mozz

mozz, 18 days ago

Super Mario World

It had by far the best tech and it finally opened up the format to the real potential and then the actual gameplay was for the first time in the series basically just a guided walking tour of all these different areas you could visit and then you got handed a trophy. Pure crap

Super Mario 64 had somewhat the same problem although with somewhat of a challenge from time to time, and with the added excuse that they were breaking new ground on the format and so it made sense for the difficulty curve not to be perfectly tuned and polished. SMW had no such reasons

mozz, 18 days ago

Yeah. SM64 you could say was just a normal game, after the exercise in deliberate punishment that was a lot of the NES library.

I greatly enjoyed James and Mike Mondays showing Metroid; in part 2 around 9:00 in, you can see the part where the real NES begins to set in. It’s a kind of unapologetic unbalanced hardness you don’t really see in mainstream games anymore; now it’s like a niche phenomenon if the game is just deliberately un-fun in sections to help you build character.

mozz, 18 days ago

This is the UN report which found strong evidence that widespread rape occurred during the October 7th attack, as well as debunking one or two particular claims that Israel was putting forth which got published in the news.

This is a press release from the UN about it.

For some reason, the couple of lies Israel told about sexual violence became the entire story, overshadowing the much larger truth about sexual violence by Hamas fighters. Most of the infamous NYT story was true.

Just because Israel is actively engaging in a genocide and are committing atrocities 10 times worse than whatever’s coming back to them doesn’t automatically mean that claims of atrocity by Hamas are automatically false.

mozz, 18 days ago

That is the exact opposite of what the UN report did. Did you actually read it, or if not where did you get all this information you're telling me?

The executive summary is only a few pages and breaks down a high level of what they found pretty well, and then you can skip to particular sections to see more detail. Pages 4 and 5 have a pretty good high-level overview of which allegations in which locations they believe they gathered reasonable grounds to believe, which allegations they believed they debunked, and which ones they weren't able to verify or debunk one way or another. Warning, it's slightly graphic.

In particular, they pretty immediately debunked some of the Israeli governments' accounts which got repeated early on in the media, actually specifically by comparing them against evidence and by doing their own interviews where they were able.

mozz, 18 days ago

This is the other thing that's weird about the "it was all debunked" side. So, they invaded the music festival, shot a bunch of people including plenty of women and children, hauled away a bunch of hostages, burned up some homes, and yet, nobody raped anybody. Just didn't happen. That's a red line that these music-festival-goer-shooters adhered to absolutely without fail.

The Israeli government does much worse, unprovoked, and much more systematically. But that doesn't mean all of a sudden that you have to say every bad thing about Israel is true and every bad thing about Hamas is false, and these people who invaded a music festival and shot more than a thousand innocent people are these noble paladins you have to protect the right and honor of.

mozz, 18 days ago

Aha! We have arrived at the point of Never Play Defense. Someone simply observing the flow of the conversation, who doesn't take a look at the report and compare it against what you're saying it says, could be mistaken for thinking this is a vigorous debate between roughly equally justified points of view, or differing interpretations which are both roughly grounded in reality, or something else which isn't you talking purely out of your ass and me giving factual citations for why you're wrong. Kudos! Not sure what else you could do, but you're playing it well.

I'll do one more round, sure. It's not a fun game for me to play indefinitely, but:

If this was true the UN would be saying Hamas raped people. But alas, the UN does not say that.

I(12), page 4: "Based on the information gathered by the mission team from multiple and independent sources, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations."

I(13), page 4: "At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped."

If you're going to imply that civilians unrelated to Hamas might have done it, and it wasn't part of Hamas's attack -- as the OP article, hilariously, does -- then sure, you can, if you want.

mozz, 18 days ago

I said I wasn't going to indefinitely play the game of you saying total bullshit and me citing sources for why it's wrong, because going back and forth with it too many times usually isn't a good use of time, but for some reason this one irritated me all afresh.

I(17) from the report, page 5: "With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing."

mozz, 18 days ago

The OP article makes a big deal, too, about this distinction between Israeli women who were raped by Hamas fighters because the Hamas fighters wanted to rape, as opposed to because their commanders told them to go out and rape. I'm not sure that's a super impactful distinction. Why do you think it's an important distinction?

(Actually, the OP article says something stupider than that; it says that "some reports have asserted that those acts and other reported atrocities were committed by civilians and those not affiliated" with Hamas, without explaining what the fuck they're even talking about, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and dealing mostly with their treatment that it's important whether or not Hamas "ordered it" to happen, which is still stupid to me but not transparently absurd like the idea that unaffiliated civilians suddenly started coming in and raping all these Israeli women at the same time that the October 7th attacks were going on.)

mozz, 18 days ago

Since I already cited a few entries out of the UN report to you, I'm gonna make this one into one of those "exercise for the reader" type of things. Like teaching a man to fish. In what entry in the table of contents to the report do you think the answer to this question might be contained?

I realize you will have to read most of the whole first page of the document to find it, but I believe in you. Hold your focus. Persevere.

mozz, 18 days ago

I think I'm comfortable with the reasons I've already laid out so far with citations for why what's in the OP article and what you're saying about it is crap.

