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Charlz Guybon posted:Why do you think that is Hellsing? I think the prospect of an accidental nuclear war ought to focus our minds a bit. Most Democrats who have commented on the INF have at least pointed out that its a terrible idea to withdraw from it yet when the actual opportunity to do something presents itself the party votes in favour of building more nuclear weapons and militarizing space. These are policies that place the future of our species under genuine existential risk and the relevant arms control experts are saying as much but the liberal media is more interested in reporting on how Trump's policies in Ukraine, Syria and North Korea are dangerously soft on Russia.
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Dec 21, 2019 15:52
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Could you imagine if Russia had pulled out of NPT agreements after we meddled in their election in the 90s and started building nukes and militarizing space. The same people crying "election interference, casus belli" now would be squawking about how Russia's unreasonable provocative rearmament over some election ads just proves that you can't deal with the paranoid and aggressive Asiatic brain. But I guess they'd want to go to war either way, so at least they're consistent VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Dec 21, 2019 |
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Dec 21, 2019 16:04
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Helsing and Jrodefeld should have a dedicated debate thread where they can non sequitur over each other freely
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Dec 21, 2019 20:37
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It's funny how people like the guy in the post above mine view the points Helsing is making as non sequitors, because they're incapable of understanding the concept of "putting things in context." It seems like, to these people, if someone says a bunch of technically true things (like "Russia technically involved itself in the US election") that should just be taken at face value with no consideration given to the way people and politicians are interpreting and using that fact. It's like if someone went around quoting technically-true black crime statistics and someone said "This is misleading because of (insert other facts) and helping to support a racist narrative" and they replied with "That's a nonsequitor, I'm talking about these facts and not those other facts. Are you denying these facts are true?"
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Dec 21, 2019 22:43
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Ytlaya posted:It's funny how people like the guy in the post above mine view the points Helsing is making as non sequitors, because they're incapable of understanding the concept of "putting things in context." I think the problem is with people who don't really understand how to support an argument, or how to evaluate how well an argument is supported, so they just default to saying "well are the reasons given factually correct" and not "do those reasons support the conclusion." So we have to start another Great Game or possibly World War 3, because Russia meddled in the election. The conclusion, that we start a war, must be correct because it's factually true that Russia bought some Facebook ads to help Trump. Is that a good reason to start a war, well I don't know how to evaluate that so the question is a meaningless non sequitur
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Dec 22, 2019 02:40
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I think it's more a narcissism thing where people assume that because what they've written makes perfect sense to them, their posts are definitely rational and reasonable and easily followed, and the only way someone might not understand what they've written, and how it connects to what they're replying to, is if they were being willfully dense. But enough about my posting
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Dec 22, 2019 03:38
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Rest assured I don't think you're being willfully dense.
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Dec 22, 2019 17:29
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What are you even getting out of a discussion forum if you're so ignorant that making inferences between ideas is a non sequitur? Near as I can tell the only other thing D&D would serve as is a Twitter dump for people too anxious, incurious or inept to curate their own follows. oh god thats really it isn't it
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Dec 22, 2019 19:12
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Why did Russia reopen the investigation into the Dyatlov Pass thing? New information? I thought the whole thing had been chalked up to hypothermia and we had all moved on....
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Jan 1, 2020 20:01
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jet sanchEz posted:Why did Russia reopen the investigation into the Dyatlov Pass thing? New information? Bandits.
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Jan 1, 2020 20:10
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This is the most loaded of all loaded questions, but is there anywhere reputable that I can read about Jefrey Epstein, his crimes and the lolita express? Like even just some kind of primary source (like, a scan of a court document that a non-trivial number of people are accepting as official) of the L.E. flight logs? As far as media sources, I would be willing to read any major source with a journalistic reputation that it actually cares about. In particular I'm curious about any info about allegations that Bill Clinton flew on the lolita express, and that Trump had connections to Epstein. Also, just a list of names that were found on the logs. Can't seem to find an unbiased source on this in any respect. Meanwhile everyone is claiming that they have the facts, confusing me.
