Grrl Power #1273 – Going loud
Doc Chevy is super interested in Frix’s Tissue Recombobulator. Her powers accelerate the body’s natural repair mechanisms, but she’s become about 8x more effective with her abilities since she got her doctorate. She’s trained as a trauma surgeon, but her specialty is in Regenerative Medicine. She actually does very little surgery, using it only to supplement her normal healing powers. Like, she’ll cut out shrapnel or remove tissue that’s been so damaged that trying to repair it would take more effort than regenerating it, like 4th degree burns, or tissue destroyed by acid, leaving the victim looking like the guy from Robocop after he fell in that vat of industrial waste, or like Toht (the nazi guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark who got the medallion burned into his hand) halfway through his Ark face melting scene.
But grilling Frix about how the Recombobulator works could give her a lot of ideas on how to better leverage her abilities. Even if she can’t create a virtualized cellular substrate to pre-viz the new tissue matrix before creating proto-stem cells. There’s also a button on it that filters out technobabble, labeled “Fix Owie.” It’s next to the “Kiss it Better” switch and the “Boo-boo go bye-bye” lever.
I’m torn if I should call attention to Anvil’s shirt. It might be too subtle, and if I don’t mention it, no one will go “Hmm…” But if I don’t and one guy does figure it out, then he’ll be all “I’m the guy! I got it!” And he’ll be king of the nerds all day. So this is me not mentioning it, for that guy’s sake.
The new vote incentive is up!
Oh no! Superheroines in a deathtrap! Well… a tickle trap. Okay, not trapped, trapped, but… look, three of the girls are getting tickled. Actually, in a way, seven girls are getting tickled since the other four Harems will feel this as well, but technically it’s only the three shown in the picture since Harem insists there’s only one of her – it’s just confusing since she can be in 5 places at once.
As you can probably imagine, Patreon shows what happens if they laugh, and also has a comic revealing who is behind this nefarious situation.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
So her shirt is purple, I take it?
*And* hearty! (Especially if you convert it to decimal.)
I do not get this one. Since the number on the shirt is clearly RBG color definition in hexadecimal, in decimal it will be
122 49 199
Is there something I’m missing?
Ok, converting it as a single number reveals the hidden meaning. Understandable *nods*
I am officially swiping the word “recombobulate”
Anvil’s shirt text is the hex color code for her shirt.
Anvil’s shirt is also the same color as Max’s hair.
Anvils shirt is made from Maxis hair?
I’m guessing that would make it difficult to get damaged.
It would give all new meaning to the phrase “Hair Shirt”.
AKA “wool”.
Umm, no, it was some ancient practice (or punishment) to make a criminal wear a shirt made out of hyu-mon hair (not sure if it was their own)
Nah, just a very uncomfortable shirt worn as penance for one’s sins. Didn’t have to be human hair, actually mostly it was goat. But it had to be scratchy and uncomfortable.
Typically woven by their own grandmother.
I’m reminded of “eufiber” in the Aberrant TTRPG, which was the setting’s equivalent to Marvel’s “unstable molecule” costumes, ie your own powers wouldn’t damage the outfit because it attuned to them and it would adapt to stretching, invisibility, etc. Eufiber was much in demand in superhero fashion – and every bit of it came from one guy whose power was speed-growing his hair, which is what it was made of.
TTRPgs being what they are, many players assumed it was all some sort of sinister scheme to mind control/parasitize/devour people who wore the stuff when some signal was given, but no, nothing like that ever happened in the canon metaplot. Just some guy’s freaky super-hair.
Same power which allows you to create stuff also lets you do other things with it. What those “other things” were for him was always undefined but we’re talking about something which mimics your power sig.
Gawd I miss that setting. It was part of a triad of games. Ancient fantasy genre, modern supes, and future wierd shitall extremely well written. Still looking for those books…
I don’t remember any ancient fantasy. The third game was pulp, or maybe neopulp. The ancient fantasy game Exalted used the same core mechanics, but it didn’t seem to have any shared continuity.
Interestingly the color is called “Purple Heart”.
That might be an unintentional third level, considering the other stuff. I don’t see DaveB’s replies to correct guesses indicate there might be a third level, hence the unintentional. Of course, it COULD be foreshadowing…
So is that an indication that Anvil has been injured during service before? That would generally need a lot of firepower.
It’s not just the hex code for her shirt.
Look at what you get if you rewrite that same number in decimal.
I’m almost sure that Dabbler got her that shirt.
(8008135)
Winner winner, chicken dinner!
So wait – that color spells “BOOBIES” in decimal, and it’s the same color as Max’s hair has been since day 1… Has Max always had “BOOBIES” hair? Is this the most drawn out subtle joke in the whole comic?
Going for the long payoff.
Oh, the guy’s name in Raiders was Toth, not Thot, just FYI
OK.
1: The character’s name is Toht, not Toth.
2: DaveB didn’t write Thot.
If you’re going to correct someone’s spelling, make sure *you* get it right.
Oh, you’re right, it IS Toht. I guess I was conflating it with a friend I had in High school whose name was Toth, and misremembering the name in the old illustrated book I had of the movie. I would’ve sworn it was Toth on a bible, but I went and looked at Wikipedia to verify.
I’d delete the original, but I don’t have the option.
If Dave was talking about the first level, then not subtle at all. A significant number of people got it, even if they just did a quick web search of the text out of curiosity. No crown for you.
If he was talking about the second level (converted to base-10, the number says “BOOBIES”), then yes, very subtle, because as of now yours is the only comment that mentions it.
I personally didn’t realize it until your comment. Congratulations, you’re the “King of the Nerds” for today!
Wow… another comments glitch today. I specifically refreshed before commenting, and Dave’s reply 1.5 hours before mine wasn’t there until after I posted. Probably something I did, though, and not the web site.
It’s probably nothing you did. Dave just put the site behind a caching CDN (I think cloudflare?), because that’s the sane thing to do with content that changes as infrequently as a webcomic. The trade-off is the comment glitches, but the alternative gets rather expensive.
Interestingly, I picked that it was hex almost immediately, and found a converter that would allow me to convert it to text.
I got “z1?” so… not particularly promising.
Fortunately, the same website also had easy options to convert it to binary (“011110100011000111000111”) and decimal (jackpot). Having discovered this, I didn’t even think to look further for a second meaning.
I don’t get it. I don’t know much about base conversions, but to me the number becomes 7 11 3 1 13 7, what am I doing wrong?
When I add (7+11+3+1+13+7) it becomes 42. Is this a third layer?
# a simple terminal emulator on my cheap phone computes:
~> math 0x7a31c7
8008135
# Boobies, check ’em …
~> math 7+0xa+3+1+0xc+7
40
# Computer says “No”, it’s not 42.
~> math 0x7a
122 # 122/255 red
~> math 0x31
49 # 40/255 green
~> math 0xc7
199 # 199/255 blue, so with additive colour mixing these 3 Numbers endcode a bright, strong purple.
