Marjins Þridus

Politics
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Sigh… So many news sites…

“We rely on you to report posts which violate our community standards.”

Fair enough. They don’t have an obligation to provide a platform for anything, and I am sick of so much hate everywhere.

“Error.”

“You’ve been blocked for false reports.”

“If we removed every post which violated our community standards, we wouldn’t be able to discuss controversial issues, such as race or immigration. So we won’t remove posts which dehumanize people, which violate our community standards. But we will remove posts which talk about dehumanizing people, because we can.”

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tw for eugenicist quote

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more sadopolitics:

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Are some people really this ignorant?

I just got an email asking people to protest Putin’s anti-trans and anti-gay laws by posting “A gif alternating images of things that would be illegal under Russia’s propaganda law, like same-sex couples killing and holding hands, and someone holding up a rainbow flag.”

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I know this is a typo, but the imagery of this amuses me. And the typo itself reminds me of a book I read long ago.

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I don’t know the specifics for Toronto, but traffic safety politics:

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Sexagesimal fractions are looking useful, since they allow exact division by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6…

Might lead to confusion when people say a 3rd, though.

Do they mean 20/60 or 1/216,000?

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You know that fake Voltaire quote?

If you want to know who you’re oppressed by figure out who you aren’t allowed to criticize.

Neo-Nazis say the same thing. In general, if you take people telling you you’re wrong, with evidence, when you claim falsehoods, as proof that you’re right, you’re only going to get more and more wrong. And if you take people asking you “have you no decency?” when you blame victims or preach hate or the like, as proof that you’re right, you’re only going to get more and more wrong. Neo-Nazis are an extreme kind of wrong, so their heuristics may be an extreme kind of misleading.

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I was gonna say, that’s illegal over here too.

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indeed, there’s a story in a neonazi publication in which a Kevin S. says that he wrote those words in the early 1990s (for neonazi purposes), and he’s flattered by the misattribution and also that Voltaire was an antisemite,

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I went to the middle of the place where no fearbeasts are allowed, to try to relax and get some fresh air.

But some people brought their fearbeast and cornered me, so I couldn’t get away from their fearbeast in the middle of the place where no fearbeasts are allowed, and I could only panic unable to flee instead of relax and get some fresh air.

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There’s an important empirical question-- how much inequality will lead to runaway inequality?

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The family separation policy uses people’s humanity as a mere means to punish them for seeking asylum, to enforce white supremacy, rather than treating people’s humanity as an end in itself.

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70 db leaf-blowers are incapacitatingly painful, whether they’re being fired at leaves or at bare cement.

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https://marjaerwin.dreamwidth.org/113972.html

Cruelty, for the sake of Cruelty

I don’t understand anti-immigrant politics.

To begin with, it’s cruel to decide that people can’t live the lives they want because those people were born on the other side of that line.

In America, these policies were introduced for racism, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act, and for eugenicism, and while they have been changed, they haven’t been abolished due to institutional inertia. Of course many people insist that they support these policies because they’re the law rather than because of racism or because of eugenicism, but now many of these people want to tighten/worsen the law– because what?

To continue, if you believe different countries represent different values, and if you also want to restrict immigration, then you’re saying that people can’t choose a country that represents their values, and you’re saying that this country should represent your cruelty, and not my rejection of this cruelty. I’m disabled and can’t travel, and would be turned away because of my disabilities if I could travel.

Now many insist that “each nation” “has a right” “to restrict immigration”. I think rights are something which protect people from arbitrary power, including state power, so these restrictions are the opposite of rights.

So right now the rulers impose these restrictions, and then they have a growing police state to enforce the restrictions, and concentration camps to enforce the restrictions, and disappearing children, and mass graves on the border.

Now some insist that the mass graves justify further restrictions, because “people smugglers,” but there wouldn’t be any people smugglers without the original restrictions.

So it looks like cruelty, for the sake of cruelty, or for some other evil end.

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Powers of Doublespeak:

On the other hand, there are moralistic cults that wish to oppose thier immigration rules on the country at large. There is increasingly unanimous opposition among Democrats to any form of immigration enforcement at all. “An undocumented alien is not a criminal,” protested Senator Kamala Harris last year. The spreading view of the Democratic Party seems to be that immigration is a civil right and that immigration enforcement is totalitarian is an attack on democratic legality.

From the comments here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-rank-and-file-evangelicals-arent-likely-to-turn-on-trump-over-family-separation/

Where to begin? Immigration is a human right. No one would argue if those who opposed immigration just chose not to travel, but instead, they pass and enforce draconian laws to limit other people’s freedom to travel, punish jurisdictions that try to protect people, and, oh right, put people in concentration camps. Even children!

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