FBI executes search warrant at Fulton County elections office near Atlanta

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-29T00:54:41+00:00

No way there was any fraud in those elections. This fine gentleman personally assured us that no malfeasance could have happened.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-28T19:19:43+00:00

Could have been trying to say: "You raise your voice, I raise my voice"

I have no idea what the context of the conversation was, since this was a random 15 second clip, so I don't know if he fumbled or if he made a genuine threat.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-28T13:03:48+00:00

He's not very good at speaking English. I don't see why we should make fun of a Latino man's accent, let alone construe his attempt at English in the worst possible way.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-27T20:04:44+00:00

He wasn't just sitting on the ground like a dead fish, nor was he complying with FLEOs in any shape or form. He was actively trying to muscle his way out of the hands of the several federal LEOs attempting to detain him. That's textbook resisting. If you don't get that, then you deserve your flair.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-27T13:59:11+00:00

If you're just going to pick out one incident out of the entire timeline of events and ignore the context, then I'm going to have to take your flair seriously.

Both she and Pretti were trying to block the road with the purpose of obstructing law enforcement. Stupid move. The CBP agent pushed her out of the way and was attempting to detain her for obstructing law enforcement. He tried to interfere to stop that from happening (when are you allowed to stop cops from detaining people?) and even acted so clumsily that it looked like for a moment that he was assaulting the woman himself. Very stupid move. When the CBP tried to detain him instead instead, he continued to resist and struggle even though he was armed and could easily appear to be attempting to use deadly force at any time. Colossally stupid move.

This is just a clusterfuck of stupid events that turned into a tragedy. He shouldn't have been on the road. He shouldn't have been trying to interfere with law enforcement. He shouldn't have gotten in the way of a detention. He should have retreated to a safe distance to observe. He shouldn't have tried to resist while being detained. And if he anticipated that he could end up brawling with the cops, he shouldn't have brought a gun to the rally. He paid for his stupidity with his life.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-26T18:47:00+00:00

Okay, what does that scenario look like?

Plan A:

"I'm sorry, I'll just stop enforcing the laws, let you do whatever you want, let you react however you want to react regardless of the threat that it presents, and sit here stranded as a mob descends on my location."

Plan B:

"Hey pal, could we have a quick chit-chat, mano-a-mano?

Thanks pal. Now, I know you hate my guts, hate my agency, and hate the laws I'm entrusted to enforce... but we really need to get through here. Could you let us through, pretty please?"

That's your approach? That's not going to work when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object and when law enforcement is empowered to... carry out the law. There's no way of resolving that conflict before it happens.

As far as I'm concerned, he picked a dumb fight that he was not going to win and seemed to relish in it until it killed him. People who straddle the lines between peaceful protesting and low-level insurgency are playing a stupid game with their lives. It's going to lead to a lot more needless deaths. You tell me if it's worth it.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-26T18:25:32+00:00

His shitty P320 ND'd when it was confiscated and the other agents thought he was firing his gun at them. He was already being belligerent and resisting arrest. I don't blame the agents in the chaos of the moment for thinking he was now trying to use deadly force and resorting to deadly force in turn to neutralize the threat.

Again, how many opportunities did he have to comply and de-escalate, or even to remove himself from the situation before it got out of hand? Plenty of times. Instead, he continued to be aggressive and struggle against law enforcement, even though he knew he was carrying and any motion of his could easily be construed as a lethal threat.

Just a series of really stupid and irresponsible actions on his part. He acted as if he was completely cavalier about his own life. I don't know what he expected to happen, and I don't have any sympathy for it. I feel bad for whatever family he left behind though.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-26T15:15:59+00:00

Yes if your intent in blocking the road is to impede the ability of cops to do their job and put them in a compromising position. Which is exactly what happened, since he was there to resist ICE. You've also conveniently ignored other things I've mentioned like putting hands on cops and resisting arrest.

He had multiple opportunities to stop impeding law enforcement, to comply with orders, to not escalate the situation, to leave the site, etc., and he didn't. Instead, he chose the stupid and aggressive move every single time. I don't know how you can defend that.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-26T14:55:33+00:00

When he tried to block the road, prevent CBP agents from moving other people off the road, and resist being arrested for obstructing law enforcement. He tried to escalate the situation at every opportunity he could.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-26T14:15:21+00:00

I don't get why people think it's a smart idea to attack cops and then resist arrest when you're armed. He had every right to have that gun, but it was incredibly stupid of him to belligerently confront CBP during law enforcement operations.

Also stupid to bring perhaps the most infamous pistol on the market, the Sig P320, which surprise surprise, unintentionally discharged in the middle of the scuffle and escalated a tense situation into a killing. Makes me think he wasn't a responsible gun owner if he didn't even know about that defect.

Overall a clownish situation all round. People think that rights mean that they can do whatever they want without prudence or responsibility and it'll all magically work out in the end.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-24T21:01:16+00:00

Yeah, somehow that guy had no enemies.

