But the bible is fiction (bad fiction, at best). We wants "facts" so that we can scream without thinking.... and there goes my cap for inteligent comments in this thread. I made it to 2. (2 and half if you count this one). Good thing I just picked up some poutine from the street vendor.

The beauty of the thread is that it doesn't matter if you believe it to be the word of God or bad fiction at best. In fact, it probably works better if you do believe it to be direct from God's printer.

Way to miss the point.

like did you even read it?

I know you would, jla, cause I've seen your photos in the cookin' thread, but the question that many men would not be able to answer correctly is: Would you clean the house to protect your kids? Would you cook dinner to protect your kids? Would you do laundry to protect your kids? Would you *lock your guns in a safe* to protect your kids?

Anyone who doesn't do those things is not a good parent. Period.

Would you parent to protect your kids?

Or maybe more on point, would you sacrifice your gun fetish to protect your kids?

Of course the easy way to win this specific ARGUMENT is to declare loudly that OF COURSE I WOULD. But you're not the end-all be-all. You're not the point. You're not even a proper representation of the intended audience, so you're over here on the edge of the war setting up a boxing ring and pretending your personal views somehow have an effect on the larger discourse.

Disclosure: I still have you on mute, so what I wrote above is based on my understanding of x-lax based on past behavior, not specific to his recent comments. How'd I do?

dunk.

No true gunsman.

If guns aren't the problem and people are the problem why would you ever give the problem guns?

Oh, x-jla - I'm sure you've been posting a lot of injudicious nonsense but I've blocked you so . . .

jla, you really need to stop taking everything I post as directly targeted at you. The fetish comment was more generally targeted at people with a gun fetish in the terms of the twitter thread ... but be as narcissistic as you want to be I guess.

As for the dangers posed by guns in gun safes to children ... I'll just point out that there have been cases where safes have found to be faulty and even resulted in the death of children who were able to gain access to them. Also, my father (a responsible gun owner) had a gun safe and stored his guns, unloaded, locked inside, with the ammo locked in a different part of the home in a different safe with a different code/key to access it. I think I first figured out where everything was and how to unlock the safes when I was about 10 years old. So overall, I'd disagree that having a gun in a safe does not pose any danger to kids.

I own firearms. I conceal and carry nearly every day. I been trained by experts in defensive handgun combat.  I train a lot with my firearms.  I've had to use a firearm to defend myself form an attacker who broke into my home.

I have no children.

I still lock up my firearms when not in active use. 

When nieces and nephews come to visit the firearms are disabled so they cannot fire.  The parts are stored high up out of reach, then the ammo is stored separately. 

If you have children in your house you NEVER leave a firearm (even locked up) where a child to get to it.  EVER. 

My dad is a retired cop and I spent the majority of my childhood in the boy scouts, so I know my way around guns & gun safety. I'm with Chad on this. As a kid, our guns were locked in a keyed-safe that only my dad had a key to. More than that, I was taught from a very early age that you don't touch the safe. Frankly, I don't trust any gun owner who isn't somewhat terrified of their guns. In the way that I don't trust a carpenter who isn't somewhat terrified of their tablesaw. If you can't acknowledge the increased risk to your own safety & the safety of your loved ones because of the tool you have, I don't trust you to be responsible with the tool.

Chad's comment's begs the question if there even is a "responsible" gun storage solution for a household with an inquisitive 10-year-old who can literally access every part of his home and had done it because he has an interest in architecture and how houses and things get put together and the mechanical inner workings of things like locks and safes and figuring out what secrets might be hiding in plain sight. 

FWIW, there are no hidden secret passageways or doors behind bookshelves in my childhood home. Though there were decent hiding places in the basement where the floor joists sit on top of the foundation wall once you open up the return air register to gain access to the cavity above the ceiling (not where my father kept his gun safe by the way). 

I can also say that my friend's basement had a purpose build hiding place in the foundation wall that was accessed via a magnetic catch on some plywood paneling that was all hidden behind some artwork (it was empty when we found it, but we soon filled it up with our treasures).

I agree with tduds' comments about tools, except I wouldn't say terrified, but certainly a healthy respect. Partly because I've seen the results of tablesaw, jointer and shaper accidents. I'm not terrified of my guns--they are just tools, after all--but I definitely have a healthy respect for them and wish they would be regulated at least as strictly as automobiles. I learned gun safety at a young age. In 6th grade a classmate shot and killed another classmate (and friend) in the neck and killed him.

I don't have mine locked up but they are well-hidden and their ammunition is not in the same location. Part of learning gun safety is to obsessively check the chamber. I can't pick up a gun without doing so. We don't have kids or really any visitors so it's not as much of a problem as it could be. But thanks for the reminder to get or make a locking safe for them.

I'd say there isn't. The best you can do is keep firearms unloaded, locked up, and if possible disabled with either a trigger lock or a cable lock. Then the ammo is stored someplace else, and again locked.

I like the secrete hidie-hole in the basement you found!  That would be cool for a kid to find.  That brings up a good point - kids WILL find any and all firearms in the house.  

Completely agree Chad. I tend to think of it like when I lock up my bicycle in public. Anyone intent on gaining access will be able to, the locks are just keeping the people without that much intent from trying. 

As a 10-year-old, I had all the intent to gain access. Luckily, I never had any intent to do anything with the guns once I gained access. It was a puzzle for me, not a means for anything else.

Puzzles were really my thing if I'm being honest. Relating to another story about guns, I was the fastest in my JROTC class in 9th grade for disassembly and reassembly of the M1 rifle. I don't remember the time exactly, but it was just a puzzle to me. It was about the only part of the class that appealed to me in any way. Well that, and tracking the shadow line on my desk at the exact same time each day (really another type of puzzle).

EA - speaking from my own childhood, the solution is less about "hiding" and more about awareness. I knew exactly where the guns were, and if I really wanted to I probably could have figure out a way in. But it was *drilled* into my head practically from birth that you don't touch the gun safe. Zero exceptions. Don't even look at it. If you want to go shooting, ask dad. If you mess with the safe, there's hell to pay. 