# if you don’t have ‘math’ installed, use the POSIX arithmetic evaluation: echo $((0x7a31c7))
Or the best terminal calculator program: python
(Seriously, I will boot up a terminal for a python interpreter if I need a calculator at my desk)
No offense to M.d.H.’s explanation, but maybe something a bit simpler:
Hex is a “base 16” system, so there are 16 values for every digit. (0-9 then A-F). Decimal is a “base 10” system, so 10 values per digit (0-9).
So you if you had just “70000” as a hex value, it’s actually “7340032” in decimal.
So, you’ve got what looks like 2 mistakes: “off by 1” and trying to treat each character as a separate number even though it’s actually 1 long number.
“Off by 1” – Remember that in computer science, counting always starts at “0” not “1”. So in your conversion example where you treat every character as a separate number, you said “a = 11” but it’s actually “10” in decimal. That’s why M.d.H. was pointing out that if you did it that way, you’d get 40 not 42.
echo $((0x7a31c7))
“We have to get involved, but, like, L.A. traffic, you know? I”m in no hurry.”
This is the correct attitude. ^_^
Unfortunately a real life phenomenon, it’s quite common in cities with bad drug problems for the cops to really not care if one scumbag drug dealer attacks another scumbag drug dealer for the rights to a street corner or whatever. It’s when innocent people are caught in the crossfire that you start seeing actual investigations and arrests.
Unfortunate for whom?
For the neighborhoods who have to put up with what are essentially small scale wars between rival gangs over turf or drug deliveries or whatever. Some of the strongest supporters of more effective police are the law abiding people who live in bad neighborhoods. They’re the ones bearing the brunt of Defund the Police and ACAB, not the community activists living in gated communities with armed security.
+1000.
The estimates of how many more people have been murdered since the police pulled back after the Saint Floyd riots and “Defund the Police” BS start in the thousands and only go up.
Just because the police really do have some problems and could be improved in some fairly straightforward ways doesn’t mean they are worse than having no police or even less police. The support for that stuff was always primarily relatively affluent people, overwhelmingly white, who didn’t leave where the problems actually are. But hey, what’s a few more dead brown people compared to *thoughtlessly following the current trend*, you know?
Sneetches, all of them. If the current fad was “dismember and eat a live human baby”, they would ask for directions to the nearest establishment serving them.
Wow. “Thousands of new murders.”
I would think that would have been all over the news.
Citation missing, fascist. Show us your source.
Also? “Saint Floyd?” That is just absolutely precious. Tell me, how mad were you, exactly, when the white cop who murdered a black man was convicted of the murder he committed, on camera, in front of witnesses?
And that “some problems” fig leaf is very on-brand. It’s always “just a few bad apples,” right? Can’t possibly be a systemic flaw in the system of policing that literally goes back to the days of slave patrols, right? Never mind the fact that the pigs are regularly killing people who are completely innocent of anything, to the extent that they are documented as literally raiding the wrong addresses and killing the residents inside. Totally worth it to have a police force that routinely solves…3% of reported crimes, on average?
Really? You can’t be arsed to look at the murder rate in major cities since then?
“Publicly documented murder rate after riots” times “population of cities in question” minus “publicly documented murder rate immediately before riots” times “population of cities in question” is not a hard concept.
In practice, getting it down to an exact number is more difficult because both murder rate and population are always in at least a little bit of flux, hence the estimates vary, but the lowest is still in the thousands of additional murders.
“Tell me, how mad were you, exactly, when the white cop who murdered a black man was convicted of the murder he committed, on camera, in front of witnesses?”
Oh, I’m not mad in those cases. In fact, I’m not made in cases like that more generally, whatever the races of the police officer/victim. I don’t care about race (as I have explicitly stated to you many times).
I was mad in the Chauvin case, since that’s not what happened.
The “saint” part is because SOMETHING must be special about Floyd. There have been functionally-identical cases involving both white and hispanic men in the last 10 years, and they received NO public outcry.
And I think that was the correct result in those other cases, too – white, black, purple, green, whatever. But with Floyd, RIOT TIME! Something about him is more special than the other cases, you see.
This paragraph: “And that “some problems” fig leaf is very on-brand….”
It’s not a fig leaf. There are definite problems. As I have stated before, the police can and do literally get away with murder… of people of all skin colors (it’s easiest against white people, by the way, because the media doesn’t care, so there’s extremely little chance of public outcry). To be explicit, I THINK THAT IS BAD, without any regard AT ALL to the skin color of the victim.
I don’t dispute almost any of what you said in that paragraph. There ARE “systemic flaws”. We would definitely disagree with what they ARE, mind you, but they are definitely there, and it would be better if we could find ways to get rid of them.
So yes, as I said, there are “fairly straightforward” improvements available, and yes, I agree that, if you include all the “little” crimes (compared to violent crime), there’s a very low solve rate.
None of that changes what I said. Having them, *EVEN WITH THEIR FLAWS*, is still better than not having any, as evidence by what happens in areas (especially large cities) where the police pull back, do less, because they are convinced they are unwelcome or going to be thrown under the bus even in completely legitimate cases (like Chauvin was).
That is not, in any way, saying things are fine as they are. If my leg were broken, it would suck. It would not work very well. I would still be better off than if I CUT OFF MY LEG. This is not a hard concept to grasp.
You don’t even have to agree with me to grasp the concept, to understand that horrendous racism and other evils is not a requirement for my position. I don’t expect you WILL grasp it, as you have shown repeatedly that your own beliefs DEMAND that I somehow be racist and evil.
I am not, in any way, justifying everything the police do. I WANT better policing, and I WANT better accountability.
The problem is that “better” is not ONLY “more” (though some “more” is indeed necessary – as I have said to you here and other places, yes, the police can AND DO get away with murder… including deliberate malice-aforethough murder in some cases. Again, that’s bad, full stop).
You made the assertion that there was a spike of “thousands” of murders. The burden of proof lies with the one making the claim: you.
Derek Chauvin murdered a man, in front of witnesses, on camera. We have the footage. We watched him do it. He’s a murderer. Period, end of sentence, full stop.
It’s always the same song & dance with you people. There’s always an excuse. A post hoc justification. “Oh, I agree cops must be held accountable, BUT THIS TIME…”
Always a f’ing “but.” And it’s always the same story with the victim. You people always start with, “well, they were no angel,” as if that in any way justifies the pigs engaging in extrajudicial killings. “Well it’s not like the guy was innocent…” So what?! Last time I checked, and I’m pretty sure Pander will back me upon this, there is no such thing as a capital offense property crime! Passing a fake bill isn’t a hanging offense! Being intoxicated does not carry the gods damned death penalty! But no, no, you death-hungry fascists will look for any and all justifications for “the other” to be publicly and brutally killed, as an intimidation tactic against everyone you don’t identify as part of your tribe.
“Oooh, waaah, there was ‘something special’ about ‘Saint Floyd.” Yeah, there was.