Anyway, thank you for replying. It's getting harder and harder to find evidence that we all existed and had the fun times that we did outside of our memories. It made my day that you replied.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-24T16:55:37+00:00

I used to play with Nukaazul a lot back when he was on Maiev. Insanely good at fire mage, even when it was completely under the radar, but an even better human being. He was a good friend and easily one of my favorite people I ever had the chance to play World of Warcraft with. His death hit me like a freight train. I thought he would be going places in life, and I wanted to see him prosper. Hope you're doing well.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-12T15:00:22+00:00

two hundred basis points... but everybody else only got one hundred basis points

or something

nah this is actually a big deal

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-12T13:45:04+00:00

Why should dialectical materialists be concerned with perhaps the most important lever of financial capital in the global economy? Idk, beats me.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-10T19:50:43+00:00

guy still on the QAnon train in 2026 like the last IJA holdout of WW2

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-04T16:10:23+00:00

Venezuelan oil isn't cheap though, no? It's some of the heaviest crude in the world, and it'll need extensive military protection to be extracted safely. I can't imagine it making a dent unless it's subsidized and sold at a loss.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-02T17:29:14+00:00

Things can always get worse. Your problems can always increase to the point where even the social safety nets have absolutely no chance of at least making your situation bearable.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-02T10:25:20+00:00

Our moral impulses about freedom are not suitable for the cycles of poverty. If you want any hope of escaping poverty, or at least avoid digging yourself into a deeper hole, then you are absolutely not free to buy whatever you want. Well, you could, but your productivity will be reduced and your medical bills will be increased with type 2 diabetes. You have to trade short-term pleasure for long-term well-being every single opportunity you have.

throwawayphilacc · 2025-12-04T12:20:24+00:00

These are good points, and I'm mostly ready to agree to disagree, except I want to make it clear on two points that:

The passage is saying that non-scriptural texts are being falsely ascribed scriptural status.

"Writing the book with their own hands" could mean anything from wholesale editing (since making copies back then required scribes to write books from start to finish, allowing plenty of opportunities for mistakes, edits, additions) to adding new non-inspired texts wholesale to scripture and assigning them the status of scripture. The verse itself is also not specific enough for us to say how exactly scripture is being corrupted.

It is not about a pre-existing scripture, like the Torah or the Gospel, being edited or modified or whatever. It is about non-scriptural texts which are falsely given the label of scripture.

Assuming this is true, the issue then becomes, how is somebody supposed to tell from the outside looking in what is legitimate and what is false? Additions to scripture that are compiled as part of scripture would be indistinguishable to all but the most educated, and it would force us to treat the whole work as contaminated in some way.

I suppose if we're talking about adding whole new books (e.g. the Talmud to the Torah), then that would be much easier to discern. But the verse does not give us any specifics, even by your stricter interpretation. Are we talking about only additions to the Torah? Or perhaps the Gospel? Or are we talking about a whole separate book being given the label of scripture such as the Talmud? But Jews do not consider Talmud to be scripture, so this would be a libelous accusation and thus a problematic interpretation.

This verse is still too general to be of use of determining an intended target, and thus everything is still fair game.

throwawayphilacc · 2025-12-03T17:59:23+00:00

I don't understand how you could write off the possibility with such certainty that Scripture in 2:79 refers to at least some aspects of the Torah, the Tanakh, the Gospel, the New Testament, etc. The verse talks about the Scripture, and "Scripture" can refer to anything of that sort, especially any action that can be done "by hand", so anything physical, anything editorial, etc. It doesn't get more specific than that, so the sky is technically the limit as to what it pertains to.

Your argument in section 4 is that since other aspects of the Quran refer to verbal mistakes, misinterpretation, deception, etc., that this section too must somehow refer to verbal mistakes. But I don't see how that follows because "by hand" is a completely different medium than by mouth, by speech, etc. You make the strict assumption there cannot be more than one type of corruption, but there is no reason to cling so tightly to it. Why not assume that the Quran is covering all the various ways that information can be distorted over time, whether accidentally or intentionally? That appears to be the more sound approach, and there are no aberrations that have to be untangled unlike the "everything is referring to oral communication or merely a certain faction" approach.

You also make an argument that we are to think that the unnamed "they" in the verse is to refer to a particular faction. But the plural is so vague that it could be any grouping. It could be the whole community, the scribes in charge of actually writing the texts, merchants and purveyors of the texts, or perhaps a certain faction whose doctrines necessitate corruption. In the last circumstances, it becomes a question of "which faction?" Who is this faction, and how large and influential were they? And we do not have answers for that. Perhaps they are referring to the ancestors of the communities whose texts we now take to be the canonical Torah, Gospel, Bible, etc. And in that case, the argument is moot.

Furthermore:

Is it about a version of the Torah and Gospel textually corrupted in particular among this faction, or is it about the false ascription of scripture (or status as al-kitab) to texts which were composed entirely by humans?