Wood Guy - That's a good point, maybe "terrified" is an overstatement. Healthy respect, for sure, which imo is rooted in the gruesome knowledge of consequences that come from a lack of respect (the consequences, I guess, are what's terrifying).

tduds, essentially the same for me. My father never tried to "hide" them, I'm just pointing out that if he had, I would have found them. He did tell us to not touch it, but if I'm honest, that just made me want to get into it all the more. He also taught the awareness, well before I ever actually gained access, and would take me shooting as much as I wanted to. I just never really wanted to all that much. I saw no need for it. There was one time in my entire life where I used a gun for anything other than shooting at an inanimate target and it was enough for me that I immediately regretted it because I didn't "need" to do it. There were plenty of other solutions to the problem that would have been better.

It's funny I don't really think of target shooting as "training" for anything. I just like marksmanship. Now that I think of it, I have a similar relationship to running.

Growing up we always had several guns hanging on the wall and ammo was in the adjacent closet. When friends would come over we'd often do some target practicing. But I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and most of my friends grew up hunting, so we followed good safety protocols and nobody got hurt.

Well, there was that one time we convinced a friend who was NOT experienced with guns to hold the 12-ga a few inches from his shoulder, "to absorb the kickback." We didn't realize that he didn't know he shouldn't pull both triggers for the double barrel at once. A few years ago I saw him and he was still pissed about it, 25 years later. Fortunately he didn't break his shoulder. 

With power tools, I learned how to use a table saw and radial arm saw with little instruction; my brother and I were just expected to figure it out, and we did. Though I've had many close calls and I'm surprised I have all of my body parts today. The reason I take issue with the word "terrified" is that I have seen how people act when operating power tools while terrified, or driving, or climbing ladders or walking on roofs. Terror does not lead to good decisions. Confidence and respect, with a dash of fear, earned through experience and education are better qualities to have when in potentially deadly situations, IMO.

Knew a guy once who was missing his ring finger. Found out he actually lost all of his fingers and thumb to a table saw and the reconstruction was why his thumb looked like a ring could fit on it.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-only-way-to-prevent-car-crashes-is-more-cars

I used to work at a saw mill as a teen. A good percentage of the sawyers were missing fingers and/or had reconstructive surgery. Thankfully I never witnessed any bad accidents, though one guy got run over by an extension-boom forklift one day. We all had to get forklift licenses after that. Ha!

I am obliged to post this.

i was off the wagon for a bit.. but i'm back on.

Dude we're playing soccer.

you sunk my scrabble-ship.

I have this image of x-jla sitting at his computer and wondering why no one is responding to him . . .

"x-jla is ignored by you"

"x-jla is ignored by you"

'x-jla is ignored by you'

At this point he's just talking to himself . . . 

Because it looks gooood:

He's triggered by almost anything.

Can the BGH update the text so that when you have him blocked the text reads "x-jla is triggered by you" ... yes?

Oh gowd, that would be funny. BGH - do it!

You'd think a guy so obsessed with convincing us he should be trusted with guns would be less easily triggered.

Actually, that's a valid point. When you carry a firearm you need to ignore and 'brush off' a lot of stuff. Legally there is a very narrow set of circumstances that allow someone to use deadly force in self defense or the defense of others. Hell, even drawing a firearm is limited to a super narrow set of circumstances.

Maybe it's some sort of amnesia.

talking about getting triggered in a debate about firearms...

I just assume every post jla makes is a obtuse reaction to being triggered.

Ah yes... JP... typical pseudo-intellectual jive now it bite-size pop culture snippets!

jla, JP's popularity si due to clueless wankers quoting snippets and treating them like mic-drops. He uses language and typical word definition arguments to appear to make a point all while layering it in a thick coat of social science evolutionary vibe. It's philosophy with training wheels masquerading as critical thinking.

^Douglas Adams

jla, I don't care much for conclusions. I do care about the process and the way in which they frame their observations that lead to said conclusions. Hitchens and Adams are those I'd consider intellectuals.

Solzhenitsyn, now there's an intellectual.

by the way, this link included in the article, is worth visiting. love seeing jp get dunked on by zizek (a real intellectual) - what a hack.

You're not missing anything

same here... waiting for someone to post something who is worth while listening to.

While tainting any discussion of it with his bad faith efforts to own the libs, and "give them a taste their own medicine," jla actually brought up an interesting bill. It was introduced in CA regarding social media companies, their terms of service when it comes to hate speech, extremism, foreign interference, etc., and it would be interesting to talk about .. but not here with jla.

I'm not sure if Paul would want to wade into it, but given that he owns a social media company based in CA I'd be interested in hearing his take on it, even if it isn't on the merits of the bill itself but whether or not this would affect Archinect (there are some qualifiers for what constitutes a social media company in the text of the bill).

is there a cliffs notes version?

Companies have to clearly define and make available the terms of use for their websites and state what can get you banned and for how long.

I imagine a steep downside to this which can be seen in the lengthy EULA hiding stuff that is only "legal" as long as nobody takes the EULA writing company to court. Vague language makes bad law and all that. 

And what's the deal with foreign interference, asking for a friend...

Too bad the tax increases on those remaining 10% not pay for all the infrastructure improvements but also more than make up for the reduction in taxes in the remaining 90%.

Democrats would fumble a wet dream if given the opportunity. Marketing is not their strong suit.

I was about to respond but I can't deal with the number of notifications I'm going to get if I do, and I'm not going to change anyone's opinion, so what's the point in posting here.

The top 10% hold about 70% of the total wealth, so it seems extremely fair that they'd be responsible for *at least* 70% of the total tax revenue. 

The Democratic Party platform is objectively popular and the party is absurdly bad at selling their proposals. The Republican Party platform (well, back when it existed) is objectively unpopular and the party is frighteningly good at marketing to racial and class grievance to garner identitarian support since they lack ideological support.

It's funny when you get mad at facts.

We might have a shot at not screwing this one up.

I finally got tired of getting sucked in enough to put xjla on ignore. So what do you want to talk about?

In my neighborhood it's become difficult to address problems because things have gotten to a point where institutional and very old failures have created a situation in which one can't say "Man, this place is a mess" or "I do not feel safe" without someone else accusing that individual of intent that was not there, and at most they were simply ignorant of the underlying issues while being a bit selfish with their feelings.

Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone, often not in a good way.

“Social” media...

i'm thankful everyday i didn't grow up with social media. this was plenty of social media for me.. was always quite sad to lose stewart to a snake bite:

Fancy.

I had this:

“ Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone”

I still remember phone numbers from friends and family from the pre-internet/text times...some of whom dead for decades.

