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Pointless poll

Favorite vampire?

Sheridan Le Fanu's CarmillaWikipedia (1872)

6

Vote

Bram Stoker's DraculaWikipedia (1897)

12

Vote

F. W. Murnau's NosferatuWikipedia (1922)

5

Vote

Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's The Tomb of DraculaWikipedia (1972-1979)

5

Vote

The legendary Chupacabra vampire goat sucker

9

Vote

To do list

Is there a pre-existing term for this?[edit]

I have met individuals in the past who have been non-white and have used their status as non-white to dismiss or provide defences for other forms of oppression. I.e. adultism, ableism, queerphobia, etc. I am not speaking to the more justifiable criticism of critiquing the way these struggles draw analaogies to racism, that may be displaced. No, I think there is a genuine case to be made there. I am talking more so about people who state something like that because casually using the word "retard" isn't racist, it's morally permissible. If I object to it, saying that it's ableist, the criticism of ableism is framed as "white bullshit" and the individual continues using the word.

I have also witnessed people leveraging their status as non-white to defend iffy stances like the Irish slave myth or defend class exploitation, child abuse, etc. I feel like language to describe this behaviour should already be a thing, but I find it hard to find any literature on it. Asking around if anyone knows of an appropriate term to call this behaviour? An example may be something like a black person thinking that objecting to the word "faggot" is white bullshit, etc. Obviously, that is homophobic, but I am interested specifically in the use of one's oppressed status to justify oppressive behaviour. Like often these arguments have a weird implication that says disabled people or gay people don't exist in non-white communities....which is absurd. It probably works to marginalize such people in such communities even further, as it sort of implicated their non-existence, rendering them invisible.

Is this simply appealing to one's own authority? Anti-intersectionality? Oppression Olympics? I have only met a handful of people like this in my life, but dealing with some Palestinian acquaintances right now who throw around such language as "retard", and make weird casually homoerotic rape jokes in online games like it is an endangered species, then go on tell me "shut the fuck up, you're white" if I say something like "I don't like language like that, I think you should maybe stop using it" is getting hella exhausting. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 04:38, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

It is just up to you. You never have to engage with hate online, but if you do and get dismissed, it's their loss. And if it's online, you aren't really being oppressed, you're having your opinion challenged, probably disingenuously because a lot of people believe that trash talk works. I would say the word is a snarl word, but again, online, it's what you do with it. Growing up, my older brother knew if he called me a retard or a faggot, I was throwing hands and employed them in order to kick my ass. I tried a million insults on him, but the problem was he already knew them because I learned them from him. Not speaking on it is not the solution. The homoerotic rape joke stuff, I saw it coming from a real weird guy I worked with named Anus, not his real name but in real life somebody called him Anus and he thought it was hilarious, he was in high school and also thought the joke 'Hitler did nothing wrong' was top shelf, I did my best to discourage one of the jokes that wasn't OK, but I do remember him saying he was gonna fuck my dad before that meme blew up. I looked him straight in the eye, as his elder, and said 'you don't talk about my family'. He didn't talk like that to anyone afterwards, but he still made strange edgy jokes. Honestly, Anus was a naturally funny kid. A gem. His edge, for moving from online only to a group of real people only sharpened.
The must be retort more powerful than the insult, I would suggest rather than picking an insulting term, a response might blow their minds. Respondingg with 'hey, don't cut yourself on all that edge' Or a your mom response 'Weird, because your mom and I are friends, and we talk about you.'. I mean, if you can't vamp on that one, Then you don't know enough about these guys to worry if they are syour friends. I know a lot of guys who think, from movies, just giving each other shit and laughing about it is male friendship. I have run a majorally male warehouse , and I have had to interrupt, and say, literally 'Are you guys doing that thing where you're pretending to give each other a hard time but actually your feelings are getting hurt?' Adult men. And before I was in charge, I witnesIsed fistfights and wrestling matches. You ask that question, and the pride of no masculine feelings destroys all tension. But you have to understand your snarl words enough to know that the people who use them are ignorant of them and they don't have the understanding to use them in a truly harmful way against you.Torrent (talk) 05:52, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
The truth is, a lot of folks only give a damn about societal issues when it hits their 'own bubble'. In my experience, this is more often seen in people who are politically right-wing - that the moment a problem [such as homelessness] runs outside of their own personal experience they are incapable of empathising. Lack of empathy means lack of understanding, which leads to a complete lack of action on the issue. I've actually coined this issue 'the Cheney factor'; that the moment his daughter outed herself to him was the day LGBT rights became personal to him and he moved to dampen down the most homophobic elements swirling around Bush Jr. I've seen instances of where in the space of five mins a person has given a nuanced and intelligent decription of a marginalised group's problems to repeating the worst stereotypes of another.
The only time I've remotely managed to get through to anyone with this issue was arguing 'mutual tolerance/respect'. That if you want people to not call you [redacted], [redacted] or make jokes about [redacted] in return you must not call them [redacted] or make refrences about [redacted]. I don't give a damn in this case if you think the others 'mean nothing', it's simply about avoiding fucking blood on the carpet - there shall be some people elsewhere who think nothing of you but they are also biting their tongues. There's not much futher you can really go on this unless they've genuinely wish to learn, which in my experience is rare as hell. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:12, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
There is no pre-existing term for a marginalized group acting bigoted; this is because they are just bigoted. A black person, to give one example, certainly can be homophobic (hip-hop has been justifiably criticized for some pretty nasty examples of such). RW has an article on black supremacy for a reason. A group that is marginalized in one place may be the majority in another, so this has led to some very nasty anti-LGBTQ laws in Africa, eg Uganda.[1] Blacks are just an example here; you can pretty much rinse and repeat for *every* group out there, marginalized or not. TERFs and transphobic homosexuals, Jewish supremacists, racism in Asian countries, Islam xenophobes, the list goes on and on. Empathy is not the norm for humanity, unfortunately, IMHO. I agree with KarmaPolice that traditionally it is more the so called "right wing" (at least in Western-space, probably Asia-space too from what I can tell) that engages in anti-empathetic behavior, due to a greater emphasis on "traditional" society values or roles. But as noted above, it is not *exclusively* within that domain.
A lot of people's "bubble" involves them absorbing stereotypes without actually meeting the people in said stereotypes and failing to understand how much bullshit is involved with them. Even if there are elements of truth in the stereotypes, such is often grossly exaggerated. And yes, "the Cheney factor" reminds me of a compilation of anecdotes widely circulated on the Internet in the early days entitled "the only moral abortion is my abortion". One of the great ironies of religion is that so many of them actually do contain text encouraging empathy, but so many followers of the religion ignore said text and use the cloak of religion as justification for bigoted self-centered behavior. While Cheney had his "bubble" pierced a little, this doesn't happen for everyone who is personally affected on something they are bigoted about, unfortunately. BobJohnson (talk) 13:46, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
i dont know why anyone would be surprised at this. membership of an oppressed group does not prevent someone holding prejudices against another oppressed group. this should not come as a surprise. it should not come as a surprise certain prejudices are super common in some groups and super virulent too. with reference to homophobia specifically as an example, its no secret homophobia is present in most muslim communities, in the islamic world and in the west. in london, there are obviously going to be lgbt muslim people with the muslim communities there. but they are functionally invisible in those communities as a result of the homophobic sentiment in those communities. you either stay in the closet or you leave that community. either way, no gays in the muslim neighbourhood. that means all criticism of the homophobia in those communities comes from outside. often these communities already feel under attack from the outside, islamophobic sentiment common in the press, from, politicians of all stripes. they are attcked for being muslim, their defining identity, by a non muslim majority. people who just want equality attack them for their homophobia but say its not their muslim beliefs, and attacked by white racist groups who are probably just as homophobic say homophobia is fundamental to the being muslim. to muslims probably sounds like they both hate muslims. to them probably looks like white people hate muslims probably looks like white folk trying to diminish their faith, water it down by imposing something alien and in antithesis to their culture and religion and values. something abhorrent to them. a corruption not from within but from outside. they pull up the drawbridge and resist this poison from the white infidels.
should one be surprised that palestinians may be homophobic? sadly probably not. should a palestinian friend be taken task for homophobic comments? no doubt. will they appreciate the criticism? well that comes down to the individuals involved. palestinians have a cause in need of support and no doubt grateful to all it may come from. but whatever your intentions, you still look and sound like their oppressors and beating them with the same stick. the last person they heard that 'white bullshit' from probably used it to justify shelling his home.
criticism from white folk directed at a group once or currently oppressed by white folk doesnt make the criticism invalid, but it does make it very easy to ignore. ::::AMassiveGay (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Stereotypes are also frequently fairly outdated too; for example, I've heard right-wingers going on about the unemployed sitting around watching their 'widescreen TV' [when was the last time you saw a non-widescreen TV?] all day while living the lifestyle of Onslow from Keeping Up Apperances [ended 1995]. This is unsurprising when it's recalled that in the UK a lot of these are being peddled by Boomer journos to be read by other Boomers, some of which literally haven't updated their worldview for decades [qv, Littlejohn - telling us how it is in the UK from his Florida condo since the late 90s]. But the truth is, shite like this isn't designed to be evidence, they're simply thought-terminating clichés to stop critical thinking.
The other aspect which is notable is the 'exception makes the rule' situation some folks end up in - for example a person feeling that the unemployed are 'dole scoungers' because their own mother spent their entire live 'playing the system' so they could avoid having a job for twenty years and was/is always trying to get 'more gives' out of anyone [no, they really did]. This is more difficult to counter because we have elevated 'personal experience' to some kind of indisputable position [ie feels over facts] - which can be deadly if we have some totally unrepresentative minority idiot [qv, Braverman, Patel, Sunak etc] telling 'their story' which a non-minority person would feel uncomfortable in refuting the conclusions of even if they have literal stats to show it [like Gay points out].
[Hey hey, Gay!] KarmaPolice (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
This is one of those things that has been bothering me as of late. It really takes you down a rabbit hole of dilemmas over tolerance, respectability politics, tone policing, freedom of speech, "freedom vs equality", loaded language and all that other fun stuff. Granted, I've been in a shitty state in the last few months, but it has shown me how people can get really conflicted over this sort of thing and can seek out conclusions that just "feel better." For instance, there's this one little part in the back of my mind that starts acting up any time someone with a pro-Palestinian position says something questionable. I'm trying to push that down for myself, but I can see other people being influenced by it all, letting emotional arguments pulling them to an opposite side. Again, respectability politics and all, but that does influence a lot of people. Doesn't really seem like you can do more than ask people to play nice, but that's not going to work (and someone's going to start yelling "You can't tell people what they can and can't say!").
I don't know. The whole thing just a pile of despair and my brain's been a goddamn mess with too much shit floating around. Paul S (talk) 17:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I should clarify the thing of novelty for me is not of minorities being bigoted, that isn’t novel. The novelty is in appealing to one’s status as a minority as a rationalization or grounds of dismissal to the accusation of bigotry. There is no “surprise” in finding minorities being bigoted, and I do think Karma is right to assert that in a lot of cases it is about people being concerned about their “own bubble”. I know that is definitely true in the case of my acquaintances. But I am more interested in the fallacy of the rhetoric (beyond the obvious ad hom). I.e. given you’re white you cannot criticize me for x kind of bigotry, because whatever it is it is not as a big of deal as the racism that effects me. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:05, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I think actually the most pressing example that y’all might of experienced online is in the comments section on a post about hitting kids. You’ll often see PoC who were hit as children themselves along side the usual crowd of “I was hit and I turned out fine”, stating that opposition to hitting children, or those who haven’t been hit as children are “predominantly white” — and that is appealed to as reason why doing so is okay. I had a Vietnamese co-worker express as much to me once, talking about how normal it was among his family for kids to get hit and that it was some “white bullshit” to oppose “physical discipline”. You can call this attitude “adultism” but there is something characteristic about the rhetoric afforded to non-whites, that white people who engage in similar practices can’t appeal to. That phenomena is something I desire a term for. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
I'd argue more the simple fact that if it's within your 'own bubble' you're basically forced to learn more about it [well, unless you simply disown them]. For example, Cheney had to re-consider any stereotypes he held re: lesbians when he realised he had 'produced' one. What's more, they have a ready-made 'guide/teacher' who will [usually] be more willing to field the stupid/insane/insulting questions with relative good humour - including but not limited to 'can't you stop feeling that way?'
For the latter bit... if anyone ever pulled the 'you're white so you cannot comment on any minority' I would simply turn around and say 'does this apply to the likes of Suvella Braverman [or some horrid example of humanity] too?' for this is just minority ultracrepidarianism. However, in the case in particular I would point out that no, the LGBT community does find that offensive and if you say otherwise, I will then curtly inform them that they are now policing my own feelings.
In fact, if I was in an onery enough mood, I might say that to them even if it wasn't true, just to fuck with their heads. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
The perennial problem concerning justice with respect to minorities is that, given a chance, minority groups can be as intolerant as any larger group. African Americans are culturally conservative. LBGT people are the alphabet people to many including one another. Minority groups, on average consider their group to be paramount and all others worthy of criticism. Asians are white-adjacent, and if they or middle-east people call out "white people," if you listen closely, they are often calling out western enlightenment values, and it has nothing to do with "whiteness". Every minority has its hierarchies. In general, it's hard to understand the hardships of minority groups to which one is an outsider. I know of no theory that adequately accounts for these problems. — Unsigned, by: UncleKrampus / talk / contribs
Being a part of a group that's faced a lot of trouble may give you extra potential interfaces for empathy with other groups that have faced a lot of trouble, but it's hardly a sure thing. At the least I might tell them that there are certainly people who are from their own communities who are part of both groups (thus where intersectionality came from), although I don't know how effective saying that really is. It seems more effective if they hear it from an actual breathing person from that experience, especially a friend or family member. (Assuming they are in fact the sort to retort "well you're white" or some such when this comes up.)
If we want a kind of "case study" minority community for these subjects, we might look at black Americans. There are a lot of black people in this country with anywhere ranging from very socially conservative to very progressive views, all in sizable numbers. You can look at discussions about how black people suffering mental illness are treated, or how black women are treated, and how these problems have been addressed as well as partly but not quite fully ever solved. I believe decades ago there was some kind of internal dialectic in the Black Panther Party regarding sexism, and even pro versus anti gay sentiments and that Angela Davis had something to do with that shift towards more inclusion long before gay inclusion was more mainstream. The history with things like that would be somewhere to look to understand how inclusion can come about organically within minority communities that previously may have held more prejudiced views. Chillpilled (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I cannot believe how many people have engaged this with an 'actually, minorities DON'T get a pass for being upset about any of this shit.' All racism is bad, yes. Systemic racism is real, yes. Parking racist/cultural ideas I that don't apply to an individual is racist, yeah? Existing in a multicultural system means you're going to carry the weight of your culture. Be a good white and laugh it off, I'm not joking, it's OK. They aren't after you. I know a white kid who honestly thinks he has the n word pass because he was friends with all the black kids at his high school and has been to jail. That's stupid. I have never witnessed him use the n word in front of a black person he doesn't know. I think he is happy he's got it, but fundamentally understands there's no such thing as the pass. Torrent (talk) 08:31, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
which brings me to my next point, there is no such thing as the pass. Racism is racism snarl words that have been coopted and colored are not that powerful. If I am called a 'cracker' and have space to defend myself, I generally tend towards 'I like to see myself as more of a honkey than a cracker'. Which is a very recognizably white American thing to say. I've lived with black and native and Mexican people around me, just, casually, all of us living. I had the lucky spot of being a little kid for a lot of it, in a trailer home across the street from a black family, going to school with a Shawnee kid, who had his family come to do a powwow in the gym, with a strange exchange program for a native girl from Alaska who almost always refused to speak, but had a big smile, and with nobody cartoonishly saying 'people aren't people.' Culture is culture. White culture is ambiguous, you have to carry that weight. Torrent (talk) 08:31, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
my idea for a modern white culture is one of informed anti-racialism. This will be hard to explain. defending your whiteness is not accepting your whiteness, which if you've read anything worth reading about race, white people are generally doing this wrong. It doesn't reach as far as white critics of white are doing it right, all race criticism is still bad criticism, this isn't that. What, at least I mean is 'what a silly insecure world, that cultures would continue to be bloodthirsty for something so inauthentic as a line on a map.'Torrent (talk) 09:28, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
The only thing worth reading about race that I ever read is Negros with guns, by Robert F. Williams. This argued that having a gun and an opinion about civil rights is on the whole superior to just having an opinion about civil rights. Seemed to make sense at the time. UncleKrampus (talk) 02:49, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I am also very familiar with Malcolm X, you have to be prepared to meet violence with violence. And I agree with that, until the tide shifts. Then, violence is insular and a show of who is really making a point and who is really violent. Is that the only thing, because there's a bunch a shit abot ZNH being edited or ghost written into obscurity. Fuckin, williams, so I don't know him, but that's nothing hard or special. On his side forever. Torrent (talk) 06:01, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Except that the LGBT community has been predominantly nonviolent, and has gotten farther in the last 50-60 years than the Black community has in 170. CorruptUser 06:31, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
I REALLY didn't want to have to respond to this. Before I do, is there something else to say there? A clarification? Please? Torrent (talk) 07:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Apparently CorruptUser forgot about the Stonewall riots.Wikipedia
How the fuck did we get into this tangent though from the original topic? BobJohnson (talk) 13:10, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Would Corrupt like to explain what "Except that the LGBT community has been predominantly nonviolent, and has gotten farther in the last 50-60 years than the Black community has in 170" even means? Carthage (talk) 17:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Sure.
While Stonewall riots were a thing, it caused 0 deaths, and AFAIK everyone that was injured was either the LGBT rioters or the cops that attacked them, never any bystanders. Compare that to the MLK riots just a year prior, which had a death toll of 43 and injured 3000 more, or any of the riots since then. The LGBT community has been very good at making itself "harmless", and never the aggressor, and the message has generally been "we are just people who want to live our lives, please stop attacking us!" As a result, the average person is not afraid of Gay people. And while the progress from less-violent or non-violent means seems slower, the progress that is made generates less pushback. Violent methods get more things done in a shorter amount of time... but result in so much pushback that any gains made with violence can be easily undone with more violence.
In 1960, it was worse socially to be Gay than to be Black, while today the opposite is true. How can we tell? To (badly) paraphrase Dave Chappelle, "if a Gay man and a Black man have a dispute, the Gay man remembers he's White and calls the police"; that was not the case in 1960. So in 60 years, Gay (White) men went from being "less" than Black men, to being "more". Which means they've made far more progress than the Black community has in that timeframe. And extending it back the 170, while being Black meant you basically had a few more rights than cattle, being Gay was actually a capital offense. So even at that time, Gay was below Black. CorruptUser 08:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── This completely ignores intersectionality (you, and by extension Chappelle, don't think gay black people exist?), and I don't really think we should be citing Dave Chappelle on anything. Also, while there are a lot of problems with this wall of text: you neglect to mention that during those exact same 1968 riots African American gangs in the south side of Chicago actually put a stop to the violence in that part of the city. There are also queer groups arming themselves in response to bigotry. No bigot expects a trans person to have a gun. I have actually heard stories where queer people have warned off bigoted would-be attackers by being armed. Carthage (talk) 08:33, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

