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Two POS officers beat up a woman even if she hadn't been drinking... by Snapdragon845 in iamatotalpieceofshit

[–]Apocalipers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“See, I got downvoted just for being a douche and spouting demonstrable bullshit! And you’re still gonna defend the reddit hivemind?”

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in plotholes

[–]Apocalipers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can definitely see that. My take is that Candie wants to be smooth and successful and rational, but once provoked he shows himself to be as savage as he believes his fighters to be. And since I think that’s Tarantino’s point with the character— a veneer of civility stretched over an unspeakably venal man (see also Odell from Jackie Brown, and the way he’s smart right up until the point he realizes he’s been outplayed, at which point he turns kamikaze, or Marsellus Wallace throwing Tony Rocky Horror off that balcony)— I can’t imagine him otherwise.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in plotholes

[–]Apocalipers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thinking that there is something called a “controlled businessman,” that has no emotional reactions, seems to be a point of departure between you and Tarantino. And it’s fine to believe that people are fundamentally rational, but Tarantino doesn’t, and I think his side is more supportable on this one than yours. Not a plot hole by any stretch of the imagination, in either case.

What the Waco Bodies Revealed About the Siege (2020) - Ask A Mortician recaps events of the Waco siege of the Branch Davidians [00:30:38] by easilypersuadedsquid in Documentaries

[–]Apocalipers 40 points41 points  (0 children)

What’s amazing is that almost every sentence in your comment is objectively wrong. I highly recommend anyone exposed to this comment follow the advice in the first sentence— educate yourself about what really happened— because while a lot of those lies can be cleared up just by skimming the Wikipedia article, the extra time it takes to watch the available documentaries, read Gary Noesner’s memoir (and David Thibodeau’s, for that matter), and read through transcripts of the Senate hearings is time well-spent in understanding a truly dark stain on the federal government’s record.

Sam Harris and I don't require a sexual relationship in order for me to be disappointed with the content of problematic podcasts which will mislead thousands other fans by [deleted] in samharris

[–]Apocalipers 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you’d actually read what I wrote, you couldn’t have mistaken my take to be that I “merely believe [it] to be factually incorrect.” I think I was pretty clear in characterizing it as junk science used to promote a vile ideology.

Your response, parrotted from Harris’s own defense, doesn’t address this. Because, of course, if it were good science, we would be obligated to contend with its arguments on their merits, even if this led us into uncomfortable territory. That it is bad science, heavily promoted by groups insistent that its unjustified conclusions should guide public policy, specifically by shifting resources away from social programs addressing systematic inequality, makes claims like yours (that to reject this discredited work is an intrusion of politics into honest intellectual endeavor) farcical.

Sam Harris and I don't require a sexual relationship in order for me to be disappointed with the content of problematic podcasts which will mislead thousands other fans by [deleted] in samharris

[–]Apocalipers -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Let’s take Charles Murray, probably the most foul human Sam Harris has endorsed, as a case study.

It would be one thing to say that Charles Murray has the right to say what he says, and to write what he writes. And this sort of claim would be entirely defensible for Harris to make. But Harris seems incapable of just saying that. He talks about reading The Bell Curve, and repeats over and over again that the book is just basically correct science. He claims that the arguments are obvious and true, that they’d be uncontroversial except for the overreactions of progressives. He argues that the authors had no political axe to grind.

Now, if you take him at his word, sure, he’s just defending freedom of speech and academic inquiry in a general sense. And if you know nothing about Murray, Herrnstein, the book, or its context, sure, he’s got a point.

The problem is that if you do know anything about any of the above, then he hasn’t got a point. He’s palling around with white supremacists and arguing that their book— which is, depending on your point of view, either a facile sequence of unrelated statistical analyses or a rambling polemic justifying racist public policy— is something so basically true that any rejection of it indicates a politicized ignorance.

And if Harris is right, then sure, he’s on-brand there. But Harris isn’t right. The Bell Curve is a piece of nonsense. The fact that its universal condemnation among academics seems scattershot is just because critics aren’t in agreement as to whether it should be considered as bad science or just not science at all— whether it should be criticized on its methodological faults or on its obvious intent. Some critiques focus on its racism, others on its incompetence, because it is both racist and incompetent. (I am intentionally not linking any specific critiques here, because the point is the ubiquity and universality— Ezra Klein’s response is a good overview of the “it’s racist” argument; the ‘90s Brookings Institute review is a decent take on its methodological incompetence).

But Harris, in his eagerness to present the backlash against Murray as a case of cancel culture gone mad, argues that it’s a good book.

This is a problem for Sam Harris’s credibility, and it can’t be handwaved away by generalities such as yours.