We had video of literally the whole f’ing murder. We got to watch Chauvin strangle the guy to death, laughing about, and joking with the 3 other pigs who were watching him kill a man and doing nothing to stop him. He was already down, restrained, compliant…he’ll, he was unconscious before he died! They could have taken him into custody at any point! But no, they all stood there, and watched their fellow pig murder a man.
Hmm…I wonder if that might, possibly, have been what people were reacting to?
…nah! It’s just because all we bad, dumb, inferior masses must hate white men, right?!
And here you are, still insisting that white people are “the real victims.” That everything is racist against white peoples, in spite of the fact that white people, and white, cishet men in specific, occupy damn near every position of institutional power & authority in the damn country. Hell, out of 46 Presidents, just 45 of them have been white cishet men. Gods, how long can this terrible oppression go on? When will the white man finally get a chance taste the fruits of liberty? When will the guys who own most of the wealth finally receive justice?
But getting back to the pigs, I find it very telling that you think the alternative to “cops get to murder everyone freely & without consequences,” is – let me check – “not having any.”
Now, I realize that your little fascist skull filling probably took “defund the police” as a personal threat of indescribable violence, and I’ll happily agree that it’s not a great slogan, but see, that’s not what the alternative on offer is. See, weirdly, some of us think that a significant chunk of the funds taken from the badge-carrying murder gangs could used to, instead, fund a vast and bewildering array of new & exciting responses to crime. Like, “Meeting People’s Needs.” It turns out, most crime can actually be traced back to _poverty_, not “moral weakness.”
I know, I know, it’s just so impossibly counter-intuitive.
Another part of this strange and alien approach would be those social workers you were disparaging else, for their inability to violently defend a bank against the roaring hordes of heavily armed bank robbers that everybody knows constantly prowl the streets, looking for poor, innocent, morally righteous and supremely virtuous banks to prey upon like vast, teeming packs of wolves. See, it turns out that even though social workers aren’t capable of single-handedly ending all crime forever with grit and gunplay – like all of the copaganda action movie “loose canon” heroes – they _can_ prevent crimes by keeping people from becoming so desperate & deprived that they decide risking a prison sentence – which at least gets them shelter, medical treatment, and _some_ food – or catching a bullet from – you guessed it, a cop – seems like a better bet than trying to survive homeless & hungry…until some annoyed middle-class (probably white, probably woman) person calls – you guessed it again, the cops – to remove the unsightly vagabond from their area of perception & awareness. Probably violently, because cops are specifically trained to rely on violence, and the poor and homeless do get to be treated like actual, real human beings in our glorious capitalist state.
So yeah. Fuck cops, and fuck anyone & everyone who thinks we need more of them.
“Derek Chauvin murdered a man, in front of witnesses, on camera. We have the footage. We watched him do it. He’s a murderer. Period, end of sentence, full stop.”
Yes, almighty, all knowing mistress of reality. It is as you say.
Now, out in here the real world, where we can actually look at the entire record of evidence, not one deceptive camera angle, we can make a determination that doesn’t depend on your supposed omniscience.
No, he was not murdered, we have the not-murder on camera. He’s not a murderer. Period, end of sentence, full stop.
See, I can make bald assertions, too. And they are just as convincing as yours.
Or I can talk about the actual evidence, ALL of the evidence without cherry picking, compare to other cases that had extremely similar fact patterns, and check both law and case law.
Oh, and the statements of the jurors after fact, where at least two of them mentioned being intimidated by the mobs.
But sure, just like the old KKK-intimidated jurors in the old south, that’s totally fine. Yep. Sure. Uh huh. Just to be clear for your sake, Bharda, *that is sarcasm*, I don’t actually think the old KKK-intimidated jurors in the south was fine, I think it was horrible and wrong. I think racism in general is both wrong and stupid.
“It’s always the same song & dance with you people.”
“you people” again! Everybody drink!
“There’s always an excuse. A post hoc justification.”
No, it’s not post hoc. As I pointed out, there are at least two other cases in the last 10 years with nigh-identical fact patterns that did not result in any massive outcry, and I don’t think they are miscarriages of justice, either.
“And it’s always the same story with the victim. You people always start with, “well, they were no angel,” as if that in any way justifies the pigs engaging in extrajudicial killings.”
Angel or not, other than those exact circumstances, is irrelevant. Next talking point that you’ll dishonestly accuse me of please?
“And here you are, still insisting that white people are “the real victims.””
No, here I am explicitly stating that the police can and do get away with murder against people of all races. People can check the immediately prior post. Lying does you no good.
“But getting back to the pigs, I find it very telling that you think the alternative to “cops get to murder everyone freely & without consequences,” is – let me check – “not having any.””
I do not think that, and have explicitly stated so, including in that post. I have said so. Repeatedly. I am, in fact, *condemning people* for pushing for that. Why must you lie? Think about why you MUST lie on stuff like this, when my post is *DIRECTLY ABOVE* saying *DIRECTLY THE OPPOSITE*.
The rest of your post is a ridiculous rant having little to nothing to do with me or reality in general, proceeding from stuff that you claim I think which I do not and have stated repeatedly that I do not.
Why MUST I be evil and believe stuff (that I have explicitly condemned repeatedly)? Why do you keep claiming I believe stuff I do not and have explicitly condemned? Why spew all this hate for someone over stuff they do not believe? Do you need some remedial reading classes or something?
You’re right up there with Illy on this thread, where I say, “Nazis were so horrible that we should be careful of devaluing the term using it on lesser horrible things,” and his response is “Why are you defending Nazis?”
WTF? Is it just pure gaslighting for giggles, or something?
Yeah, nah, he may have killed Floyd, but he did not murder him
Even though Pander is the wrong kind of lawyer, fairly sure she will back me up (this time) in that ‘murder’ implies intent, and there is no proof, of any kind, that any of those cops set out to intentionally kill Floyd
Technically speaking, it depends on what type of intent the prosecution convinced the jury that Chauvin had.
You are correct that murder implies intent. And when you say that there is no proof of any tiype that any of the cops set out to intentionally kill Floyd, that is possible as well – but the latter argument is an argument about premeditation, and premeditation is a first degree murder charge – which Chauvin was not charged with.
Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second degree murder (and also second degree manslaughter, likely because the prosecution was not sure that second degree murder would stick – prosecutors tend to overcharge just in case – although second degree murder wound up being the charge of which the jury convicted him).
Second degree murder is murder with malicious intent but NOT premeditated (that’s the difference between first and second degree murder). So yes, intent is required, and you are correct there. However, the intent does not have to just be intent to kill. There are several possible intents in the mens rea criteria for murder in the second degree.
The mens rea involved can be either:
1) intent to kill;
2) intent to inflict serious bodily harm that could reasonably result in death;
3) acting ‘with an abandoned/depraved heart’ (ie, reckless conduct lacking concern for human life or having a high risk of death).
While I believe in the case that there was not an intent to kill that would qualify for the first possible mens rea criteria, the jury was apparently convinced that Chauvin’s actions met the second or third criteria.