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Jan 2, 2020 05:33
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Bandits. Trots.
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Jan 2, 2020 16:36
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Somfin posted:Helsing and Jrodefeld should have a dedicated debate thread where they can non sequitur over each other freely I feel like D&D needs at least one poster who 100% believes Zardoz had excellent policy ideas.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:24
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Ytlaya posted:You seem to not understand what the word "conspiracy" means. Is it really a conspiracy when literally everyone knows about it  jet sanchEz posted:Why did Russia reopen the investigation into the Dyatlov Pass thing? New information? Maybe going to pin it on Finnish war criminals. (Joke post but I'm not ruling it out. The fact that it happened in the late 50s absolutely doesn't matter.)
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Jan 2, 2020 18:32
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The Scientist posted:This is the most loaded of all loaded questions, but is there anywhere reputable that I can read about Jefrey Epstein, his crimes and the lolita express? Like even just some kind of primary source (like, a scan of a court document that a non-trivial number of people are accepting as official) of the L.E. flight logs? There are the Miami Herald articles by Julie Brown which arguably did the most to push Epstein into the public eye but they are fairly narrowly focused. There are various profiles of Epstein from before his arrest but a number of authors like Vicki Ward have come forward and said that their reporting was heavily censored or suppressed. Most of the specific details such as the available flight logs, court scans of documents like the indictment of his jail guards, reports about screaming in his cell, reports about his first 'suicide attempt', reports that the cameras watching his cell block were broken, etc. all mostly just came out in the NYT, Wapo, etc. There are websites out there that aggregate those daily stories but I'm not aware of anyone who has actually tried to put it all together into a coherent narrative, and for the most part there hasn't been any follow up on the initial reports. As it stands quite a bit of the reporting on Epstein has actually originated with the right wing press. The Daily Mail and the New York Post have seemingly been among the most proactive investigators of this story, take that how you will. The short answer would be no, there's no single reliable and comprehensive source and everyone reporting on it seems to have their own agenda whether they're saying he killed himself or was murdered.
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Jan 2, 2020 21:36
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Jerry Cotton posted:Is it really a conspiracy when literally everyone knows about it Yep
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Jan 2, 2020 21:43
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Regarding Epstein, there's also very strong circumstantial evidence and, at the very least, we can conclude that a bunch of public figures had no problem socially associating with Epstein after his first arrest for procuring an underage girl for prostitution. Basically, the Epstein situation is one where it's definitely true that Epstein dealt in underage prostitution, and your default assumption should be that the powerful people he associated with were at the very least aware of this and likely directly participated. Ignoring Epstein specifically, on a basic ethical level it's my personal belief that when you're talking about people with great wealth/power, concepts like "burden of proof" should be treated differently than they are with normal people. Partly because great wealth gives a person more power to obscure and obstruct the process, and partly because the consequences of letting wealthy/powerful people get away with crime are greater than the consequences of "wrongly" punishing them (which is the complete opposite of how it is with most normal people, where it's worse to wrongly convict than it is to wrongly not convict). Not only are the wealthy/powerful capable of greater crimes, but they are by definition not part of a group oppressed by the powerful (since they're a part of that group). I would go as far as to say that those without wealth/power have an obligation to presume guilt on the part of the wealthy, because institutions themselves can't be relied upon to go after "their own." This doesn't mean you should just blindly assume they're guilty of any accusation made against them (since there might be some clear factional/partisan motivation), but it means that if you're uncertain and there's reasonably strong circumstantial evidence of something, you should lean towards assuming guilt until the claim is disproved or credibly discredited. Again, this is my personal belief and very obviously is not derived from the US legal framework.
