You know, I have never seen an EA/longtermist so much as mention the idea of consequences for suppressing climate change research and policymaking in the '50s/'60s/'70s. You'd think that according to their ideology that would have the potential to be the single most grave crime in the entirety of human history, past or future

It's crazy it's almost like they don't take moral philosophy seriously at all and just cribbed a bunch of pseudointellectual garbage from reactionary movie Interstellar so that they could grift money from reactionary tech oligarchs. But that can't be right

it is funny how little EAs dream about or invest in large scale solar and wind energy... like i can see that the regulatory barriers for nuclear are complicated, but like where's miri but for overturning the jcpoa? i guess a lot of that is unsexy engineering and reading policy from the 90s instead of grifting in the silicon valley world?

My impression is that EA previously used to take stuff like climate change and global poverty seriously, but once the Silicon Valley money started rolling in the focus shifted to stuff like AI, space exploration, and longtermism (which conveniently don't require the mass redistribution of wealth and resources away from billionaires). Funny how that happens.

They still do take global poverty and health very seriously? The top 4 charities on GiveWell at this very moment are

all aimed at improving health in the developing world.

And my impression is that they are very much beating the drum about making it easier to invest in solar and wind energy.

I'm not sure how that's supposed to help us now.

"I've never looked at or spoken to EA people, and my impression of them is only from my fellow Communists expressing contempt for them, but I am very confident they are all bad and stupid and wrong in the way that is most satisfying for a Communist to hate."

like they don't shut up about malaria nets, the go-to example for everything is mosquito nets and all tradeoffs are considered in terms of equivalent value in mosquito nets, this is obvious from just glancing observation. but if a Communist doesn't like you, you must therefore only care about things a Communist finds trivial, because you were bribed by the infinite agency of Capital.

THE ONION OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE

Reportedly Alex Jones confirmed it on X, but I can't verify it because it's an almost 2 minute video and I aint watchin' all that shit.

this reveals some important things about the relative power and influence of InfoWars, given that the Onion is not a major financial player or power broker and yet was able to win the auction for InfoWars's name and all their shit, so nobody with more money wanted it more

and if someone could figure out what those important things are, and then tell me, that would be great. because fucked if I know.

you will not be surprised to learn that not only was the commercial spot in question not “about how we all need to stand with Israel”, but israel & palestine are not referenced or alluded to in any way whatsoever.

here’s the ad:

it’s not even an ad primarily about antisemitism. it’s a campaign called “Stand Up To All Hate” about standing up to racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, antisemitism, etc.—all hate, as the name suggests.

and, for a split second, there’s a kid wearing a kippah. that’s it. shaq appeared in an ad where a kid wears a kippah and that is what is getting him accused of “supporting genocide”

#people will literally see one (1) jew #and say their existence is genocide apologism #beyond parody (via @taibhsearachd)

remember that everyone is lying to you all of the time in order to tell flattering stories to themselves

people who think that their dehumanization of other people is justified and safe because they are a marginalized group need to read more on the Rwandan genocide. You Are Not Immune To The Genocidal Mindset No Matter How Justified It Feels.

nothing will save you from being a human monster except yourself. there is no identity, no social status, no experience, nothing that will give you some immutably upright moral standing. all that stands between any of us and horrific acts of violence is our choice not to do that. of course some of us have more access to greater acts of violence than others. but NEVER start thinking that you are exempt from making deliberately ethical choices, because your mission is just so so pure and good that anything done in its name must be justifiable. that is the devil talking. no one is that damn special

You know, I have never seen an EA/longtermist so much as mention the idea of consequences for suppressing climate change research and policymaking in the '50s/'60s/'70s. You'd think that according to their ideology that would have the potential to be the single most grave crime in the entirety of human history, past or future

It's crazy it's almost like they don't take moral philosophy seriously at all and just cribbed a bunch of pseudointellectual garbage from reactionary movie Interstellar so that they could grift money from reactionary tech oligarchs. But that can't be right

Wheeling out 95 year old former fossil fuel executives for show trials does not seem like a feasible or particularly effective form of charity to me

Longtermist EAs don't have to wring their hands about nefarious parties suppressing technical progress like that because they know, uncontroversially, that decades of activity by antinuclear greens are to blame for some share of global warming Right Now.

why would the ideology about ignoring emotional satisfaction and putting time and resources in places where it creates the most efficient utility not spend time and resources to prosecute crimes from the 1950s?

it must be because they're contemptible right-wingers!

when I was 13 I watched too much burn notice

no such thing

This one needs to go right next to the Baltimore accent with the Aaron earns an iron urn.

