Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 3:58am
Re: Re:
"Why was he neglecting his lawn? Did anybody check on him before sending in enforcement officers? The reported behaviour is consistent with someone with mental issues that need dealing with."
In most other places this would probably end with the man ending up in rehab or health care after getting carted off in cuffs by a bunch of more or less gentle yet firm officers of the law.
But in most places it's generally rare that a nutcase may have a firearm or ten on the premises or on their person.
This is actually a case where I can't fault the US police. The responses back and forth were proportional and reasonable up to the point where the resident decided to, for some reason, start using texas lawmen for live-fire practice. At that point it all devolved into the less glamorous version of the shootout at the OK corral.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 3:51am
Re: All laws require violent enforcement
"The police go everywhere armed to enforce the will of the government, and if you resist, they might very well kill you... no matter how trivial the basic infraction."
Literally not true anywhere in the world except in the US and certain third world hellholes.
Laws are certainly upheld by the monopoly of violence but the core criteria in the execution of said duty is proportional response.
According to your argument as written, a police officer can walk up to a ten year old, draw their firearm, and double-tap the tyke in the skull at point-blank range, execution-style, for dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk.
And that argument is made even more ridiculous given that you didn't even have to employ that sort of broken logic to contradict the OP - where you could just say something to the effect of; "Well, it certainly isn't a desirable outcome but there's probably no country in the world where storming out, guns drawn, against well armed lawmen in cover, will end well".
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 3:44am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Although we can get that much from the tone of the commenter...the topic in the OP is actually pretty clear cut, following a few links. We're talking about an irate homeowner who responded to police mowing his lawn by taking pot shots at them with a firearm and finally emerging from the house, guns drawn, in an emulation of that last scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".
I'm not going to pick this hill to die on and suggest no one else does either.
What it may offer, depending on the background, is as an argument around the state of Texas mental health care or gun rights. But as an argument against police it really doesn't have the je ne sais quoi of the George Floyd murder.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 3:37am
Re: Re: Re:
"Inverting That One Guy's question: was firing a gun a necessary level of force to remove them from his property?"
You could just invert my comment above to that question (posed by Stephen T. Stone, not That One Guy, i think).
Even so, no. Every sane resident in the US should realize that if the cops show up to mow your lawn then that lawn will get mown. Yet morbidly, that's the hill he chose to die on in his quest for freedom.
If anything this appears to showcase a person who should have sought and received mental health care a long time ago, because running out of a house, gun drawn, in the face of a posse of texas lawmen is neither the most rational of responses nor does it have a history of ending well.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 2:13am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The police did serve it."
They did not, according to the OP. A "warrant" is served when the person in question has personally received and read it. We can argue about the other details but that one's basically carved in stone.
We don't know, for the rest of that sad shit-show, whether the homeowner was drunk, deranged, angry, or too scared to think.
We also don't know if the PD provoked the incident, but sadly can not rule that out either.
The only hill to die on here is the one where you ask the question "Why are guns held so sacred law enforcement has to assume every nutcase or call they make concerns a potential homicidal maniac with a loaded firearm?".
The death may be wrongful but mainly insofar that it once again exposes the skewed values of a society where the right to own a firearm is better protected than the right to vote, the right to own and drive a car, or the right to obtain and use a bank account.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 2:06am
Re:
"For what reason was lethal force the one and only method of dealing with him?"
I really hate coming out swinging on this particular side of the fence, Stephen, but this much is true; if the opposition has a loaded gun and has begun firing then firing back with live rounds is the only viable option left on the table. Beanbag rounds and tasers require you to get up close and personal with a person who is capable of dropping you from 30 meters away. You could make a case for rubber bullets, classified as "less than lethal" - still a euphemism for applying the equivalent of a baseball bat until the suspect stops moving.
Mind you, there is one caveat here I can apply. With SWAT around and every officer in cover you could just aim for the legs and spray'n'pray. That'd get him on the ground. From that position it's possible to disarm and control from a distance.
Now, given the scarcity of on-site information we don't know there peaceful de-escalation was ever on the table;
The man might have been drunk, high, angry, or insane.
The officers might have been threatening, provocative, and hoping for an excuse to rack up a notch on their gun grip.
The reality is somewhere between those two extremes but we don't know where. What we do know, from the official reports, is that the PD doesn't want to supply those details. And given the shoddy reputation of US law enforcement that's really enough to start asking hard questions.