I won Oregon Trail IRL.

rando: Smart phones mean I haven't had to actually memorize a phone number in years. I can remember my high school fling's phone number, but sometimes forget my wife's.

tduds - how many of your party got dysentery though?

I got shingles once.

My dog poops on John McLoughlin's front lawn.

same issue happens locally between states- would love to see something there as well.

...with President Delaware in the big seat I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Yellen finally got something right. States need to do the same thing to keep corporations honest. Many corps get decades-long tax abatements to set up business in a state then move 6 months before the abatement is up.

BUT MILES THEYRE CALLED OPPORTUNITY ZONES. WHY DO YOU HATE OPPORTUNITIES?!

Opportunities for who? The usual suspects.

This song explains how I view "liberals" vs. "leftists" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nFvhhCulaw

Tduds, did you read today's HCR post: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-6-2021? I've heard most of it before but I love how she puts things in context. Seems to relate to your post.

Trend? yes. Point? no.

Thanks Wood Guy. I only catch her posts occasionally, but I always enjoy them. I agree she is great at finding the context of the moment (Others I think are good at this: Daniel Dale, Jared Yates Sexton, & Ezra Klein)

The Biden-Ukraine Conspiracy!

https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/04/02/stephanopoulos-blinken-score-win-for-micimatt/

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/

https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

https://www.theroot.com/maybe-america-is-racist-1846667213?fbclid=IwAR00UUVejslZwYvfX1SCtEPS68cSnkOQjOFr8b4QHi0mVce4sUc3Q7i7P74

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550620916071

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3431132

Everything has gotten worse. This place is just a refection of that. And that trend is accelerating rapidly.

lol

Seems like it...

Maybe the kkkiller kkkops need more training?

So a black guy in a black neighbourhood is killed by cops because of the higher crime in that neighbourhood, the black guy in the white neighbourhood is killed by cops because he looks like coming from a neighbourhood with higher crime? What can black people do to finally not get killed by cops, because it seems to me they're in a Catch-22 situation here...

Nothing. The culture is to kill Blacks. Whites don't get executed at random traffic stops. Police, economic persecution, racism, it's all part of the program to maintain an underclass that is used to instill fear in the general population, which makes them easier to manipulate. Hitler did it with Jews, the US is doing it with Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians ...

More white people swim because of vestigial generational effects from segregated pools.

No one is saying (okay, no one worth taking seriously is saying..) that cops deliberately go out looking to murder some black folk because they're hood-wearing violent white supremacists. What people are saying is that the legacy of racism in this country has left us with a slew of different factors - from poverty to health to crime to education to stereotype to implicit & explicit bias - which American minorities, especially black Americans, being disproportionately impacted by. That's what we keep trying to explain by saying these things are systemic & structural. You just accidentally explained it to yourself above, but you're too arrogant or ignorant to figure that out.

I do agree with your solution though. It's not *the whole* solution, but its definitely part of a solution.

A system, that has its own historical legacy, tied to capturing runaway slaves, cannot be given the benefit of doubt when it comes to race, and racism. Chairman Hampton was sleeping in his bed, executed by kkkops. Police, real estate, medical, education, governance, all have tentacles in 18th and 19th century racist policies, that they, we, refuse to grapple with, all because, why? Because, that was in the past, yet, it wasn't thousands of years ago, it was only in a handful of generations ago.

kudos to jla for making a clear point in one comment using paragraphs and everything.

I can't remember where I heard it first but someone said it seems like America is trying to run out the clock on racism. & sorry but that's not how it works. Inertia won't fix itself, it takes action.

Inertia: 

1. a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. 
2. a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

“If you make up 13% of the population and commit 2x the amount of crime you can expect 2x the amount of police interactions and therefore 2x the amount of misfortunes at the hands of bad cops, overly vigilant cops, or negligent cops.”

If you are being singled out more by the police, it only makes sense they are likely going to find something that sticks...it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a downward spiral in one...as black people also simply show up more in the statistics because they have more police interactions but they have more police interactions because they show up more in the statistics(!)

you can’t find what you’re not looking for...

That IS how it works x-jla, it's called racial profiling and it targets non-whites specifically and intentionally, richer or poorer...why'd you think Chris Rock had to make his "PSA"?

*Describes the system exactly* 

"See, it's not about the system."

"Telling young kids growing up in the inner city that nothing is their fault is putting them in harms way." 

Good thing nobody's telling them that.

xlax, you know what you've accomplished here, you and you alone? you've single-handedly have wore the fuck out of the term "woke", in fact 2020 is asking you to stop already...

Post some examples then.

I can only imagine what jla is saying in response to this .

I expect that we'll be hearing helicopters all evening again...

seeing on the twitter that it's guilty

"Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/derek-chauvin-trial-verdict-n1264670

Yup. Guilty. The governor of MN still declared a state of emergency this morning at 7am CST.

something like this? https://www.aia.org/pages/6303978-racial-equity-initiative-

People using the term "woke" are either incapable of seeing the systemic problems that exist, or racists. Or both. You decide.

"Woke" is similar to "snowflake"--meant as an insult, but I wear the terms with pride--I'd rather be sensitive to others' plights than to be an insensitive asshole.

I wonder what jla's clients would think of his views

Sorry Chad, strong thumbs down on that one. That's the sort of talk that keeps me anonymous around here. Whether they would love, hate, or be indifferent about his views, that's something you don't mess with.

As a purely hypothetical comment I think it's fine to wonder, but it does read a bit like a threat. I may not agree with most of XJLA's opinions but he has the right to hold them.

i'm missing the problem here, seems like a bit of an overreaction. unless chad knows xlax's identity, i think the speculation is proving a point. not that i've read a post from xlax anytime recently..

I actually do know jla's identity and business. I find many of his comments racist and stupid. However he's allowed to have those opinions as long as he's not causing harm.  Square is correct in my intent though - would jla say these things to his clients?

For me posting anonymous is a pet peeve of mine.  What you say online is no different than saying it in person.  If you're not comfortable with someone knowing who you are online because of what you say then you shouldn't be saying it. 

That being said I do see a difference between posting anonymously to protect yourself from retribution for exposing harmful or illegal actions of others and posting anonymously just so you can get away with saying shit that would get you in trouble.  

"I agree with everything in this statement except “anti-black bias in architecture”. What’s an example of this?"

To begin, that isn't the quote.