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Jan 2, 2020 22:24
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In another of those irony is dead moments a major American media conglomerate named after its billionaire oligarch owner - who happens to currently be mounting a bid for President that is literally just staffed by people from Bloomberg, a paper which recently admitted that its entire editorial slant is directly decided by Bloomberg himself - warns readers about the incredible danger posed by Russian interference campaigns.quote:Politics
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Jan 11, 2020 00:32
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Helsing posted:There are the Miami Herald articles by Julie Brown which arguably did the most to push Epstein into the public eye but they are fairly narrowly focused. There are various profiles of Epstein from before his arrest but a number of authors like Vicki Ward have come forward and said that their reporting was heavily censored or suppressed. Most of the specific details such as the available flight logs, court scans of documents like the indictment of his jail guards, reports about screaming in his cell, reports about his first 'suicide attempt', reports that the cameras watching his cell block were broken, etc. all mostly just came out in the NYT, Wapo, etc. There are websites out there that aggregate those daily stories but I'm not aware of anyone who has actually tried to put it all together into a coherent narrative, and for the most part there hasn't been any follow up on the initial reports. Agreed that there’s no single article from a reliable source that explains the whole thing comprehensively. This article covers several of the specific points that The Scientist asked about, though: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-lolita-express-bill-clinton-flight-logs-1448367%3famp=1 Edit: Specifically: Yes, Clinton flew on the Lolita Express, although the press hadn't named it the Lolita Express yet. Yes, Trump was buddies with Epstein, saying in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” And yes, there are flight logs, available here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jan 11, 2020 |
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Jan 11, 2020 03:25
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Top-secret UFO files could cause "grave damage" to U.S. national security if released, Navy says https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-secret-ufo-files-could-cause-grave-damage-to-us-national-security-if-released-navy-says/ quote:In November 2004, several U.S. Navy pilots stationed aboard the USS Nimitz encountered a Tic-Tac-shaped UFO darting and dashing over the Pacific Ocean in apparent defiance of the laws of physics. Navy officials dubbed the strange craft an "unidentified aerial phenomenon," but they have remained mum on what, exactly, that phenomenon could've been. Now, unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever considered making a hat out of tinfoil, the military has confirmed they know more than they're letting on.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:23
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https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30916275/government-secret-ufo-program-investigation/quote:After almost a year of investigating the U.S. government’s interest in UFOs, what they’ve just said should neither be shocking, nor revelatory. Unbeknownst to them, they’ve only further confirmed what over a dozen other people with backgrounds inside the government and the now-defunct Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) have already admitted to me.
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Feb 21, 2020 05:44
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So the Donald is going to kill way more people through incompetence re Corona... they are at 200+ plus a day in nyc dying with and tracking an exponential increase. So Helsing still better than Bush Two?
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Mar 29, 2020 16:01
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You're imagining that George "heck'uva job Brownie" Walker Bush would have responded to this crisis? For now I won't even bother arguing with you on that highly dubious assumption. Let us just consider some of the things Bush actually did. Even a conservative estimate of Bush's Iraq war adventure would be that hundreds of thousands of people died as a direct result of his decision to go to war. We can add to that the many millions of additional deaths from the political, social and economic dislocation and additional conflicts the invasion spawned. The entire region is still suffering from Bush's 2003 decision, and that is only one of Bush's foreign policy adventures.
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Mar 29, 2020 16:59
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Bar Ran Dun posted:So the Donald is going to kill way more people through incompetence re Corona... they are at 200+ plus a day in nyc dying with and tracking an exponential increase. literally yes, this would've been a complete shitshow no matter who was president just due to the way the american state is structured
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Mar 29, 2020 17:02
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There's arguments to be made about how other people probably would've lied less, provided a front that people could trust better, or wouldn't get into stupid petty fights that continually worsen the crisis, but it is hard to tell how different people would've reacted to the crisis. People don't talk about enough though how Trump has been proactive about this though. How he actively placed the government in a worse position to deal with the crisis by firing the pandemic response team, defunding the CDC, and generally making the government weaker and less capable. To say nothing of how the current state of politics galvanized his party around denying healthcare under any circumstances and core republicans being even more detached in a fantasy land than ever before.