One of which is why has a self-evident answer; why the US needs police officers to do the job of a HOA of going over to someone's house and telling them "You really need to cut your lawn, sir. You signed off on that when you bought the house".
The answer to which is that any person "being a nuisance" in the US too often turns out to be cradling a loaded firearm in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other when people arrive to annoy them.
I wouldn't die on this hill, Stephen. A society which considers the right for everyone to bear arms so vital possession of a firearm is less restricted than possessing a car, a ballot slip, or a credit card, will be racking up a horribly high count of needlessly dead people. That's just how it is.
The PD should supply more detail on this and US SWAT teams need to learn that when you have overwhelming tactical advantage it's not a capital sin to go for legs rather than center body mass. Those are the takeaways from this OP.
That a benighted moron or deranged person decided to go out guns blazing over someone mowing his damn lawn...that doesn't have the odds of a less than lethal ending. Not even in stolid old bleeding-heart Europe.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 1:17am
Re: Re:
"Cops take pictures of women during a strip search too."
And that's the milder version of abuse. A number of cops, over the years, have found that any abuse of a suspect - up to including rape and murder - is very rarely redressed.
The George Floyd murder showcased quite well just where the low bar of expectation cops have they'll be sanctioned lies. And the only lesson US police learned from that was "OK, so don't murder people on camera in broad daylight".
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 1:10am
Re: Re: Re: Re: I hope their stupid prize hurts them personally.
"Qualified immunity has NOTHING to do with who pays."
I wouldn't be surprised to see most municipalities had union contracts beholding the city to pay for any damages awarded a plaintiff against their officers though.
I believe it plausible to assume no officer in the US to be sued has ever had to fork out their personal money in a lawsuit incurred over malfeasance in the line of duty.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 12:42am
Re:
"I thought LEOSAT-based Internet could not be anywhere near competitive with fixed-line broadband."
They can't. Some 99,9% of fixed-line broadband is served to urban areas. Starlink and other constellation-based networks are limited to the amount of connections each cubesat can handle for any given area. Meaning that in cities with just low to moderate population density starlink will only be able to offer service to a small fraction of the citizenry. I think the limit estimate would be about 50k for any given city or so - the rest will all be relying on wire.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 8 Nov 2021 @ 12:37am
Re: Competition
"T-Mobile is offering cell tower based home broadband for $50/mo, and Starlink is rolling out in what are beginning to be significant numbers."
If all the other mobile providers follow suit it might start cutting into the profit margins of wired ISP's...but looking at the US market, that's unlikely. If the issue with the broadband market is that it is a monopolistic protectorate falling apart under decades of erosion in the name of cost cuts and price gouging then the issue with the US mobile market is that it's a congregation of warring tribes so hostile your smartphone working across state lines without punitive charges isn't a given.
And Starlink isn't competitive and never will be. Even Elon doesn't believe it'll scale well. It'll end up in the hands of the early comers, the very wealthy, a number of NGO's and government agencies operating in remote areas...and only for as long as the model of building and maintaining satellite constellations remains competitive.
No, this is just that sad story about a business hitting market saturation in a capitalist market. Unless they can keep growing at the same rate it really won't matter if they remain obscenely profitable.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 7:34am
Re: Re: Religion
"You’d think after all the fake panics people would eventually go after the number one cause of death in human history. "
I'm afraid that the people causing all the fake panic - and no shortage of atrocities over such fake panics - aren't really big on accepting the idea that it's the faith which drove them to claim some harmless behavior an abomination to be expunged by fire and sword, which poses the real threat.
My guess is they'll just call you an abomination and try to expunge you with fire and sword if you suggest it.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 7:26am
Re:
"Harassment by defamation should be its own crime and should be an exception to section 230 protection."
230 doesn't protect against defamation either.
Seriously, what is up with people? 230 does only one thing - it insists that the platform isn't liable for the posts of a user under civil law. That user is liable. Even if said platform moderates the user in question or tosses them out/fails to toss them out.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 7:12am
Re:
"People weren't seeking out QAnon material. They weren't radicalized Q supporters prior to YouTube and Facebook."
Cast your mind back to the days of George W Bush & Dick Cheney. Tell me how this base of radical "hate the lib" fanatics ordering their "freedom fries" while defending Cheney's advocacy of torture or the lie about Iraq having WMD's...weren't as loud and strident as they are today. Trump pulled out all the plugs and opened the floodgates, sure...but everything he released was already there and had been building up for some time.
Sure these people were looking for Q. They'd been trained and taught for their entire life that the prime cause for all their ills were the gahd-damned damyankee libs.
Qanon is just the latest prophet in a long line, providing a steady parade of reasons to keep hating liberals. A worthy successor of Rush Limbaugh.
You can't bring a sensible person to believe in Q. Ever. No matter how many times that message repeats. But the damaged? The deranged? Some 70-90 million people in the US republican base who have spent their entire lives addicted to grievance? Oh, they'll believe it the same way ANY junkie believes in their next fix. Unconditionally and without questioning.
This is the point so many keep missing. Yeah, very little of what the republican base believes in makes any sense at all. And that's because that belief isn't based in logic. It's based in the fact that persistently elevated levels of adrenaline is more addictive than most opioids on the market.
This scapegoat strategy where you point out a target to be hated and then feed the addiction of your voter base until they're so hooked on it they're willing to believe anything which keeps feeding that hatred has been used quite a lot throughout history. Hitler's "history" of events, with his "Big Lie" and "Fake News" was so stunningly successful republican leaders just had to copy his methods of convincing the masses and could thrive since the 80's on not ever having any actual platform other than "No".
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 6:50am
Re: Re:
"...but if watching a few videos claiming that some unknown person is predicting things that never actually happen..."
We'll always have that urge to come up with a single, understandable, specific and easily graspable reason as to why a thinking human being identical in form and capacity to ourselves would suddenly wrap tinfoil around their head and start screaming about how the liberal cannibal cult helmed by the Kenyan Muslim on behalf of the NWO is turning all teh frogs gay because chemtrails and fnord.
I mean, psychologically it's a lot easier to blame youtube, that D&D splatbook, fantasy or the ready access to imagery of nudity than it is to accept that it's all just an innate defect of humanity which is warded off only by a solid focus on reason and logic during our formative years.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 6:29am
Re:
"Even Facebook research says a person becomes more radicalized."
From what?
Yeah, Facebook, Youtube, all the social networks - they allow you to find a silo of like-minded morons where the latest broken logic on how Antifa mind-controlled staunch patriots into shitting on the rotunda floor on jan 6th keeps bouncing around until they start believing it for real...
...but that holds true for every social gathering where people invite like-minded.
Social platforms online are a mediator which works to make connecting people easier in all ways. As such they don't radicalize at all. They just facilitate the mentally unfortunate in the same way they benefit the MENSA society debating ways to solve the global warming issue or terraform Venus.
The data emerging isn't a condemnation of social media. It's an indication that most countries and the US especially needs to up it's game when it comes to diagnosing and treating the mentally ill, feeding the hungry, and teaching the ignorant.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 6:24am
Re: As you wish!
Also, they're generally considered harmful unless bound to a predefined transport chain shuttling them to where they're needed.
This should mean we can cure Trump cultists, religious fanatics and the church of Qanon with sufficient dosage of antioxidants and a vegetable-heavy low-carb diet.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 6:20am
Re: People Get What They Seek
"YouTube may not start people down the wrong path, but it does seem to provide them the "rabbit hole", should they start that way."
That...is arguably the most pushed misunderstanding about literally every social phenomenon to be blamed for societal ills. From the Sorrows of Young Werther to D&D, Fantasy, Science-fiction, Youtube, TikTok, all of the darn intarwebz and every invention to take place since the first time humankind managed to coax sparks out of flint.
That anecdotal friend of yours? He may or may not have been in a bad way from the get-go but if he later on spent 7 years primarily taking his information from conspiracy sites then he belonged in the same padded cell as the guy who started believing a D&D splatbook could teach him to do real magic.
Because face it, your anecdotal friend is dumb. Gullible. Willing to subscribe to a religion of fucknuttery relying on more interesting things than dry old factual reality.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 5 Nov 2021 @ 6:07am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Sure, I’ve CIS and ITS education."
Which is arguably better than what tp appears to possess given that his technical explanation emerge from a mix of 30+ years old "state of the art" computer understanding and, apparently, one of Hogwarts less successful curriculums on defense against the dark arts.
