainly not in the multitude of actually dangerous ideas that spew from Darwinism like alpha particles from a just-slightly-sub-critical chunk of uranium.

…but that's (mostly) beside the point.

There's just one aspect of Darwinism that I want to (need to?) touch on today: sexual / group selection and alliance games.

In any species that lives lives other than the solitary, brutish, and short variety, members cooperate. Cooperation is often a utility maximizing approach for basic economic reasons: if I'm well fed because I had a good hunting day, and you're hungry because you had a bad day, a marginal calorie is worth much less to me than it is to you, so I should share some of my catch with you. This is true for two reasons: first, because if we're kin, your future reproductive success redounds to the benefit of (some of) my genes, and second, because you might return the favor a day or a year later.

Nature, however, is better at generating frenemies than friends. A better way for me to reproduce my genes is to use a mixed strategy: helping you when it's easy, defecting when I think I can get away with it, etc. I should ideally take food from you when offered, yet give back as little as I can get away with. I should be seen to be a good ally, and fair, and yet stab you in the back when I can get away with it.

In social species, there's advanced technology to accomplish these goals: I can marshal alliances, vote people off the island, harass males away from fertile females, seize more than my share of the food for myself and my offspring.

It doesn't matter if it's nice; it matters if it's effective. Gnon has no pity and laughs at your human ideals…especially because he created your human ideals to help you be a convincing liar in social games.

And thus deception slithered its way in to the garden of Eden and/or earthly delights.

What is the take away here? It is this: evolution has crafted every one of us for one mission: to pass our genes on to the next generation. The fact that you, or you, or you, have chosen not to have kids does not refute this; in fact, in supports this. Your genes will not be present in the next generation, and Gnon will laugh.

And what effects does this mission have on us? High libidos? Well, yes, some of that – but so much more. We're the ape with the run away brains. Any ape that just had a high libido is long removed from the gene pool. Only the apes that also are excellent at joining alliances, marshaling allies, sniffing when the winds are changing, and defecting strategically reproduced with enough success to have contributed meaningfully to our genome.

A million years ago this alliance-making skill meant being on the right side of the alpha ape…and perhaps sneakily supporting the up-and-coming number two male.

Ten thousand years ago it meant being a member of a hunter gatherer tribe, and making status-degrading jokes about the one guy who was acting a bit big for his (deer hide) britches.

A thousand years ago, it meant … well, by a thousand years ago, social alliances for status games were starting to look pretty damned modern. It meant cobbling together wacky alliances from diverse groups like Diggers, Levelers, and Fifth Monarchists in order to overthrow one set of rulers and establish yourself in their place. Once in power there are all sorts of food-and-sex optimizing strategies for those good at the alliance game… like enslaving the foot soldiers of the old regime and selling them into slavery overseas, seizing their land, and more.

tl;dr: I reiterate my point in my previous post in this sequence that the current culture war is a thousand years old, but that's just the tip of the ice cube that sits atop the submerged iceberg.

Gamer Gate as the most recent battle in the Kulturkampf

The two teams in the culture war have had many names over the last thousand years:

Barons and kings. Parliamentarians and Royalty. Puritans and Southerners. Yankees and Rebs. Democrats and Republicans. Blues Reds. Progressives and reactionaries. Social Justice Warriors and homophobes.

These English terms obscure the fact that these two camps are much bigger than the Anglosphere countries. My reference to Kulturkampf earlier was not accidental nor flippant.

One one side you had Otto von Bismark: a Protestant, a man who wanted government centralized, a leader with disdain for regional differences, a bureaucrat who created the first welfare state (Wikipedia's words, not mine), expelled the Jesuits, secularized the practice of marriage, threatened to arrest clergy who took political stances contrary to his own, radically expanded government schools, created a government run retirement system, and more.

On the other side you had people who were for lower taxes, smaller government, regional differences, Catholic doctrine, etc.

I could draw more examples from Russian history, from Italian, from French, from Mexican, from Swedish, but I think it would be belaboring the point.