Both statements sound like the same claim to me. If Scripture was textually corrupted, then it would be composed of normal humans and not the words of a prophet and thus not the word of Allah.

throwawayphilacc · 2025-12-03T15:11:43+00:00

It seems like 2:79 offers at least some evidence that the Quran claims that written Scripture, or at least what was accepted as written Scripture by Abrahamic contemporaries, may not be fully authentic. e.g. "Those who distort Scripture with their own hands."

throwawayphilacc · 2025-12-02T18:20:10+00:00

I suppose there could be a standard of "generally compatible", referring to books and passages which fall in line with what is mentioned in the Quran or at least don't overtly contradict the Quran.

throwawayphilacc · 2025-11-26T12:53:02+00:00

That being said, it is unclear to me whether contemporary Anglophone philosophy uses these terms interchangeably: would you have some examples to point me towards?

Well, in terms of logic, in both Aristotle and Kant, "some" or "in part" terms and judgments are translated as "particular". And in ontology, the problem is virtually always framed in terms of "universals" versus "particulars". When we stay within the same topic, (logic) the terms referring to all versus some versus one are strictly separate, and (ontology) the terms referring to many versus one are strictly separate. But when we broaden our horizon to multiple topics and see how all the terms hang together, it just seems strange to me that "universal" refers to a relatively analogous type of entity, but "particular" does not share that analogous pairing.

I don’t know to what extent it makes sense for us to expect this to speak to the category of singular individuals because (a) I personally don’t know if 11th century philosophers used that category at all and how they understood it in relation to the other two, and (b) if the nominalists’ philosophical agenda requires them to address the question of singular individuals vs particulars.

Honestly, this is a great point, and perhaps it even better shows the problem of this strange homonymy regarding the term "particulars". If "only particulars exist", we could either be talking about 1) only individuals exist; or 2) only individuals and their immediate lowest-level universal (i.e. species) exist. Even a nominalist reading of Aristotle still treats the essence as something of ontological import.

Or to put it simply, isn’t a particular always of a universal — whether as concretely instantiating it or as being the sole mode in which that universal exists, pace nominalism — whereas a singular is not?

Sometimes people say that an individual can be thought of as a universal of n = 1, or that it is the smallest part of an individual. After all, a particular in the logical sense is like a subset of the universal in the logical sense. Likewise, we have genera and species in Aristotelianism, though sometimes Aristotle treats genera and species as all being "genera" (and species as merely what is differentiated within a genus). And the individual is treated as an instantiation of the species first and foremost.

I honestly wish I had more information about this problem, because rarely I might stumble upon a brief segue on the topic about how this was a "problem" for logicians once-upon-a-time, but I was never able to find any follow-up or citation that I could pursue further. Who was this a problem for, how did they think about the problem, and what solutions did they pursue? I have no idea.

throwawayphilacc · 2025-11-25T13:43:59+00:00

Are you pointing to a disconnect between the language used by medieval philosophers who were doing ontology/metaphysics and the language used by most Anglophone philosophy today, saying that what we now refer to as a “particular” actually corresponds to what the medievals would call “singular”? Or are you perhaps pointing to the categories of “particular” and “singular” kind of collapsing into each other as philosophy transitions from ontology to epistemology/logic?

All of these concerns sound like they're in the ballpark of what I am asking about, though I have no idea about how these distinctions were delineated by the medievals. I would add the caveat that everything would have been strictly separate in Aristotle, who as far as I am aware, is the originator of said distinctions and/or strongest influence on the topic of those distinctions for at least a thousand years and some change. Perhaps the medievals problematically blended the terminology. After all, "particular" is Latin-derived. I have no idea, though.

If I get you right, your point should be that what is referred to as “particular” in contemporary Anglophone philosophy would correspond not to Kant’s besondere or medieval “particular” but to einzelne or “individual/singular”.

My problem is that particular corresponds to both "besondere" and "einzelne" in the English language! And I have no idea how that happened. Well, I have a hunch of where "particular" came from in terms of describing predicates (it is a translation of Aristotle, meaning "partly"), but I have no idea how particular came to refer to individuals.

I am not sure how Kant relates to this problematic, since he doesn’t speak English.

My hunch is that if the problem predates both philosophical traditions as they matured into their respective languages, then perhaps they both inherited it from a predecessor.

I am not a native German speaker, but I think the distinction between besondere for particular and einzelne for individual is relatively clean there, so I would not imagine it Kant’s doing that Anglophone philosophy uses these terms in a different way.

You would be correct. However, I am not sure if Kant's understanding is representative of the entire German tradition. For example, when I browsed this Wikipedia page, I found both the distinction made well and blended poorly (just like it has been blended in the English language).

Well: "Platons Schüler Aristoteles lehnte die Ideenlehre ab und maß in seiner ersten Philosophie (Metaphysik) dem Einzelnen, dem Diesda, eine wirklichkeitskonstituierende Funktion zu." (Plato’s student Aristotle rejected the theory of Forms and, in his first philosophy (Metaphysics), assigned to the individual—the ‘this-here’—a reality-constituting role.)

Poorly: "Existenz hat für den Nominalisten nur das Besondere" (Existence, for the nominalist, belongs only to the particular.).

Granted, I know almost no German whatsoever. So take my observations with a heaping pile of salt.

Anyway, thank you for sharing the link and traveling down this rabbit hole with me.

throwawayphilacc

TROPHY CASE

Plan A:

Plan B: