ChiGoose

Lol. I thought you blocked me. Pathetic. So it’s ok for the government to have laws criminalizing books so long as they pinky swear not to enforce them? This is modern conservatism?

Sure, that’s what we have child endangerment and decency laws for. Thank you for pointing out that these book bans are unnecessary.

Do you go to jail if your kid sees an R Rated movie? Do you get a criminal record if you don’t follow MPA (not FCC…) guidelines? I don’t know if you’re all missing the point intentionally or are just so encased in your bubbles that you cannot comprehend any nuance. The point is that the government should not be censoring books under penalty of a crime. That’s something you would think small government conservatives could get behind. School curriculum and library books should be decided at the local level between school administrators, librarians, and parents. At no point should someone be in legal jeopardy because they put a book on a shelf. It’s pretty ironic that you’re all demonizing liberals for upholding a traditionally conservative value of letting people decide what to read without government interference.

Are you in support of the government telling us what is and isn’t appropriate to read under penalty of a criminal charge?

Is it inappropriate for schools to have books about gay couples? Or slavery? Or minorities?

Do you believe “And Tango Makes Three” is an inappropriate book? Do you believe that when kids hear a story about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin, they think of sex?

Once again, I used your phrasing. And you still have yet to cite to a single piece of evidence to support your claim. I don’t see how anyone could be persuaded by the weak sauce you’re spewing here.

I phrased it using your exact words. Here, you can see for yourself: So... can you provide any evidence to back these claims? Cite to a study, or a survey, or anything at all? Literally any source? If I said: "They will certainly look at it as a time when many people lost their minds. Literally believed that Republicans believed in democracy and weren't all members of the Klan. So much so that it’s more offensive to want kids not to be killed than for everyone to own machine guns. So dumb it can’t be believed." Would you believe what I said? If you had previously disagreed, would you then change your mind based on my argument? If you asked for evidence to support my claim and I refused to provide it, would you then be convinced I was right? Or would you just think that I was a partisan hack living in a bubble that prevented me from seeing reality and drove me to believe insane things? So, I'll ask again: please cite your sources.

I’ve never met anyone who believes that insulting someone is worse than murdering them. Seems like a very dubious claim to me. But you seem so sure! So if you’re a right, it should be no problem at all to provide links to studies or other evidence that supports your claim.

Any data at all to back your claim would be helpful. Is it 50% of people who thinking hurting feelings is worse than murder? 25%? 5%? You seem to believe this is obvious so providing hard data on it should be no problem at all.

Can you provide evidence of the claim that “Many in society believe that hurting someone’s feelings is the worst thing you can do”? What percentage of people believe that hurting someone’s feelings is worse than killing them?

You are saying that there was a time that people literally believed up was down and that hurting people's feelings was worse than killing people? Maybe what's really going on here is that you have an absolutely terrible media diet that's caused you to believe incredibly stupid things.