I'm gonna take a page from "Never Play Defense." What do you think about this?

This week, Israel released an appalling video featuring five female Israeli soldiers taken captive at Nahal Oz military base on October 7. Fearful and bloody, the women beg for their lives while Hamas fighters mill around and alternately threaten to kill them and compliment their appearance. The captors call the women “sabaya,” which Israel translated as “women who can get pregnant.” Almost immediately, others disputed the translation and said sabaya referred merely to “female captives” and included no reference to their fertility. “The Arabic word sabaya doesn’t have sexual connotations,” the Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian wrote in a post on X, taking exception to a Washington Post article that said that it did. She said the Israeli translation was “playing on racist and orientalist tropes about Arabs and Muslims.”

These are real women and victims of ongoing war crimes, so it does seem excessively lurid to suggest, without direct evidence, that they have been raped in captivity for the past several months. (“Eight months,” the Israelis noted, allowing readers to do the gestational math. “Think of what that means for these young women.”) But to assert that sabaya is devoid of sexual connotation reflects ignorance, at best. The word is well attested in classical sources and refers to female captives; the choice of a classical term over a modern one implies a fondness for classical modes of war, which codified sexual violence at scale. Just as concubine and comfort woman carry the befoulments of their modern use, sabaya is straightfowardly associated with what we moderns call rape.

mozz, 18 days ago

Not even slightly. Or, I mean, not for quite a while; the treatment of rape in war has evolved past what you are describing since quite some time ago.

• Pre World War 2: Shit happens, they're soldiers, what are you going to do
• World War 2 through 1993: Hey I think they shouldn't do that
• 1993: UN declares systematic rape to be a war crime <-- you are here
• 1993-2008: Various minor redefinitions over a series of resolutions

Then in 2008, the UN took the fairly sensible when you think about it step of saying that if you are fielding an army, and that army is raping people with any regularity, then that is your problem i.e. a crime against humanity and you don't get to mount the defense that you didn't tell them to, and so it's not your problem if it is happening.

Your viewpoint is disgusting and explicitly rape-apologist, as well as in this case legally incorrect.

mozz, 18 days ago

I sent you a link to the full report. Maybe that needs to be the first part of your challenge then: Finding the link to the report, and then finding the table of contents, and then identifying which entry in the table of contents might contain the answer to your question.

Do you really not want to take on the challenge of finding it? I am trying to help you become more capable with sources and verification procedures. I wasn't expecting finding the report that I sent the link to to be the hard part, but I honestly don't think any part of it should be altogether super-challenging.

mozz, 18 days ago

(1/2)

Here, I'll repost the full article, which of course does no such thing as relying on a single IDF translation as its sole and only source, and instead actually deals at length with what the word means, how it was recently resurrected, and what it does and doesn't imply about any official sanction from Hamas leadership.

I am not surprised that you want to replace this kind of detailed analysis with a simple and pithy oversimplification, since any detailed analysis will expose the truth that you're openly defending rape.

This week, Israel released an appalling video featuring five female Israeli soldiers taken captive at Nahal Oz military base on October 7. Fearful and bloody, the women beg for their lives while Hamas fighters mill around and alternately threaten to kill them and compliment their appearance. The captors call the women “sabaya,” which Israel translated as “women who can get pregnant.” Almost immediately, others disputed the translation and said sabaya referred merely to “female captives” and included no reference to their fertility. “The Arabic word sabaya doesn’t have sexual connotations,” the Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian wrote in a post on X, taking exception to a Washington Post article that said that it did. She said the Israeli translation was “playing on racist and orientalist tropes about Arabs and Muslims.”

These are real women and victims of ongoing war crimes, so it does seem excessively lurid to suggest, without direct evidence, that they have been raped in captivity for the past several months. (“Eight months,” the Israelis noted, allowing readers to do the gestational math. “Think of what that means for these young women.”) But to assert that sabaya is devoid of sexual connotation reflects ignorance, at best. The word is well attested in classical sources and refers to female captives; the choice of a classical term over a modern one implies a fondness for classical modes of war, which codified sexual violence at scale. Just as concubine and comfort woman carry the befoulments of their historic use, sabaya is straightforwardly associated with what we moderns call rape. Anyone who uses sabaya in modern Gaza or Raqqah can be assumed to have specific and disgusting reasons to want to revive it.

The word sabaya recently reappeared in the modern Arabic lexicon through the efforts of the Islamic State. Unsurprisingly, then, the scholars best equipped for this analysis are the ones who observed and cataloged how ISIS revived sabaya (and many other dormant classical and medieval terms). I refer here to Aymenn J. Al-Tamimi, recently of Swansea University, and to Cole Bunzel of the Hoover Institution, who have both commented on this controversy without sensationalism, except insofar as the potential of sexual enslavement is inherently sensational.

Under classical Islamic jurisprudence on the law of war, the possible fates of enemy captives are four: They can be killed, ransomed, enslaved, or freed. Those enslaved are then subject to the rules that govern slavery in Islam—which are extensive, and are nearly as irrelevant to the daily lives of most living Muslims as the rules concerning slavery in Judaism are to the lives of most Jews. I say “nearly” because Jews have not had a state that sought to regulate slavery for many centuries, but the last majority-Muslim states abolished slavery only in the second half of the 20th century, and the Islamic State enthusiastically resumed the practice in 2014.

