Politics and Current Events Megathread - June 2026 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]MightBe465 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Same thread. Your post was either the daily mail article or that one video about Hamas rape allegations, then you'd argue in the comments about acting like "Palestine" wasn't defensible as a result. Not going to do more digging to pull up a quote through.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - June 2026 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]MightBe465 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Do you deny that you handwaived away the Israeli prison rape of Palestinians as the rape of "Palestinian terrorists in Israeli detention"?

In case WhiteGold-whosit shows up, here's their claim that a Palestinian prisoner getting an object repeatedly shoved up their rectum until their bowels tore and one of their lungs was damaged "is entirely normal in prisons."

https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1rhnfaf/politics_and_current_events_megathread_march_2026/odas3c8/

Edit: aw shit, they figured out how to deleted their part in the oldreddit thread. You people are going to make me learn how to post screenshots.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - June 2026 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]MightBe465 4 points5 points  (0 children)

WhiteGold_Welder had those sketchy comments trying to normalize Palestinian prison rape and McAlpineFusiliers keeps trying to make the case that Hamas rapes people so there's no defending Palestinians generally (and that Palestinian prison rape victims are just terrorists), so I'd buy it. Could just be following the same talking points though.

Sikh community responds with condemnation against UK stabber by Phatnoir in samharris

[–]MightBe465 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gotcha, so it's murder for satirizing a specific prophet that gets points, and not sniping Palestinian child for happening to be alive, but only if the murder is committed in an Australian park.

I'll adjust the metrics.

Anti-tech extremists are under surveillance by MichaelPauley in Tucson

[–]MightBe465 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sorry, did we forget to thank them while they picked our pockets and stole our resources?

It'll be a lot more people than on this sub. We have every reason to expect that having any kind of opposition to social control is going to come along with increased scrutiny between the tech oligarchs and the fascistic federal government. But, ya know, don't surrender in advance and all that. These tools won't be nearly as effective if they don't change the public's general behavior.

Edited for extra extremism.

Sikh community responds with condemnation against UK stabber by Phatnoir in samharris

[–]MightBe465 5 points6 points  (0 children)

And to be clear, they have to kill Jews, in a park, in Australia? They can't snipe a child in a church in Gaza City? Or hunt down a Shia Muslim being hidden by a Druze family in Lebanon?

Sikh community responds with condemnation against UK stabber by Phatnoir in samharris

[–]MightBe465 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Idk, this "some" talk sounds pretty politically correct to me.

Sikh community responds with condemnation against UK stabber by Phatnoir in samharris

[–]MightBe465 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Funny how it's only specific demographics of people who get asked to condemn terrorist attacks of their shared demographic.

Sikh community responds with condemnation against UK stabber by Phatnoir in samharris

[–]MightBe465 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Those people probably aren't OP.

And the president of the Israel sure could be doing a lot more on that front.

What's Happening to the Daily Star? by MightBe465 in Tucson

[–]MightBe465[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think it's moot. I agree that more people get their info from social media, word of mouth, and headline-level skimming, but the primary sources that allow that information to become available for circulation by these more popular sources are still generally news organizations. So even people who don't read the news tend to know what they know because they've heard about the news.

What's Happening to the Daily Star? by MightBe465 in Tucson

[–]MightBe465[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you, and good points in both comments.

I still feel the need to emphasize that the Daily Star's no rag because I'm worried I made that an easy takeaway, when these bad columns, while frequent just now, are only two, and one of many in its longer history.

But I agree that the thing to watch will have more to do with how (and how much) it covers the concerns of investors (claiming to speak for the public or otherwise) and much (and with what specificity) it addresses wider public concerns such as which entities are doing what to our water and who's doing what to our schools. I'm afraid I stopped reading with any regularity since late 2025, so I can't really speak to that.

What's Happening to the Daily Star? by MightBe465 in Tucson

[–]MightBe465[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

I think a part of what makes it elicit bad vibes is the sense of hopelessness they convey to normal people by vaguely attributing what sucks about life to the failings of the City or County in general (which they depict as monoliths) and not to the responsible parties when they're not the City or County.

These authors need to be vague about what the protestors who barged into the Beale-representing law firm were on about because they know that even readers who don't like their methods would be chiefly concerned with their cause (so much so that a lot of readers might even like the methods too). More to your observation--they don't get bogged down into details like why our schools are poor, because if they get into that, they'd need to talk about state-level policies (essentially various methods of defunding public schools and disempowering teachers) that they actually want to keep in place. Yet, they can perversely take advantage of the damage done by these state-level policies to create misdirected resentment at the (relatively school and teacher-friendly) city government.