I know that this will change absolutely zero minds because everyone just runs to their partisan corners, but what the Twitter Files show, is a company struggling with content moderation. To believe that the government was censoring posts, you would have to twist the definition of "censor" to the point of meaninglessness. Twitter was not compelled in any way to reach specific determinations on posts flagged by the government, or anyone else. Their failures and mistakes are the failures and mistakes of a struggling company, not some nefarious plot by the government to censor people. Content moderation is difficult, and often impossible. If people are interested in it, they should seek out people who are experts in that field instead of generalists or the traditional talking heads. Personally, I find the discussions on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth podcast a helpful tool to learn about the issues of truth and content moderation in the modern internet. In any case, while the Twitter Files can point to various instances of Twitter failures, the overall message that there was a grand conspiracy by the government and Twitter to silence conservatives, or that the government was censoring posts, has been debunked dozens of times: Interpreting the ‘Twitter Files’: Lessons About External Influence on Content Moderation "...[W]hile U.S. intelligence may have overstepped in some cases (such as possibly seeking support for their own operations abroad), much of what the files show in this case is simply mechanisms by which light is being cast on possible foreign information operations. Far from illegal, working with U.S. platforms to stop foreign information operations in this way is exactly what we should expect from the government. " "A close examination of the Twitter Files doesn’t show a Frankenstein’s monster “grown out the control of its designer.” The truth is much less dramatic. More simply, the files show understandable problems with systems plagued by conflicting interests. The villagers don’t need to grab their torches and pitchforks just yet. The communication that the files demonstrate between the platforms and outside groups, including U.S. intelligence, is nothing to be afraid of. On the contrary, when done correctly, this communication can foster balance and a safer social media experience for everyone. The Twitter Files certainly show, however, that so far these collaborations have often been ad hoc and distrusted. We have work to do, but it is work worth doing." Elon Musk is using the Twitter Files to discredit foes and push conspiracy theories ""What is really coming through in the Twitter Files for me is: people who are confronting high-stakes, unanticipated events and trying to figure out what policies apply and how," said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who studies how narratives spread on social networks." "[The Twitter Files] show Twitter executives and rank and file employees grappling with difficult tradeoffs, questioning the company's rules and how they should be applied — and in some cases, getting things wrong." No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’ "What the files show is that the FBI would occasionally (not very often, frankly) use reporting tools to alert Twitter to accounts that potentially violated Twitter’s rules. When the FBI did so, it was pretty clear that it was just flagging these accounts for Twitter to review, and had no expectation that the company would or would not do anything about it. In fact, they are explicit in their email that the accounts “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service” and that Twitter can take “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.” "That is not a demand. There is no coercion associated with the email, and it certainly appears that Twitter frequently rejected these flags from the US government. Twitter’s most recent transparency report lists all of the “legal demands” the company received for content removals in the US, and its compliance rate is 40.6%. In other words, it complied with well under half of any demands for data removal from the government. Indeed, even as presented (repeatedly) by Taibbi and Shellenberger as if it’s proof that Twitter closely cooperated with the FBI, over and over again if you read the actual screenshots, it shows Twitter (rightly!) pushing back on the FBI." "As for the accounts that were flagged, from everything revealed to date in the Twitter Files, it mostly appears to be accounts that were telling a certain segment of the population (sometimes Republicans, sometimes Democrats) to vote on Wednesday, the day after Election Day, rather than Tuesday. Twitter had announced long before the election that any such tweets would violate policy. It does appear that a number of those tweets were meant as jokes, but as is the nature of content moderation, it’s difficult to tell what’s a joke from what’s not a joke, and quite frequently malicious actors will try to hide behind “but I was only joking…” when fighting back against an enforcement action. So, under that context, a flat “do not suggest people vote the day after Election Day” rule seems reasonable." "Given all that, to date, the only “evidence” that people can look at regarding “the FBI sent a list to censor” is that the FBI flagged (just as your or I could flag) accounts that were pretty clearly violating Twitter policies in a way that could undermine the US election, and left it entirely up to Twitter to decide what to do about it — and Twitter chose to listen to some requests and ignore others." Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop "The morning the NY Post story came out there was a lot of concern about the validity of the story. Other news organizations, including Fox News, had refused to touch it. NY Post reporters refused to put their name on it. There were other oddities, including the provenance of the hard drive data, which apparently had been in Rudy Giuliani’s hands for months. There were concerns about how the data was presented (specifically how the emails were converted into images and PDFs, losing their header info and metadata). The fact that, much later on, many elements of the laptops history and provenance were confirmed as legitimate (with some open questions) is important, but does not change the simple fact that the morning the NY Post story came out, it was extremely unclear (in either direction) except to extreme partisans in both camps." To be clear, the decision by Twitter to do this was, in our estimation, pretty stupid. It was exactly what we had warned about just a month earlier regarding this exact policy. But this is the nature of trust & safety. People need to make very rapid decisions with very incomplete information. That’s why I’ve argued ever since then that while the policy was stupid, it was no giant scandal that it happened, and given everything, it was not a stretch to understand how it played out. "And then Taibbi revealed… basically nothing of interest. He revealed a few internal communications that… simply confirmed everything that was already public in statements made by Twitter, Jack Dorsey’s Congressional testimony, and in declarations made as part of a Federal Elections Commission investigation into Twitter’s actions. There were general concerns about foreign state influence campaigns, including “hack and leak” in the lead up to the election, and there were questions about the provenance of this particular data, so Twitter made a quick (cautious) judgment call and implemented a (bad) policy. Then it admitted it ***** up and changed things a day later. That’s… basically it." TechScape: I read Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ so you don’t have to "A series of Slack posts shared by Shellenberger show the team, led by former trust and safety head Yoel Roth, desperately trying to invent policy on the fly (all staff except Roth are anonymised in the posts Shellenberger shared). Trump had been given special treatment, left on the site for months after a typical user would have seen his account deleted: at what point does that approach cease to be viable? The answer was clearly January 6. But if you give someone special treatment without admitting as such, it just makes it all the more difficult to take it away." Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ ignite divisions, but haven’t changed minds "“I’m not persuaded these are anything close to a bombshell,” said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in an interview." "At a November 2020 congressional hearing, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the company had erred in limiting the [Hunter Biden] article’s spread under its policy against the dissemination of hacked materials, a 2018 rule that aimed to discourage the unauthorized exposure of private information. Dorsey said that the company considered feedback and changed its policy on hacked materials. “We made a quick interpretation, using no other evidence, that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread,” he said. “Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.” "Taibbi also shared screenshots that showed communications employees asking Twitter executives for guidance about how they should explain the decision. One employee shared concerns that the action would become the focus of a Capitol Hill hearing where Dorsey was scheduled to appear." The ‘Twitter Files’ Is What It Claims to Expose "It is true that, as vice-president, Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. But Biden did so at the behest of a coalition of Western interests. In addition to the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and European Union all believed that Shokin was complicit in endemic corruption that was diverting development funds to oligarchs. And not without reason. Troves of diamonds, cash, and other assorted valuables were discovered at the homes of Shokin’s underlings, indicating that they had been taking bribes. Yet the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office declined to take the officials to court; individual prosecutors who tried to pursue the case were fired or resigned. In truth, Shokin was not fired for investigating Burisma but for the opposite; one of the West’s complaints about his office was that it failed to pursue a corruption inquiry against Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky." "Yet despite having access to virtually all of Twitter’s internal communications, Taibbi produced no actual evidence that the decision [to block the Hunter Biden story] was motivated by anything beyond concern that Twitter would find itself complicit in promulgating hacked materials." "In sum: The New York Post published a story based on data that was apparently — but, at the time, unverifiably — Hunter Biden’s. That story falsely purported to offer “smoking gun” evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption, when it actually provided no such thing. Faced with warnings from federal law enforcement about impending foreign hacks, and a story based on apparently stolen emails sourced from Rudy Giuliani, Twitter’s content moderation team chose to suppress the Post article. That decision was internally controversial, and even those who supported it said that they wished they had more information about the source of the emails. Within 24 hours, Twitter reversed course. It is possible that this reduced the ultimate reach of the Post’s story, which, given that story’s mendacious content, probably would have been beneficial to public understanding of the Trump-Biden race (after all, there was exponentially more evidence that Donald Trump had used public power to advance his family’s private business interests than evidence that Biden had done so, yet the Post’s story conveyed the opposite impression). But it’s also possible that Twitter’s decision actually increased the story’s prominence by endowing it with an aura of forbidden knowledge. Separately, when the Biden campaign flagged tweets that featured pornographic images, Twitter responded by enforcing its own rules." It can be true that Hunter Biden is a scumbag influence peddler, Twitter sucks at content moderation, and the government was not censoring Twitter posts. And the reason we know all of that can be true is that it is true.