That's why "White" was in parantheses... While no one likes Oppression Olympics, a couple questions do need to be asked.
Who was more hated by society in the 1950's; a Straight Black Man, or a Gay White Man?
Who is more hated by society in the 2020's?
Because it seems to me, as bad as life was for Black Straight men in the 1950s, it was worse for Gay White men. And that today, while both have it better than in the 1950s, Gay White men have it better than Straight Black men. That means the LGBT crowd has made a LOT more progress. CorruptUser 15:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
The answer to "who is more hated by society in the 2020s" is transgender men and women, which kind of throws a bit of a "monkey wrench" into your "analysis". BobJohnson (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
The question doesn't make a lot of sense. Society doesn't love or hate, or pay taxes, people do. The question collapses into an abstract statistical subject. Do trans people get more hate from society than any other extreme minority? Maybe, but I don't know how to decide that either. Generally, I would say that the Jews are more hated than any other minority group in America. They have their sponsors though and take violations to court whenever they can. Their condition and place in America is stable and nobody worries about their future other than their own ngos.UncleKrampus (talk) 00:40, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
It's so laughable that all of this is still ignoring intersectionality. "The most hated group in America" is a meaningless phrase because oppression intersects. Nor does it matter what form oppression takes. Positive discrimination (like philosemitism) is still discrimination. Carthage (talk) 00:47, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
It makes sense to talk about, but how is intersectionality useful? There are elements of every group from Aborigines to Zoroastrians that hate the Jews. So? Trans folks, Mormons, Catholics, British nobility, gay men, incels etc., even Jews as a group, all intersect non-trivially with the aggregate of anti-Semites. UncleKrampus (talk) 01:17, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
"Hmm, CorruptUser answered what we initially asked of him, and he has a solid argument, so let's bring up 'intersectionality' in order to drag down the conversation rather than admit that he's got a point" CorruptUser 03:48, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
No scholar worth their salt would consider your argument to be "solid." Furthermore, I bring up intersectionality (which you completely ignore) because while a white gay person may be able to claim white privilege in an interaction with the law, a black gay person doesn't have that same privilege. You are acting like "black" and "gay" are two completely separate sets that don't overlap, and so must be analyzed separately. This is shoddy scholarship. You have no argument worth taking seriously. Carthage (talk) 05:27, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
If White Privilege is stronger than Straight Privilege, you've proven my point. CorruptUser 12:48, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
When Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced intersectionality to legal scholarship the whole point was that there mere "additive" conceptions of discrimination were insufficient. She used specific cases where black women were being discriminated against legally by employers specifically for being black women, but the presence of black male workers and the presence of white female workers was used by courts to dismiss such claims. The rationale was that the presence of black men in the workplace "proved" that racist discrimination was not occurring, and that the presence of women workers "proved" that sexism was not occurring. The existing civil rights law at the time had no room to treat black women as if they could be a unique case for discrimination. This is ultimately what intersectionality is about. In many cases, it does not make sense to think of those existing within intersecting systems of oppression as simply experiencing (x + y), but rather the systems of oppression interact with themselves to produce unique forms of discrimination and prejudice. To talk about gay black people as if oppression exists simply as (racism + homophobia), and that one can identify the larger sum contributing to the equation is mistaken. Gay black folks are subject to forms of discrimination entirely unique to them that are not experienced by other black people, or other gay people. The fact that such individuals are then systematically worse off as a demographic compared to straight black people, and white gay people suggests that the compounding effects are unique enough to make any discussion about which prejudices or discrimination axis is "stronger" entirely misinformed. It doesn't work like that. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Except that nothing says that Black Female is always socially lower than Black Male or White Female just because overall racism/sexism exist, it's entirely possible for Black Female to be above Black Male or White Female even if, on average, Women are below Men and Black below White. So then you'll have to look at every category. But even ignoring bi-racial people, if we include Hispanics and Asians (ignoring other ethnic groups and how you can be both Hispanic and African and all that), that's 8 categories that need to be evaluated separately. If we also include Gay, Bi, Straight, that's 24 categories, without getting into all sorts of variations of Bi or Asexual. Now add in Trans, and you have 48 categories, even if we kept it simple and ignored NB, Queer, etc. Add in neurodiversity, and you have 96. Add in disability, and it's 192. Add in religion, polyamory, age, and suddenly we have tens of thousands of categories. Is a Buddhist Hispanic cisgender neurodivergent disabled asexual woman in a worse place than a Atheist Asian transgender neurotypical ablebodied bisexual man? Or is the superlative superfluous at this point?
Intersectionality has its uses, but when it comes to the general status of Black or Gay communities in 2024, versus the status of Black or Gay communities in 1954 or 1854, these distinctions are being used as nothing more than rhetorical technique meant to distract from the simple, hard to deny reality; that while life has improved overall for Black people since the 1860s, life has improved far more overall for the LGBT community in less time, to the point where socially, on average, a Gay White Man has it better than a Straight Black Man. CorruptUser 05:14, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