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Mar 29, 2020 19:49
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V. Illych L. posted:literally yes, this would've been a complete shitshow no matter who was president just due to the way the american state is structured To pretend like "this would've happened regardless" is to be incredibly reductive at best and naive at worst. SlothfulCobra posted:
You'd be hard pressed to think of anybody who ran for president in 2016 or 2020 in either party who could've done as bad or worse at handling this outbreak than Trump. Only ones I could think that comes close is Rand Paul or Ted Cruz because they're both huge idiots that even their own party doesn't like anymore, and Bill DeBlasio because he's also a moron. Donald J. Trump purposefully made the US less prepared for this outbreak because he dismantled a ton of things simply because Obama had created or expanded them (cutting 80% of funding to the CDCs Global Pandemic Response team, dismantling the "Predict" program to proactively find the next big outbreak amongst animal-borne pathogens, etc.). He put Mike "I had an HIV Outbreak in Indiana" Pence in charge of managing the response. Through John Bolton he fired the National Security Council's global pandemic director and dismantled the entire team. He sabotaged attempts to get cornoavirus tests because he wanted to get them from a company that Jared Kushner was on the board of. The list goes on. And on. And on.
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Mar 29, 2020 20:00
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Helsing posted:You're imagining that George "heck'uva job Brownie" Walker Bush would have responded to this crisis? For now I won't even bother arguing with you on that highly dubious assumption. Let us just consider some of the things Bush actually did. Even a conservative estimate of Bush's Iraq war adventure would be that hundreds of thousands of people died as a direct result of his decision to go to war. We can add to that the many millions of additional deaths from the political, social and economic dislocation and additional conflicts the invasion spawned. The entire region is still suffering from Bush's 2003 decision, and that is only one of Bush's foreign policy adventures. Don't forget Hurricane Katrina, the previous poster child for bungled federal disaster response, run by a FEMA which had been stacked by incompetent political cronies and micromanaged by Dick Cheney.
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Mar 29, 2020 20:39
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Sooo, Federal COVID 19 response: sheer horrifying incompetence or actively intentionally causing as much harm as possible?
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Apr 13, 2020 22:41
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Sooo, Why not both? Feels like the only thing we can argue is the degrees.
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Apr 13, 2020 23:01
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I’ve been watching this “open er up” business and I’ve had something in the back of my mind. We know about the manipulation of social media and have argued extensively about its sources and effectiveness. Anyway has there been anything in the news on that subject and conservative groups manipulating social media? I mean I’ve seen bots mentioned a little bit.
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May 27, 2020 00:20
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I’ve been watching this “open er up” business and I’ve had something in the back of my mind. We know about the manipulation of social media and have argued extensively about its sources and effectiveness. I mean, it is almost garaunteed that foreign troll farms are encouraging Americans to give each other the plague. And just like with the quote unquote election interference on Facebook, the real scandal is you can significantly shift US public opinion with poo poo posts because Americans are the dumbest people on the planet.
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May 27, 2020 08:14
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I’ve been watching this “open er up” business and I’ve had something in the back of my mind. We know about the manipulation of social media and have argued extensively about its sources and effectiveness. Any comments on the massive ongoing manipulation of the mainstream media as it tries to gaslight people into thinking that these riots are caused by the perfidious Russians?
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May 31, 2020 16:03
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lol no by US conservatives internally. Also how is trump doing now on the Bush scale Helsing? You ready to tell us all Bush was worse again after yesterday?
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May 31, 2020 16:15
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Bar Ran Dun posted:lol no by US conservatives internally. I can't parse what you're saying here so maybe you can clarify. quote:Also how is trump doing now on the Bush scale Helsing? You ready to tell us all Bush was worse again after yesterday? Yes, the guy who started multiple wars that killed millions and whose incredibly dire impact is still victimizing millions more to this very day is still worse than Trump. Do you just not factor in deaths outside of America when you try to do these comparisons or something?