In doing so, the Islamic State reaffirmed the privileges, and duties, of the slave owner. (Bunzel observes that the Islamic State cited scholars who used the term sabaya as if captured women were considered slaves by default, and the other fates were implicitly improbable.) The slave owner is responsible for the welfare of the slave, including her food and shelter. He is allowed to have sex with female slaves, but certain rules apply. He may not sell her off until he can confirm that she isn’t pregnant, and he has obligations to her and to their children, if any are born from their union. I cannot stress enough that such relationships—that is, having sex with someone you own—constitute rape in all modern interpretations of the word, and they are frowned upon whether they occur in the Levant, the Hejaz, or Monticello.

mozz, 18 days ago

(2/2 - this is the rest of the article I pasted as the "1/2" section of the comment)

But in the premodern context, before the rights revolution that consecrated every person with individual, unalienable worth, sex slavery was unremarkable, and the principal concern was not whether to do it but what to do with the children. The Prophet Muhammad freed a slave after she bore him a child. The Jewish paterfamilias Abraham released his slave Hagar into the desert 14 years after she bore him Ishmael. But these are cases from antiquity, and modern folk see things differently. Frederick Douglass, in the opening of his autobiography, emphasized the inhumanity of American slave owners by noting the abhorrent results of those relationships: fathers hating, owning, abusing, and selling their own kin.

Sabaya is a term in part born of the need to distinguish captives potentially subject to these procreative regulations from those who would be less complicated to own. To translate it as “women who can get pregnant” is regrettably misleading. It makes explicit what the word connotes, namely that these captives fall under a legal category with possibilities distinct from those of their male counterparts. As Al-Tamimi observes, Hamas could just as easily have used a standard Arabic word for female war captives, asirat. This neutral word is used on Arabic Wikipedia, say, for Jessica Lynch, the American prisoner of war from the 2003 Iraq invasion. Instead Hamas used a term with a different history.

One could read too much into the choice of words. No one, to my knowledge, has suggested that Hamas is following the Islamic State by reviving sex slavery as a legal category. I know of no evidence that it has done so, and if it did, I would expect many of the group’s supporters, even those comfortable with its killing of concertgoers and old people, to denounce the group. More likely, a single group of Hamas members used the word in an especially heady moment, during which they wanted to degrade and humiliate their captives as much as possible. Thankfully, the captives appear unaware of the language being used around them. The language suggests that the fighters were open to raping the women, but it could also just be reprehensible talk, after an already coarsening day of mass killing.

Reading too much into the language seems, at this point, to be less of a danger than reading too little into it. As soon as the Israeli translation came out, it was assailed for its inaccuracy, when it was actually just gesturing clumsily at a real, though not easily summarized, historical background. What, if anything, should the translation have said? “Female captives” does not carry the appropriate resonance; “sex-slavery candidates” would err in the other direction and imply too much. Every translation loses something. Is there a word in English that conveys that one views the battered women in one’s control as potentially sexually available? I think probably not. I would be very careful before speaking up to defend the user of such a word.

mozz, 18 days ago

My evidence for Hamas raping people is the UN report I already posted which talks about all the evidence for Hamas raping people. We're talking about something different, which is Hamas fighters using a word which is explicitly associated with rape (and a pretty in depth explanation of what it does and doesn't imply.)

Isn't "Never Play Defense" fun? I can switch to a new accusation, if you decide to change your mind and continue the conversation.

mozz, 18 days ago

What page of the report did you read that dealt with hostages?

Not that I don't believe you; I just have forgotten, and I want you to remind me so I can reference it really quick so we can continue the conversation.

mozz, 18 days ago

You said that a soldier raping a civilian is a regular criminal offense. I cited the UN resolution that says among other things:

The Council demanded that all parties to armed conflict take immediate and appropriate measures to protect civilians, including by, among others, enforcing appropriate military disciplinary measures and upholding the principle of command responsibility; training troops on the categorical prohibition of all forms of sexual violence against civilians; debunking myths that fuel sexual violence; and vetting armed and security forces to take into account past sexual violence.

I mean, it's possible that we're saying the same thing; sort of contingent on what you mean exactly by "isolated incidents". I am saying that widespread rape on October 7th is indicative of a war crime regardless of whether approval for it came through Hamas's chain of command. Is that what you're saying?

mozz, 18 days ago

I think they are basing it off the conclusion that they have already decided that they want to reach

mozz, 18 days ago

I think some people's brains are all-or-nothing. I mean, it's certainly true that whatever significant crimes against humanity Hamas is doing, Israel is doing literally 10 times worse. But some people will go from there to saying that everything Palestinian is good, even if it's a violent and corrupt organization like Hamas which is bringing only death and destruction to innocents on both sides, and accomplishing nothing at all for better conditions for the Palestinian people.

Surely the right answer is for the Palestinian people who only want to live and not get murdered or starved to death, and the Israeli people who only want to go to the music festival and not get raped or shot or kidnapped, to gang up and seize all the people on both sides who want to continue and profit off the conflict, and string them up upside-down like Mussolini, so they can die of thirst over several days in the hot desert sun. Then, the problem simplified, they can get together and work out some approximation of a peace agreement.