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Without any statistics (a Dave Chappelle quote does not count), this is all just "Internet hot air" to "prove" a rather spurious suggestion -- that A) LGBT people have advanced far more than African American people, and B) that violence is the reason why. These are honestly frankly sweeping statements on a complicated, long lasting historical topic that from my perspective is *extremely* too simplistic. To throw (yet another) monkey wrench: there is no equivalent of the Tulsa Race Massacre for homosexuals, nor there is the equivalent of Ku Klux Klan mobs for homosexuals (not that the KKK didn't hate homosexuals, mind you... they also hated Jews and Catholics too. But I can't find the equivalent of lynch mobs that the Black community experienced. The KKK hated African Americans above all else.). The truth is, if you were homosexual but in all other respects part of "the majority society", you had one options that black people did not: you could hide it, Rock HudsonWikipedia style. It's much harder to hide skin color.
A general statement I can easily make is that life has improved for both LGBTQ+ and African American communities; however, phobias still hugely exist, and that we have a way to go with both. I don't think it's easy to directly compare "which has improved more or less". I think even discussing the legacy of more "radical" activists in whether they help or harm is more complicated than you have made it. Feminism has had their weird and kooky extremists, same with environmentalists, yet the "core movement" has remained unaffected, and progress has been made with both (as has been made with race relations). I don't think radicals have the impact that you think they do. In my experience, the radicals are often used as "crutches" to justify deeper racism. In my lifetime, the one event that has provoked the most racist white backlashWikipedia has not been anything that some radical Black activist has said. Rather, it has been the election of Barack Obama as president. BobJohnson (talk) 12:37, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
@CorruptUser Kimberle Crenshaw doesn't actually say that "black females" are always "socially lower" than black men or white women. That's not the argument. Look back at what I wrote. The argument is that black women experience unique forms of prejudice and discrimination specific to being black women that are not reducible to simply (anti-black racism + sexism against women). Black women are specifically the targets of certain forms of prejudice that neither black men nor white women are subject to. Likewise, there are stereotypes about black men that black women aren't subject to. Black women are not framed as a sexual threat to white women the way black men are as an example. We have tropes and stereotypes specific to black women (i.e. the angry black woman trope). So when we talk about "gay" people, and specifically look at the intersections of black gay people -- the stereotypes, prejudices, and forms of discrimination that such a demographic faces likely are not generalizable to homophobia and/or racism as a whole. We cannot make sense of that racism by looking at the racism faced by non-gay black people, nor can we make the same inference from homophobia experienced by non-black gay people. The fact you frame it as categories that need to be analyzed separately proves you are not getting it. Intersections of oppression are not tools to be used, they are a current objective fact of our social lives. When refusing an intersectional analysis you are, in essence, refusing a factual analysis and distorting the realities of oppression. You're entire response to based in a very poorly constructed strawman that provides strong evidence you do not read what I wrote. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
> "life has improved far more overall for the LGBT community in less time, to the point where socially, on average, a Gay White Man has it better than a Straight Black Man."
... and there you go, proving once again you do not understand the issue. You are making inferences about the LGBT community as a whole based on the advances that gay white men have received. That's distortive. Gay white men do not make up the majority of the LGBT+ community, that would be bisexuals who have a much higher rate of poverty. The poverty rate for LGBT people on the whole according to an analysis published in 2023 was at 17% by 2021 [2]. According to census data, black Americans have a poverty rate of roughly 17% as of 2022 [3]. If this data is correct this disproves your claim, the poverty rates are comparable if not statistically insignificant in difference. Notice though, that breaking down this data, the highest of those in poverty among the LGBT populations are trans people and people of colour. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:12, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
if the point is that there are inalienable human rights of just being, existing not by choice but by horrible happenstance, and then somehow some people don't agree about the terms of you existing, just because you've been born? then I would hope you and I both default to human rights before we make anything other than just being dead or whatever harder than it needs to be. A lot of thought in the US has placed importance on racial terms instead of on just being, which is stupid, because I've talked to those guys that say that, and not only do they really buy into it, they all look just like me. So, I personally don't think saying LGBT rights advocates in America have made the generally peaceful headway to where they are now on their own. I don't think every 'hey hey I'm gay, I'm here to stay' action has actually caused real change in America. Sometimes, it's as simple as 'Look man, I know this date is important to you, and you, you can't wear khaki shorts.' and I honestly don't think anyone who was being honest would think otherwise, let alone actually care. It is the exact same as saying black America shoulda been a culture that begged their way to equal rights, 'They could have done it non violently' is like saying violence was never part of it, like nobody kicked the shit out of them for just being. Not for having ideas or lives. They got the shit kicked out of them because somebody was like 'here's a really easy reason to' I don't think you could ever say , without being a small, dumb dumb idiot that the LGBT community begged for their place without actually having merit while constantly getting the shit kicked out of them if not murdered. And getting some acceptance? I don't think you'd ever voice a documentary with Morgan Freeman and say 'before they could fight for their place, the white American community just kinda told them 'that's ok, but if you gotta drink water, please do it from that fountain over there because it kinda grosses us out to think about sharing water. Not with us, with you, specifically'. And then whitey crawled through a tube of poo, and everything was solved' It's really, really strange to whatabout these movements against each other when neither is finished or currently particularly violent. Torrent (talk) 09:38, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

American cops and American cops who shoot dogs[edit]

https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol17/iss1/18/

Cops are trained to shoot dogs in a life or death scenario. Cops are also trained that every scenario is life or death. Somehow, this correlates with a statistic that implies just shooting dogs. So the difference in the title is nothing, until American cops stop unloading on dogs. I was attacked by a dachshund let out for a pee, while I was just walking home. It must have looked to that the tiny little dog that I was headinvg straight for them, and it bravely charged me and just kinda bonked off my leg and started barking. You know what I did? I laughed, little sweetheart, I'm not here to hurt anybody and did not break my stride. I did wave hi to the guy. Sometimes I walk to a gas station, and there is a dog that starts barking at me. I never go meet it, but I do whistle a little two-note tune every time I walk past, because I want this dog to know, I'm just walking past. It actually worked tonight. The dog that wants to bark is very useful, a bark is a good alert. This dog is a shepherd collie mix, if I can guess from across a street, while walking. You absolutely cannot do this 'ain't I just walking?' training if you are not a just walking. Any approach to the dog, as long as my heart is wide, negates the training that, ah will whistle two tones, stay on my side if the street and you have identified me. The dog barked at me, I gave the whistle, and dog just stopped barking. Y'all are never gonna believe this, but I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. Torrent (talk) 08:53, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

The point is, with a dog, it's not supposed to know me, but it a does remember me because we meet each other on very dog ass terms. It doesn't leave the back yard, I don't approach the back yard. The bark is loud, the whistle is two notes, and there's no more barking for the neighborhood. A big bark against me as soon as it sees me from across the street, not bad or dumb or unusual. It's a dog, it's gonna do dog shit. Torrent (talk) 09:18, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
This is literal. Torrent (talk) 11:51, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
There's also the psychological issue that a vicious dog is terrifying, in a way that bullets are not. When a cop shows up and has to arrest someone, well, even if the owner doesn't resist that dog is not going to be happy. CorruptUser 06:05, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
There are plenty of cases where cops shot dogs while mistakenly raiding the wrong address, or the right address but the perp they're after hasn't lived there for years. Carthage (talk)`
They've also shot people at the wrong address. The solution to dog-shooting is quite simple, actually; if the cop can't prove beyond a preponderance of evidence that the dog was dangerous, then the officer must pay for the dog. Your family pet is worth a lot more to you than the $500 cost of a dog, but that the $500 is probably worth a lot more to the officer than the power-trip of killing someone's pet. CorruptUser 04:24, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
The state pays for extrajudicial misjudgment all the time. That's not a new solution. That's a garbo libertarian argument. [ A sherriff literally faked his own assassination attempt https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-phony-murder-plot-against-joe-arpaio-winds-up-costing-taxpayers-11-million-6629798] (notice I put the horse in front of the cart there, I know how to edit to format and I'm choosing not to) costing the state a million in a settlement, which does not take into account the man-hours it takes to make the scheme work in the first place. $500 for a dog, are you insane? Do you think that is a prohibitive cost, or do you just want dogs shot? Or are you getting eaten up by the Rand worm that says 'well, we've never actually tried free market capitalism?' For profit prisons are a thing. For profits police forces are a thing any time their bottom line requires a full prison. 1 million dollars is a stupid Austin Powers joke to them. Torrent (talk) 08:08, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
when did you turn heel, man? We can disagree, but the bad guys are still the bad guys. Torrent (talk) 08:34, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
What we have here is a bad case of cops believing their own propaganda (that there's a war on police and the average patrol beat is like patrolling in a warzone). In fact, the "warrior cop" training industry is fucking lucrative. This Slate article even links to knife fighting courses which cops will never need. I wonder if there are statistics on how many dogs are killed by SWAT, which empirical evidence shows does not enhance policing in any measurable way. Tell me, what exactly do cops need full on tanks and 50 caliber sniper rifles for if those don't improve policing? Carthage (talk) 22:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
It shouldn't cost the taxpayers $500 per dog; it should cost the officer $500 per dog. Most shootings, of dogs or even of people, aren't clearcut "good" or "bad", but judgement calls where the officer could've really gone either way. Somehow, we need to 1) make the officer hesitate in those judgement calls, and 2) not make the cost so prohibitive that a good officer can't do his/her job when it really is required to fire the gun at the dog. CorruptUser 03:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Who the eff is "Drake" and "Kendrick"[edit]