In case anyone hasn't seen it

love how english started as a rhotic language and half the native speakers said, "oh, Fuck That Noise"

What I DEEPLY LOVE about the Baltimore one is how mad HE IS to realize what his own accent did to it. XD He's SO MAD. XD XD

"damn, we really talk like that???!!!" and then he starts extremely overenunciating both out of spite and for comedic effect

On the topic of Leftist Andrew Tate and other mythical creatures of the liberal mind

ID: Two screenshots of a Twitter thread by Joth @ jothwip with text reading:

"The reason men are turning fascist is because the feminist and workers movements of the past decades have made it harder for them to own women as property, with current movements threatening to rid them of power they still have. Not because lesbians are mean to them

"When you talk of "The left alienating men" you are either buying the fascists at their word, or suggesting feminists compromise by not abolishing the power men have over women. Either option puts you on the same side as them"

End ID.

I just don't think it's true that "men" as a whole are turning fascist

I don't think that's really the argument here. It's specifically Western cishet white men, particularly men of the middle and upper classes, who are acting on this sense of aggrieved entitlement that the world that was "supposed" to be theirs is now telling them they must share it with others, and that women are not their reward for good behavior but in fact their equals. and so many of these guys believe themselves to be feminists, but can't wrap their head around the idea that their hurt feelings and bruised egos are irrelevant in a conversation about women, particularly marginalized women, losing their political rights. scratch a male ally and an MRA bleeds🤷‍♂️

My problem with this is that many millions of women also support right-wing, far-right, and fascist causes. Personally I've played a part in disrupting "For Britain" when their leader, a woman, tried to hold a launch meeting in my city; Meloni and Le Pen are women; when I've had to go help defend a nearby hotel housing refugees or help organise the counter-demo to the attempted islamophobic pogrom in August there were plenty of women on the other side -- clearly motivated by the supposed threat of refugee sexual violence, i.e. on a feminist basis. Some 45% of American women voters voted for Trump along with 55% of American men voters. So there is a gendered difference, and the stuff described here probably makes a difference to that margin, but it's clearly a secondary cause at most of the rise of the far right.

Also just a deep failure to imagine any position on sex and gender less than 'the specific kind of progressive leftist feminist that I am' and greater than 'fascist who wants to own women as slaves'

This is a particularly extreme form, but I see an awful lot of stuff in this vein that seems to think that the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1970s all happened, like, last decade and right-wing men are just responding to this now.

It's very funny to see people continue to blame white, cishet, middle and upper class men as so many young, poorer men of all races voted for Trump.

"you keep saying we are alienating this demographic because we obviously hate them, but that's not true! they turn away from us because they're so stupid and evil and contemptible."

"There must be a reason for why Andrew Tate got such a large following besides 'thousands of men individually made a bad judgement call' and 'feminists are being too mean', something material and real"

"Wow, so you're saying you hate men? That's what you're saying. You think men are evil and stupid. Wow this is why the manosphere is so popular"

Y'know there really is probably some interesting and useful analysis to be done on the topic, it's just that the analysis being provided by OP isn't that - it's not really going much further than 'men are evil'

It's like, the opposite of analysis, it's anti-analysis.

I'm OP. Please tell me how "Men arent attracted to the manosphere because feminists are mean to them" is me saying any version of "men are Evil"

The original post is literally saying men are turning fascist because they want to keep women as slaves. That's as close as you can get to "men are evil" without outright saying it.

Anyway, I agree that it takes more than mean leftists to turn people into fascists. I think the biggest danger of mean leftists is making people disengaged and unwilling to entertain certain ideas.

i feel like in some bizzarro universe

Do men, as a class, not have authority over women? Are men, as a class, not shaped by our society to expect that power, and see it as a given? have men, as a class, not directly owned women in most of the world throughout history, as recently as the last century in the west?

A major focus of the feminist movements of the last century in the west was getting women into the workforce, in order to make them not financially dependant on their husbands. Is that not a form of ownership? And if you analyse the things the Manosphere promises, the future it wants for women, as stay-at-home tradwives, is that not a promise of ownership?

Literally none of this has anything to do with someone being evil, it is all just really basic marxist analysis of the material reality which forms these movements and why it attracts men. How can you do anything about it if you cant even acknowledge the conditions which shaped this movement?

Men are not a class. Marxist analysis does not apply. There is no common interest uniting me and Trump. A common interest based on gender is a lie, and I do actually suspect that believing this lie is part of what does drive some men into the "manosphere", so repeating and reinforcing that lie is the opposite of the feminist project.

And yes, wanting to hold people as slaves is evil. A lot of men in the "manosphere" are evil. But that is a very, very different statement from the assumption that men's evilness is what drives them into these contexts.

I would like to point out that many of the men in the manosphere are quite young, too young to have held any control over women in their lives. What can the manosphere promise them, a return to a more patriarchal past where everything was supposedly better for them? But so many men have never experienced that past for themselves to feel nostalgia over it, there never was a past where everything was better for those young men, because they are too young to have experienced it!

In addition, young rightwing men seem to be socially isolated, with no or few interpersonal relationships with women, so how could they have ever exploited them?

the only justification for the claim that men are moving right or "becoming fascist" is that it's okay to despise fascists and the people making this claim really despise men. there is nothing in reality that points to this trend. all of the cruelty and knife-sharpening and bloodthirst over the evils of white men voting in Trump is because those people cannot come up with any answer to a question other than "I hate straight white men and it is their fault." Trump made huge gains among women and non-whites, the election results utterly disprove the "Trump is for sexist white supremacists," but these people literally cannot arrive at any conclusion other than "this is the fault of straight white men, who should be hated and punished."

e: also none of the people involved know what the "manosphere" is. feminists call it the "manosphere" in order to claim that everyone who doesn't agree with their ideology is part of the same group with collective responsibility to each other, find the worst non-feminist ever, and blame all non-feminists for his existence. the reason men stray away from feminism is they notice that feminism is wrong about very very important claims it makes all the time, openly despises men, lies constantly, and then every feminist you know gaslights you when you notice it, insisting you didn't see any of the things you saw and ACTUALLY what motivates you is wanting to own women like slaves.

"I WROTE IN BLOOMBERG"???!??

That's the last straw, democracy is officially cancelled. We going back to the drawing board on this one.

Okay I actually wasn't expecting that - so far the Joe Rogan thing was being used symbolically imo. Like Harris needs to reach out to a swath of people like Joe Rogan, go on many podcasts and such. Maybe she did just need to go on this one guy's show!

Though this does reinforce something about elections - the vast majority of paid media doesn't do much before the last month. Anyone paying attention has already decided, swing voters don't worry about it till the point of decision. Might want to build campaign strats around that more.

(Re: "Did the Media Cover the election fairly) Top guy is a Jill Stein voter btw. You can think whatever you want about the media coverage and its balance and all that - but the way the median voter sees it is heavily stacked against Trump. Because it is! Because reality is. But you can't steer that ship farther left, it is broken enough.

(Though they are right about the Liz Cheney thing. Obviously selection bias ahoy but still, right is right)

Finally, the one good median voter.

Being less meme-y this is a good read. A few thoughts:

I'm defaulting to "most people just vote for chimpy reasons like he's taller, and makes more noise". It fits with all the immigrants voting against their interests... submission before a threat display. It's not happy thinking but it's probably accurate.

maybe

just maybe!

people don't believe the same things you do about what their best interests are.

maybe you don't actually understand the beliefs of others as well as you think.

On the topic of Leftist Andrew Tate and other mythical creatures of the liberal mind

ID: Two screenshots of a Twitter thread by Joth @ jothwip with text reading:

"The reason men are turning fascist is because the feminist and workers movements of the past decades have made it harder for them to own women as property, with current movements threatening to rid them of power they still have. Not because lesbians are mean to them

"When you talk of "The left alienating men" you are either buying the fascists at their word, or suggesting feminists compromise by not abolishing the power men have over women. Either option puts you on the same side as them"

End ID.

I just don't think it's true that "men" as a whole are turning fascist

I don't think that's really the argument here. It's specifically Western cishet white men, particularly men of the middle and upper classes, who are acting on this sense of aggrieved entitlement that the world that was "supposed" to be theirs is now telling them they must share it with others, and that women are not their reward for good behavior but in fact their equals. and so many of these guys believe themselves to be feminists, but can't wrap their head around the idea that their hurt feelings and bruised egos are irrelevant in a conversation about women, particularly marginalized women, losing their political rights. scratch a male ally and an MRA bleeds🤷‍♂️

My problem with this is that many millions of women also support right-wing, far-right, and fascist causes. Personally I've played a part in disrupting "For Britain" when their leader, a woman, tried to hold a launch meeting in my city; Meloni and Le Pen are women; when I've had to go help defend a nearby hotel housing refugees or help organise the counter-demo to the attempted islamophobic pogrom in August there were plenty of women on the other side -- clearly motivated by the supposed threat of refugee sexual violence, i.e. on a feminist basis. Some 45% of American women voters voted for Trump along with 55% of American men voters. So there is a gendered difference, and the stuff described here probably makes a difference to that margin, but it's clearly a secondary cause at most of the rise of the far right.

Also just a deep failure to imagine any position on sex and gender less than 'the specific kind of progressive leftist feminist that I am' and greater than 'fascist who wants to own women as slaves'

This is a particularly extreme form, but I see an awful lot of stuff in this vein that seems to think that the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1970s all happened, like, last decade and right-wing men are just responding to this now.

It's very funny to see people continue to blame white, cishet, middle and upper class men as so many young, poorer men of all races voted for Trump.

"you keep saying we are alienating this demographic because we obviously hate them, but that's not true! they turn away from us because they're so stupid and evil and contemptible."

"There must be a reason for why Andrew Tate got such a large following besides 'thousands of men individually made a bad judgement call' and 'feminists are being too mean', something material and real"

"Wow, so you're saying you hate men? That's what you're saying. You think men are evil and stupid. Wow this is why the manosphere is so popular"

Y'know there really is probably some interesting and useful analysis to be done on the topic, it's just that the analysis being provided by OP isn't that - it's not really going much further than 'men are evil'

It's like, the opposite of analysis, it's anti-analysis.

I'm OP. Please tell me how "Men arent attracted to the manosphere because feminists are mean to them" is me saying any version of "men are Evil"

The original post is literally saying men are turning fascist because they want to keep women as slaves. That's as close as you can get to "men are evil" without outright saying it.

Anyway, I agree that it takes more than mean leftists to turn people into fascists. I think the biggest danger of mean leftists is making people disengaged and unwilling to entertain certain ideas.

reading "men are turning fascist because they want to own slaves" as "men want to own slaves" rather than "men who are fascists want to own slaves" seems, if nothing else, wildly uncharitable. evilsoup is quibbling in an at least reasonable direction i think, about the magnitude of demographic shifts, but much of this thread reads to me as like, misreading by conflating a statement about the motives of men who are fascists, and demographic trends in light of patriarchy, with the motives of every man

"I wasn't saying black people are rapists, I was just talking about the black people who are rapists. While talking about the 'reason black men are turning into rapists' and blaming my team's recent electoral loss on all those black rapists."

Nobody's fucking buying it.

Are you equating misandry (a form of oppression that does not exist in any part of the world) with racism????

let's just focus on the most salient bit here and ask: are you familiar with the concept of "analogy?"