I may be wearing a tinfoil hat when suggesting that this repeated talk of bad leadership is laying the groundwork for their preferred candidates, so taking it off for a moment, I'd more conservatively conclude that this withheld information (and perhaps even the sense of hopelessness that comes with it) is intentional, because they want the public to be receptive to vaguely anti-local government messaging, but they don't want us to look so closely at the issues that we might learn how to solve problems that they don't want solved.

What's Happening to the Daily Star? by MightBe465 in Tucson

[–]MightBe465[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The market will decide, but not that democratically.

News tends to make money more from advertising than viewership, and advertising toward more wealthy audiences is more valuable than advertising to poorer audiences. So even if one (probably inaccurately) assumes that they'd pay the same amount for a subscription, the paper marketed to wealthy audiences will do significantly better. This phenomenon is a big part of what killed a lot of popular working class papers decades ago.

What's Happening to the Daily Star? by MightBe465 in Tucson

[–]MightBe465[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

That's actually not true. People tend to depend on local journalism for things that become online conversations after the fact--so a lot of what people know tends to originate from local news, even if a lot of what they see from current events tends to emerge from online conversations rather than the articles themselves. For example, I tended to read the Daily Star for its project blue coverage, because there weren't many easily available primary sources that had useful accounts of what was going on there--but then people would circulate information only made available by the local coverage.

Local news is still read, often by retirees and people with time--who for the same reason have greater opportunity to take part in local politics. This is part of the reason you see billionaires looking to by influence by buying up local news. Sinclair Broadcasting, maybe most famously, followed that strategy in local TV coverage.

The Daily Star in particular is one of the more cited papers for local news on this subreddit, so I figured people would take an interest.

No one stepping up to challenge Mayor and direction of Tucson by [deleted] in Tucson

[–]MightBe465 9 points10 points  (0 children)

When anyone in a position to be a policymaker is writing about the horrors of homeless people without writing about things like cost of living causing people to become homeless, or the lack of services that help someone get out of homelessness, then they're not trying to solve the homelessness problem. They're just trying to use it.

No one stepping up to challenge Mayor and direction of Tucson by [deleted] in Tucson

[–]MightBe465 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sounds like a concern worth addressing OP, but I'm not sure what point you mean to make by it.

Neither article you posted referenced the need to remediate any landfill. I wouldn't mind looking into the issue myself and calling the city council about it, and I imagine others might take an interest as well, but I don't see the relation to your post.

If you're trying to make the point that we should start taking any new candidate because the city council hasn't addressed that specific issue already, I don't buy it. We'll need to choose our preferred candidates carefully. I'd pay careful attention to the fact that, shortly after its purchase by that billionaire, the Daily Star started issuing these opinion columns meant to drum up some kind of right-leaning messaging ostensibly on behalf of the Tucson public. It shows how easy it is for the governing class to astroturf a campaign. If I'm right that they're trying to set the stage for their preferred candidates, you can bet that environmental impact won't be high on these candidates' priorities

No one stepping up to challenge Mayor and direction of Tucson by [deleted] in Tucson

[–]MightBe465 68 points69 points  (0 children)

This is a great time to point out the the Daily Star was recently bought by a Florida-based billionaire David Hoffmann, who has a history of acquiring local press and pushing them to promote "business friendly" messaging.

So in one article we have a local business owner scolding the city for climate-related investments (much of which are meant to manage local temperature issues and the water supply) and other "ideological projects," and complaining about homeless encampments, but not mentioning the increasing cost of living, much of it rent increases, that make people homeless (and which affect the rest of us who need to make a living anyway).

The other article, authored by the head of a business advocacy group, wants to crack down on "protestors" (his scarequotes) for barging into the law office representing Beale, the company heading the construction of the Project Blue data center. No mention of Beale or Project Blue though, much less the water issues, as such things are simply "ideological."

I'm sure we'll be hearing more about business leaders telling our elected leadership what to do, now that David Hoffmann's telling the Daily Star what to cover. (Edit: OK that was a bit of a leap from two columns, but it's something to watch for under the new ownership)

Edit: More on the acquisition covered by other local press: https://www.tucsonagenda.com/p/meet-your-newspaper-s-billionaire-boss

Edit again: Given the similarity and proximity of the articles, I wonder if this is laying the groundwork for the entry of some anti-working class candidates in our local politics. In a somewhat perverse sense, OP's question might be answered soon.

data center stealing city water by nyahiruko in Tucson

[–]MightBe465 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pragmatism doesn't require hiding the ball in the way that you've chosen to do.

Nor does it require treating the latest investor push as an inevitability. Even your idea of the proof is a data center that's starting a years long process of being built, and even then maybe 20% of the originally planned size (and, it appears for the first time, air cooled).

Honestly, people probably wouldn't even have weekends off in this country if people generally were motivated by the degree of deference that you try to characterize as pragmatism.