Been hearing that some rappers are angry at each other. I guess their names are Drake and Kendrick, but I'd never heard of either of them before this spat of theirs. Are there actual emotions running behind people's intrigue with it, or is it just a fun little musical spectacle? MirrorIrorriM (talk) 21:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Top dogs in the rap game shitting on each other. Kendrick bringing allegations of drake being a pedo and minor toucher. Meanwhile all drake did was dissing on kendrick’s small feet. I think drake fell off in talent after god’s plan, but this beef now making his popularity sink as well. Meet the grahams cold. 💀2600:387:15:1511:0:0:0:4 (talk) 21:15, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I guess there's enough "meat" in this feud for there to be a whole Wiki article on it.Wikipedia I haven't paid a lot of attention to it. I do think it's basically celebrity drama. BobJohnson (talk) 21:32, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I feel old after reading that. Impiricism (talk) 21:44, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Ig im pretty young compared to everyone else in this wiki, still in HS. 2600:387:15:1511:0:0:0:4 (talk) 21:57, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been "big" in mainstream pop rap/R&B since the 2010s, they're not *that* new. :) Music however has been so balkanized since the Napster days. Sure, in the US, R&B/hip-hop and country tend to be the "top charters", but there are so many other sub-genres out there, and so many artists. "Name recognition" is no longer a big thing, there are few current musicians in the "megastar" space these days. (As big as Drake and Kendrick Lamar are in their respective genre, I don't consider them a "megastar" on the level of, say, a Michael Jackson... or even a Taylor Swift).
Also, to help you feel "younger", the current Billboard Top 200 albums [4] contains entries from the Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, and even Journey's Greatest Hits. BobJohnson (talk) 13:13, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
I miss the days of 2Pac and Biggie, where if rappers had "beef" they actually had fights instead of this fake-fight commercial BS meant to garner attention and album sales. CorruptUser 19:14, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Blud forgot reggaeton in hispanic areas like mine, but I see either way. Despite being young I am damn lost in the pop sphere as I now mostly listen to 90s screamo. And as last comment said mfs too scared to rlly make music beef spicy these days leaving it up to the fans like kendrick fans vandalizing drakes home on google maps. 2600:387:15:201A:0:0:0:5 (talk) 19:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
@Bob
Music has always been fragmented, at least since the days when there were multiple radio stations that focused on their own genres. MTV sort of made it less fragmented for a bit; you got the music that they played, so you got exposed to everything that Viacom wanted you to see. Then the internet came and made MTV irrelevant, and everyone ended up back in their own bubbles again. CorruptUser 05:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
The problem with radio and even MTV (past the first few years when they'd play anyone who produced a video) "back in my day" were that: A) radio stations and MTV were often limited to a narrow range of regurgitating the "top hits", and B) subgenres that weren't popular enough for a radio station either had to resort to "other means" to get heard (eg tape trading), at least until it got popular enough for the bigwigs at radio/MTV to notice (this happened with both "alternative music" and rap music). Genres were also divided neatly with little to no mixing of eras. This "limited promotion" made it more possible for "big names" to exist, but overall it was honestly shit for music, because (as you say) music really is naturally balkanized, it's half a social phenomenon.
My understanding is that "back before my day" there was both more DJ influence in radio as well as more "regional" / "local" variety. Where there wasn't, things like pirate radio helped "bridge the gap". Local bands were still a thing when I grew up, but not in most of radio (the community radio station and one oddball UHF channel excepted). The town I'm from (the Tampa FL area) actually was notable at the time for its death metal scene; no way that got played in "standard radio" (now or then). One local band (SavatageWikipedia) actually got well-known in the "progressive metal" scene. I think they were occasionally played on MTV's "Headbanger's Ball" (one of MTV's late night genre music programs) but certainly not the standard radio (at least until Savatage accidentally figured out they could actually make some good money writing Christmas metal music, thus birthing the far better known Trans-Siberian Orchestra).
This is why some in the industry, like your Steve Albini (RIP) types ([5]), actually were quite happy with what Napster birthed. It nixed the record industry as the major gatekeeper of taste. To some extent the YouTube/Spotify algorithm has replaced it, sure. But unlike record labels, the Internet provides much less of a barrier for publication. The music mega-star is sort of (not completely) dead as a result, but in the Internet era, it seems like more musicians can "find their niche" and have long careers without having to worry about not having the "big hit", like they used to.
The biggest change I've seen with the Internet is that it seems like not only do people "genre hop" a lot more, it seems like people "era hop" as well far more than they used to. BobJohnson (talk) 13:20, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
I will try and keep this short and digestible. I was born in the late 1980's and was told I had to have a favorite British invasion band. I don't care what anyone says, it was not the Beatles. I used to watch Drake as an actor on a teen drama called Degrassi. It was a melodrama, and Mr Drake's character was a basketball star who wound up in a wheelchair. Then I had some friends, and this is now late oughts, who were trying to boogey down down to Drake. just out of high school. In my opinion, that's like being a grown man trying to say 'Will Smith' might be the greatest. It is, on a technicality, still the Willenium. I didn't like Drake. Then Kendrick dropped Money trees and I was like 'I get it, but not for me, and I can't understand all the white homeboys loving it'. Except I can.
People love hearing a word that they recognize with an interesting pronunciation. Ya Bish was fine? I hated 'ya Bish' I heard it like a hundred times a day. Sia also had Chandelier, where she, an Australian woman, took on a lyric 'one two three' and gave it a 'wuon two tree'accent as if she was from barbados. which does make sense because she was trying to get Rhianna to sing that song. But then Rihanna sings 'ner ner ner ner ner' in an entirely different song instead of 'work work work work work' and it's implied you don't need to use words to make music. Which is nothing against the idea of working. It's just not actual language out of or within context. My least favorite genre of music is not country, is not edm, is not pop. It is vocal jazz.
I don't listen to Drake or Kendrick today, but I have heard their early stuff, and I can say, man, who listens to Will Smith? Kendrick, I don't know, I haven't been keeping up, I liked the second album better than that first with money trees cutie backup lil Wayne bullshit, a lot of my friends boogied down to it and left when it got good. King Kunta was great funk, but I guess he wasn't rapping enough. But didn't Drake drop a single for his kid like it was real? I'm not on the scene, for years, but I do believe Drake has always been an analogue of Will Smith. An actor so powerful he can convince a generation he is also making music. I don't really care about the beef, but I have seen Drake pretend to be crippled in a Canadian teen melodrama, and so had friends blast his tracks in the early 2010s. I don't care who I'm talking to or who I might be defending, in this beef I have exactly one opinion.
Drake sucks, and I can't believe that's ever been controversial. Torrent (talk) 10:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
There is a comment from 7 months ago on this performance by Kendrick on Network TV that implies this beef is at least two months older than anyone getting into it now realizes. I also remember a viral clip of a white woman getting on stage, and Kendrick saying something like, you know the lyrics, but you gotta censor yourself. White lady did not, and it was like 'oh no, you gotta go. Kendrick Lamar censors his swears but also says in this medley while accepting how great a record deal is, now he's got a platform, and says 'send it back' like some sort of socialist, and addresses the pressure to put up top 50's. 'This feeling is unmatched, like drilling ain't good rap, like penitent ball cap, we don't share the same synonym for that' i'm not into drill or trap, and you know what's insane?

I hear so much pop country that is using drill and trap percussion that I don't believe Beyonce when she says she wants to take country back to its roots, but I also don't give a fuck what she wants to do with it, because what a silly notion that a country song would have a trap snare, and any idea challenging the awful truth that people are just buying racist pop music is fine by me. I really like some Robert Johnson, and I get why it was like 'how is this possible?' at the time. I really have met people who were blindsided by Lil Nas X going 'by the way, I'm gay and Old Town Road was you being inclusive, surprise!' Country has a lot of history that I respect. Country/blues was a genre the first time I was sentient and capable enough to use Napster, like, it's intertwined. But country as rock or pop, versus country as folk or country as blues are wildly different, so genres are kinda not it. I'll listen to anything if it's good. I am impressed by Beyonce's vocals, but 'looka there looks there' with such squeezed, not just compressed, instrumentals behind it, it's still in my opinion just pop. Slay Bey, but I'm just not that into a great vocalist going 'ah yah Yah YAAAHhh' in a backing track. like, it's churchy, and it's cool for what it is, and it definitely is way better than most modern pop masquerading as country, but it's really not taking the genre back to its roots, it's just reminding everyone what currently is done can be done better by a superstar. Torrent (talk) 06:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Beyonce to country is what machine gun kelly is to punk. Im curious on whether country at the moment is mirroring punk in the late 90s as stuff like blink 182, fall out boy, etc brings poppy melodies and lyrics about romance or hating one’s hometown turned punk from already a joke to even more of a joke nowadays with shit like pierce the veil. Long gone the days of earth crisis. 166.205.159.61 (talk) 18:07, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Im better off identifying as a deathrocker than that term I will not say that has been ruined by alternative looking camgirls that fries the younger generations' dopamine receptors linking that term to edgy camgirls rather than the dark offshoot of post-punk. — Unsigned, by: Phantasmagoria / talk / contribs
So I think post punk and pop punk are a little confusing. Pop punk is generally bad, but there are some examples that aren't awful. The early Blink 182 stuff is not awful, first Alkaline Trio album is my favorite pop punk album, and I don't like pretty much anything else from them. like I always say, if it's good I'm into it. I do believe in gateway music. I think Viagra Boys and Idles are good punk. One of my favorite heavy punk bands is 'The Tanks.' Years ago I bought a vinyl for a friend and it is maybe one of the most savvy gifts I've given. I've been told you can find any album on youtube. Been unable to find Epic Loads. But like Idles, maybe not as much as Viagra Boys or Amyl and the Sniffers or even Cherry Glazerr, it sounds more like punk than any other genre even if it is thematically heavier than what most people consider punk.
What country has already done and is falling deeper into, I wouldn't exactly consider a deviation. I also don't think Machine Gun Kelly leaving white rap for pop punk is a deviation. It's branching, at a really basic sense that rebranding is somehow reforming, which is a classic pop tactic. Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and now I guess JoJo Siwa have all rebranded.

It's their right to do so, and it's maybe better than Red Hot Chili Peppers calming down over decades and writing bad stolen covers of Tom Petty and spacey buttrock, I don't know. But I've deviated so far from the point. Drake has always been trash. He didn't drop off, he didn't have a cool hit, Hot Line Bling had the aesthetic of a hit track, but was it actually good? It was paced well with a small melody, the friendly range anyone could hit, but it was just such a nothing track other than that. It always reminds me of Hall and Oates. Torrent (talk) 04:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

On Social Verschlimmbesserung[edit]

Here's something that I was somehow thinking of for days now involving social justice and the things that people do. Sometimes, poorly executed initiatives in social justice only make things for everyone worse instead of better due to poor wording, lack of critical thinking, or overzealous demands that damage civil liberties for everyone else. It miffs me because it happens quite often, and Poe's Law that causes good faith and bad faith cases involving social justice to intermingle into a fog of uncertainty. Are they actually trying to make lives better, or are they just trolls or agents of chaos?

Links to a rough definition for the word: [6], [7]

Any examples of this happening in the political and corporate worlds, and anything that can be done with this? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 13:56, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

That's a nice oxymoron, Verschlimmbesserung = Verschlimm (worse) + besserung (improvement). One can also see that sentiment expressed in Cory Doctorow'sWikipedia idea of enshittificationWikipedia with regard to the internet. Bongolian (talk) 14:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
I’m not sure that enshittification is a good example, since the German phrase appears to be mainly about (unintended?) bad consequences of trying to make improvements, whereas enshittification is mainly due to chasing (short term) profits at the expense of everything else, not actually trying to improve anything beyond the quarterly earnings.
If I had to point to examples, it might be adding lead to gasoline to prevent engine knocking and thus improve efficiency and reliability. Or the use of CFC gasses for refrigeration and in spray bottles. Both seemed like good ideas at the time but had some nasty consequences (both being discussed in depth in “Merchants of Doubt” btw).
An inversion might be something like the Bolsheviks seeing the disasters of the tsarist regime and the gradual societal collapse during WWI in Russia as positive, because these events would further their own revolutionary cause. While Lenin might not literally have said “the worse, the better”, he seemed to have adhered to the sentiment. ScepticWombat (talk) 13:06, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
German here. ScepticWombat is right that Verschlimmbesserung ist any change to a thing that seeks out to improve things but inadvertedly made it worse. Anyone breaking the rule "never change a working system" would commit a Verschlimmbesserung. ULTRACOMFY (talk) 16:01, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Yet there are some people who DO attempt to change a working system in the name of social justice. That was my initial concern. (But then again, a system may work for some, but not for others. Yet the Verschlimmbesserung that could occur would mean that in an attempt to make the system work for the latter group, it no longer makes it work for the former group. Nuance.)TheEternalOutsider (talk) 08:54, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
The Bolshevik example isn't really the same thing, because their hope/belief was that the 'old' needed to be broken before the 'new' [ie them] arose, and things were a lot easier if said 'old' breaks themselves up first. That was the whole basis of their policy of 'revolutionary defeatism'; they wanted Russia to lose WW1 because said ruling class be completely discredited and weak [and thus, allow the Bolsheviks to make a play for power].
Now, you wanted an example, and I shall provide; the UK benefits system for disabled people. The Govt had this theory - 'too many disabled people are on the books' and came up with a wheeze 'closer management/testing of claimants' so they could catch more fakers. So you had people having their cases reviewed on a yearly basis rather than rarely/never like before. Problem was, this resulted in lots of genuinely sick people with permanent/worsening conditions having to on a yearly basis explain to some poorly trained, outsourced box-ticker that no, the 'dementia', 'heart failure' or 'missing limbs' won't get better in the next few months and no, just because I can sometimes make a cup of tea it doesn't mean I can do shelf-stacking for 40 hours a week.
I estimate some 75% of all disability claimants have medical documentation so firm that no physical meeting was needed, perhaps half of these with conditions which won't ever get better [meaning even a case review was unneeded], and the majority of 'fakers' were more knowlegeable/skilled than the person trying to catch them out. Most of the people who get caught out are genuine folks who simply didn't get how the dance went, which is shown by the fact something like 75% of appeals were successful.
If the system was designed to 'save money', it clearly is a 'verschlimmbesserung' because all the extra admin would have cost more than the 'fakers' it caught [unsurprisingly, UKGov refuses to tell us how much all this cost]. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:12, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
Also, I think the academic and scientific sphere is undergoing a severe Verschlimmbesserung in terms of DEI, where initiatives at universities meant for researcher inclusivity into the sphere of science morphed into positionality-based gatekeeping and identity-first preaching that threatens the scientific research process as well as the concept of merit. It actually hobbles critical thinking long-term, and some researchers have been forced to self-censor just because someone could be "offended". [8], [9] Any thoughts on this example? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 07:09, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
This would be a similar concern to The Equal Opportunity Employment initiative, wherein employment standards would be basically reduced by quotas involving race or gender. So, it's been said a lot that diversity initiatives for colleges actually benefit southeast Asian applicants disproportionately. I don't think that makes the incentive wrong, and I really don't believe it does anything inherently harmful to the qualit?y of the workforce in any field. It could be detrimental for somebody in charge to be upset and feel unconnected to the people they are in charge of.Torrent (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
@KarmaPolice I think you misunderstood my Bolshevik example: I meant it might represent an inversion(!) of trying to make things better, but inadvertently making them worse. Hence, the Bolsheviks might be said to have made things worse in order that they might become better.
As for the Tory policy on the disabled, I’d say you present the more charitable interpretation. ;-)
Another would be that the policy was indeed designed to kick people off disability benefits regardless of merit and that the rhetoric about “fakers” were just a convenient cover. Not to mention the very clear lineage back to the Reagan/Thatcher rhetoric of “welfare queens/benefit scroungers” and that the private ”evaluators” were incentivised to come up with reasons to reject claims.
Also, as for saving money, I’m not sure if that was ever the reason. Instead, it could be argued that the stigmatisation and institutionalisation of suspicion (the default assumption that anyone on benefits are cheats) would probably be more important for ideological reasons.
As for the expenses themselves, when those are poured into private companies that’s a two-fold ideological and practical benefit: 1) It’s a direct subsidy of private companies that can then show their gratitude in return. 2) It moves funding from the public to private sector while suggesting that civil servants can’t properly evaluate benefits claimants (read: because they’re either softhearted or just want to was your tax money). ScepticWombat (talk) 08:26, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Well, I was going on the official narrative - these policies were brought in at the start of Austerity and yes, 'saving money' was the main lauded aim. Yes, my own personal belief of what it really was for aligns with yours. I would also add 3) 'making people more dependent on private charity, which requires more cap-doffing and being 'grateful' to one's betters for the aid'. Which feeds in the general belief that the first thing Starmer and Co need to with these types of fucker is to get their leech-teeth off the British state, seal the wounds and then actually spend the money on productive shit. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:19, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Yup, the cap-doffing, servile/grovelling displays of gratitude (with the opposing shows of magnanimity from the “betters”) and the potential for reintroducing the good old distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor are definitely all pluses in the Tory book. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

On the "Celebrate Pride or Else" mindset.[edit]

Warning icon orange.svg Warning: Nutpicking ahead!

Nuts on Spice Bazaar in Istanbul 01.jpg

Time Before Things Get Really Bad for Climate?[edit]

Maybe it's just the "climate anxiety" described in some articles that I'm having, but things are definitely not looking good for the environment in Canada. An important tributary in Alberta dried up just this past February, there's recent articles of Great Slave Lake in NWT having the lowest water levels ever recorded, and in my own city I've visibly observed water levels in the municipal river be exceptionally low compared to previous years in the last decade. Haven't even gone into detail yet on the exceptionally early wild fire season that has started in Canada. Despite all this, conservative provincial governments still want to expand oil drilling and water irrigation. I think I recall headlines saying the last full IPCC report from the UN reports 2060 as the time that profound effects from global warming will be most explicit and felt, though I'm sure there are newer articles giving closer dates. It's all a little bit dreary really. Impiricism (talk) 16:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I am starting to think we as the so-called Canadian public may need to abandon the focus on federal elections as the means for towards a ecologically sustainable society. We can turn our focus to municipal and provincial bodies, and more towards local grassroots organizations. We can establish penalties for externalities that negatively impact the environment, outlaw fossil fuel companies in province from receiving government subsidies, implement participatory economic policies, push for guaranteed housing, organize more unions, establish a universal basic income, establish policies to ensure a right to repair, and implement penalties on practices of planned obsolescence, etc.
Most importantly we should be ensuring a greater level of indigenous sovereignty over relevant tribal territory to restrict the extraction and alteration of natural resources without their say so from their traditional systems of governance, and organize cases for the violation of indigenous rights to land with international legal bodies when such sovereignty/consent is violated by the Canadian State or relevant corporations.
We may also want to put an end to oversea mining operations Canada is engaged with.
Neither Liberals, or Conservatives will support this. I am not even sure the Greens will. It may require that we focus our efforts in establishing new political organizations, push for participatory budgeting, etc. It’s is not as if the public is against implementing dramatic changes to our society to combat climate change, even miners and oil workers could be willing if they were provided a green job guarantee that implemented their skill sets and provided equal or greater pay/benefits. Federal level Politicians only care about maintaining their power, and they will avoid risky policies if it effects their chances for re-election. This is a product of the centralization of power, and is not a manner of simple moral failing, but how the system itself structured. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:24, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
So, as a green supporter, I will say the global oil economy is overblown but also not vital. Oil companies will make a huge stink about jobs if their projects don't go through, but their projects are generally construction enough masse and then maintenance by a few. So, what they know is the same as the 'concrete project,' where it looks really good on paper to hire a bunch of people to tear down a building, pour concrete, and build something else. It is not harmful to a construction business for an area to need a new building, or in the worst case scenario, a simple parking lot. I'm gonna sound like a boomer here, but the absolute Economy of construction doesn't mean anything in 3 to 5 years. And if we're going to put people who have actually spent their lives honestly in construction in the position of a promise of training a one time job that they might get beat out over for a maintenance job that they might get beat out over isn't inspiring. And the people big industries hire for oversight and maintenance jobs are not inspiring. It fucking sucks to need a construction job, nobody is addressing that, and it blows my fucking mind. Economics don't work without the workforce, and economics are so fucking reliant on them, but at some point when it hits peak efficiency, the workforce disappears. This isn't an anti AI argument or a pro coal mining argument. We build the highways and the oil rigs and the parking lots and skyscrapers, we dig out broken pipelines only when they break production by breaking. We work for business. The line of thinking is entirely turnaround labor, as if nobody should ever get a raise. Unless you just create building projects whether they matter or not, that goal to sustain the idea of 'working for working's sake' in which labor is it's own reward, undervalued labor and redundant projects are honestly just a really stupid way to spend resources. In order to prevent unemployment, over preventing poverty. It's the way it's going to be done. The promise of green jobs for people already established in hard labor jobs does not mean anything but 'oh no, I gotta fight for my job again.' Construction workers are not gonna suddenly flood the green engineer market. That's not a plan. Torrent (talk) 05:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Now, I'm not Canadian, but from what I know of the situation [and economics/politics] is not that the oil industry 'creates lots of jobs' [I personally think they don't, or at least not as many as the Big Public thinks] but the fact they usually are a disproportionately large contributor to Govt coffers without them having to 'do'/'spend' much [which is tasty because it allows them to spend without having to tax people so much]. This is the 'resource curse' which coupled with the sheer size/natural wealth of Canada has led to an overly heavy economic dependence on extractives [with their short-termism] coupled with a perennial 'there's more where that came from' belief.
However, the crux of the issue on questions like this is how much of Canada's total 'carbon footprint' has been outsourced. Successive UKGovs have parroted repeatedly over the years how 'how well we've done in reducing emissions' without ever mentioning that the benchmark was 1990 and the country has hugely de-industrialised and much most of our 'dirty' production to the Far East - and the methods of production might be even worse ecologically as well as adding up the costs of shipping [but isn't on our books]. In this respect, it is perhaps a reasonable [but counterintuitive] policy for advanced nations like Canada/UK to accept some 'bad' industries to be reshored [steel, concrete, timber, electronics] so they can be done as 'greenly' as possible. In this case, this also means that yes, we do still need oil and to a lesser extent, coal. But Canada exports her crude but buys back from the USA refined POL. Why? Another bit of ecological legerdemain, so the refining costs are left in the south?
The other frankly, infuriating aspect of this whole debate is that the 'total cost of ownership' carbon-wise is rarely, if never discussed. Go on, buy an electric car, it's good for the planet... but is it? What about the more tons of carbon locked into the car, the electricity used, the building of infrastructure to support them [power plants aren't free] and finally, their scrapping after how many years they last. No business would ever make an investment decision on anything without these stats... but we are expected to. It's like all we give a toss about is the 'current spend' of carbon, not how much gets locked-in view the production and scrapping stages. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:15, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
So that would be a vote with your dollar free market capitalism ideal. And it just doesn't work that way. The American Capital system really reads like it wants you to go into debt so it can claim future capital to pay its own. Promise a manufacturer 80,000 for a big dumb truck, they can say they sold an 80,000 truck and your capital is promised to be whatever cost plus interest. It's speculative. So much value is speculative, credit cards are designed to build credit. Can you spend less than what it costs to have a credit card? It's not even horseshit, cause you could put that grainy turd into a fire and get a spark. The debt economy relies on debt. Austerity doesn't solve it, tarriffs don't prevent it, it's just a stupid thing we all have to work ourselves out of. Buying Electronic Vehicles is not our job or responsibility, and there are a lot of downsides, including a lack of charging stations, distance between charging stations, and a steady decline in charge versus distance (not the batteries anyone was promised, bad batteries from the manifacturer) that make the promise of a full ev A dream.I still think, if you are able to afford a big dumb truck, the hybrid is the answer. Did you know UPS runs a bunch of their trucks on natural gas? They consider is either compressed natural or liquid natural. Both of which sound a little stupid but they come from the same source. Renewable Natural Gas. Fuck everyone. Torrent (talk) 02:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm fairly cynical about the whole 'personal responsibility' thing re: climate change, for I know the line 'carbon footprint' was coined by the ad people at the behest of those friendly folks at British Petroleum. And historical examples of no-penalty voluntary reduction schemes show that at best, they work a little [mainly on the middle classes] but it's never near enough. There's been countless examples of where responsibility has been fobbed off on us final consumers, rather than the producers or the state [most obviously with plastic recycling; making us donate our own time/labour to clean/sort/transport shite we never wanted in the first place for 'recyling' which normally does not even happen].
With EVs, I think they're part of the solution with transport emissions - to whit, for folks who live in suburbs-density locales in urban enviroments where mass transit isn't a viable option, barely ever make a round-trip of 75 miles and most importantly, have ready access to low-carbon electricity. It would also be suitable for other niche uses, such as small 'local delivery' vans in which much of the time it's sitting at the company depot [and charging]. However, we do need to sort out some quite serious issues even before we get to this point; such as such as 'product lifespan' [we'll only get 'trickle-down' EVs for poorer folks if they know a 10-year old EV is 'still good'], 'enforced standardisation' [such as charging plugs], the state to actively build a standardised public charging network [such as having all the charging companies use the same fucking app] and perhaps most critically, breaking open the 'black box' and allowing independents [or even skilled home mechanics] to fix their own EVs.
The 'renewable natural gas' you mention is known as normally 'biogas', produced as a byproduct from the rotting of organic matter. Drained off old landfills or produced deliberately in large plants, it can be considered fairly 'green' as said methane would have been produced normally and to a major extent, said waste cannot be avoided in the production of food and similar. However, the crux of the issue is whether the feedstock really is 'waste' - there's moves to start deliberately producing crops for this [which in my opinion is totally missing the point]. Similar can be said of the old coal power plants converted to burning wood; okay [I suppose] if it's simply consuming waste but not if they're fucking importing virgin Canadian logs to be shipped over to the UK for some 'off-budget' carbon emissions in the UK. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Goat..... stuff[edit]

Goats are apparently even more impressive than I thought! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pic-goats-gravity/ Koafox (talk) 17:17, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

If you think that's impressive, you should look up mountain goats. Carthage (talk) 23:12, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Or tree climbing goats (argan oil). Anna Livia (talk) 23:31, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Initiative/Primer: On Brain Draining the Autocracies[edit]

Here's something that the US hasn't been thinking of too much, but is there any way the US and allies can help in brain draining authoritarian regimes and snap experts back to reason and sense? Because if experts serve a dictator, it could seriously darken the future of humanity as a whole. TheEternalOutsider (talk) 19:52, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I would guess that it would be nearly impossible to outdo Putin's self-inflicted Russian brain drain: estimated hundreds of thousands to over a million young people[10] and at least 2500 scientists have fled.[11] During the Cold War, the West would not and then entice a few defectors, but never anything on this scale. The closed thing in Russian history approaching this was the exodus following the October Revolution and Russian Civil War. Bongolian (talk) 20:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
So the question now is, what can we do to entice these scientists to renounce their allegiance and naturalize? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 20:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
A Bloomberg op-ed on the subject [12] mentions that there are a few programs like France's "Programme PAUSE" in the Collège de France [13] designed for scientists and artists in exile, but they are often small. The Bloomberg article advocates that more should be done along these lines. The Putin brain drain might be one of the bigger ones in the Western industrial era so maybe some countries are caught off guard for all I know.
The United States is currently in a poor state to take advantage of this due to the significant pro-Russian influence and oh noes immigration! Chicken Littles in the Republican party. Apparently in April 28 2022, Biden wrote to Congress requesting a fast-track process for Russian scientists and engineers for 4 years, to be included in a Ukraine supplemental funding bill.[14] According to a Washington Post op-ed, [15] this ended up not making it in the bill due to Republican opposition. What a world of difference from the Operation PaperclipWikipedia days! BobJohnson (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Next up, what does it take to brain drain via permanent emigration and naturalized citizenship from an autocratic country that isn't actively implementing a war, such as Russia's partner in crime, China? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 22:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
I think it's because Russia is no longer really seen as a 'first rank' nation scientific/engineering-wise, and a lot of the right-wingers give no value to the humanities, arts, literature etc so they don't really give a damn [they'd welcome an rogue oligarch with their loot-bags, mind]. Wait, scrub that. They don't give a damn, just like Putin doesn't give a damn losing them. I've been saying this since the invasion; that Putin is merely them 'through a darkened mirror', a land where they are merely more overt in their corruption, arrogance and hubris and the polite facade is even more threadbare. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:43, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Do you think Xi will fall into the same trap of unabashed nationalism? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 22:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
China already is an unabashed nationalistic autocracy. However, Xi Jinping seems to actually value science and technology as a "soft power". So, it's not quite the same as long as Xi doesn't start invading countries like Putin did. (Right now, I don't see the signs with Xi that you saw with Putin for the decade before the invasion, but you never know).
Nonetheless, I did find a New York Times article suggesting that there was a bit of a brain drain from China in 2022.[16] For those who are concerned about China autocracy, or for those wanting to escape the horrible (and rather sexist to boot) work-life balance of China, many other countries do have some appeal. BobJohnson (talk) 23:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Xi is a politically/nationalistically-biased technocrat at the helm of a still-growing empire via a 'party system', while Putin is a cynical, manipulative ex-spook in charge of a dying one via his own personal power. As a general rule, Putin has never given a toss about any form of 'development' of Russia; she is a more hollowed-out, rusted hulk than she was in 2000. Say what you will against Xi, but he has made a beeline for a myriad of infrastructure/development projects to 'build up China' for the socio-politico goals Xi and his allies in the CCP envision for China in the next say, 25 years. It is quite possible that like Stalin quipped back in the 1940s, Xi and Co are hoping Chinese 'brawn' [sheer numbers] can beat Western 'finesse' [a technological advantage], as well as a more laser-focus on key projects. KarmaPolice (talk) 23:49, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
But there's also the disastrous One-Child policy and the demographic time bomb ahead for China, including the hordes of spoiled "little Emperors". How will that affect China long term? And will India overshoot them if they relied on sheer numbers? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 23:55, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
'One Child' proved to be rather too successful a policy, and was widened to a two-child policy, and then to even a three-child one. It failed to pull the birthrates out of the plughole, but I suspect the issues are similar to the ones plaging the UK - housing is too fucking expensive/small for kids, we work too long hours, there's shit childcare provision and stuff like education is so expensive an ambitious family might want to have 'fewer eggs'. Chinese per-head productivity generally is fairly shit, which suggests there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to harvest to allow the Chinese economy to support a lot more seniors. There are also other ways to 'stem the decline'; for example there's something like 60 million in the 'Chinese dispora' of which Beijing could/does tempt to move back to China proper [Russia did similar in the 00s].
India has already surpassed them in raw numbers, but that's not everything - Xi and Co shall diligently note that the Japanese who humilated China in the 1930s were numerically less than them, the Russians who did in the 1800s were too and the damned British drug-dealers in the 1850s were like outnumbered something like 25:1 and they won. I personally suspect Beijing is more concerned with 'losing their technological edge' vs Delhi [perhaps with the assistance by the dastardly West] than anything as simple as simple demographics. In fact, some of younger, cynical technocrats might argue that having a bit smaller 'Chinese boat' might help it survive the travails of climate change, while a heavier 'Indian boat' may sink due to shortages etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

White Christian Nationalist Movement: Threat Level[edit]

This is a follow-up concerning the current state of US democracy and the looming threat of white Christian nationalism. How severe of a threat are they to the US and the rest of the world, and should we be concerned to take action? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 03:56, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