Surely there are a few problems with that, not least of which that the people who like continuing the war have most of the weapons and wouldn't agree to the proposal. But that makes more sense to me than picking a "right side" and defending them regardless of what horrifying thing they're doing to innocent people on the "wrong side."

mozz, 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

That's actually a fairly reasonable question, which I know you asked a couple times already, which I haven't addressed.

So, I'll give a genuine answer: The report explicitly doesn't deal with the question of who raped the Israeli women who were raped during the October 7th attack, because they were already dealing with enough evidentiary difficulties just trying to put together and say conclusively whether or not it had happened, and where, and dealing with a certain amount of dishonesty and fog-of-war among other issues that made it hard to even sort out the basics, especially with victims who are now deceased where they were dealing purely with forensic evidence. Trying to bring a standard of proof of which specific men had done it into the equation would have made their already pretty challenging task more difficult and more open to criticism, I think.

To me, that's not automatically a bad thing. It means they're being cautious and trying to have solid backing for things they are saying. I would contrast it for example with the abysmally low standard of proof that led your OP article to write things like "some reports have asserted that those acts and other reported atrocities were committed by civilians and those not affiliated with the group." Of course, it's easy to simply say that obviously it was probably unrelated civilians who raped all these women during the October 7th attack, and not Hamas, if you don't feel bound by the need to produce evidence or even answer simple questions like, "What reports? Who are you saying did the rapes, then? What the fuck are you talking about?"

You are, of course, welcome to seize onto that pretty sensible decision by the report authors and shake it back and forth like a little bad-faith terrier, as if it somehow invalidated the whole report -- for example, implying that the evidence it presents of hostages who were raped during captivity somehow leaves open the possibility that they were raped by some other, non-Hamas captors during their time as prisoners of Hamas.

Speaking of which, how's that search for the report's treatment of the prisoners who were raped in captivity coming? I can give you a couple other hints about where to find it, if you still can't find it after I sent you a link to the report, and then gave you hints about where to look in the table of contents, which page of the TOC, and the general area on the page where you might be able to find the applicable entry.

mozz, 18 days ago

The UN report allegations also pertain to the festival.

Quick question, since you're clearly familiar with the report: Section III(c)1 is divided into 6 different subsections, of which the first is the festival and surrounding areas. What are the other 5 subsections?

I can start to give some hints if you have trouble answering this question. There's also III(c)2 and 3 but I already asked some questions about III(c)2.

(That was another hint, a big one, to one of my earlier questions you still seem to be having some trouble with.)

mozz, 18 days ago

“Out of order” is not quite a strong enough reaction for “We found a woman who doesn’t look pregnant as far as I can tell so that means that her and all the other women definitely didn’t get raped, so stop worrying about it”

mozz, 17 days ago

I'm gonna quit being a sarcastic dickhead for a second to take this question seriously.

I already gave citations of evidence -- a link to the report with some criticisms of what the article was saying was literally my first comment here, and then after that, I responded to questions usually with page numbers or section citations or quotations (examples here, here, and here).

But that made absolutely no difference to how you reacted. You continued to make 100% wrong claims about what was in the report, and didn't react substantively to the demonstrations that what you were already saying were wrong.

As I said, I don't feel like simply continuing that cycle of me providing citations and you continuing to blandly argue wildly wrong things like this. I decided to try a different tactic of asking you about the citations, providing enough hints that you should easily be able to find them in the report you claim to have read. I'm actually pretty happy with it, since it breaks the cycle of "duck season" "rabbit season" "duck season" and so on, and throws it into sharp relief when you're pointedly ignoring some kind of evidence that disproves your case.

Honestly, I'm happy with the result so far. I think it's a lot more effective at highlighting the fact that you're not actually interested in looking up information, or checking these wild claims you're making against some kind of objective basis.

So. Are you sure you don't feel like looking in the table of contents of the link I sent you, and locating the specific section which might possibly contain the answer to your question? There is, really, only one entry that qualifies. It should be very easy.

Of course, you could also pretend that someone me sending you the link and telling you to look in the table of contents near the bottom of the first page and you will probably find the information you seek, represents me not giving you a citation. You can claim that. It is your right. I will not stop you.

mozz, 17 days ago

So, you don't feel like checking III(c)1 to verify your claim that the UN report pertains only to the festival? I am trying to make it easy for you to learn how to check your claims against sources, but you do not seem eager to develop your skills in this area.

mozz, 19 days ago

Guys I don’t think they want to cease the firing

I would be happy to be proven wrong, but they had some chances already, and they just told Blinken yeah sure sounds good and then fell on the floor laughing when he left and went back to killing children

mozz, 20 days ago

I know nothing about the guy, but I just skimmed over about 30 minutes of this and I can't tell what the hell he's talking about. As far as I can tell he's just talking in a funny cadence and listing people he really likes and from time to time touching real lightly on the idea that America does bad things sometimes.

Contrast that with (I just picked a random video from Youtube) Fred Hampton talking for 5 minutes and making simple, coherent, powerful points (among them hilariously enough being "we gonna have to do more than talk.")

