US Politics: Portlandia

[GrimTuesday]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

This is a nice thought for an ahistorical version of reality.

 

Our reality sucks, how about instead of telling people to just accept it is what it is we actually fight to make it better, like our predecessors should have, and failed to do.

Honestly right now I am incredibly depressed by everything around me and am basically screaming into the void I'm not going to keep arguing about this because there really is nothing to argue about unless you want to say (which I know is not what you are saying) that this is the best possible reality we could have had and nothing could have been done to stop it.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

 

Our reality sucks, how about instead of telling people to just accept it is what it is we actually fight to make it better, like our predecessors should have, and failed to do.

They did fight. You just don't like the results. 

2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Honestly right now I am incredibly depressed by everything around me and am basically screaming into the void

I'd suggest decoupling yourself from social media and the news cycle. Maybe read Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann's The Broken Branch and It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

I'm not going to keep arguing about this because there really is nothing to argue about unless you want to say (which I know is not what you are saying) that this is the best possible reality we could have had and nothing could have been done to stop it.

Putting the onus of everything on the Democratic party is unreasonable, and a mental trap.

[GrimTuesday]

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

They did fight. You just don't like the results. 

I'd suggest decoupling yourself from social media and the news cycle. Maybe read Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann's The Broken Branch and It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

Putting the onus of everything on the Democratic party is unreasonable, and a mental trap.

And you like the results?

Of course I put the onus on the Democrats, we have two parties, and there is one party that is always going to be working to harm people no matter what. You don't blame the tiger for killing the villagers, you blame those who are say they are there to protect you for making a deal with the tiger that the tiger will only eat a few people so long as they cut tiger sized holes in the walls.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

You don't blame the tiger for killing the villagers, you blame those who are say they are there to protect you for making a deal with the tiger that the tiger will only eat a few people so long as they cut tiger sized holes in the walls.

Really?  Call me crazy, but I mainly blame the tiger.  Especially when, ya know, it's not a tiger but a group of people that should be smart enough to know better.

ETA:  Also, to respond to your original complaint, John Lewis was a liberal lion.  But the fact that he never even contemplated running for Senator in Georgia is all you need to know for why the national Democratic party never adopted his position, policies, whatever.  Same thing with Sanders - it's not too tough to get elected statewide in Vermont if you're that liberal, but it still don't fly on a larger scale, as we saw.  Maybe one day, but acting like the Dems are being feckless by not being recklessly leftist is rather absurd.  The Dems are feckless in many other ways, but that's just not being an idiot.

[Week]

Stable genius geniusing.

 

[Martell Spy]

Pandemic Surge Damages Trump,
Boosting Biden’s White House Bid

https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1214a22020Election.pdf

Quote

Public preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in trust to handle the coronavirus pandemic
has soared since March in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, boosting Biden – along
with other measures – in the race for the White House.
Three and a half months ago the two candidates were virtually even in trust to handle the
pandemic, Trump +2 percentage points, 45-43 percent. Today, with COVID-19 cases surging
around the nation, Biden leads Trump on the issue by a 20-point margin, 54-34 percent.
Biden’s also advanced, nearly to par with Trump, in trust to handle the economy, after trailing in
March. Biden leads Trump by 9 points on handling crime and safety, a focal point of Trump’s in
recent weeks. And on race relations, Biden leads by his largest margin, 25 points, 58-33 percent.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Maybe one day, but acting like the Dems are being feckless by not being recklessly leftist is rather absurd.

Are you really arguing that self-destructive tactics are a bad path to pursue? 

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Triskele said:

Could either go here or the police thread, but Ken Cuccinelli (I'd forgotten he's at DHS now) says they're taking this police tactic seen in Portland national.  

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

How is it possible that mask-mandates are the heights of fucking tyranny, but cops kidnapping U.S. citizens off the streets WITHOUT FUCKING WARRANTS is goddamn oakaley-dokely?? 

[DMC]

41 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Are you really arguing that self-destructive tactics are a bad path to pursue? 

Just because it works for Trump doesn't mean it works for, like, anyone else.  Including myself.

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Just because it works for Trump doesn't mean it works for, like, anyone else.  Including myself.

Is it even working for Trump?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Just because it works for Trump doesn't mean it works for, like, anyone else.  Including myself.

Damn, I was going to suggest you rediscover your Florida roots and do some coke, then some meth, then hit someone in the face with a toilet seat you ripped off and stole from a public bathroom, but perhaps common Miami behavior won't get you that far in Pennsylvania. I can't say as I've never lived in Pittsburgh. 

[Ran]

4 hours ago, DMC said:

Really?  Call me crazy, but I mainly blame the tiger.  Especially when, ya know, it's not a tiger but a group of people that should be smart enough to know better.

Yeah. Dehumanizing them shifts the burden of responsibility and lets them off the hook, while being completely unconnected to the reality that they are people making what they see as rational choices based on their construction of the world and their incentives. To defeat them requires not treating them as savages.

10 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Is it even working for Trump?

Down 15 points in the suburbs, a figure not seen since maybe LBJ. We'll see how things stand in November....

 

[fionwe1987]

16 hours ago, DMC said:

Gonna stop right there.  Now researchers are supposed to be aware of their subjects' mental state?  Obviously, just based on percentages, some subjects are gonna be bipolar, more will be depressed, and most are going to be experiencing some kind of stress.  Your line of reasoning lost me here.

Umm yes? For psychological research, if you're not aware of priors, your data is pretty close to worthless. And this isn't a new thing. 

15 hours ago, DMC said:

Not in the way this was portrayed.  Researchers cannot verify the mental state of their subjects.  Hell, THAT would be invasive and unethical.  Researchers are supposed to ensure their experiment will not - or is at least as unlikely as possible to - inflict psychological damage on subjects.  But what we're talking about here [ETA: that's wrong, what I should say here is what I am specifically concerned about in terms of the implications] is "negative" and "positive" political messaging that facebook users are going to be exposed to already.  If that's "unethical" to you then you're really tying the hands of political behavior researchers behind their back.

Okay, firstly, it is not invasive or unethical to verify mental health issues. Not when you ask the subjects, and they can voluntarily choose to not answer, or not be part of the trial.

Second, it appears you remain completely unaware of what the researchers did. They did not manipulate political messages. They manipulated all messages, or posts, based on a scoring of their positivity or negativity. This means, for instead, a post from my friend said "Look at my baby, how cute" could have been blocked from my wall if I was in the cohort that was getting positive posts suppressed. 

You might want to at least read through the introduction to the paper you linked before making statements about it's supposed lack of ethical issues. You look like an absolute moron as you keep mouthing off about stuff that the paper isn't about. 

14 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

I would actually say that researchers specifically excluding those who may be more susceptible to disinformation and may have psychological issues would actually taint their research. While it might present some ethical questions, the fact remains that those people still exist and you can't ignore that. So long as your sample is not over representative of that, I think that is the right way to go.

Nope, it isn't. See, from a purely research point, you're right. But definitely not from an ethical standpoint.

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Is it even working for Trump?

Well, it did for awhile.

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I was going to suggest you rediscover your Florida roots and do some coke

As I've told you many times, I don't have Florida roots, it's just where my parents moved to when I was 20.  And I've never been to Miami.

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Dehumanizing them shifts the burden of responsibility and lets them off the hook, while being completely unconnected to the reality that they are people making what they see as rational choices based on their construction of the world and their incentives. To defeat them requires not treating them as savages.

Agreed, but to be fair, if you're gonna be dehumanized, being compared to a tiger instead is pretty cool.  I kinda wanna be a tiger.

3 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Umm yes? For psychological research, if you're not aware of priors, your data is pretty close to worthless. And this isn't a new thing.

It would be a new thing, if it was a thing.  Psychological researchers, pretty much any social science researchers, do not screen for subjects' mental state.  I'm sure certain hard science experiments do, but that's different.

6 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

They manipulated all messages, or posts, based on a scoring of their positivity or negativity.

Right, this is why I qualified one of my responses with an ETA.  I don't care much about that, but it doesn't change my point.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

26 minutes ago, DMC said:

As I've told you many times, I don't have Florida roots, it's just where my parents moved to when I was 20.  And I've never been to Miami.

You went to university there too. That water is in your blood now my man.

And Miami is the best city in this country. Try being a preppy white kid living in Liberty City. Strangely I fitted right in. 

 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Try being a preppy white kid living in Liberty City. Strangely I fitted right in.

That's just because you enjoyed killing sex workers in GTA.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

That's just because you enjoyed killing sex workers in GTA.

That was GTA 3, not 5, which has all these rules.............., and I'll have you know I enjoyed dropping boats and tanks on people, as well as shooting them with the sniper rifle, far more than I enjoyed killing the prostitutes, though I did always make sure to get my money back after they rocked my car. Those guns were expensive, after all, if you didn't use cheat codes.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That was GTA 3, not 5, which has all these rules

Well, I didn't qualify it to begin with.  It was the one that came out right after GTA 3, and it was literally called Liberty City [ETA:  Whoops, it was called Vice City.  My bad.  But still, it was Miami.]  Other than that I dunno, I generally don't get video games, but that's about where I had enough of it.  IIRC, GTA 4 just annoyed me because I had to put more effort into my character's life than my own.

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You went to university there too. That water is in your blood now my man.

I don't feel very Florida-Man-ish despite going to UM, but I can definitely not deny having Florida roots.

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And Miami Is the best city in this country.

Hmm.... Yes, but 

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Try being a preppy white kid living in Liberty City. Strangely I fitted right in. 
 

Huh. I had no idea. That must have been an interesting experience (which I gather was a positive one, which is great but, sadly, no something one could just assume).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, I didn't qualify it to begin with.  It was the one that came out right after GTA 3, and it was literally called Liberty City.  Other than that I dunno, I generally don't get video games, but that's about where I had enough of it.  IIRC, GTA 4 just annoyed me because I had to put more effort into my character's life than my own.

I only played that for a second as I'm not much of a gamer, but wasn't that based in Cali? Or was that the other version of GTA 4? I agree though, the notion of making your toon lift weights while refusing to do so yourself was silly. 

20 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't feel very Florida-Man-ish despite going to UM, but I can definitely not deny having Florida roots.

Wait, you're a Hurricane? 

23 minutes ago, Ran said:

Hmm.... Yes, but 

Huh. I had no idea. That must have been an interesting experience (which I gather was a positive one, which is great but, sadly, no something one could just assume).

One of many, but yes it was. Still doesn't compare to me telling cartel members in Mexico that they don't know how to sell drugs correctly and them wanting to drink with me when all was said and done. And that doesn't even rank in the top 5 silliest shit I've done.