They have their plans clearly laid out for all to see https://www.project2025.org/ 2001:67C:2628:647:9:0:0:2BB (talk) 07:10, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
I think the "world" bit is easier because what is happening in the United States is in many ways mirroring what is happening globally. It seems like that there has been an allergic reaction (deservedly, TBH) within the developed economies to the post-Reagan/Thatcher "neoliberalism consensus". The more racist side of these folks have retreated into a populist, reactionary "far-right" whose chief concern seems to be whining about the Other, rejecting globalism, and musing about the good old days. Since this is an inward / backward isolationist looking movement, not a revolutionary one looking to conquer and expand (as far as I can tell), I see an American Christian nationalist takeover (should that happen) as less of a threat to other nations and more something that will continue to erode the United States' global influence in the world. Something that, I might add, has pretty much already happened in the last 30 years (the US still wields big influence, but is no longer *the* influence like it was from, say, post-WWII to the 1990s or so.) One interesting thing about the United States is that, from my perspective, the "far-right" side (Trumpism) is heavily elder-tilted, something I don't see in other similar reactionary European far-right movements as much. As the youth in the US are rejecting the Religious Right within institutional Christianity as well at the moment, this makes me hopeful that once the US gets away from electing octogenarians for president, the threat of Christian nationalism will recede.
Domestic wise, it's a pretty tough call. I think the governorship of Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott could be a good template for a future "what if GOP is elected?". One can summarize their governorship as one that goes out of their way to make laws to shit on minorities and the opposition as much as possible, along with many performative symbolic shit for the Fox News sect (much of which is later struck down in the courts). As is common for states with GOP governors these days, both governors have had their "too far" moments when the party splintered, due to "Heil Hitler" / 4chan shitpost-fascist chums gaining influence within the party in some way, or scandals ala the Moms for Liberty three-way.
Texas and Florida are both growing states, but they also both have some fundamental structural / economic issues that loom on the horizon. These states (especially Florida) probably need to worry a lot more about climate change than, say, Maine or Oregon. Certain infrastructure, like Texas's electrical grid, is... not great. Florida's having a home insurance crisis due to the insurance industry actually understanding that climate change is not a hoax and adjusting prices heavily upward accordingly. Both DeSantis and Abbott have been happy to ignore the "big issues" in favor of the Fox News circus, occasionally (eg the Texas GOP vs. wind power) even getting in the way. And there are two industries that are definitely being damaged in these states due to the reactionary GOP posturing: the medical industry (especially maternal care, due to abortion) and education. A successful Project 2025 style civil service purge, where competent experts are replaced with GOP stooges, would make this sort of circus even worse. BobJohnson (talk) 17:49, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
How severe and how large is their voting bloc then? And they themselves overreport their numbers, so there's that too. But are they a major threat given the 2024 elections? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 03:28, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
The Republican party is still more of a "big tent" party; not all people who vote for the GOP are Christian nationalists. But, NPR did report on a PRRI/Brookings survey [17] that 21% of the Republican party was Christian nationalist, with 33% sympathizing with their views.
The problem is that there are plenty of other strains of the Republican party that also embrace authoritarianism these days. For instance, a significant chunk of the purportedly "libertarian" side of the GOP (usually seen in the business community and among those with big money, your "born on third base and think they hit a triple" type) has drifted in recent years more towards an authoritarian capitalismWikipedia stance. Money unfortunately is king in American politics, so although libertarians-cum-authoritarians are a small percentage, and have proved not to be popular when put up for a vote (see: Vivek Ramaswamy), they still seem to have outsized influence behind the scenes.
So, "are Christian nationalists a major threat?" Sure, and the biggest threat here is that they provide the backbone of the vote to get a bunch of corrupt assholes elected and in power. Trump was elected once before, and the 2024 election is a coin flip. The GOP looks heavily like Viktor Orbán and Fidesz these days in many ways -- Orbán pretty much used the same strategy (good old days reactionary religious posturing ) to successfully institute an "illiberal Christian democracy", the last word of course being a bit of doublespeak. The irony here is that, unlike Orbán from what I know (and actually in contrast to the religiously observant Joe Biden), anyone who has followed politics knows that Trump really doesn't give a fuck about Christianity at all. But he's just as corrupt as Orbán and Fidesz, that's for sure, and is willing to pander to the shallow needs of the Christian nationalist crowd for votes. BobJohnson (talk) 13:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Two words: Machine Politics.
White Christian Nationalism has built itself a political machine within the Republican Party [since the late 70s] which has become so factionally powerful that it controls a butt-load of low/mid level positions which grants them an effective veto on any wannabe Republican politico anywhere. To these people, 'Christian' is just another identity, and are happy to fall behind anyone [including Trump] as long as they mouth the right words and grant them as much power as possible to build Dominionism within the country. They generally don't give a fuck about any form of economics [mainly because a lot of them are old/retired/rich enough], which is great news for the faux-libertarian 'corporatocracy' such as in extractives, dirty energy, real estate, agriculture, opaque financial operators and any org who's business model is dependent on fucking over their employees, customers and/or the country at large - who shall fund them heavily. They then manage to slither into power by using huge amount of negative campaigning to convince wavering 'moderate Republicans' that all Democrats are evil and must be stopped at all costs.
They are a serious threat as long as said 'moderate Republicans' allow the above to fuck them over on a daily basis. Similar can be said to the 'small-c tory' types in the UK who constantly bitch about everything being crap but then slithers off to vote for the cretins, loons and corrupt fuckwits because 'Labour will be even worse'. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:36, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Which sucks. Torrent (talk) 02:45, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Yes. But I also have a solution - entryism. If a load of sane people joined their local Republican Party and got their friends to do similar, they would then be able to outvote the cutist machine in the selection of local officials etc, and thus sanity [well, what passes as sanity in the Republicans] can return. If you live in a deep-Republican area, I would also advocate/support Independent candidates [ideally, sane/respected local figures who focus on bread/butter issues] and getting the local Democrats to stand aside to give them a decent run against the loons. Lastly, I would advocate leftist/centrists should also construct their own political machines which have actual funding and run all year round, not simply when election day comes a'calling. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:59, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Thought Experiment: The Gigachurch[edit]

This thought experiment is just based on suggestions I have heard from others over the continued consolidation of churches in the United States, as regular churches dwindle and megachurches continue to consolidate and get bigger. Eventually, do you think all American churches, regular and mega, will consolidate into one single gigachurch, how would a unified gigachurch function and look like in structure and operations compared to megachurches and regular churches, and what it will mean for the United States? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 03:35, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

What is wild to me, is somebody has always already written a song about it. There's no jobs in the city Torrent (talk) 06:17, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────It seems unlikely to me unless there is some overriding national authoritarian orthdoxy. From the book The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church (page 78):

Ironically, “mergers and foundings sharply raise the likelihood of schism.”* Efforts to reunite the church can go wrong and sow further and deeper divisions. Ironically again, schism can reduce the chance of schism, though only briefly: “one year after a founding or merger, rates of schism are five times higher than they are one year after a schism.” Pursuing unity or enforcing uniformity may be the quickest way to destroy whatever unity already exists. In some cases, consolidation and centralization can lessen the possibility of schism.” At times, it is the very effort to prevent schism that causes it.

Bongolian (talk) 07:04, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

If anything, churches are probably driven by money, and megachurches are definitely driven solely by cold hard cash. So how do you think the almighty dollar would influence the current trajectory of churches? TheEternalOutsider (talk) 08:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Briefly, no. Just imagine the Catholic Pope saying to the Christian diaspora (45,000 Christian denominations across the world), " Aw, you protestants were right all along, let's forget the whole thing." UncleKrampus (talk) 20:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
In short, the 'Gigachurch' wouldn't work because the business model of a megachurch would not scale that far.
Megachurches are built on charismatic authority [Weberian term] of the pastor(s) within it, and much of their product is not the message, but the 'show' given - in this case, psychologal manipulation of the crowd to 'feel the Holy Spirit' all together at the same time in the same physical location. Yes, you have TV/radio/podcasts etc, but it simply does not work half as well because you don't get emotionally swept up in the crowd's emotions and your sense of self is aborbed into the group [this is why fundie pastors led the charge against Covid lockdowns; they know much of their business relies on the 'personal touch' and feared an elongated absence from the endorphin-hits would cause their flock to drift away]. But that's the issue; there's only so many services a pastor can do in one day, building/maintaining a 2,000+ seater-venues is expensive and not every area would have enough donating congregants to make it economically viable.
There's ways to jump this cramp, of course; for example the old 'touring preacher' model [qv: Billy Graham] in which his big-tent meetings helped build up a national [or even international] following which then supported his radio/TV shows etc [though he preached that he was a suppliment for their flesh/blood pastor, not a replacement]. Another model which is being tried in the current era is a multi-church one; where the 'daughter' churches show the pastor's syndicated show from the 'parent' church. Problem is, that cuts off the emotional flow between the preacher and audience; whipping up the crowd is harder and they don't have their finger on the local pulse [good public speakers learn how to 'read' the audience and tailor their message, mannerisms, tone etc to help fit]. Again, some churches try to get past this cramp by making it 'hybrid'; that the 'daughers' will have their own pastor who acts as a kind of warm-up act to the main pastor etc - but this them means the church needs to find not only another charismatic pastor but also one who is doctrinally effectively identical to the main one.
Which is where the model comes under strain. Charismatic pastors are... well put politely are often 'of strong personality and will' and it makes collaboration with possible 'rivals' difficult to impossible. As in, the 'junior pastors'. Demarcation issues arise - the junior will often try to make their area 'theirs', while the senior will continue seeing it all as 'thiers' to meddle in as they see fit. If they're in phyisically different locations, the senior will often end up trying to micromanage from afar, perhaps even start fearing that the junior is planning to 'steal' the congregation or even usurp the whole church from under them. This is assuming there is zero doctrinal or even 'style' disputes...
Most importantly, not everyone wants to go to the 'same style of church', nor do they all believe the same things or have the same needs. It's like asking why aren't all the restaurants in the country be owned by the same chain. Religion is a 'personal service' [perhaps the most personal], and thus one where the individual 'human touch' will always be important [which is also why being a rabbi/imam/pastor/etc might be the most 'AI-proof' occupation ever]. Which in fact one of the most common criticisms of the megachurch; that they are simply too impersonal to have this touch [I would guess a pastor can 'effectively' personally pastor at most 100, which means the megachurch attendant only has a parasocial relationship with their pastor] and as such rapidly devolve into becoming Jesus-themed infotainment and political adverts to tickle the fancies of their well-heeled, low-maintenence congregation. Even the Southern Baptists deride megachurches as 'triggering false spiritual highs', only created by showmanship and 'crowdfeels'. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
so basically, you are are saying this is an improbable concern, because a man will die and that could free a culture. if I have read that wrong, please. Torrent (talk) 02:48, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
In very short; it won't happen because the model does not scale that far, too many preachers are egotistical and there's always going to be a significant % of believers who genuinely want the 'personal touch'. Not sure how that involves people dying, though. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Arab Jews: An interesting topic with little information[edit]

I have been trying to read about Arabs who practice Judaism as I think that the concept of Colored Jews (I believe that is the term) is interesting. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