I'm not trying to sit in judgement of West just because I watched one talk and didn't get anything from it. But I watched one talk and I didn't get anything from it. Does anyone have like a little TL;DR on what Cornel West believes and wants to make happen in the country?

mozz, 20 days ago

Oooh ooh I know, we refuse to vote for his opponent because this is so tiresome that we have to do this every election / because his opponent isn't everything we wanted to have in terms of forward progress / because that'll show the system as a whole that we want better candidates and things will finally move forward as a result / etc

No? Because I have been assured that that is the answer

mozz, 20 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

And then he grabbed the reporter by the front of his shirt with both hands, pulled him close, reeling in the fabric by twisting his fists, and sneered at him, inches from his face.

"And what are you going to do?" he asked, steadily, his voice quiet but with a hard edge of menace. His eyes were blazing. When there wasn't a reply, he suddenly dropped his arm back, and hit the other man's guts, hard, with one dark massive fist. As the reporter collapsed over coughing and flailing, backing up, Thomas boomed loudly, "I asked you a question, boy! I said what the fuck are you going to DO about it?"

The hapless man was occupied with gasping for breath, until Thomas started approaching him again, and he suddenly cried, "Nothing! I'm not... the one in charge of it, what would.. would I even do? What do you even mean?" He was still doubled over.

And then Thomas stopped, and broke into a broad, malicious grin, looking down at him. "That's right. You're not gonna do a God. Damned. Thing."

"Now get out."

mozz, 21 days ago

https://mbin.grits.dev/media/ac/66/ac66b57baf4c3a9007661ccb3d987259e740afaada16efb710fc4b2d297cc79c.webp

mozz, 21 days ago

"How dare you make me look like a misogynistic monster by putting up a perfectly sensible proposal which my misogynistically monstrous views will then cause me to vote against and make me look bad"

mozz, 21 days ago

This is what happens when loyalty to the group starts overriding good outcomes and moral judgements of what's right and wrong.

Everyone knows it's the wrong answer, but to speak on behalf of something that's been defined as an enemy viewpoint is to yourself become an enemy. And since health care for women is now an enemy position, here we are.

Once you're on the train, it's very hard to get off. Even when everyone knows it's gone too far, even when real killing starts, most of the people who defined themselves in that manner won't say a word against it. Because of course what would happen to them, if they did?

mozz, 21 days ago

See this is a flawless bad-faith dig at the Democrats. I started typing up a big list of important stuff they've been doing, as counterexamples to the implication that they're only pretending to care about American women as some weird ploy to get votes, but then I just sound like some kind of overreacting after-school special.

With simple cynicism and dishonesty, this short comment actually does a pretty good job of making the Democrats trying to do something good which is only necessary in the first place because Hillary Clinton (for as much of a useless toad-lady as she was) didn't win the election, and being blocked by the Republicans, and turning all of that into a reason not to feel like electing Democrats.

Electing Democrats isn't the only answer; we need a lot better than them. But yes, electing Democrats would have prevented all these women that are suffering or dying or almost-dying right now because they need medical care (to say nothing of the ones that just need abortions), because there's a big difference between "not as good as we need" and "actively wants to kill Americans." Voting for the first one is not exclusive of working for better outcomes outside the voting booth. Refusing to vote is helping the second one.

I feel like I've already taken this bullshit too seriously by even typing up a longish comment in response, but this variety of bad faith bullshit is just getting too irritating and the outcomes in the real world are very real.

mozz, 21 days ago

I feel like that whole diagram is the result of a long evolution of, what are all the possible ways that somebody can fuck this up and what’s literally everything possible we can do to prevent it

mozz, 20 days ago

No, this is based on decades of observing Democrats

This part I actually agree with. Obama did a couple of good things but on the whole the whole Clinton / Pelosi axis is a pile of shit. Of course, that's not a good argument for letting Hitler come to power, but you would actually have a point if you weren't applying this to the guy that did:

• 40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030
• 15% minimum corporate tax
• Actual labor people in charge of the NLRB for the first time in God knows how long leading to all these union wins
• Hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan forgiveness
• Big wage gains at the bottom end of the scale even when adjusted for massive historic inflation

Etc etc and so on. Biden's actually this radical forward departure from the pretty uninspiring Democratic norm. But sure, the system is still broken; if you're advocating for improving it above Biden that sounds like a great idea. I was just reacting to the absolutely false implication that these particular Democrats are only pretending to make progress. Or, have I got it wrong, were you not trying to say that?

If you want to lie and say I'm telling people to not vote for Democrats

Do you think people should vote for the Democrats? Not "allowed to vote for whoever you want" or whatever -- do you think it's a good idea for them to? What do you think they should be doing to make progress in the country, generally speaking?

But we're never allowed to demand better

Absolutely I think you should demand better. I just don't see that as incompatible with choosing the best available option while you're working for a better option than the ones currently on the table.

mozz, 20 days ago

I wasn't applying it to Biden. I was applying it to Senate Democrats in particular and Democrats more broadly. I have other criticisms for Biden, and have made it clear multiple times that I approve of how he handled student loans.