"Looks like a lot of typical identity politics bullshit. Any mention of...idk...removing expensive barriers to entry like licensing? Surly if a 15$ id is a barrier to vote then a 2-10 year low paid internship following a 100k degree program must be too, no?"

I'm not aware of AIA National publicly supporting this position but there are AIA chapters working on removing the education requirement as we speak.  My state has an alternative path to licensure and as a member of my chapter's board I have been involved in discussions of how we can support other states adopt similar alternative paths.

yeah, i mean you sort of have to be aware that anything you say online could eventually come back to you, even if anonymous. there's no guaranteed protection.

exhibit a

i can't believe i have to respond to this.. but what's the common thread here, mentioned 7 times?

poverty.

Wood, I agree, I don't care if people think I'm woke. Dumbasses who do, don't know shit about me. I didn't wake up in 2008 and think that racism was over, just the opposite. It's these racist smear merchants like xlax spreading a blatant disregard for the reality that exists, who often resort to that bullshit.

I wonder how all this garbage reconciles with the idea of a "color blind" society? Color blind, but a limited understanding of one aspect of a culture, means the entirety of that culture is "x". We're one step away from calling Jews good with money, and Chinese are great at math and science, hell everyone knows that all Russians are forced to drink vodka from the bottle at birth.

Just because a colorblind society was your goalpost does not mean it was the goalpost.

Listen I didn't look very hard I'm sure there are better examples.

Anyway my Irish great grandfather famously (within the family, at least) slowly drank himself to death after immigrating because of the lack of social cohesion, constant money worry, and frequent exclusion he faced in America. So, you know, if you see an overlap between a "whiskey culture" and "alcoholism" there's a causal instigator there and its - if not explicit than implicit - racism.

And just for the record, jla, I do not think you're racist. I do think your views are much less examined than you think they are, but not racist. Ok back to lazily trolling...

Of course you'd misunderstand MLK's words. You read them as passive, divinely provided, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Go read a book, or a fucking article.

Which culture does your beating of a dead horse arise from?

*Looking into 'not shutting the fuck up' culture in White America*

Sure I could focus on rhetoric, citations, examples, history, etc. but that's only part of the story. Turns out that not shutting the fuck up is considered honorable in some subcultures of White America.

I've even heard that, in some remote villages, shutting the fuck up is considered a violation of ones fundamental rights.

Look I gave you plenty of heads up...

I think I missed the context that this is referring to?

Not sure tduds. Only thing I've seen lately that might fit is the "public charge" rule that SCOTUS essentially sent back to the lower courts. I'm not fully up to speed on it though so I'm not sure if it really fits SP's complaint.

Recent decision to make sure we can keep kids of color in prison for life with no pesky reading or thinking required for the judge or jury, upcoming loosening of gun "rights'," making sure there's no oversight abilities for charitable donations, etc etc.

Point being that the lower court decisions (as well as previous SCOTUS rulings) do nothing except make sure the only cases that percolate up through the system are the ones these shitgibbons can use to the greatest political effect.

x-jla is ignored by you

.

OK now this is getting too meta, most of the thread is me seeing the message "x-jla is ignored by you" and the rest of it is people posting the same thing as images or quotes.

Granted. Also acceptable is 'x-jla talks to himself'

You need game to dunk.

Empty room indeed

A masterclass in how to lie with statistics.

I don't understand this tweet. Even if it were sarcasm I don't get it.

Naw it's a half- joke that clearly has merit seeing by the nerves it hit.

It feels hyperbolic.

Therein lies the joke.

Babble, for me, the example as described in the tweet, best represents what fraudsters like xla, and others in the conservative echo chamber, like to do to challenge the movements for Black Lives. Especially when white people like me challenge the white supremacy, and capitalist narrative that has been destroying the country.

They want to use "woke" as an insult, instead of dealing with reality. I'm not offended, but Bree is correct.

"Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any system ever." 

I'm going to elaborate on this one and nothing else, simply for the sake of time. This is, to me, the "How to Lie With Statistics" archetype. The framing is not incorrect, just simplified. As an analogy, imagine poverty as drowning. You're not wrong to say that "Capitalism" (as you define it) has saved a huge proportion of the world from "drowning", more than any other system in the past. 

But what this "fact" ignores is that some people are clinging to a floating plank while others have 300' yachts and unlimited champagne. And whenever the people on the planks suggest that some of the champagne budget might help pay for, say, a rowboat, they're told "You should be thankful you're not drowning anymore!" Kinda rings hollow imo.

There's also an entirely different argument which points out, rightly, that before we invented capitalism (and even for a while after capitalism's initial ascension) Feudalism was the system that lifted the most people out of poverty in human history. There's nothing to suggest something else far more successful might supplant capitalism in the future, and pointing to it's past success does nothing to counter the claim that capitalism as a system is starting to show its age. Things evolve.

The Planet Money people at NPR did a podcast recently on socialism and it pointed out that evolution of economic systems thing. For a 20-min overview of the history and critique of capitalism, it wasn't a bad episode. Worth a listen at any rate. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981686254/socialism-101

Defend capitalism without talking about communism challenge go.

EA - That planet money episode was great! I caught it a couple of weeks back. Very even-handed I thought.

Outliers skew averages. Perhaps we could discuss medians.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/Is-San-Francisco-more-conservative-than-Moscow-16151793.php

Facts without context are simply trivia.

You've missed the point & I've lost interest. Ciao.

ok buddy {-_) am i doing this right?

This is good.

*cracks knuckles* 

What's reductionist about it?

Who is saying this?

Many of them.

tduds, does your twitter feed see into the future? No, it's not about critical race theory, but the back and forth of "who said that?" is uncanny.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/st...

Found a version I can embed here (skip to 0:21)

Psaki is a master at shooting down bad faith questions. I'm just catching up to her brilliance.

"Who's saying this?"

"People are."

"Who specifically?"

"You hear it from people.."

"Ok, so it's just you that are saying this, aka it's your opinion."

Gold.

Who says it's legitmate?

Way to pick a completely different playing field instead of just moving the goal posts there jla. I like that she didn't just take it at face value that "different people" "in the media" "say [this is the third term of Obama]," and challenged the reporter to cite some sources of that claim before she would respond to it. Context matters.

But don't let me get in the way of you taking the ball and running with it wherever you want to go to make a point that's completely unrelated to that.

I guess you liked it better when there were no press briefings and the world found out about things from random tweets at 2 am?

Not all questions are created equally. Responding to every question equally conveys the false impression that every question deserves to be asked.

FWIW, she was trying to answer the question which was, "What do you say to people who are saying that?"

"Who are saying that? Who's saying that?"

"You hear that a lot in the media."

"Who in the media?"

"Different people."

"Like ...?"

"Well there were lots of questions when [changes subject to the press conference when VP Kamala Harris was blah blah blah]"

Point is Jen Psaki was trying to figure out who said what exactly so she could respond appropriately and the reporter withdrew the question when she couldn't ask it with enough detail to get a response. It's not dodging anything other than an attempt at a bad faith question to get a sound bite or something.

---

"People are saying jla abuses puppies and kittens. What do you say to people who are saying that?"

"Who is saying that."

"People in the media."

You get the picture...

Depends on who's asking it. and who's answering.

While the questions for the "lab leak theory" were included in the video I posted, my point was about the first half of the video as I explained and as was understood by everyone but you. Feel free to take the ball to another field with a different set of goal posts if you must.

Interesting points EA but have you considered this unrelated point, in which my stance is more easily defendable?

Yes, tduds. And while you may think it is easily defendable, here is another unrelated point as a counter point that in no way counters your first unrelated point.

Wow, no need to immediately turn to personal attacks.

That wasn't a personal attack, but why do you feel the need to defend this completely unrelated issue I'm just now bringing up, and that you in no way have tried to defend?

You're missing the point, which is something else I just thought of and also exhaustively whined about at you nine months ago. If you don't have this argument with me again I'll accuse you of running away because you can't admit you lost.

No, the point is I'll just keep repeating the same annoying stuff until you ignore me and then I'll claim victory because all you know how to do is silence other people's views that don't align with your own. BTW, I don't even really believe the views I'm defending (wink wink), I'm only doing it because all you liberals need to see the real issue which is something I'm not even really going to get into other than to say you should watch some youtube video which I won't even link to.

The people who are saying "people are saying" are the ones saying it. They're planting it by suggesting its already planted. They're *promoting* terrible ideas under the guise that they're just *reporting* them. How are you still taking that bait?

We are now, finally, back to the initial point of the original post.

Mostly I'm sad you didn't pounce on my very intentional use of the word 'master' in an earlier comment.

"I just want to get your reaction to people who question that."

"Well, it's hard to react when I don't know what people you're talking about. [But I will say that the president's actions don't really show what you're alluding to, and it shouldn't be shocking that the VP is involved in governing the country]."

"It's more so than other vice presidents have."

"How so? I'd love to see the data ..."

[paraphrasing the rest of this now]

"I'll provide you with the data sometime and I'd like to get your reaction to it."

"Great, looking forward to it."

"Excellent"

I don't know man, seems like they figured it out just fine and the reporter got enough of a response to go on and follow up with more substance later. Personally, I think this is exactly the job of the WH press secretary and Jen Psaki is doing it wonderfully.

I'm imagining jla dealing with RFIs in this same sort of way.

Contractor: "Hey some people have been saying that the weather has been unusual and we should get an extension in contract time. What do you say to people who are saying that?"

jla: "Who's been saying that?"

"You hear it a lot."

"Who is saying it a lot?"

"People are."

"Ok, well it's hard to say if I don't know who is saying it ... but sure I'll just take your word that the weather has caused some delays and that you're only asking because of that, and not because you've mismanaged the project thus far and are simply looking for anything that might give you a life line so you can make some profit on this job. I'd say to those people that I'll just sign and approve the blank change order proposal and they can fill in the rest when it's convenient. We probably don't need to worry about the details if lots of people are saying it."

The popular perception is based on the repeated amplification of the question. Again, it's surprising to me that you're still falling for this one.

"Many people are saying..." has been a twitter meme for like 5 years now. Come on, dude.

When someone with a vested interest in planting a story plants it with "Many people are saying..." you believe them.

To bring this back from the Psaki topic to the CRT topic: Every single point you've made to criticize critical race theory is something you heard from a critic. Your entire knowledge of the topic is from people who are arguing against it. I know this because you define it incorrectly. No critical race theorist would agree with your framing of it, which is the joke in the screenshot I originally posted. 

The point here is that who is saying something *does* matter, because in all discussion but especially in political discussions, why something is said matters more than what is said. You need to understand the motivations of the person making the claim to understand the context in which the claim is made and the goal it seeks to advance. 

For example, I have not heard anyone claiming Harris is running the show. You saying that is surprising to me because we're exposed to different media environments. To say "I know that the idea of Harris running the show is a popular narrative that’s been echoed a lot" what you're you're saying that you know its been echoed a lot. You don't know if its true and you don't know who started the story or why. For every thing that "many people are saying", someone had to say it first. Who were they? Why did they say it? Did they witness something? Or are they trying to discredit someone? Was it a journalist with an inside source? Was it an opposition politician? Those are very different motivations. I think a healthy skepticism is warranted there, and I'm surprised by how un-skeptical you are of this given your infinite questioning of ulterior motives and corruption when the political axes flipped.

Oh, but you do care. Otherwise you wouldn't keep talking about it.

Harris leading from behind? I don’t believe, disbelieve, or care. She could have just said “no”. 

That wasn't the question posed in the press conference. You brought that up. You don't seem very alert today. Maybe take a break until you can follow your own thread.

I joked years ago but I think this is more true than not: When Republicans do something, they go on TV to explain it. When Democrats do something, Republicans go on TV to explain it.

Again you say "Kendi says this" but you link to criticisms of him, not his own words. You say Kendi says x because other people told you. You didn't bother to listen to the man himself.

Ibrahim Kendi is a controversial and provocative figure (and I'd argue intentionally so), and one could easily debate the pros and cons of any one of his statements or his personal philosophies. But to dismiss an entire school of thought based on a third party's critical interpretation of one of its outliers is, well...

I clicked through a couple of links in that Coleman essay and found his summaries of their contents extremely slanted.

Well those are some words.

"You're all fine to be thinking your thoughts, I don't give a crap about them. But don't you dare let me catch you acting on them. That's where you cross the line and we're gonna have a problem. Can't have you having ideas *and* implementing them."

Spoken like a true libertarian.

"The issue is when institutions begin to adopt these ideas and implement policies that affect people" 

What ideas are being adopted by which institutions? In what ways are these policies affecting people and which people are being affected?