Note: I hold no hate for Jews or Israel existing. That said I believe that both Jews and Palestinians can live side by side if leaders would get their heads out of their religious nationalistic asses. Religious nationalistic beliefs get innocent people killed. --Trans Fem Agenda 16:51, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Arabized Jews.
Basically, outside of the Arabian peninsula, there aren't a lot of ethnic Arabs (beyond general intermarriage and all that), but rather, millions of people who "converted" ethnically to Arab. The Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, etc, are actually made up of various ethnic groups, but they've basically adopted Arabic as their mother tongue and all that. That's actually the biggest reason for the Persian/Arab conflict; Persians have always viewed themselves as the guardians of civilizations, and it was the barbarians from the west (the Arabs, not "The West") who conquered them, whereas the Arabs despise the Persians for not giving up their culture, language, identity, etc. CorruptUser 20:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Given that races are statistical constructs from a modern perspective, one might ask what you think an Arab Jew is? Most Jews in Israel are not "practicing Jews." It is, for them, an ethnic identity. That is a "because I say so" identity. Arabs are not a race. They are just folks that live in North Africa and west Asia and share cultural attitudes. UncleKrampus (talk) 21:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Judaism is classed as an "ethno-religion" that one can convert to. If someone had an arab parent or both parents were arab, and the mother was a follower of Judaism, then their child would be considered Jewish. Also, races are not, really "statistical" constructs. The whole point in refuting racialism was that racial groupings are not statistically meaningful. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:35, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Anything can be made statistically meaningful. Race is not a scientific construct. Statistics is something else. Science is expected to make sense. Statistics is just a group of theories of probabilistic modeling. Races, like the rainbows are real in a very limited sense.UncleKrampus (talk) 13:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
it's kind of a Harry Potter house thing. Anyone is allowed to convert to Judaism, but the tenets matter to orthodoxy. It's like, you can join a Catholic family, but you're not getting off with an unbaptised child. Non practicing is fine and included, but it's also not fine. It's not that different to me with judaism. It IS ethnically tied, but it is so cultural that I just can't buy it as an ethnicity at large. Would an Arab Muslim be held to a different standard? I worked with a Pakistani Muslim and he brought his family's leftovers to the break room the day Ramadan started. What a fucking cool thing to just do. Was he Muslim? Well, I made sure I was in the break room any time he had to run his socks under water before prayer, I've seen worse done at a sink. Torrent (talk) 03:17, 22 May 2024 (UTC) Torrent (talk) 02:55, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
There is so much kindness and humility in any religion that wants to exist, and it works so much better than distrust and exclusion. As an atheist, kindness and humility is not suspect. it's just how we all get by. Torrent (talk) 03:28, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel
https://jewishcurrents.org/our-white-supremacy-problem
https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/racism-in-israel-some-jews-are-more-equal-than-others-28109
?
KarmaPolice (talk) 10:45, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
The timeline I’ve got for this thing which I have no stake in yet like any modern major jerk have opinions of (and please, mods please smash this if it is pure flame bait but I ask only that ye not banhammer me) is that:
Artificius (talk) 05:03, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
There do exist people who identify as both Arab and Jewish, but they are few and far between. Carthage (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Watched this live[edit]

https://youtu.be/IEFGKMWYD-E?feature=shared the drone footage is cool, watched live from the the truckyou, 2024 is a dang garbage year if you don't like extreme weather eventsTorrent (talk) 06:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Happy Birthday, RationalWiki[edit]

On this day, 17 years ago (May 22, 2007), RationalWiki (2.0) was born and has lived ever since. Thanks to everyone who has helped to make this place into what it is today. Let's put the last year of being below legal age to good use before we join the big boys (and girls) club. ULTRACOMFY (talk) 12:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

For new york university students.[edit]

For the reflection paper, may I suggest sarcasm. like something along the lines of "I now realise that protesting against genocide is bad and that genocide is ok if done by a U.S. ally" or something like that. Koafox (talk) 15:21, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It appears that (of all things) NYU is requesting that students watch episodes of The Simpsons as part of their assignment.[18] My modest proposal would be to sarcastically reflect on the many Simpsons episodes that skewered the poor morals of mob mentality and/or shitty educational administration.
For instance, (sarcasm mode on) consider the episode Whacking DayWikipedia (an episode about a Springfield "traditional day" where the town mob gathered to kill snakes). One can modestly state that in "reality", Bart Simpson was actually wrong to "cancel" Whacking Day because it was a traditional holiday and therefore should not have been messed with. It follows that similarly staunch support of Israel no matter what is a United States tradition; therefore, in the style of the Simpsons opening credits, it is obvious that any transgression of this tradition should be punished by writing "I ❤️ the Jewish Defense League" 1000 times on a chalkboard. Besides, who needs snakes anyways?Wikipedia Let's celebrate killing them all, because the mob said so! (Ignore that bit about Whacking Day originally being about beating up Irish immigrants, btw, that's fake news.) (/sarcasm) BobJohnson (talk) 16:41, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The Election is on![edit]

Sunak has called a snap election in the UK; Thurs, 4th July 2024.

I've set up a draft page for the election https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Draft:2024_United_Kingdom_general_election Idea being; if everyone adds to it during the campaign [with refs please], I will then review and make it fit for mainspace afterwards. Thanks in advance. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It feels a bit symbolic that Sunak was drenched by a downpour while announcing the election. Quite apart from the unplanned background music. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
That music was planned. Just not by CPHQ...
In other news, the talking heads on LBC are predicting a Labour majority of 50-60. I think this is going to come down to a) level of tactical voting, b) how much Reform run, c) how 'suppressed' the vote is by the summer stuff going on and d) how bad the 'Gaza sore' is to Labour. The fact the Unis will be out I think will nullify itself; it might diffuse a very anti-Tory vote from a few [perhaps] marginals and disenfranchise folks not registered to vote at 'home' [though this can be sorted by a big advance postal ballot push] but it also means a lot of students will be in places like the Shires which might prove a resource that can be tapped to help with canvessing etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:10, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, the summer recess will potentially play against the Tories since they can’t rely on the “on campus voting ban” to suppress the student vote. They’re probably still hoping that their voter ID law might give them a crucial edge in very close races, though.
And the short campaign is probably also to forestall any (further/formal?) collaboration between Labour and the LibDems to further magnify Tory losses by not attacking each other and ensuring that the party with the best chance of beating the Tories in a particular constituency will not be hampered by a split vote, and thus encourage tactical, anti Tory voting.
I also agree that Reform UK presents an important uncertainty: If they eat into the Tory vote, the results could be truly disastrous for the Tories (especially if combined with anti Tory tactical voting). But there are a couple of asterisks here: Are the people who’ve said in opinion polls that they’ll be voting Reform UK actually defecting Tory voters? And if they are indeed former (potential) Tory voters, will they actually end up voting Reform UK, even if that risks a Tory seat going Labour/LibDem? ScepticWombat (talk) 18:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
I've long bitched that Mandelson has in effect moved into Starmer's head, but in this case it's a good thing - for the Kennedy-Blair 'cease fire' in '97 was part of the reason for the Tory wipeout. It also helps that there's basically zero straight LD/Labour fights [I think the only one is Sheffield Hallum, Clegg's old seat]. Having done lots of reading on every GE since 1992 for RW, I think Davy must rule out a coalition with the Tories or Labour [but say they're open to ad-hoc arrangements] but also state another vote for PR isn't going to be the 'price' they demand for 'collaboration'. In return, I believe Starmer is going to need to make a 'people of the left, please lend me your votes' pitch and cherry-pick a totemic couple of policies which appeal to Greens/socialists/etc while being fairly honest that while yes, Labour is hardly appealing to them they're a damn sight better than the Tories. However, I seriously doubt he'd do the latter as he's basically been shouting at me to go fuck myself since becoming leader.
With Reform voters, from the looks of it they are almost solely the old Farage-era UKIP vote - the ones which 'lent' their votes to the Tories in '17 and '19 due to Brexit. I'm actually interested to see how strongly Tice and co are going to push this, and in response how rightwards Sunak will lean in to 'accommodate' them - I suspect that while yes, chanelling Braverman over immigration, othering and woke might save a clutch of Rustbelt seats, it very well might sicken enough in the Shires and 'Cameronian' suburbs to bolt to Lab/LDs. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:36, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

If there was a 'None of the above (candidates)' option on the ballot paper the results might be interesting (as with getting fewer votes than the Official Monster Raving Party). Anna Livia (talk) 20:28, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Sunak not only got soaked but also got trolled during his announcement with anti-Brexiteer Steve Bray blasting the song "Things Can Only Get Better" from beyond the security barrier.[19] Some have speculated that the earlier than expected election date is because Tories have come to the conclusion that things will not get better before the election deadline in January. Bongolian (talk) 02:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
I think it’s absolutely the reason for the snap election that this is the “least bad” time for the Tories and it’s likely that things would get even worse for them, if they’d waited.
Right now, the Tories can at least pretend that they’ve “beaten inflation”, and, due to the season, some voters aren’t in the “heating or eating” dilemma that might fuel yet more eagerness to stick it to the Tories.
The water companies are only going to keep increasing their prices and pouring shit into the rivers and oceans, so there’s no improvement in sight on that front either, quite the opposite in fact. And since even their latest promises of tax cuts didn’t move the polls, the Tories’ political ammo pouch is basically empty as it is. ScepticWombat (talk) 08:41, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
One good personal good thing. Expat UK voters have finally got our right to vote back!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:09, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, nothing good 'seems to be sticking' for the Tories - they've been blaring out their Greatest Hits for a year now and the polls are stuck. My guess is what has happened is what I warned Grant Shapps about in 2017; that a political party needs to avoid becoming hated - shown in this case by the fact perhaps the majority of the people have quit listening to them. I think they did want another giveaway in Sept/Oct, but the sounds from the IMF etc about them being in effect unaffordable [well, even more than the last ones] and this spooked them.
The other reason is I suspect the Conservatives chose now is the 'Gaza factor'. My fag-packet tells me that 'Muslims' [I hate lumping people into demographics, but you have to for some extent in conversations like this] make up more than 10% of the electorate in at least 85 seats, traditionally vote Labour by about 70% and quite a lot are concentrated in Rustbelt seats. If say, a third of these ditch from Labour... that's worth at least 1,300 votes per seat in Labour/Tory fights.
This leads me to discussing hat-man. Galloway's 'Workers Party' on the surface appears to be a 'socialist' splinter from Labour [actually mainly a cut-out for the Stalinist splinter from the CPGB]... but if you actually read their manifesto etc [yay, lucky me] you'll spot that their main Venn overlap is in fact with Reform [anti-woke, anti-establishment, 'patriotic' and populist] which means they're more a threat to the working-class Tory flank too. This leads to two questions; a) how strongly with 'the Muslims' does the WP become associated with and b) does Tice tacitly come to an 'arrangement' where there's no seat where both WP and Reform stand?
Lastly, I've been seeing Communist posters about recently, apparently from the 'Revolutionary Communist Party'. Anybody else seen them? KarmaPolice (talk) 10:02, 23 May 2024 (UTC)