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May 31, 2020 16:41
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What does your heart tell you?
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May 31, 2020 16:46
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Helsing posted:I can't parse what you're saying here so maybe you can clarify. If one looks a graph of restaurant business in states that reopened early, still in the shitter. Nobody going to restaurants even after opening. That’s a fact. But large groups seem to be showing up at specific restaurants, bars, etc. This appears superficially to a person only looking at images that restaurants are getting slammed. My suspicion is that these large gatherings were probably instigated by social media manipulation to create that appearance. I think US conservative groups were probably doing it. It doesn’t matter now. The last two days make it irrelevant. Helsing posted:Any comments on the massive ongoing manipulation of the mainstream media as it tries to gaslight people into thinking that these riots are caused by the perfidious Russians? It’s ineffective and dumb. That’s not going to work at all. They might get some traction with “out of state instigators” racist trope. But not for the reasons they would have in the past. I think there is a widespread opinion that these riots are justified and that the police are being monsters, at least in segments of the population outside of side of Republicans. That will lead to some people trying to reconcile “protestors upset for good reasons” with “violence bad”. So the outside agitators narrative will partially work, but it’ll be aimed at left (and right) US groups. Basically think of people looking at the video of the burning of the slave market last night and going 150 years too late, drat right. People that saw MPD firing at that lady on her balcony. But they also having deep opposition to property damage in protests and violence. They’re going to try to square that contradiction. Narratives about Russia don’t square it. Only idiots will push that right now . Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 17:10 on May 31, 2020 |
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May 31, 2020 17:07
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Here's Obama's former national security adviser showing how the 'alt-right infiltrators' and 'the Russians' have been fused into this monolithic entity embodying everything bad and sinister: https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1267182813675216899 This strikes me as a convenient deflection from the fact that the a major premise of contemporary Democratic liberalism has been that racism can best be ameliorated through better representation at the top. Compared to the 1960s there has been impressive progress in that regard, with Democrats leading the way, and we've seen numerous African Americans mayors, police chiefs, Councillors, not to mention justices and even the last President. I think at this point is fair to say that while there has been some significant progress on some specific issues overall the last fifty years have been a crushingly disappointing failure to build upon the reforms of the Civil Rights era. This is an uncomfortable reality for a Democratic party that wants to use better representation as a substitute for reckoning with the fact that the economic doctrines it has embraced since the 1980s are one of the main drivers behind both the economic and the political disenfranchisement and exploitation of minorities. I think some good advice here might be this: "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
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Jun 1, 2020 20:01
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Fortunately for me I’m not Susan Rice. A general observation, that generation isn’t reaching conclusions they should be. They should be able to see the problems, and I don’t disagree with your description of those problems. They aren’t seeing it, one could conclude a couple of possible reasons. It’s intentional and they are hiding true motives or they don’t see it. My inclination is towards that second. They don’t see it because the conditions of their lives prevent them from seeing it. Which of course is to assert that the material conditions of their lives are driving this inability to see. It is rather unfortunate that Bernie lost.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:12
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Yo Helsing I want to apologise for being a shitbird earlier in the thread. I was in the middle of a real bad crack ping event, brainwise. Easier to accuse folks of not making sense on purpose than it is to accept that your brain hasn't actually taken on board what they've said because you're still locked in a self-imposed cage.
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Jun 2, 2020 05:31
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https://www.valleyrecord.com/news/how-a-man-from-california-caused-a-false-antifa-scare-in-north-bend/ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/antifa-rumors-george-floyd-protests So this is a thing that is going on. To me this looks like somebody (my suspicion is US White Nationalists) is trying to prime the nutters (often not locals to the community) in small towns to be violent. They are showing up, I’ve seen it personally. I think is is a precursor. The communities this is occurring aren’t all conservative either. The locals are often the ones whose children are organizing these BLM protests. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 02:33
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