Oh shit, I think maybe I did an unfairness then. I have you in my little mental list of people who talk shit on Biden relentlessly but it sounds like maybe I should not -- yeah, general unenthusiasm for Senate Democrats I can pretty fully agree with. Makes sense.

Do you think people should vote for the Democrats?

Yes. Until we have a less shitty option, that remains my position. It was my position last time you asked too.

I for-real do not remember this. I probably wouldn't have written what I did if I had -- yeah, everything you're saying here makes perfect sense.

I will continue to demand better, and you'll keep making veiled accusations.

100% fair and I apologize. Yeah, demanding better sounds great.

mozz, 20 days ago

• 1932 politics

mozz, 20 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

Yeah. Little bit 1932 and a little bit 1861, maybe.

mozz, 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

Yeah. He killed like a million people by bungling the covid response, and conspired with one of America's shooting-war enemies (at least one) to get a whole bunch of CIA assets killed in the field. Like dozens of them. A foreign government hacked up an American journalist with bonesaws and took him out in pieces, and Trump came out and said, well they gave me a bunch of money so who cares about one journalist.

And all that is just the stuff that we know. He's like a supernova of treasonous and criminal behavior. No matter how bad you might estimate it is what he did, it's many many times worse.

mozz, 21 days ago

I think we've long passed the point where it'd productive to go back and forth about it. But sure, a little bit longer maybe.

"I think Biden is bad, here is evidence for that opinion". And then someone who disagrees says "I think he's good, here's my evidence", and taken together you get a good picture

No.

Again: Starting with the result (who will benefit, who will look good and bad because of the analysis), and then looking for news that serves that conclusion, is dishonest. To me, and apparently to the mod team (or jordanlund at least).

Starting with facts about the world, and arriving at the result (who looks good and who looks bad as determined by what is happening), is honest. Again, this is my definition. You might have a different one which might also be reasonable, sure.

What you're describing is a little bit more like what happens in a courtroom, where it's someone's job to arrive at a particular conclusion, and they're going to marshal whatever level of evidence they can find to try to support it. It's also what's expected from someone who works in politics who's employed to support one particular interest no matter what. It's not how normal people behave outside of that type of very specialized setting, and I would argue that letting people who operate that way into the sphere (paid interests to come into the climate change debate, paid shills into online political discourse, advertisers into journalism, and so on) is a bad development in that sphere.

I think I've said my piece on it. You can disagree with my feeling, it is fine. But that is my feeling.

mozz, 21 days ago

I talk from time to time about wanting to set up a forum where if you say something, you have to back it up, as a way to mitigate the impact of low-effort trolling "of COURSE we all agree Biden ruined the climate" from 5-10 different accounts as a technique to distort the discourse. I think it's toxic if it is politically slanted so that someone with mod power is deciding what is the "right" political viewpoint, obviously; on that much we will agree. But I do think that the discourse is being radically distorted by the existence of organized shilling efforts, and I think about what would be a good solution to it (which seems like a pretty difficult problem), in ways which I am sure would be wildly unpopular with a certain segment of the userbase.

You can characterize that as me thirsting to silence dissenting political views, if you want. I won't stop you.

mozz, 21 days ago

Castigating people you disagree with as 'shills' or 'bad faith actors' is, in my opinion, the lowest quality of political commentary. It excuses you from engaging with what that person saying

Can you point to anyone who's said anything that I responded to without engaging on its own merits?

Everyone has a rosy view of themselves I am sure, but in my mind, I've spent an almost pathological amount of time here talking to ozma about the merits of what he's saying, on the face of them, and likewise for you, likewise for a lot of the other people. Then also in addition to that, if they display shill-like behavior I tend to call it out instead of just avoiding the potentially-unfair accusation. But I don't think I have ever really led out of the gate with anything along the lines of "you're a shill so that means I don't have to respond to what you just said".

Can you point to an example of someone who said something and I just dismissed what they were saying instead of breaking down why (in my view) it wasn't right, at least as a first step even if later I proceeded to what I thought of their motivations or changing the subject or etc?

mozz, 21 days ago

I've told some people to their face (virtually speaking) that I think they are shills and why. Ozma is one, and in this thread I said it to somebody else after looking over their user a little bit. My point was that I generally engage with their arguments on the merits at first, and then proceed to accusing them of bad faith if it seems really clear to me that they're engaging in bad faith; I don't think I usually engage in it as a reason not to engage with their arguments.

I've seen you speculate that midwest.social is a troll farm, based on what I assume is just your interactions with me

It wasn't from you. If I ever fully realized that you were from midwest.social I then forgot it; my instance doesn't show what someone's "home" instance is in comments unless I mouse over to investigate. It was a different user that raised my suspicion (who I didn't really engage with all that much, just observed the type of stuff they posted), and the overall nature and setup of the site. If that's relevant.

I'm not completely sure if you are a shill user or not. I have suspected it in the past. If I'm honest, you engage in some of the same types of behavior they do (using some particular talking points, and mischaracterizing what the other person is saying to a more convenient thing to argue against, being the most egregious), but that could just be what you feel like saying because you feel like saying it, and you also talk at length back and forth which is un-shill-like behavior, just because I think it's not really time-efficient for them to do that for any extended debate.