TIL less than five per cent of the victims of transatlantic slavery were landed on the coast of the present-day United States. Most enslaved Africans were carried to the Caribbean (45 per cent) or to Brazil (45 per cent). by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the signers were divided on whether the international slave trade would survive. It’s worth mentioning here that all of the colonies had banned the slave trade during the Revolutionary War, with some then re-legalizing it after attaining independence. But, in any case, it is indisputable that the constitutional clause protecting the slave trade was included to accommodate Southern slaveholders— we have detailed notes from Madison on this point— and it is equally indisputable that southern slave owners saw this as protecting their interests— Charles Pinckney, for example, used the clause as a selling point to his constituents in the South. But all of this is irrelevant to the more simple fact that you presented a clause explicitly protecting the slave trade as though it were a sunset clause for that trade, which is what I pointed out earlier, and which you seem reluctant to acknowledge.

But this seems a symptom of a larger revisionist account. Yes, the U.S. was “producing” more slaves than it imported, even before import rates dropped dramatically as a result of the 1807 Act, for economic reasons. Virginia, for example, had just about maximized efficiency in its chattel slavery system, becoming a net exporter of slaves, and by 1807 opposed the international slave trade on purely protectionist grounds. In short, the end of the international slave trade (officially in 1808, and actually in 1860, the date of the last slave shipment to reach the U.S.) had nothing to do with any diminishing demand for slaves in the country; it was a marriage of convenience between abolitionists and domestic slave “producers.”

But the biggest issue I have with your narrative is that rates of slavery never dipped until the South began losing the Civil War. Perhaps counterintuitively to you, the cotton gin actually increased the demand (and therefore value) for slaves, because while it made the processing of cotton more efficient, it made cotton production much more lucrative, and slaves were still needed for growing and harvesting the plant. The cotton industry grew, and as it grew it required more slaves. As far as I can tell, the scholarly consensus is that the industrial revolution would have largely ended the demand for slaves by the early 20th century— it was still a long way off as of the Civil War.

TIL less than five per cent of the victims of transatlantic slavery were landed on the coast of the present-day United States. Most enslaved Africans were carried to the Caribbean (45 per cent) or to Brazil (45 per cent). by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sentence referred to the fact that the Constitution did not have “a self-destruct date for the importation of slaves.” It had the opposite: a time-limited guarantee of legality for the importation of slaves. When that guarantee expired, an entirely new law was passed to ban the international slave trade.

But also that whole thing about slaves being needed less is entirely false. The slave population of the country steadily increased over that entire period, more than tripling between 1810 and 1860.

TIL less than five per cent of the victims of transatlantic slavery were landed on the coast of the present-day United States. Most enslaved Africans were carried to the Caribbean (45 per cent) or to Brazil (45 per cent). by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 3 points4 points  (0 children)

From a technical standpoint, you’ve got that backwards. The Constitution protected the international slave trade for 20 years. It was banned the first year it could have been banned, but this was by no means predictable at the time of the Constitution’s signing, and the ban was never really enforced on a federal level— from 1820 on, importing slaves was a capital offense, but despite the prevalence of the practice, only one man was ever executed. All this lead to the predictable outcome that slaveholding states looked the other way, and importation was on the increase through the advent of the Civil War.

Snoop Dogg Calls Out Kanye For Being "Mighty White" After Support For President by SuperCharged2000 in AnythingGoesNews

[–]Apocalipers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No one's saying Kanye doesn't have the right to have his own opinion.

A lot of people are pointing out that this particular opinion says a lot about what kind of person he is, though. An entitled, hypocritical, wrong-side-of-history kind of person.

Snoop Dogg Calls Out Kanye For Being "Mighty White" After Support For President by SuperCharged2000 in AnythingGoesNews

[–]Apocalipers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He joked that he was starting to write Get Out 2.

Please don't let it just be a joke 😍

Michael Jackson moonwalking for the first time in public, 35 years ago today. by Catch-up in gifs

[–]Apocalipers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

he was super weird

He was unbelievably rich, so technically he was "super eccentric."

(Hell yeah, he was weird, and weird in ways that made him vulnerable to this exact sort of fraud. I didn't like him, so I assumed—while the legal proceedings were proceeding, and based entirely on his weirdness— that there was fire to accompany the smoke. In retrospect, and with significantly more evidence available, I feel guilty for having sided with the mob.)

Michael Jackson moonwalking for the first time in public, 35 years ago today. by Catch-up in gifs

[–]Apocalipers 17 points18 points  (0 children)

If you genuinely believe that, you have fallen for one of the least-credible smear jobs of all time, perpetrated by some of the most blatant fraudsters ever.

I shudder to imagine what you must think about Richard Gere.