For at least a thousand years there have been two factions in The West. The magnetic poles drift slowly, and no one compass points with perfect precision, but there is no denying the reality of the poles.

One pole tends (and note that word "tends") to be Protestant, centralized, "scientific", pushing for "the greater good", and "Blue" (as we say in the American language).

The other pole other tends (second disclaimer, same as the first) to be Catholic, decentralized, "traditional", tolerant of inequality, and "Red" (again, in Americanese).

Why two poles, and not three? Because we humans are honed by millions of years of evolution, and understand game theory at a level that we can not explain: small factions are crushed between the wheels, and must ally with a larger faction or be ground to dust.
[damn length limit]

Wild Zontargs
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68156

Post by Wild Zontargs »

[continued]

Our forces have Technograd surrounded are pounding it with shame bombs, and our sappers are inside the walls

As a poet once said: Cthulhu swims slowly, but he only swims left. Isn't that interesting?

The blue team has made amazing progress over the last three hundred years. Occasionally by force of arms, but usually by a much more clever strategy: entryism.

Entryism, for those not hip to the lingo, is "a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. In situations where the organization being 'entered' is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right."

Since World War II the Blue team in the US has entered into the stodgy old universities (taking advantage of the GI Bill and the resulting explosion in size of secondary education institutions), and taken them over completely. It has taken over the media (now called the "mainstream media" or MSM by the red team), because of this. It has taken over many corporate boards (although not all attempts have succeeded).

One advantage the blue team has is the aura of inevitability: as with small Iraqi militias or army units facing ISIS in the Levant, when faced with an enemy that wins every battle, one's priors must be that in the coming battle one will lose. Thus, the winning move is to immediately surrender, ask for forgiveness, and join the winning team (millions of years of evolution make us pretty decent players at this game of thrones, remember).

Over the last few years blue team has been rolling up red team's flank in a new battle: the tech world (or, pace Scott Alexander, they're actually trying to roll up the flank of a minor Red faction / ally that should perhaps be called "Gray": techno-libertarians).

This is a really smart move for Blue, as much of the economy has stalled out over the last ten years, and tech is the only area of growth. Who wants to own 90% of a stalled boat, when you could own 90% of a boat that's going somewhere?

The dismounted skirmishers of this particular Blue attack are the sub-faction known (pejoratively) as social justice warriors. (A quick digression: I hope no one reads my dispassionate "X attacks Y" as being particularly condemnatory of X for the fact of the attack. Humans are a social species, forged in the crucible of evolution. Status games and attacks are what we do. Red team is no more moral than Blue team, and they attack just as much…but because their star is not ascendant, their attacks are in smaller arenas and do not last as long. We're all nasty social apes on this bus.)

The current blue attack (or "pink" in a term coined in parallel by James Poulos) on the tech grays uses two tactics: entryism and status shaming.

The entryism is of the usual type: people with blue/pink ideals join red / gray groups and try to achieve social status with in those groups, then use that social status to push for the admission of – and promotion of – more blue/pink members. Once the blue/pink members achieve a majority they then change the rules of admission to create a lock on their new conquest (in the case of academia, for example, even blue researchers in the Netherlands of all places, were shocked by how blatant the process was).

The status shaming is also of the usual type: high status blue / pinks follow Alinksy's battle plan.

First, they pick a low-status target (rule 12). This target is usually a pale, bespectacled Aspergers-ish nerd) for a transgression against the norms they wish to universalize. The high social status pinks paint themselves as victims of a power imbalance, then they use their superior popularity to out-speak the target and push their version of the narrative. Pink allies in the media join in to keep the pressure on (rule 8). This is easy to do, because the act of social shaming is not only fun, but it's click-bait, so everyone involved not only has lolz, they has cheeseburger (rule 6). The toxic nature of the allegations is usually sufficient to make sure that the target of the attack does not get much, if any, sympathetic press (rule 12, again: "Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions".)

We saw this in "DongleGate", when @AdriaRichards told her almost twenty thousand twitter followers that she was offended by the rampant institutional sexism she experienced when she eavesdropped on two low status nerds, and the entire left wing media piled in to attack two blinking developers who'd been pushed into the limelight with out any warning. The two guys were fired.

We saw this when Gawker writer Nitasha Tiku took a break from making fun of mentally ill hoarders to attack some dweeb sysadmin as "homophobic, racist, misogynistic, classist" because she didn't like the jokes he tweeted to his friends, or that he'd dressed up as a brogrammer for Halloween. The guy was fired.

We saw this when the multimillionaires / Harvard grads who run OKCupid (the 420th most accessed website on the internet) used their megaphone to attack the bespectacled microkernel programmer who'd been promoted to run Mozilla. The guy was fired.

GamerGhazi is Arabic for Kulturkampf

In computer gaming the attempt at entry came by first establishing a few pinks inside the community (not a problem, because the world of gamer development did not think of itself as politicized), and then using these pink resources to promote, give good reviews to, and bestow awards on pink developers and pink games, even when the games in question are not "games" by the normal definition.

The gray flank probably would have been turned in short order (the smart money is always on pink), but the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes stumble for stupid reasons. The War on Jenkin's Ear didn't kill 25,000 people and sink 600 ships because anyone gave a shit about Jenkins or his ear – it raged because the tinder was dry and the spark fell in the right place at the right time.

GamerGate was, for about a hot millisecond, about a female developer and the fact that she cheated on her boyfriend with five guys, or, alternatively, about low status nerds slut shaming a brave women developer (stage 1).

…but it's not any longer.

GamerGate was, for about a day, about corruption in game journalism (stage 2).

…but it's not any longer.

Those topics are sort of interesting for the handful of people who care, but they don't provide enough fuel to keep a fire burning.

The reason GamerGate has legs is because it's yet another battle in the thousand year long culture war between red/gray and blue/pink.

Of course, to put GamerGate in historical context is implicitly to force the conflict off of the ground where the pink team has trained its guns. This is a tactical reversal for the pink team, and through a combination of honest ignorance and dishonest faux outrage, they keep trying to pull the gray team back into the kill zone, where the pink's well-tested tactics of shame and media outrage work so well. Thus we see tweets like this:

http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploa ... itweet.png

As I said at the time:

http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploa ... ktweet.png

We and They

I'm not a Blue, and I'm not a Red. It'd be nice if I was crisply one or the other, because then I could give myself wholeheartedly to one alliance and fight the good fight. Instead I'm forced to agree with 50% of what each team does, roll my eyes at 10%, and be damned annoyed at the remaining 40%.

I support an unlimited right to keep and bear arms…and I think LGBT folks should pack heat to keep queer-bashers at bay.

I'm a social con who's queasy about tearing down the Chesterton gate ideal of monogamous heterosexual marriage…and I think that an ideal ancap society would have polycentric law such that six lesbians could all marry each other.

I like rural landscapes and salt of the earth people…but I live in a dense blue state so that I'm surrounded by museums, coffeehouses, and restaurants.

I bring all of this up to make the point that I'm not unwaveringly opposed to the blue alliance. It's done a lot of good things.

The problem I have is that the blue alliance has been on a winning streak, and with recent Blue success in gay marriage, immigration of client populations, university-and-media roll-up, etc. I feel like the culture war is over and the victors are going around (metaphorically) humiliating and shooting survivors of the losing side, and conducting mop-up operations. Witness team Blue forcing bakers to bake cakes and forcing photographers to shoot photos for partnerships that they consider immoral. Witness blue team arguing that innocent people should go to jail for rape, because – and I'm quoting Ezra Klein here – we "need to create a world where men are afraid." Red team men, I take that to mean. Football players. Frat boys. Not nice guys like Ezra.

"The people must be reeducated!" goes up the cry. …but that's not the reason for the ritual humiliation. The reeducation is merely the rationalization, the justification.

Orwell had it right:
"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
As the paleo diet folks note, we are not evolved for the physical environment we now find ourselves living in; we are evolved for the physical environment of the savanna.

Likewise, we are not evolved for the social environment we now find ourselves in; we are evolved for the social environment of the small tribe.

Today, though, we still follow that ancient programming. We pick fights, we form alliances, we portray ourselves as the weak party (when it is to our advantage, to gain sympathy) and then we act as the strong party (when it is to our advantage, to humiliate our enemies and warn our enemies-not-yet-met-in-battle).

Humans be humans. Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

…and that's all well and good, but the problem between a tolerable game and an intolerable one is whether the players shake hands as they exit the field.

Robert Conquest wrote a great book We and They: Civic and Despotic Cultures. He divides societies into two types: those that allow the vanquished their survival, their honor, and another bite at the apple, and those that seek to crush, in perpetuity, the temporary loser.

I'm certainly not asserting that GamerGate rises to the level of a totalitarian threat against all that we know and love. That would be ludicrous.

GamerGate is, however, a small battle in a thousand year war. The Blue team is neither entirely sympathetic nor entirely unsympathetic. The Red team is neither entirely sympathetic nor entirely unsympathetic.

However, the Blue team is ascendant, and it's a valid question as to whether it wants a peaceful rise. It's not crazy to note that Blue Team has used policies that arrest, deport, and kill "thought leaders" from Red Team on occasion (in Ireland, in France, in Mexico, in Germany, in Russia, and so forth) and to note that the ascendant Bright majority today is happy to talk about imprisoning or killing people who disagree with their conclusions on, say, global warming. Sure, the slickly produced videos of AGW deniers being exploded for their thought-crimes are meant as a light hearted joke, but many a truth is spoken in jest.

All things being equal, I'd prefer to live in one of Conquest's "civic" cultures, and not one of his "despotic" cultures. But if I'm forced to live in one of the latter, then it behooves me to play a game of realpolitik and back the weaker side.

I don't play video games, and I don't care about video game journalism. But I know a culture war when I see one, and I've chosen my side. It might be the losing side, but I'm still not convinced it's the wrong one.

feathers
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68157

Post by feathers »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:I honestly did not anticipate this day would bring about an unironic call for McCarthyism. On the pit no less.
It's a bit disconcerting, indeed. For people who think 'retribution in kind' is such a good idea, I'd be willing to sponsor a ticket to Aleppo. Thirty factions proving each other anything you can do, we can do better.

http://static3.businessinsider.com/imag ... he-war.jpg
Photo: Kirbmarc carries Vicky home after confronting Ciccariello

VickyCaramel
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68158

Post by VickyCaramel »

Lsuoma wrote:
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Lsuoma wrote: Explain?
VickyCaramel has several times commended the effectiveness of McCarthyism and seems to be calling for similar tactics.
Directly endorsing, by that name?
Throw them a few crumbs and they will make a meal out of it.

feathers
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68159

Post by feathers »

VickyCaramel wrote:McCarthyism really stopped Communism being cool and trendy.
Holy shit.

VickyCaramel
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#68160

Post by VickyCaramel »

Aneris wrote:
piginthecity wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote: But yes, there are some actors in the "anti-SJW community" (whatever that is) that aren't in to defend their rights, analyze data and criticize stupidity but to outright attack and more or less ban from public discourse an entire side of politics just like the SJWs have done.
Yeah ... I think this year we have seen the first spinnings of that. Just as the SJW's peeled away from scepticism abut four/five years ago leaving us, perhaps we're seeing a cultish "anti-SJW" community begin to form, which, too, will develop its own jargon and have its own clan-signalling methods and its own warrior-leaders. I'm not really talking about the pit so much or old-stagers such as Sargon, but I get the feeling that there are some younger you-tubers not having an atheist/Sceptical background specifically who are animated by an emotional anti-SJWism and have made it their life's work.
The tyical Anti-SJW faction that represents the detractors most visibly these days, from Sargon to Amazing Atheist come across as pearl clutching offended as the SJW themselves. They still go after easy targets, engage with subjects only in the shallowest manner and their opposition, in the main, is not as prinicipled it may seem. They simply have a different opinion, but they can't articulate what it is, they oppose exactly. They made out a different tribe, and as such have permission to disgree with what they say.
Are you talking about the Great Meme war of 2016?

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