Some people are saying there are institutions that are doing this.

To my knowledge, no one considered jla's feelings when the racist policies were put into place by racist institutions so we should just get rid of them. It was fine for them to have racist ideas, but they went to far when they got institutions to implement them without getting jla's take on them first.

"the Asian quota at Harvard." 

I assume you're referring to the lawsuit brought by SFFA that they lost, twice. The lawsuit in which the judge ruled that "while the system is "not perfect"...it nonetheless passes constitutional muster." and that "there were 'no quotas' in place at Harvard." 

Not the best example imo. Everything else you wrote is your own conjecture. I might get more into that if I'm feeling feisty tonight but I've got work now.

Same

Wide angle lenses are trippy.

I know its difficult but try to stay on topic. This post is about the 50+ year characteristics of the Republican Party.

Trump's rhetoric rarely matched the policy that was implemented (or continued) during his administration. Aside from a few executive orders (lookin' at you, Tarrifs), the vast majority of government business that happened under the Trump admin was GOP-as-usual.

The essay says as much: "Yes, Trump has turned some of these traits up to 11. The dog whistles became bullhorns; the “executive time” administration plumbed new depths of incompetence. But for Republicans, as televangelist and later right-wing presidential candidate Pat Robertson said 40 years ago, “it’s better to have a stable government under a crook than turmoil under an honest man.” The threat of liberalism outweighs the risk of an inept, amoral or fascistic president. The Trump era — including its culmination in January’s attempted insurrection — was not out of step with that."

I've been limited in my deductions twice now by the SALT cap, but I'm still ok with them not repealing it. I'd rather have them spend their political will elsewhere. Problem is there is no political will elsewhere because elsewhere wouldn't benefit their donor base.

1

I read point 1 as “Justin Bieber” and got unreasonably excited.

It's not surprising because the last few times this sort of information has made public nothing has come of it.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said, “I share the concerns of every American for the sensitive and private nature and confidential nature of the information the IRS receives. Trust and confidence in the Internal Revenue Service is sort of the bedrock of asking people and requiring people to provide financial information.”

Trust and confidence? NOT in taxing the rich. Trust and confidence in the IRS facilitating and perpetuating vast wealth accumulation by the rich while penalizing people who actually work. 

U$A Inc., the world's largest Banana Republic.

x, where's your source on those stats?

Also, this isn't about whether the gov't is "getting enough" or not. 

Income != Wealth

It's a bad statistic, even if true. The data is based on reported income, which the ProPublica article indicates is the way to avoid paying taxes (minimize reported income). It ignores the vast amount of wealth not accounted for. Moreso, focusing on the "Top 1%" ignores the staggering inequality within even that top percentile. Take the bottom .9% of that 1% out and then re-run the numbers and see how it stacks up. 

Finally, I simply disagree with the premise that "a fair share" is a tax burden somehow equal to a cohort's income share. Redistribution is - at least in part - a goal of progressive taxation. That's more of an opinion so I get that people can & do disagree, but you can disagree with the conclusions without employing a bullshit premise.

Wrong question.

My gawd, those are some infuriatingly deliberate, misleading stats.

No.

(this is a canned response I wrote months ago but it applies here)

I'm not going to do that for you. That's not the conversation I'm having. I'm not going to take the bait that allows you to poke easy holes in the inevitably undercooked ideas I had an hour ago. I'm not going to go on the defensive because you misunderstood my demand. It's not my job to solve the crisis of income inequality. It's not my job to create policy. 

 My job is to hold accountable the people who were elected to create policy. They put a ton of effort into getting a job whose primary responsibility is to solve problems, or at least try, through policy. If they want their job so bad, they need to listen to problems and try to solve them.

I tossed it in there as an opinion that I admitted was an opinion. I don't really care to litigate it. That you chose to harp on this instead of the other 2/3rd of my post questioning the premise you opened with is curious.

I could spend a few hours and several thousand words elucidating my stance. It would be difficult to present a reasonable case in less. But I've got a job and my stance isn't the point of this thread.

As I said above, our role in the system is exactly to talk about why. How is for legislators. I have no power to enact things, so why waste energy thinking about how I might do it? For me it's about interrogating the what & why, to develop an internally consistent set of beliefs from which I can advocate, donate, and vote.

Why shouldn't taxation be at least somewhat progressive? Why should a few dozen people hoard billions while paying less than 1% effective tax rate? You answer some questions first.

x, how is it an "inconvenient truth" when it's blatantly bending and massaging information to convey their (false) narrative?

You're the reason why every high school and college curriculum requires a basic stat class.

I mean, you're not even trying at this point. 

The US is a giant pyramid scheme. Benefits accrue at the very top at the expense of everyone else.

An Amazon warehouse worker's quality of life is very much effected by how much Jeff Bezos spends trying to go to space. In the long term the sum is variable, but in the short term resource availability is very much a zero sum game. 

I also reject the framing (that seems like a billionaire invented) that progressive economic policy is somehow a "punishment." A system in which people were actually compensated relative to their value wouldn't produce people with the largesse of Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos. I don't begrudge either of them for taking advantage of a bad system. I begrudge the system for allowing such a disproportionate advantage in the first place. 

I'm not even going to bother responding to your kneejerk "but communism!" response. We've been over this so many times: there are infinite options in between "unfettered exploitative capitalism" and "authoritarian Stalinism." Don't use one extreme to defend the other, they're both bad and a huge gulf of middle ground exists where I think you & I would both find satisfaction.

x, you're obviously very passionate about this, but completely missing the point of the article I posted. It's not about quality of life (albeit an affect of) , nor about how much the government receives, nor what the gov't does with the money it receives. It's about how the current system, whether it's deliberate or not, has allowed a certain few to not be accountable for the actual money they make while most have no choice. It's as if you reach a certain threshold and you're invincible. I personally believe this to be problematic and unjust.

We're not, but we are way off topic.

"but deal with the specific offenses that they do" 

That's what the ProPublica article is about and, ostensibly, what the topic at hand should be. 

I'm fine with blaming Miles for derailing the topic just pointing out that the topic immediately derailed. I guess the larger point is: Whatever your idea of a "fair" tax system, we have a current set of rules and the wealthiest Americans are using their means to skirt those rules. That's a problem.