Honestly, except for really egregious examples like ozma, I don't feel like I can tell with any confidence who is and isn't fake, so I tend to talk to people on the merits and then talk about fake users as a systemic problem as a separate thing.

Even if it's not in response to what that person is saying, you're still encouraging others to disengage with them based on some false notion of them being bad-actors.

Yeah, maybe so. I think in general, accusing people of acting in bad faith is a bad way to go, just because it doesn't really lend itself to productive conversation (and I realize that's ironic since I do do exactly that sometimes). Definitely getting into the weeds of ad hominem, categorizing each person in the discussion as is or isn't a shill, shouldn't be the main thrust of the discussion. It's only relevant in this thread specifically with ozma because he does it like a full time frickin job.

That's the other side of that coin: if there's a cohort of users that is so clearly engaging in bad faith that it's distorting the overall conversation, I do feel like that's worth talking about. I don't think it's real productive to just play the sucker and keep saying "No actually Biden didn't ruin the US's climate change policy" over and over again indefinitely, without delving into why it is that so many people keep saying that he did and using the same very particular talking-point framing.

But yeah, the point about it being usually not really a friendly or productive thing to do to run around throwing accusations of shilling around, I'll somewhat agree with you on.

mozz, 21 days ago

even though I still take issue with the default seemingly being 'shill, unless enough effort is shown'.

Hey so check it out: That's not at all what I said. My criteria I listed for suspecting you of something dishonest were:

1. Reusing shill talking points
2. Using tactics like rampant strawmanning, just blandly pretending that someone said something different than they said and arguing against that instead of what they said.

Then I also mentioned that:

3. Since you seem like you're open to talking at this huge length which isn't usual for shills, that sort of makes me trust you again.

I have more to say, but I just wanna pause on this point for a second. Check this out:

Therein lies the pitfall of the shill-unless-proven-otherwise attitude - it makes it easy to characterize most people as shills

I literally never said that, or anything close to it. I listed two criteria that would fit a shill, and one that would exonerate someone from being a shill, and it sounds like you just totally edited away the first two and started telling me that I think everyone's a shill unless exonerated by the third.

Surely you can see how conducting the conversation like that would make someone conclude you're not speaking in good faith?

Like I say, I have more to say, but this is such a critical point that I want to pause and focus on it for a second.

mozz, 21 days ago

The person specifically called me out by name and said that I’d accused them of something but been too cowardly to engage with them directly on it. I hadn’t, but since they brought it up, I looked into it a little and confirmed that yes, I feel comfortable accusing them directly, and did so, and explained why. Thus they have a chance to defend themselves directly if they feel like what I said was unfair. But I didn’t bring the ad hominem into it and never intended to until I was specifically invited to. Until then, I was, as I pointed out, engaging with them purely on the merits of what they were saying.

mozz, 21 days ago

So, I still don't think that what I am saying is what you think I am saying.

I wasn't saying that those three bullet points were the things that would indicate a shill user. The only reason I brought them up was to speak to you directly about how I saw your user -- they were all things that applied to you, as I saw it, in some way. But like I say, I don't really try to get involved in saying "I think this particular user is fake" unless it's pretty egregious. Just expressing leftist agitation isn't it. Like I was recommending slrpnk to somebody recently, sort of like yeah they hate voting sometimes, IDK, but whatever, they are good people.

One of a much smaller set of behaviors that'll imply to me that someone is fake is a glaring incongruity -- like beliefs or ways of speaking that very rarely go together. A good example is ozma talking about CNN as a trusted liberal news, sort of "our news" since all of us are leftists together... presumably if you are this far-left lemmy.ml person, you will see how ridiculous that is. Does it mean on its own he's a shill? Not completely, no. But it's super weird. That kind of thing is why I am suspicious of him, somewhat less suspicious of you even though you post stuff that to me seems wildly counterproductive to leftist progress in this country, and not at all suspicious of slrpnk. Does that way of looking at it make sense?

it will create just enough discomfort to spur action

So your intent in posting memes against voting for Biden is to spur the reader to get involved in leftist action? What would they start doing, to improve the state of the country? I'm not trying to be dickish by asking that, I'm genuinely asking.

That's why every criticism of Biden here is always couched in "but i'm voting for him anyway"; without signaling 'I am not seeking to cause chaos' every critique is potentially suspect of being bad-faith. It's a cancer for actual activism and it's another one of the convenient logics that can dismiss uncomfortable confrontation as unworthy of engagement.

Yeah, 100%. This is one of the key reasons why I don't like the shills. The country needs a whole lot of help definitely including replacing the Democrats with something substantially better, and by distorting the whole conversation away from "how do we make some progress" and towards "is it a good idea or not to let Trump get elected and start imprisoning anyone to the left of Mitch McConnell and shooting anyone who tries to hold a protest", it's eliminating a lot of the potential for forward progress that something like Lemmy could otherwise provide.

mozz, 21 days ago

I am mocking the essentialist and attitude that suggests [voting] is the only thing that matters

those who seek to enforce support for a candidate and discourage dissent

discouraging the propagation of news coverage that is unflattering to that candidate to a point that is threatening to consensus opinion

launching crusades against those who are insufficiently emphatic about the need to vote

I just don't think any of these things are happening. I think you're mounting this grand challenge against an enemy that 99% doesn't exist on Lemmy, and the people who actually are reading your messages are in a very different place than you're describing here. When they say "yes Gaza sucks please can we get a better president in the future but in the meantime also Trump is 10 times worse for Gaza among many other things so let's not elect him, also let's go to the Palestine protest this Saturday" and you scream in their face "GENOCIDE JOE, GENOCIDE JOE, DON'T TRY TO SILENCE MY DISSENT" you're producing no benefit for leftism in this country.