This post is so dumb it can’t be believed. You live in a fantasy world. Log off the internet, it’s rotted your brains.

For like the zillionth time, genital surgery on minors goes against the medical guidelines. Surgery on minors is extremely rare and if it is done, it’s generally top surgery performed after years of gender affirming care. Do you guys care at all that you’re being lied to? When you hear these outrageous claims that liberals are trying to chop up kids genitals, doesn’t it seem ludicrous? Do you ever think to look up what the actual medical guidelines are? Bad faith actors are trying to boil down the entire range of different forms of gender affirming care into surgery and then lying about it. You’re being fooled and playing right into their hands. In general, what liberals want for trans kids is that they get age-appropriate medical community approved care from medical professionals with informed consent and parental support. That’s it. This BS about genital surgery is coming from people who seem to be incapable of not thinking about kids’ junk.

If disclosed, it means Thomas followed the law and the public would be better informed about potential conflicts of interest. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Also, not caring about the appearance of corruption is how we get actual corruption.

Gee, I wonder why Ukraine might not want to negotiate for peace with Russia right now…

Used to go to Massawepie every summer, just an hour down the road from Crow’s place. It’s a beautiful area. Also, Succession is an excellent show.

This was a clear test of partisanship. Thomas absolutely violated the law, which requires all comped transportation to be disclosed. And even if there is debate as to the lodging and food, it’s clearly an ethical gray area that any rational person would have disclosed just to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. All people here had to say was “Yes, he should have disclosed the trips” but apparently some people can’t even do that. He’s on their side, so they need to reflexively defend him even when he’s clearly in the wrong. He’s free to have wealthy friends and go on lavish trips. He just has to disclose them. This would be a good time to explore better ethics provisions for all SCOTUS justices but I would wager it just continues downwards towards partisan bickering instead.

Trying to image the outrage if the exact same thing happened but it was Sonia Sotomayor going on trips paid for by George Soros…

He’s probably the most pathetic person on this board. Claims to block people who disagree with him because his feelings get hurt but then still quotes them, tags them, and responds to them because he needs the attention. Just a tremendous loser whose real life must be incredibly sad and pathetic to spend so much time acting like a child online.

Tennessee disenfranchising voters by ousting any elected official who protests children being killed (so long as they are black) reminded me of this from last month: Florida Republican pitches bill to eliminate the Florida Democratic Party In the continued path towards Hungarian style autocracy, the Florida GOP wants to outlaw the opposition.

And yet, they still won’t vote Republican because the solutions offered by the GOP are worse. The Democratic Party is the second worst political institution in this country, but it’s going to benefit greatly from the GOP’s insistence on committing suicide.

And that is why, unless it changes course, the GOP’s days are numbered.

Marriage rates and birth rates will continue to decline as the costs of living continue to rise. The difference between financial stability on one income in your late twenties versus needing dual incomes to afford a middle class life in your thirties is probably several children over the life of a marriage.