The concept is that unrealized gains are not considered income, so they don't pay taxes on it. When they sell a stock, they pay capital gains taxes on the profit. If you had to pay taxes on unrealized gains than long term investment would be nearly impossible, it would blead a lot of people dry in the process.

I derailed the topic? It's the Pro Publica article, and I posted the IRS commissioner's response to that. LOL

RJ87 - you're correct, but are you suggesting the only variable in calculating someone's wealth is stock holdings?

Pretty good opinion piece in the Times today related to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/opinion/politics/irs-tax-evasion-geithner-lew-paulson-summers-rubin.html

That article completely ignores tax breaks enshrined into law that only benefit the rich. Beefing up the IRS will not create a "fairer" system for all.

To accomplish that we need truly progressive tax rates (like those in place in the 50's, 60's and 70's when the top rate never fell below 70%) and an aggressive wealth tax to remove the political influence associated with financial wealth.

As Buddha said, 'the wealth of a few is founded on the poverty of many'.

Incidentally there's another opinion piece in the same newspaper about that: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/opinion/income-tax-billionaires.html

In short, yes and also yes. I favor more progressive taxation, and closing loopholes that favor the wealthiest, and beefing up enforcement to raise compliance. It's important not to mistake a step in the right direction for the entire solution, or to let perfection be the enemy of the good.. I want all three, but I'd be happy if even one became reality.

"If higher taxes were the answer to everything" They aren't. Next question.

it's not necessarily about how high or low taxes should be (although it is) it is about what you choose to spend those taxes on...

Even Steve Bannon is upset!
https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-demands-higher-taxes-rich-youre-being-scammed-1599779

The fix for that is not raising interest rates - which just benefits banksters and the investment class -

low interest rates act as a give away for the investment class, no? it's what allows firms like blackrock to borrow cheap money and buy middle class homes at an alarming rate, often 5 digits above asking price. also higher interest rates are better for my savings account, the rate of which is pathetic right now.

at the same time lower interest rates = lower mortgages... catch 22?

As noted, low interest rates have decimated working class savings and retirement accounts. Mortgages are bundled together and sold as investment vehicles where everything is leveraged, shorted, insured, traded, and speculated on. The underlying thing itself is irrelevant and can be anything (crytpo, SPACS, WeWork, etc.).

Seems like it

Looking at this thread…xjla is gone, not just ignored

Better for everyone including xjla. All he did was doom scroll and shit post looking for a reaction.

Maybe the militia called him up.

Don’t know which remarks specifically sparked the politburo into action, just thought it was pretty harmless anti-vax stuff, last time I read it. Getting axed from your own thread...isn’t that ironic?

Not just his own thread ...

And was there a thread called b3tadine[sutures] or is that the name of the mod that axed all his comments? that’s what I could see in x-jla’s posting history...maybe the forum should be renamed into wokenect or something, just to make it clear to all involved ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm sorry, what did I miss?! I was busy this weekend [MACA] Making America Communist Again, and couldn't follow everything. There was a thread aboot moi?? Where is this monument to greatness?

The American right wing is so good at murdering buzzwords dead that they manage to kill them in every single country.

Must have set off a firework too close to his ammo cache or something... I guess.

apparently x-jla still has posting privileges?

is he self-editing his posting history? or mods did? ...it seems the Comment History button still has the old posts of his

not mention balkins is still posting despite swearing the forum off...

I'm seeing both their posts all around...

Must have been a temporary thing, or moderator's regret?

bummer

Imo they are professional trolls. Any reaction including using the ignore button only enables them.

Petition to re-nuke whatever was nuked.

Almost literally every discussion in this thread ends with either jla quietly ignoring a challenge he doesn't want to / can't respond to, or jla posting ad infinitum until everyone gives up. That's trollish behavior. It has nothing to do with disagreement. There's no desire to have an actual discussion or learn anything, and I really ought to have learned better by now. It's a dumb but effective outlet when I need it I suppose.

America was founded by rich white slave owners who didn't want to pay taxes. Mission Accomplished!

Great idea...on stolen land

Window was already broken, I just snagged a TV for my family. ;)

"at some point" doing the heavy lifting there.

The whataboutism is strong in this one.

The rules of acceptability with respect to colonization and conquest have evolved over time. It seems useless to compare, say, the Sacking of Constantinople or intra-tribal war in pre-Columbian America or late 19th Century Indian boarding schools, because you're comparing different times with vastly different ethos. If we can agree that the Peace of Westphalia, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the Geneva Conventions are useful constructions of a global ethics, then it seems to follow that much of the American occupation of Native land which occurred *after* those three documents (among others) is, ya know, unethical.

"For people who care so deeply about injustice, why is it they they seemingly ignore the greatest most extreme injustices that are currently occurring" 

Because we're having a conversation about a specific thing now. It doesn't mean I'm/we're not aware of or outraged by other things, just that conversations require topics, and the topic here is American imperialism. Either defend it or don't.

Should've been the end of the thread:

It's almost like people can't walk and chew gum simultaneously...

Classic capitalist agenda, avoid the problems that exist at home - Jim Crow, let's go bomb Vietnam, 9/11, let's go bomb Iraq - and go practice global interventionism...classically anti-libertarian thinking. Stop intervening in other peoples problems; we got 99 problems, and your "bitching" ain't one.

"the narrative is being sold as some all encompassing omnipresent reality." No it isn't.

educate us. fully. we will wait. be exhaustive. leave nothing out. bring education to the ignorant. i am so excited to hear about the truth.

I already answered that one next question.

My answer was about when, not who. Thought that was obvious, sorry.

Events that occur prior to the establishment of certain global ethical norms are not equivalent to events that occur after the establishment of those norms when the events in question violate those norms. Pretty straightforward, to me.

That's kinda my point... we (i.e. white folks) broke our own rules.

Because I still exist within, and continue to benefit from, white hegemony. It would seem disingenuous to place myself outside of it.

*eyeroll* This is going nowhere. Once again, I'm exhausted.

You seem suspiciously incapable of understanding the difference between individual behavior and structural inertia. Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are.

I'm done trying to explain things to you. If you actually care to learn things, there's plenty of books about this.

"Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are."

I used to think it was the former. Now I'm believing more and more that it has always been the latter.

Out of steam, yes.

Look here we are, yet again. So fucking predictable.

Weaseling behind words and definitions instead of addressing the onslaught of criticism your "ideas" face is a sign your ideas were shit to begin with.