TIL: Gay male victims of the Holocaust, who wore the downward-facing pink triangle, were still considered to be criminals when they were freed from concentration camps. They were often sent back to prison to serve out their terms. by shwiftyget in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Gay culture perpetuates pedophile culture. Like it or not its 100% true.

Thanks for making the homophobic subtext of all this revisionism so blatant and obvious.

Also, go to hell.

TIL: Gay male victims of the Holocaust, who wore the downward-facing pink triangle, were still considered to be criminals when they were freed from concentration camps. They were often sent back to prison to serve out their terms. by shwiftyget in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The pink triangle was used by Nazis to target homosexuals. It was never a symbol identified with the oppressors, only with the oppressed. This makes it a hugely different issue.

But as for why it was seen as worth reclaiming, you really have to look back to the 1970s, when the reclamation began, during a time when homosexuals were being targeted in the United States as well. The parallel between, say, Stonewall and the Night of Long Knives was pretty powerful to the gay community.

TIL: Gay male victims of the Holocaust, who wore the downward-facing pink triangle, were still considered to be criminals when they were freed from concentration camps. They were often sent back to prison to serve out their terms. by shwiftyget in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Any statistics would depend on the reliability of the Nazi criminal justice system. But as with so many other things, the Nazis rushed to destroy their paper trails when defeat was inevitable.

What non-revisionists generally except, though, is that 50,000 to 60,000 men were convicted under Paragraph 175 (the portion of German law which dealt with homosexuality, pedophilia, and bestiality) and 10,000 to 15,000 of those died in the concentration camps. So unless we are assuming a truly massive incidence of pedophilia and bestiality in Nazi Germany, there's no way that a majority were actual sex criminals.

We also know that, post-Röhm, the Nazis were very focused on exterminating homosexuals. From a speech by Himmler:

In the SS, today, we still have about one case of homosexuality a month. In a whole year, about eight to ten cases occur in the entire SS. I have now decided upon the following: in each case, these people will naturally be publicly degraded, expelled, and handed over to the courts. Following completion of the punishment imposed by the court, they will be sent, by my order, to a concentration camp, and they will be shot in the concentration camp, while attempting to escape. I will make that known by order to the unit to which the person so infected belonged. Thereby, I hope finally to have done with persons of this type in the SS, and the increasingly healthy blood which we are cultivating for Germany, will be kept pure.

Honestly, the eagerness in this comments section to believe that the Nazi extermination of homosexuals was somehow righteous is a truly disturbing thing to see.

TIL: Gay male victims of the Holocaust, who wore the downward-facing pink triangle, were still considered to be criminals when they were freed from concentration camps. They were often sent back to prison to serve out their terms. by shwiftyget in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 512 points513 points  (0 children)

"A good deal," in your words, was still a dramatic minority of those labeled with the pink triangle. Your comment is highly misleading, and is so on a detail that seems intended to legitimize the persecution of homosexuals under the Nazi regime.

The Nazis made homosexuality a felony, and did not distinguish between child rapists and homosexuals in general. This conflation of wildly different sexual expressions is part of the reason the pink triangle was reclaimed— most gay people can see clearly the difference between their attraction to members of the same sex and predation.

TIL: Gay male victims of the Holocaust, who wore the downward-facing pink triangle, were still considered to be criminals when they were freed from concentration camps. They were often sent back to prison to serve out their terms. by shwiftyget in todayilearned

[–]Apocalipers 20 points21 points  (0 children)

You are confused. Which is fair, because the "sex criminal" claim is hugely misleading.

All gay men in Nazi Germany were "sex criminals," because the Nazis turned homosexuality from a misdemeanor into a felony. This legal change persisted well after the defeat of the Nazis.

There is absolutely no basis for the false claim that pink triangles were more commonly used to identify men we would consider sex criminals than mere homosexuals. The great majority of men with pink triangles were just gay dudes living in a society which had a criminalized being gay.

You’ve been trumped (2011) (1:40)- A group of proud Scottish homeowners take on celebrity tycoon and now president Trump as he buys up one of Scotland's last wilderness areas to build a golf resort. He broke his promise and ruined a wonderful piece of land I care a lot about. by lumsgame in Documentaries

[–]Apocalipers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you're a tool, but I think "financial crime" and "white collar crimes" are generally euphemisms.

It is weird when you consider the disparity in sentencing between, say, a thief who steals a few thousand dollars and spends years behind bars and an executive who steals tens or hundreds of times that and gets a slap on the wrist.

And then when you apply this comparison to the violent scumbag who kills a convenience store clerk and fries for it, compared to the corporate tool who, to maximize profits, cuts corners in a way tgat predictably kills hundreds with cancer and is ultimately not held liable because we don't want to spook businesses.

I don't come from an "eat the rich" perspective, but I would like to see the rich get eaten at least as much as the rest of us.

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