If you wanted to go the DNC and start yelling at them about support for Israel and tepid marijuana reform, then sure. That sounds fine to me, that would sound productive (because I think there you would encounter some discouragement of any "dissent" like anti Israel sentiment).

To drive progress we must sow discontent against the status quo, that much has always been clear.

Do you think that the Communists in 1932 who were fighting the SPD, instead of Hitler, accomplished progress by sowing discontent against the status quo? Certainly that's what they were doing, just my assessment of their success level is pretty limited, since they almost all were killed.

mozz, 20 days ago

I just don’t think any of these things are happening

Lmao, I mean... Disagree? Look, it's right here even

So to deal with the four bullet points one by one in more detail:

• I am very confident that I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered. Someone saying that voting does matter is in no way saying that it's the only thing that matters. I think you will be hard pressed to find even a single comment on Lemmy saying that voting is the only thing that matters.
• I don't think I am discouraging all dissent. I give vocal dissent to the Biden administration on Israel, as does the vast majority on Lemmy. You could maybe say that I'm trying to "enforce support" by presenting my logic in favor of voting for him in general, but I've also posted articles from Ralph Nader explaining how to withhold voting in order to put pressure on Democrats to produce better outcomes and said that I think that's a good thing to do. My main objection to the "I'll never vote for Biden" viewpoint is that it enables a 10 times worse outcome and does nothing to create the better-than-Biden outcome that you seem like you're claiming you want -- but I am not demanding that people support Biden or else. I think we both want better outcomes than Biden, and we are holding a discussion about how we could get them.
• I do discourage dissemination of coverage that is unflattering to Biden, if I think it's dishonest -- but the issue is the dishonesty, not the unflattering. When it seems honest (e.g. when it pertains to Israel) I encourage it, I post it myself, again as does the majority on Lemmy.
• I don't launch any crusade (even accepting that framing for typing a comment on the internet) against anyone who's insufficiently emphatic. If someone's actively hostile to the idea of voting in this election, then yes I'll disagree with them sometimes strongly and explain why, but that is allowed, yes? Almost everyone on the internet will sometimes "launch a crusade" against viewpoints they disagree with, by that definition.

I get what you're saying in breaking down that paragraph of mine, and I can respond to what you're saying about it if you want me to, but I feel like I need to point out that in my eyes not a single one of those bullet points is in it, or anywhere near it.

You said earlier "Most people who share my perspective have long since stopped trying to argue anything in good faith at all with centrists." I'm gonna be honest, I have reached that same point with a lot of the lemmy.ml hivemind, and this is why. You are wildly mischaracterizing what I actually think, to the point where you're saying things I strongly disagree with (e.g. voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden) and then attributing them to me.

The conversation I would like to have with you is, we need better outcomes than Biden, how do we get there. It is frustrating and pointless to have to over and over again have that much more productive conversation be recast as, I am supporting Biden no matter what and squashing any dissent against him and actively hostile to anything better than him, and then for me to have to try to explain that that's not accurate and be lectured about the contents of my own mind and my own opinions, and have an extended debate about it where I'm apparently not allowed to the be the authority on what I think and what my opinions are.

Surely that makes sense? Or no?

mozz, 20 days ago

I'm going to be blunt. I was registered as third party (green party or libertarian) for many years of my life, I've done various activism things in and out of electoral politics. You are inventing a reason and supporting theoretical framework for why I support Biden in this election that is mostly imaginary, just invented out of general theories and thin air, and lecturing me at length about how my own internal politics work (which isn't how they work), and also about "the way" to do effective protest (which, sure, is fine, but is also in my opinion not the only way or guaranteed to be applicable and the perfect solution to every possible political / cultural situation.)

From time to time, you tell me something about my own thinking that is so wrong that I can point to some clear counterexample, but it hasn't changed in any respect the main thrust of you explaining to me what my thinking is. I can say, look, I posted an article from Nader about how to withhold votes from Biden to get needed political outcomes; look, I showed support for slrpnk even though the general consensus there is largely just anti-voting-in-general, because I feel like they're generally working for good and authentic about their beliefs, and so that is fine.

But no, none of that matters. You've already figured out what I believe, and you'll tell me about it at length, whatever I have to say about it.

If you want to have a back and forth where the things you say are open to critique, and where you're open to listening to me explaining my own views and the reasons for them instead of you breaking them down to me based on some general political theory that applies very little to my own thinking, then sure. But if you're committed to this conduct and to lecturing -- if the whole model is, you are right and I am wrong and you explain and I listen and say "yes sir" to your theories, which are above critique because they are already right -- then there's not a lot of point in us talking.