There is such a huge amount of time spent trying to rationalize one view of the world within the constraints of facts to the contrary. It must be tiring to keep twisting around in syllogistic knots like that...

"x-jla is ignored by you"

I said no such thing. Again either you're being disingenuous by deliberately misinterpreting me despite several attempts to clarify or stupid by accidentally misinterpreting me. Don't really care which at this point.

I'm sorry the three things I pulled out of my head in 5 seconds didn't include any African or Asian or Pre-Columbian American examples, which definitely exist, but with which I'm simply not as familiar. Pretty annoying that you latched onto my failure to include these examples as evidence that I'm suggesting they don't exist in order to accuse me of a conclusion I'm not making. Real, real annoying.

If you have to entirely re-phrase what someone says in order to make a point against it, you have a weak argument.

You're going back on ignore for a few weeks. I obviously can't be trusted to leave it alone.

jesus fucking christ. You are the ur-example of arguing in bad faith, x-lax. 

PEOPLE. STOP.

You're pissing into the wind and wondering why you're wet and stinky.

THAT MEANS YOU TOO, SNEAKYPETE!

“ What it seems that you are really saying is that western culture ought to be held to higher standards.” Makes sense to me to hold the most superior culture to higher standards...e.g. we in “the west” can afford to live a meatless life, there are plenty of healthy and affordable alternatives with new ones being developed every day, so in my opinion it is totally unnecessary to kill animals in our society for human consumption. But in other parts of the world, this is not (yet) the case where people still need to rely on meat for their diet.

Dead serious...we’re the only ones that can live up to the universal declaration of human rights, which means we are the best, numero uno...

"We" frequently violate human rights. That's been my point throughout this whole thread.

Cultures where gay people are executed just for being gay are inferior no matter how you try to spin it...but that doesn’t excuse for gay people being mistreated or discriminated against in our society, as one could argue ‘at least we don’t hang them on cranes or throw them off tall buildings’.
you should always be your own worst critic, try harder and hold yourself to higher (moral) standards then anyone else, that’s the only way...

Again I made no assertion of *who* constructed norms, merely *when* they were constructed. I've *explicitly* said it several times now, so there is no room to imply. That you can't seem to get past this is, at this point, entirely deliberate on your part. So I guess you're being disingenuous *and* dumb.

Enjoy your xenophobia. I'm done.

It applies to everything

barely made it two posts.

if you reply to the shit, it will stick around

Well, we made a valiant attempt, lol

I am very upfront about my lack of self-control.

is xlax still posting news articles exclusively through google links? makes this even more appropriate..

Yep.

All too often, and especially in this thread, I sense people underplay the progress that's been made to highlight the work that still needs to be done. But also, people underplay the work that still needs to be done to highlight the progress that's been made. These aren't mutually exclusive realities. We *have* come a long way as a society, and we still have a long way to go. 

Quoting Williams again: The United States is not a perfect nation, but it has been powerfully altered since the days of Emmett Till, Rodney King, and even Eric Garner. Have we reached the summit? Not even close, and yet we would be deluded not to glance back from time to time to marvel at the plunging landscape.

That's a fine analogy. 100% in nearly anything is impossible. The danger of that analogy, to me, is that it seems to imply we're approaching that 99.9% asymptote. In many respects, for the topic at hand (racial equity in the US) we are far from 99%. But we're also far from 0, and both are worth recognizing.

If that was the only thing that was happening perhaps you'd have a point.

interested to read this. i think i hear you on race, but when it comes to environmental issues it's hard to celebrate any "progress" that has been made- the ozone example pales in comparison to the new reality that is quickly developing. my only hope is one day we can feel the same way, but i'm not sure how possible it will be to cool the planet.

I hear you there. The lack of action on decarbonizing our civilization is seriously worrying. I think, in part, there's this inertia because we don't have that "Ozone Hole" moment to galvanize support around. It's a slow inexorable slide into doom that's really only perceptible in retrospect. That + billions of dollars in lobbying money to convince those in power to simply ignore the signs. It's hard to stay hopeful, but despondence doesn't fix anything either, so I trudge along.

* Insert: This is Fine-meme of dog sitting in burning room *

not so much a meme anymore as much as it is reality..

life imitates meme

While pollution in general is bad, carbon pollution is orders of magnitude more troubling than other types.

It's not just humans in danger. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction, which is occurring at a faster rate than any of the previous mass extinction events. This is a good book on the subject: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/elizabeth-kolbert. (The author is the sister of my friend Dan, who I'm writing a book with, about the Pretty Good House approach, but don't hold that against her.)

It does require CO2 to manufacture things to offset climate change. Such as PV panels, which repay their carbon debt in 2-3 years. After they "break even" they continue producing for 30-40 years. How does that compare to carbon-spewing electrical generation plants? When do they break even on carbon emissions?

Imbecilic delusion. Imo this level of disinformation is worthy of being banned. It

The reason we are still in this mess is because of the people who refuse to get a vaccination. Period. Imo you are intentionally spreading disinformation about a deadly disease.

seems the moderators have had enough of his paranoid delusions. that covid "thread" he posted was a worrisome string of unending logical fallacies. enough is enough.

The absolute denial of reality, is not worth arguing about, shut it down I say.

So jla is perma-gone? Or is this more of the same timeout BS that will only result in a new username?

if that's what's happened... THANK YOU, MODS!!!

Looks like he was banned from this thread only. He posted a comment on the Turkey-UNESCO-Hagia Sophia news thread earlier today.

Oh did I miss another regurgitated conspiratorial rant from the resident "free thinker"?

tduds, you can see one of the last things he posted here in my post history (Politics Central, Jul 28, 21 10:32 pm). I copied it and inserted my own commentary. It's now nuked from the thread though. From his post history you can also see that he made some comment in one of the covid central threads and got that one shut down: https://archinect.com/forum/th...

whooo boy.

I truly have no idea how to counter the problem of this type of behavior. To be so loudly and incessantly wrong that they all but beg to be shown the door, and then immediately use that exasperated rejection as evidence of their righteous bravery. I'm glad I don't moderate any online forums anymore, I'll say that much.

eh, disappoint...that character needs to be voted off the island

Pretty sure I've posted this before but this thread really reminds me of jla (and some other less profilic contrarians on archinect) https://mastodon.social/@ifixcoinops/105778289798706182

Stop feeding the troll. Responding is the recognition it seeks.