Then again we also have tp freely admitting once or twice that he's around here only for the trolling. Which is why every thread featuring him tends to end up with some 300 comments worth of bullshit and people lured into countering that bullshit.
I have a rule. More than two or three comments on a tp thread is the limit. After that it's just flag & ignore.
"Guess we'll see soon which one stays longer, ps5 or urls to my website."
The ps5 is likely to generate hundreds of millions in margins before it is supplanted by a ps6 which will continue to generate hundreds of millions in margins.
You, on the other hand, measure "success" by for how long something is around? If that's your kpi for the success of a venture may I suggest you take up rock carving?
But take that suggestion with a grain of salt. There may be runestones and steles still standing a millennium or more after creation but in your case pot odds are your contemporaries will make sure they're buried or broken up as the neolithic equivalent of spammy shitposting.
"Basically, he wants to be able to create his code, and then control both what other people do with the code and how people use the complied utility. Then, blames everyone else for this being impossible in modern reality."
Mmmh, yeah, tp is just that sort of guy. Logic and causal reality don't agree with him and so he tries to argue them into obedience by shitposting on tech forums.
Or we could look back to the bit where he admitted to being a troll and realize his only motive around here is to spam the thread asunder. Arguably that does do more towards shutting our side of the debate up than trying to argue in good faith given that every fact keeps backing us.
At this point I wish people would just realize that tp is that guy you give a total of three replies at most, then just flag and ignore for the troll he is - because scrolling down five pages of spam is annoying even if all his comments have become flagged into hiding.
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re: Re:
"Why was he neglecting his lawn? Did anybody check on him before sending in enforcement officers? The reported behaviour is consistent with someone with mental issues that need dealing with."
In most other places this would probably end with the man ending up in rehab or health care after getting carted off in cuffs by a bunch of more or less gentle yet firm officers of the law.
But in most places it's generally rare that a nutcase may have a firearm or ten on the premises or on their person.
This is actually a case where I can't fault the US police. The responses back and forth were proportional and reasonable up to the point where the resident decided to, for some reason, start using texas lawmen for live-fire practice. At that point it all devolved into the less glamorous version of the shootout at the OK corral.
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re: All laws require violent enforcement
"The police go everywhere armed to enforce the will of the government, and if you resist, they might very well kill you... no matter how trivial the basic infraction."
Literally not true anywhere in the world except in the US and certain third world hellholes.
Laws are certainly upheld by the monopoly of violence but the core criteria in the execution of said duty is proportional response.
According to your argument as written, a police officer can walk up to a ten year old, draw their firearm, and double-tap the tyke in the skull at point-blank range, execution-style, for dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk.
And that argument is made even more ridiculous given that you didn't even have to employ that sort of broken logic to contradict the OP - where you could just say something to the effect of; "Well, it certainly isn't a desirable outcome but there's probably no country in the world where storming out, guns drawn, against well armed lawmen in cover, will end well".
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Although we can get that much from the tone of the commenter...the topic in the OP is actually pretty clear cut, following a few links. We're talking about an irate homeowner who responded to police mowing his lawn by taking pot shots at them with a firearm and finally emerging from the house, guns drawn, in an emulation of that last scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".
I'm not going to pick this hill to die on and suggest no one else does either.
What it may offer, depending on the background, is as an argument around the state of Texas mental health care or gun rights. But as an argument against police it really doesn't have the je ne sais quoi of the George Floyd murder.
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re: Re: Re:
"Inverting That One Guy's question: was firing a gun a necessary level of force to remove them from his property?"
You could just invert my comment above to that question (posed by Stephen T. Stone, not That One Guy, i think).
Even so, no. Every sane resident in the US should realize that if the cops show up to mow your lawn then that lawn will get mown. Yet morbidly, that's the hill he chose to die on in his quest for freedom.
If anything this appears to showcase a person who should have sought and received mental health care a long time ago, because running out of a house, gun drawn, in the face of a posse of texas lawmen is neither the most rational of responses nor does it have a history of ending well.
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The police did serve it."
They did not, according to the OP. A "warrant" is served when the person in question has personally received and read it. We can argue about the other details but that one's basically carved in stone.
We don't know, for the rest of that sad shit-show, whether the homeowner was drunk, deranged, angry, or too scared to think.