I’m not talking about any possible defenses which the defense might have tried and failed to convince the jurors of, like the fentanyl poisoning (which could have been argued as being an intervening act if the defense had been able to convince the jury of it). I’m just talking about why the jurors would have decided on a guilty verdict for second degree murder, since the jurors were being told to decide if Chauvin had intent to do an action which could inflict serious bodily harm that COULD result in death, or if there was an abandoned/depraved heart involved in his intent on using force that resulted in death. The video was probably very influential in convincing the jury of one of these intent criteria.
There wasn’t one specific incident where thousands of people were murdered, but it actually was in the news that at least between 2020 and 2022 that murder rates were up in every single metropolitan area. Just because there isn’t a national news story about ever drive-by death doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
While nobody actually called him Saint Floyd, to a person being no context to the incident, it could be looked at like he was a martyred saint. Murals of him painted everywhere people changing his last words, streets renamed in his honor, politicians saying he died for the movement. Hell, he was the only person in the US who died with COVID in his system whose death was never in the COVID death statics.
And calling someone a “fascist” just because you don’t agree with them? Maybe look in the mirror first.
Show us the links. If there was a sudden spike in the national murder rate to the tune of multiple thousands of them, you should have no trouble finding that statistic and linking it. Because _that_ is what Deoxy was trying to imply with his unsupported assertion.
And yes, “Saint Floyd” was exactly the phrase Deoxy used – sarcastically & with the obvious intent to denigrate and disparage the movement to reform law enforcement – in the post to which I was responding.
Go try gaslighting literally anyone else.
Andi call Deoxy a fascist, because he’s a fascist. Walks like duck, talks like a duck, associates with other ducks, promotes a pro-duck paradigm, it’s a duck. The fact you’re so blatantly & myopically trying to support his quacking, indicates your membership in the same flock.
“sarcastically & with the obvious intent to denigrate and disparage the movement to reform law enforcement”
Sarcastically, yes, for the reasons I have stated.
I am PRO law enforcement reform. There are obvious reforms that would help. Please stop dishonestly putting words in my mouth.
“Andi call Deoxy a fascist, because he’s a fascist. Walks like duck, talks like a duck, associates with other ducks, promotes a pro-duck paradigm, it’s a duck. The fact you’re so blatantly & myopically trying to support his quacking, indicates your membership in the same flock.”
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everyone-i-dont-like-is-hitler
Oddly enough, it’s possible to disagree with Bharda without being a fascist. Shocking, ain’t it?!?
I am against fascism, socialism, and communism. They are all require highly authoritarian government, which gets abused against the people as all authoritarian structures do.
(To cover another common dishonest Bharda accusation, non-state hierarchies aren’t really that great, either, though they at least don’t have the power of the state backing them up to make them even worse. Not sure how to prevent them or their abuses without government power… which gets abused worse, so that’s a non-starter.)
I am against racism. It is wrong and stupid.
But, since I disagree with Bharda, clearly, the only POSSIBLE explanation is that I am a racist and a fascist. Somehow. Still haven’t figured out how, but that’s clearly because I am an incredibly stupid (AND EVIL!) person… as evidenced by disagreeing with Bharda the Omniscient.
Once again, Bharda tossing out insults and stating bullshit-propaganda in the same breath
What would we do without you Bharda?
You’d probably blithely run along happily not having someone call out your collective fascist bullshit.
Prove anything I said wrong. Bring links.
+1
Links or it didn’t happen.
The burden of proof in a conversation is on the person who is making the claim.
Since you can’t be arsed to check bloody anything, here: the FBI Uniform Report for 2020:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-crime-statistics
“In 2020, there were an estimated 1,277,696 violent crimes. When compared with the estimates from 2019, the estimated number of robbery offenses fell 9.3 percent and the estimated volume of rape (revised definition) offenses decreased 12.0 percent. The estimated number of aggravated assault offenses rose 12.1 percent, and ***the volume of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses increased 29.4 percent***.”
That’s the biggest jump in murder rate since record keeping began. Doing the math isn’t hard.
Here’s one city’s example of how that math works out:
https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0706/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-june-2020
“For the month of June 2020, the number of people victimized by gun violence and murder in New York City spiked significantly, when compared to the same period in 2019. Between June 1 and June 30, there was a 130% increase in the number of shooting incidents across the city (205 v. 89) as the number of shootings rose in every borough of New York. The number of people murdered citywide increased to 39 v. 30, (+ 30%) for the month, while the number of burglaries increased to 1,783 v. 817 (+118%) and the number of auto thefts increased to 696 v. 462 (+51%) citywide.”
So, there’s +116 murders, for one month, for one city.
And if you dig into those reports, you find that, since most murders are same race victim/criminal, and blacks in the US have a murder rate of 6-10 times the rest (depending on the year), that’s 30% of extra murders falls VERY disproportionately on black people.
Again, *THIS STUFF IS NOT HIDDEN OR HARD*. That you don’t WANT to look doesn’t make it untrue.
You know the idea of “defund the police” isn’t to just get rid of cops and have anarchy instead, right? The idea is that the funding going to police could be better used for social workers, drug rehabilitation, and other things that actually lower the crime rate in a meaningful way.
It’s not “eliminate police”, it’s “put our tax dollars into empirically backed methods of reducing crime”.
In some cases you are correct. In other cases, the activists for Defund the Police did say, outright, that they wanted police eliminated or replaced with some sort of social worker response, not just police reform.
Yes, replaced, with empirically backed methods of reducing crime.
“Yes, replaced, with empirically backed methods of reducing crime.”
As only the most ridiculous example of how stupid that is, when there’s an armed bank robbery in progress, those social workers will be so very, very helpful.
:-/
Perfect fascist nonsense.
“Violent crime exists, therefore all crime must have a violent response!”
Because we all know that the addition of adrenaline junkies with military grade weapons, who have been told they “warriors” could not possibly increase the likelihood of murdered civilians.
You people really have a desperate need to see those you consider “inferior” getting killed on an industrial scale.
Okay, so you’re getting really close here to understanding the issue. Let’s look at the people we use to deal with bank robberies. Now, tell me, are those the same skills and resources that we should use to hand out traffic citations and prevent suicides?
Look at how many bank robberies have taken place in the past five years, then how many traffic citations and suicide interventions have taken place.
Which of those events are the police best equipt to deal with? Which one leads to the greatest loss of life and capital?
“You people” again! Everybody drink!
“Perfect fascist nonsense.”
Perfect mind-reading nonsense.
“They disagree with me, therefore they must believe stuff they explicitly condemn.”
“Because we all know that the addition of adrenaline junkies with military grade weapons, who have been told they “warriors” could not possibly increase the likelihood of murdered civilians.”
The overuse of SWAT is a huge problem in this country. I am very much against that sort of thing.
But again, because I disagree with you, clearly, the only possible explanation is that I want people to get killed by the police.
To be explicit (AGAIN), I am AGAINST the police being allowed to murder people, which they can and sometimes do get away with today. That is BAD.
But the problems that lead to that are not race-based (there are plenty of horrible examples of victims of every race, not that media coverage would tell you that), so the “solutions” suggested are generally poor, because they are addressing the wrong problem.
You… do understand that ‘replaced’ is another word that also means ‘remove or eliminate’, right?
“Replacing police with non-police responses” is not the same as “replacing ALL police, et al.”
Moreover, nobody, and I mean literally nobody, is saying that we don’t need some sort of public security response force, which is definitely equipped for the performance of violence. What _is_ being said, is that the modern iteration of “the police” are not just “bad,” but actually also “not effective.” Like, for every instance of police murdering someone, there are many, many more cases where just aren’t very good at their job. Targeting the wrong suspect, raiding the homes of innocent, uninvolved civilians, not actually solving cases, not actually protecting vulnerable people from abuse, and worst, not holding other cops accountable when those cops themselves are being criminal.
But it’s easy to just read “defund the police,” and baselessly assert that everyone you view as being inferior to yourself is trying to create a lawless, disorderly hellscape so they can take your stuff, or whatever it is you’re afraid of to help justify preserving capitalism & social hierarchy.
By the way, how do you like that “the President can’t be prosecuted for anything” ruling from SCOTUS? Being such a great champion of law & order, you really hate that, right? Right?
Correct.
The situation that modern police are most equipped to deal with are ongoing, current acts of violence. Except that those events are rare, and mostly dealt with by specialized swat teams and federal agencies.
So, yeah, replace (or “eliminate”) the police, and put that funding into stuff that actually works.
“Moreover, nobody, and I mean literally nobody, is saying that we don’t need some sort of public security response force, which is definitely equipped for the performance of violence.”
Yes, people literally and explicitly said that. That is what we are responding to. Stop gaslighting us.
“By the way, how do you like that “the President can’t be prosecuted for anything” ruling from SCOTUS? Being such a great champion of law & order, you really hate that, right? Right?”
I do hate it (and other forms of judicially-invented immunity), yes.
Did that FINALLY manage to get through to you that you don’t actually understand me or know more about me than I do? Because randomly putting words into my mouth and claiming what I believe (in direct contradiction to what I have repeatedly said and supported) is dishonest.
Now with links, just for Bharda:
“Moreover, nobody, and I mean literally nobody, is saying that we don’t need some sort of public security response force, which is definitely equipped for the performance of violence.”
OK, here are some links of people literally saying that (and using the slogan ABOLISH the police, which does literally mean that, too):
super-friendly Vox soft-pedals the crap out of it, and still, several of them are clearly and unashamedly arguing for the complete elimination of the police: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/george-floyd-blm-abolish-the-police-8cantwait-minneapolis
another from Vox, quoting people who want to literally abolish the police: https://www.vox.com/21312191/police-reform-defunding-abolition-black-lives-matter-protests
NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/26/882001628/these-are-the-minneapolis-activists-leading-the-push-to-abolish-the-police
So, still want to gaslight us that no one calls for it? Because that’s what you are doing.
And in comparison, the poor little benighted brown people the self-appointed white saviours are supposedly trying to save actually want MORE police, or at the very least, not less:
https://reason.com/2020/08/06/81-percent-of-black-americans-want-the-same-level-or-more-of-police-presence-gallup/
They understand that yes, the police have flaws (some very obvious and a few even fairly easy to improve, if there was the will from big blue city governments where nearly all of this problem is so well documented…), but EVEN AS THEY ARE, they are a large net positive.
What does +1000 mean?
Did I miss some sort of context while reading?
Were this a forum where posts could be voted up or down, Deoxy would be indicating that they would give Fredwasright 1000 upvotes, if they could.
At least, that’s how I read it. Only Deoxy knows for sure.
The kids down the street who get a stray bullet in the face.
He said who its unfortunate for (“innocent people caught in the crossfire”).
Of course police have also had that attitude about crimes against sex-workers, LBGT+ and minorities
Cereally doubt sex-workers and the Rainbow Coalition actively have shoot-outs to decide who gets which corner of the block on Sesame Street
No, but crimes against sex workers were often ignored
You doubt that pimps have turf wars? That’s… certainly something you could think.
Sex-workers are not pimps
I think GaT is saying that pimps have turf wars about where the sex-workers (which I’m assuming is mainly referring to prostitutes – I have no idea if strippers and phone sex operators or OnlyFans girls are considered sex-workers also) who are ’employed’ by them work. Not that I’m familiar with the intricacies of sex-work, but I’m guessing that they are not usually doing the sex-work on their own without some sort of protection (usually in the form of a pimp, if the sex-worker is a prostitute).
This is such a weird thread now that I’m in.
First off, pimps actually are sex workers, under both legal and social definitions. But, regardless, if two pimps are at war with each other, do you think that the people getting hurt would only be those two pimps? Or, do you think that, just maybe, they’d target the prostitutes who are working the areas they’re fighting over?
I feel like pimps are sex general managers. :)
True, lol
Large scale extortion gigs like these are great ways to get info, so you can get them later.
If you manage to catch the extortionist you can shake them for information about how they know who to extort and maybe even offer them a deal to act as a witness against those they extorted for a reduced sentence.
You can also get the extorted to provide you with valuable information about how the gangs work.
Things like:
When and where did you receive your ultimatum?
What were you doing when you received your ultimatum?
What happened when you received your ultimatum?
To which account did you transfer the funds(immediately also trace back from where it was transfered with the bank)?
Who was threatened(This person is probably a high gang member, because they are extorting whole gangs)?
Why do you think they hit you?
How did they find out you had this much money?
I knew Kenya was tall but Day-umm!
Dueling coffee mugs? A third one is needed for a joke. {ARC Wielder?}
They probably bought for each other. Max and Kenya are as much besties as a CO and her Master Sergeant can be.
Or there’s a dozen of each in the employee break room.
considering all the female supers but Sydney fit the description of Glamazon, would not be surprised
Now what would Dr. Chevy’s view of an ancient Gaulish magic potion be?!?
She would probably dismiss it as “pre-Christian Voodoo”!
They already know that healing potions are real in their world. See the arc around the dungeon building plans.
Is Doc Chase even a Christian? The bindi would indicate… NO!
Every Indian person I met so far (not that many) said, this is just cosmetics and has no real meaning.
“Every Indian person I met so far (not that many) said, this is just cosmetics and has no real meaning.”
There _was_ specific meaning (though I think there was also some variance on how specific by region? Been too long…), but in recent years, it has been used more and more simply as cosmetic/adornment stuff, yes.
The bindi is a caste mark. While supposedly India has moved beyond that, it still is in effect. Old habits die hard. Traditions even harder to shake.
Doc Chevy is probably either Hindu, Buddhist, or Jainist considering she has a bindi on the center of her forehead.
Still, how would Dr. Chevy view that ancient Gaulish magic potion?!?
Probably marvel at it and want to examine it to see how it works
She is a super who works with other supers, not some superstitious ignorant cultist
Depends on if it works and can be replicated via scientific method, I suppose.
I came full stop at the 2nd panel when I saw the code on Anvil’s shirt and had to look up the color code to see if it was, in fact, her shirt color. So no, not too subtle…
Likewise. I was like, “wtf is that” then “ooh! color code!” then “gotta check”.
Convert the hex to a number (the entire hex, not the separate RGB values) for the rest of the joke ;)
That’s the hex code for her shirt, isn’t it? *checks* Aww yiss.
And for what’s *in* her shirt.
(convert to decimal)
I feel like Anvil and Max’s mugs contradict each other. There can be only one best glamazon!
Same. Definitely not too subtle for the crowd that reads this comic.
Strange, I was replying to a different post with the above. I was talking about the shirt color code, which I looked up to confirm before finishing the comic.
Also, I think Anvil’s mug reads “Blamazon”.
It’s Glamazon, I bet Anvil picked one up for both, as a joke at first, but it fits them both! Just zoom in on both, you’ll see.
nah, It’s Blamazon. Move in more. It’s why the mug is black.
Does it? I actually can’t tell what that first letter is. Zooming maybe it is a B or an O?
I disagree, at maximum zoom it is a fuzzy B, with the top hole a bit larger than the bottom one and no space in the lower part of the top right side curve like there is in the G on the cup Maxima is holding.
Now I feel bad. I knew what color that code was without looking it up.
I was actually at a hardware store two days ago asking for paint by its hex code number because I couldn’t be arsed to go through their color swatches and find their seasonal bullshit name for it.
It’s hard to see, but Anvil’s mug reads “Blamazon”
Thank you for the clarification! :D
Maxima is a gold amazon, and therefore the World’s Best Glamazon.
Anvil is a black amazon, and therefore the #1 Blamazon.
:)
I love that Maxima is so overshadowed in panel 4. I am sure she enjoys NOT being the tallest/biggest/most grandiose when she’d around Anvil. At first I thought that Anvil had a few strands of her hair dyed blue, but upon further inspection – Nope, that’s Maxima pulling the ol’ Scooby Stack!
Though Max is leaning against the wall, which could drop your height a few inches compared to Anvil, who’s standing straight up.
Really wasn’t all that subtle. I thought it was an artifact, a note left over from editing.
like 4th degree burns
No such official term.
There is,
Fourth-degree burns go through both layers of the skin and underlying tissue as well as deeper tissue, possibly involving muscle and bone. There is no feeling in the area since the nerve endings are destroyed.
You just described third degree burns. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/burns
If you’re not American, perhaps it’s a regional difference?
From the description of third-degree burns on the referenced website “…When bones, muscles, or tendons are also burned, this may be referred to as a fourth-degree burn. ”
So, you’re both correct.
Heh, portable regen tech won out, I’m sure the doc is loving the fact she doesn’t have to strain and enjoying her “favorite” patient’s displeasure at the situation. If I had a nickle for every… Well not rich, but pretty jingly. Take the hint Sydney, NO socks on the mat, bare feet or work-out shoes!
Ah yes, the timeless “Nazis bad” joke where it could have simply been a Hell’s Angels token white gang reference.
Now tell us how Maxima feels about Israel / Hamas.
Yes. The most important thing is that we consider Nazis’ feelings, and make,sure nobody acts like they are anything but “very fine people”. And we must immediately pivot to The Evil Jew.
Nazis are trash. Their ideology is pure evil. There are no good ones. It really n is that simple
Hey, look, the dishonest “very fine people” smear again!
Even SNOPES finally gave up on that one (about 7 years later…).
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
From a few sentences down in the exact same interview where the “very fine people” quote comes from:
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
Not sure how much more explicit one can get on that.
The “both sides” that had “very fine people” were the two sides on the issue of taking down historical statues or not. And yes, there were indeed “very fine people” on both sides of that debate.
There were very trash people on both sides of that debate, too.
“Nazis bad” is hardly a controversial position, unless you’re a Nazi.
My main problem with comments like Max’s are that it *minimizes* the actual Nazis. There have been MANY racial supremacist groups, there have even been many white supremacist groups, no reason to use “Nazis” as shorthand for “white supremacist” when they were that *and much more*.
A simple KKK reference, for instance, would be much more relevant in this situation. It’s even the same country.
When they have swastika tattoos and call themselves Aryan Nation…
– ” It’s even the same country.”
I hate Illinois Nazis. (Do I really need to link the clip?)
Illinois nazis?
Blues Brothers reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0
Based on a real group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nazi_Party
Ohhh. And I’m guessing the ‘court case’ they’re talking about is based on the RL Skokie case?
I think I’ve only ever seen the last 15 minutes of that movie so the reference completely went over my head. Thanks.:)
I think it’s used as shorthand mainly because:
1) Neo-nazis are generally white supremacists, hold most of the same views as the original nazis (or at least see themselves as the inheritors of that twisted ideology) and so people will sometimes skip the ‘neo’ part since it’s just semantics at that point.
2) The Nazi party was one of, if not THE, most evil political and societal group in history due to its directed genocidal policies and malicious intents, so it’s a pejorative slur name for any group that holds racist and bigoted viewpoints that involve racial superiority and/or genocidal views. So I can understand why people default to using it when a group falls under being a white supremacist group.
Point 1: Yes. The “Neo” in “Neo-Nazi” is frequently superflous.
Point 2: Pretty much all white supremacist groups share 90% of the NSDAP’s other bigotries and goals. (Swap Germany for whatever country they’re in and Hitler for whatever strongman leader is running in their country and you cover most of the rest) So it’s kinda downplaying how bad they are by not acknowledging that.
(Including the jew-hating. Quite a lot of Nazis are pro-Israel, becuase it’s puting all the Jews in a box, and there’s Christian doomsday prophecy requirements about it that involve all the Jews dying after they’re all in Israel)
– Ah yes, the timeless “Nazis bad” joke
How to tell us you’re a Nazi without…
Why are you so upset about a Nazis Bad joke?
ACK ! NITPICKING SPOT ITCHING !!!
The “national socialism” politic theory, from where the acronym “nazi” is derived, is actually quite sound : “our people and our nation first”.
Strangely, it’s kinda like the whole patriotism idea of the U S of A …
Even more strange, the staunchest supporters of “nationnal socialism” were found in the U S of A before WW2 …
BUT !!!!
It is NOT the ideology behind the “final solution” and the extermination of everything not fitting into the predetermined “Aryan Ideal” (that NONE of the real nazis even approached).
What *SOME* very extremist, racist, evil, bigoted, horrible, deluded people did while proclaiming to be “nationnal socialists” has NOTHING to do with said political theory, it’s once more a case of utterly vicious people in positions of power completely abusing said power for their own gain.
The “bad nazis” went so far as to murder, torture, deport their own population, the “moderate” Germans, all the while pretending to work for “the german people first and foremost”.
Communism, as a political theory of “everyone is equal and works for everyone” is in the same situation, because SOME people considered themselves “more equal” than others, and there are still repercutions today : the fustercluck between Russia and Ukraine is due to the two northernmost provinces of Ukraine, of russian language, culture and origin, being donated to a couple of “more equal than others” people when the USSR still existed, but those two provinces were NEVER of Ukranian origin and culture.
YES, of course, what is colloquially known the world over as “nazis” are horrible, vicious, utterly mad people, but do not confuse the vast majority of the Germans from WW2, even the soldiers, that DID NOT agree with those extreme measures as “all nazis”. Even high ranking officers were either not informed of what really happened, or were staunchly AGAINST those exactions (and executed for that under the heading “treason”).
I’m extremely well informed about that particular subject, with my grandparents being war refugees from Ukraine during WW2, who fled BOTH the communist regime AND the push of the german armies (and the nazis that were in those armies).
And that bit with “Israel / Hama” is also so wrong it hurts : Israel is, according the the Torah, NOT a physical place but the Promised Paradise of the Jewish people, while the STATE of Israel was created from nothing by the U S of A as a way of reparation, and the Hamas is a political party (with really extreme views) and NOT a state.
Lastly, if you think the Hell’s Angels are even slightly “nice”, you’re sorely mistaken : it’s one of the most violent of all biker gangs, if not THE most violent. That “1%” tattoo meaning they have killed police officers in cold blood comes from the Hell’s Angels, even if they did some nice-ish things back in the 1960’s like security at concert, they are now amongst the top worldwide criminal organisations.
Amalgamation of what less than 0.1% of a particular human population did into “the whole bunch is pure evil” is how the holocaust in question got started : ONE man in history had several bad experiences with THREE men of jewish ascent, and decided that exterminating a whole culture, plus homosexuals, opponents and everyone not willing to blindly follow was the best idea, disguising that idea under an official political facade of rebuilding a country that had been trashed AND harshly punished for 20 years.
DO NOT BE LIKE HIM. BE BETTER THAN THAT !
You are missing a very important difference here though.
Once my favorite political idea has been subverted and fully overtaken by a historicly cruel anti semitic totalitarian regime. I am obliged to, and really should want to, distance myself and my cherished idea as far as possible from this situation.
So one of the first moves (after laying low for a long while) would be to rebrand my concept very far from its original branding.
So if you like any ideas that are shared by nazi Germany, you simply MUST understand the historical need to find a different name for your idealism. While you are at it probably should make sure it has strong opinions about the wrongs of dehumanizing and othering foreign nationals to actually distance it from the Nazis.
Conversely if you do insist on keeping the monicker… well you are kind of inviting the comparison.
TLDR: The name “national socialism” means Nazi Germany now and will for a long while. Find a new name or proclaim to kinda like Nazi ideas.
Why are you doing Nazi apologeia?
Seriously, why are you defending the Nazis?
The main point was, that not all German’s during WWII were Nazi’s, and not all of those who were part of the National Socialists Party were racist bigoted cunts
If you can’t tell the difference between a Nazi and a National Socialist, then you are the problem
– “the difference between a Nazi and a National Socialist”
Honey, you’re doing Nazi apologeia too…
The nazi party was the “National Socialist German Workers” Party. The word ‘nazi’ was shortened from the word ‘Nationalsozialismus’ (national socialist).
You saying that every member of the party held the same hateful view?
That’s like saying every member of… whatever party Trump is in feel the same as those who wear the MAGA caps and stormed the Capitol
I am saying that the word nazi is literally shorthand for the german word for national socialist – NAtionalsoZIalismus.
Yep. Shorthand most widely used as a derogative term by opponents of the Nazis, and not widely at all by the Nazis themselves.
As for Guesticules’ “every member” comment…not much of the German population were card carrying members—in 1939 about 6 million out of a population of nearly 87 million, less than 7%. The majority of card-carrying members are going to fall pretty in-line with party dogma (not including folks who were automatically enrolled during events like Hitler’s birthday). Most of the rest of the public kind of just shrugged and went along in that “it doesn’t directly affect me, so it can’t be that bad” way that’s so common.
For comparison: most recent data I could quickly google-fu says in the US the % is about 32 for Dems and 23 for Repubs (indies, 39ish).
I remember reading a psychology report about Germans and why a population would so blindly and completely go along with the nazi party’s ideology when, as you said, the actual card-carrying nazi party members were small in relation to Germany’s population. And apparently it was ingrained in German society to follow or agree with government authority or, at the very least, not dissent openly or otherwise. Which seems to be a large part of the admonishment of the German people’s mindset when faced with authority figures in the ‘First They Came’ confessional article by Pastor Martin Niemoller (who was initially an antisemitic Nazi supporter but whose views changed after he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for speaking out against Nazi control of churches).
You know the one – “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out, etc etc.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
At this point nothing remains of the word ‘nazi’ except for what the German National Socialist Party made it mean. You’re doing the equivalent of pointing out that ‘mercy’ and ‘mercenary’ have the same latin root – it’s true but confusing the two is not a mistake any modern speakers make.
Just mentioning – the word ‘nazi’ did not exist until the German National Socialist Party. The word nazi is an abbreviation for nationalsozialist, since the word comes from the word nationalsozialist (which means National Socialist in German). The roots being ‘Nati’ (german root word for National) and Sozi (german root word for socialist).
Therefore, obviously nothing would remain of the word nazi except for what the German National Socialist Party made it mean, since the word did not exist at all prior to them.
PS – the word mercenary did not come from the word mercy and they don’t technically share the same root word even.- the word ‘mercenary’ came from the Latin word ‘mercenarius’ (which means ‘one who does anything for pay’ or ‘hired for money’). While mercy comes from the old french word ‘merci,’ which means ‘pity’ or ‘thanks’, which in turn came from the Latin word ‘merced (which meant pity, favor, or heavenly reward).
The name National Socialism was basically an attempt to toss a couple of buzzwords together to attract people (and the National Socialist Workers Party grew out of the German Worker’s Party.
It was explicitly racist and anti-sematic from the start with a platform of removing citizenship from Jews, Poles, Slavs, blacks …
They were part of an attempt to take over the government by force in 1923
Hitler Dictated Mein Kampf in 1924, it was clearly about race and presented the “the Jewish peril” as an international conspiracy controlling the German Parliament, Marxists and Social Democrats. It contains the statements
“the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated”
and
“If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”
So the racist basis of the Nazi party was present years before they achieved power, with Hitler – as leader of the party -explicitly calling for genocide, mass killing of Jews…
So the idea that it wasn’t there from the start is rubbish (as is the whole idea of a racial hierarchy)
Didn’t matter how long the family had been in Germany, were commended soldiers from WWI, if they were Jewish they were vermin
Shortly after coming into power the party militant wing launched attacks against Synagogues, Jew owned businesses
The Nuremberg Racial laws came into effect in 1935 and banned marriage between aryan germans and Blacks, Romani, Jews
The idea that “nazism must be fine because America did some of the same things” seems to be taking the wrong lesson from the similar behaviour.