We also don't know if the PD provoked the incident, but sadly can not rule that out either.
The only hill to die on here is the one where you ask the question "Why are guns held so sacred law enforcement has to assume every nutcase or call they make concerns a potential homicidal maniac with a loaded firearm?".
The death may be wrongful but mainly insofar that it once again exposes the skewed values of a society where the right to own a firearm is better protected than the right to vote, the right to own and drive a car, or the right to obtain and use a bank account.
On the post: Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass
Re:
"For what reason was lethal force the one and only method of dealing with him?"
I really hate coming out swinging on this particular side of the fence, Stephen, but this much is true; if the opposition has a loaded gun and has begun firing then firing back with live rounds is the only viable option left on the table. Beanbag rounds and tasers require you to get up close and personal with a person who is capable of dropping you from 30 meters away. You could make a case for rubber bullets, classified as "less than lethal" - still a euphemism for applying the equivalent of a baseball bat until the suspect stops moving.
Mind you, there is one caveat here I can apply. With SWAT around and every officer in cover you could just aim for the legs and spray'n'pray. That'd get him on the ground. From that position it's possible to disarm and control from a distance.
Now, given the scarcity of on-site information we don't know there peaceful de-escalation was ever on the table;
The man might have been drunk, high, angry, or insane.
The officers might have been threatening, provocative, and hoping for an excuse to rack up a notch on their gun grip.
The reality is somewhere between those two extremes but we don't know where. What we do know, from the official reports, is that the PD doesn't want to supply those details. And given the shoddy reputation of US law enforcement that's really enough to start asking hard questions.
One of which is why has a self-evident answer; why the US needs police officers to do the job of a HOA of going over to someone's house and telling them "You really need to cut your lawn, sir. You signed off on that when you bought the house".
The answer to which is that any person "being a nuisance" in the US too often turns out to be cradling a loaded firearm in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other when people arrive to annoy them.
I wouldn't die on this hill, Stephen. A society which considers the right for everyone to bear arms so vital possession of a firearm is less restricted than possessing a car, a ballot slip, or a credit card, will be racking up a horribly high count of needlessly dead people. That's just how it is.
The PD should supply more detail on this and US SWAT teams need to learn that when you have overwhelming tactical advantage it's not a capital sin to go for legs rather than center body mass. Those are the takeaways from this OP.
That a benighted moron or deranged person decided to go out guns blazing over someone mowing his damn lawn...that doesn't have the odds of a less than lethal ending. Not even in stolid old bleeding-heart Europe.
On the post: Fifth Circuit Appeals Court Strips Immunity For Officers Who Arrested A Journalist For Asking Questions
Re: Re:
"Cops take pictures of women during a strip search too."
And that's the milder version of abuse. A number of cops, over the years, have found that any abuse of a suspect - up to including rape and murder - is very rarely redressed.
The George Floyd murder showcased quite well just where the low bar of expectation cops have they'll be sanctioned lies. And the only lesson US police learned from that was "OK, so don't murder people on camera in broad daylight".
On the post: Fifth Circuit Appeals Court Strips Immunity For Officers Who Arrested A Journalist For Asking Questions
Re: Re: Re: Re: I hope their stupid prize hurts them personally.
"Qualified immunity has NOTHING to do with who pays."
I wouldn't be surprised to see most municipalities had union contracts beholding the city to pay for any damages awarded a plaintiff against their officers though.
I believe it plausible to assume no officer in the US to be sued has ever had to fork out their personal money in a lawsuit incurred over malfeasance in the line of duty.
On the post: U.S. Broadband Growth Slows As the Profit Party Grinds To A Halt
Re:
"I thought LEOSAT-based Internet could not be anywhere near competitive with fixed-line broadband."
They can't. Some 99,9% of fixed-line broadband is served to urban areas. Starlink and other constellation-based networks are limited to the amount of connections each cubesat can handle for any given area. Meaning that in cities with just low to moderate population density starlink will only be able to offer service to a small fraction of the citizenry. I think the limit estimate would be about 50k for any given city or so - the rest will all be relying on wire.
On the post: U.S. Broadband Growth Slows As the Profit Party Grinds To A Halt
Re: Competition
"T-Mobile is offering cell tower based home broadband for $50/mo, and Starlink is rolling out in what are beginning to be significant numbers."
If all the other mobile providers follow suit it might start cutting into the profit margins of wired ISP's...but looking at the US market, that's unlikely. If the issue with the broadband market is that it is a monopolistic protectorate falling apart under decades of erosion in the name of cost cuts and price gouging then the issue with the US mobile market is that it's a congregation of warring tribes so hostile your smartphone working across state lines without punitive charges isn't a given.
And Starlink isn't competitive and never will be. Even Elon doesn't believe it'll scale well. It'll end up in the hands of the early comers, the very wealthy, a number of NGO's and government agencies operating in remote areas...and only for as long as the model of building and maintaining satellite constellations remains competitive.
No, this is just that sad story about a business hitting market saturation in a capitalist market. Unless they can keep growing at the same rate it really won't matter if they remain obscenely profitable.
On the post: Latest Moral Panic: No, TikTok Probably Isn't Giving Teenage Girls Tourette Syndrome
Re: Re: Religion
"You’d think after all the fake panics people would eventually go after the number one cause of death in human history. "
I'm afraid that the people causing all the fake panic - and no shortage of atrocities over such fake panics - aren't really big on accepting the idea that it's the faith which drove them to claim some harmless behavior an abomination to be expunged by fire and sword, which poses the real threat.
My guess is they'll just call you an abomination and try to expunge you with fire and sword if you suggest it.
On the post: Appeals Court Doesn't Seem To Like Much About A Criminal Defamation Law Police Used To Arrest A Critic
Re:
"Harassment by defamation should be its own crime and should be an exception to section 230 protection."
230 doesn't protect against defamation either.
Seriously, what is up with people? 230 does only one thing - it insists that the platform isn't liable for the posts of a user under civil law. That user is liable. Even if said platform moderates the user in question or tosses them out/fails to toss them out.
On the post: The Whole YouTube Radicalizes People Story Doesn't Seem To Have Much Evidence To Back It Up
Re:
"People weren't seeking out QAnon material. They weren't radicalized Q supporters prior to YouTube and Facebook."
Cast your mind back to the days of George W Bush & Dick Cheney. Tell me how this base of radical "hate the lib" fanatics ordering their "freedom fries" while defending Cheney's advocacy of torture or the lie about Iraq having WMD's...weren't as loud and strident as they are today. Trump pulled out all the plugs and opened the floodgates, sure...but everything he released was already there and had been building up for some time.
Sure these people were looking for Q. They'd been trained and taught for their entire life that the prime cause for all their ills were the gahd-damned damyankee libs.
Qanon is just the latest prophet in a long line, providing a steady parade of reasons to keep hating liberals. A worthy successor of Rush Limbaugh.
You can't bring a sensible person to believe in Q. Ever. No matter how many times that message repeats. But the damaged? The deranged? Some 70-90 million people in the US republican base who have spent their entire lives addicted to grievance? Oh, they'll believe it the same way ANY junkie believes in their next fix. Unconditionally and without questioning.
This is the point so many keep missing. Yeah, very little of what the republican base believes in makes any sense at all. And that's because that belief isn't based in logic. It's based in the fact that persistently elevated levels of adrenaline is more addictive than most opioids on the market.
This scapegoat strategy where you point out a target to be hated and then feed the addiction of your voter base until they're so hooked on it they're willing to believe anything which keeps feeding that hatred has been used quite a lot throughout history. Hitler's "history" of events, with his "Big Lie" and "Fake News" was so stunningly successful republican leaders just had to copy his methods of convincing the masses and could thrive since the 80's on not ever having any actual platform other than "No".
On the post: The Whole YouTube Radicalizes People Story Doesn't Seem To Have Much Evidence To Back It Up
Re: Re:
"...but if watching a few videos claiming that some unknown person is predicting things that never actually happen..."
We'll always have that urge to come up with a single, understandable, specific and easily graspable reason as to why a thinking human being identical in form and capacity to ourselves would suddenly wrap tinfoil around their head and start screaming about how the liberal cannibal cult helmed by the Kenyan Muslim on behalf of the NWO is turning all teh frogs gay because chemtrails and fnord.
I mean, psychologically it's a lot easier to blame youtube, that D&D splatbook, fantasy or the ready access to imagery of nudity than it is to accept that it's all just an innate defect of humanity which is warded off only by a solid focus on reason and logic during our formative years.
On the post: The Whole YouTube Radicalizes People Story Doesn't Seem To Have Much Evidence To Back It Up
Re:
"Even Facebook research says a person becomes more radicalized."
From what?
Yeah, Facebook, Youtube, all the social networks - they allow you to find a silo of like-minded morons where the latest broken logic on how Antifa mind-controlled staunch patriots into shitting on the rotunda floor on jan 6th keeps bouncing around until they start believing it for real...
...but that holds true for every social gathering where people invite like-minded.
Social platforms online are a mediator which works to make connecting people easier in all ways. As such they don't radicalize at all. They just facilitate the mentally unfortunate in the same way they benefit the MENSA society debating ways to solve the global warming issue or terraform Venus.
The data emerging isn't a condemnation of social media. It's an indication that most countries and the US especially needs to up it's game when it comes to diagnosing and treating the mentally ill, feeding the hungry, and teaching the ignorant.
On the post: The Whole YouTube Radicalizes People Story Doesn't Seem To Have Much Evidence To Back It Up
Re: As you wish!
Also, they're generally considered harmful unless bound to a predefined transport chain shuttling them to where they're needed.
This should mean we can cure Trump cultists, religious fanatics and the church of Qanon with sufficient dosage of antioxidants and a vegetable-heavy low-carb diet.
On the post: The Whole YouTube Radicalizes People Story Doesn't Seem To Have Much Evidence To Back It Up
Re: People Get What They Seek
"YouTube may not start people down the wrong path, but it does seem to provide them the "rabbit hole", should they start that way."
That...is arguably the most pushed misunderstanding about literally every social phenomenon to be blamed for societal ills. From the Sorrows of Young Werther to D&D, Fantasy, Science-fiction, Youtube, TikTok, all of the darn intarwebz and every invention to take place since the first time humankind managed to coax sparks out of flint.
That anecdotal friend of yours? He may or may not have been in a bad way from the get-go but if he later on spent 7 years primarily taking his information from conspiracy sites then he belonged in the same padded cell as the guy who started believing a D&D splatbook could teach him to do real magic.
Because face it, your anecdotal friend is dumb. Gullible. Willing to subscribe to a religion of fucknuttery relying on more interesting things than dry old factual reality.
On the post: Nintendo Killed Emulation Sites Then Released Garbage N64 Games For The Switch
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"Sure, I’ve CIS and ITS education."
Which is arguably better than what tp appears to possess given that his technical explanation emerge from a mix of 30+ years old "state of the art" computer understanding and, apparently, one of Hogwarts less successful curriculums on defense against the dark arts.
Then again we also have tp freely admitting once or twice that he's around here only for the trolling. Which is why every thread featuring him tends to end up with some 300 comments worth of bullshit and people lured into countering that bullshit.
I have a rule. More than two or three comments on a tp thread is the limit. After that it's just flag & ignore.
On the post: Nintendo Killed Emulation Sites Then Released Garbage N64 Games For The Switch
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"Guess we'll see soon which one stays longer, ps5 or urls to my website."
The ps5 is likely to generate hundreds of millions in margins before it is supplanted by a ps6 which will continue to generate hundreds of millions in margins.
You, on the other hand, measure "success" by for how long something is around? If that's your kpi for the success of a venture may I suggest you take up rock carving?
But take that suggestion with a grain of salt. There may be runestones and steles still standing a millennium or more after creation but in your case pot odds are your contemporaries will make sure they're buried or broken up as the neolithic equivalent of spammy shitposting.
On the post: Nintendo Killed Emulation Sites Then Released Garbage N64 Games For The Switch
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"Basically, he wants to be able to create his code, and then control both what other people do with the code and how people use the complied utility. Then, blames everyone else for this being impossible in modern reality."
Mmmh, yeah, tp is just that sort of guy. Logic and causal reality don't agree with him and so he tries to argue them into obedience by shitposting on tech forums.
Or we could look back to the bit where he admitted to being a troll and realize his only motive around here is to spam the thread asunder. Arguably that does do more towards shutting our side of the debate up than trying to argue in good faith given that every fact keeps backing us.
At this point I wish people would just realize that tp is that guy you give a total of three replies at most, then just flag and ignore for the troll he is - because scrolling down five pages of spam is annoying even if all his comments have become flagged into hiding.
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