America was a massively racist country, the treatment of Native Americans, Blacks, Asians and many minority groups from Europe was horrific (and one of the main ways minorities gained acceptance was joining in on the oppression of Black people)
The idea that the German population was unaware of the racism behind the party and the attempted Genocide during WWII is ludicrous. Hitler had been publicly calling for the extermination of European Jews since at least 1939, they sure as hell weren’t being sent to camps for a rest cure and there were stories of mass graves (holding tens of thousand of people) and shooting them when they couldn’t work anymore documented in Germany from 1941 onwards, they may not have known about gas chambers but by 43 there was testimony in court that Jews were being killed by gas – including prosecuting a furniture delivery man for stating that Jews were loaded onto wagons and killed by gassing…
So no, you don’t get to say “the basic philosophy of Nazism was fine” and “most people didn’t know what was going on”, if they didn’t know it was willful ignorance
Don’t forget that the Nazis also hated queer people.
The first book burnings (and where most of the famous pictures of them come from) were from the buring of the first modern trans clinic in the world, in 1933. (Magnus Hirchfeld’s “Institute for sexology”)
And Germany only got rid of a Nazi-era anti-abortion law in the 2020s.
If you look at Project 2025 and compare it to NSDAP policy, you will see a truly terrifying number of similarities.
“while the STATE of Israel was created from nothing by the U S of A as a way of reparation”
Citation, please. This is drastically different than my understanding of the history of the creation of modern Israel and I would like to read more about this view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
I mean, if they’d said that Israel was created by the British doing more colonialism after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, they’d at least be mostly right.
(Yes, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the broad strokes, other than “A lot of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany went there”)
Summary of Lorcryst Ny’Sell:
No True Scotsman applied to Nazis vs socialists, dishonest historical revisionism applied to Israel.
Seriously, man, just don’t. It’s been attempted by people better at it than you, it still failed, and it’s long gone beyond tiresome.
You had Ein Volk, Ein Reich, why’d you leave out Ein Fuhrer?
A depressing number of Nazi apologists in the comments today.
Woah. I ain’t reading all that crap, ya fuckin Nazi
“Nazis bad” is not a joke. They, to put it mildly, suck.
““Nazis bad” is not a joke. They, to put it mildly, suck.”
I posted something similar to this above, but I’ll send it directly at you.
Using “Nazi” to refer to all white supremacists *devalues* the term. The Nazis were every bad thing about racial supremacists PLUS several other very bad things.
It would be something like using “Dahmer” as a term to refer more generally to murderers. Save it for the “overachievers”, as it were.
– “It would be something like using “Dahmer” as a term to refer more generally to murderers. Save it for the “overachievers”, as it were.”
Why are you bringing up a murderer from 30 years ago for this example?
“Rittenhousing” for instance, works rather well for a specific catagory of murderer.
– “The Nazis were every bad thing about racial supremacists PLUS several other very bad things.”
Strangely enough, almost every white supremacist is *also* all those other bad things that the NSDAP were.
Funny that.
“Rittenhousing”
You’re comparing all murderers to what is likely the best- and most-documented case of self-defense in the history of mankind? That’s weird.
The guy literally RAN AWAY from the guy chasing him, who literally said, “I’m going to kill you” without any provocation. He only defended himself when he got cornered.
There’s government video of the event from above. There’s drone footage of both the moments immediately before and after (the actual shooting is out of frame to the left, as Rittenhouse was fleeing from the aggressor who was, by the aggressor’s own words, trying to kill him). There’s phone footage of the crowd chasing him down (as he ran towards the police, where he attempted to turn himself in), assaulting him from behind (did you know there are people beaten to death with skateboards every few years? It’s at least as dangerous as a 2X4 of the same length), and pulling a gun on him, etc., where he defended himself again, with FAR more trigger discipline than the vast majority of police officers show in legitimate shooting situations.
It is, again, literally among the most, if not THE most, well-documented case of self-defense in the history of mankind. Not sure what else to do with that.
And, judging by the other people killed by the rioting mobs of Saint George, if Rittenhouse hadn’t defended himself and instead been brutally murdered, you (and a WHOLE LOT of other people) would not care.
Not sure what else do with this. The facts are far more well-documented than almost any other public-interest event in my lifetime. If you can’t deal with that, you’re just not interested in facts or honesty.
If David Duke walked into a predominantly black bar, with a gun, wearing a shirt that said “I hate N****rs” (without the censorship) and a Klan hood, and started talking loudly about “the good old days of cotton farming” he would probably also have a pretty solid legal case of self-defence.
Doesn’t mean he didn’t walk in there with the intent to kill some black people and a plan to do it in a way that keeps him out of jail.
“If David Duke walked into…”
And that whole paragraph has any relevance to Rittenhouse……. how?
Oh wait, are you one of those deliberately misinformed people who think the people Rittenhouse killed in self defense were black?
I mean, not that it would actually matter, since none of Rittenhouse’s behaviour was racist or provoking of anyone on nearly any grounds (save those provoked by the legal open carrying of a firearm).
Some random white pedo with additional mental problems goes after him for nothing, and somehow, he’s the bad guy because…. black people? Or something? I really can’t follow the logic.
– “And that whole paragraph has any relevance to Rittenhouse……. how?”
Oh, you’re pretending you can’t see it.
Cool beans.
– “Local white kid”
For anyone else reading this: He wasn’t local. He had to cross state lines to be there.
Just going to mention this for clarity’s sake:
Yes and no. Kyle Rittenhouse was local, AND he also had to cross state lines. This was brought up in the court case.
1) Rittenhouse lived (still lives?) with his mother in Antioch, Illinois, while his father lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin. So he was frequently in Kenosha as he went between Kenosha and Antioch, as his parents are divorced and his father has visitation rights where Rittenhouse went to Kenosha.
2) Rittenhouse was a member of the local Kenosha police cadet program. So in that respect, he was ‘local.’
3) Antioch, Illinois is only about 20 miles away from Kenosha, Wisconsin – so it doesnt really take more than 20-30 minutes with traffic. So by distance, he was also technically local. It’s sort of like how I’ve had work in New Jersey despite living in New York City (I passed the bar in 4 states, and NJ is one of them, not including federal court). To get to New Jersey from where I live, it’s literally a 10 minute drive over the bridge – so it is going to take me less time to drive into New Jersey (and is closer) than to go into Manhattan (it usually takes me about 2 hours to get to the court buildings in Manhattan), or even to my office.
“– “Local white kid”
For anyone else reading this: He wasn’t local. He had to cross state lines to be there.”
For anyone else reading this, he literally had a job in the city where he worked several days a week, and “cross state lines” doesn’t mean a long distance when the city is right next to the state line.
Not sure how “I work here several days a week, and my commute is less than 30 minutes” isn’t “local”.
Oh right, that’s inconvenient to The Narrative, so The Party SAYS it isn’t. Right.
More deception from Illy. Not even surprised anymore.
But… got any other nits to pick? Got any answer to what I posted last? For reference:
“What does ANY of that have to do with racism by the kid? Help me out here. Where’s the magic that turns “white kid defends himself from aggressive white pedo” into racism against black people?”
I didn’t even list “local” in that, so I didn’t have to take it out to meet your dishonest claim. Answer? Or are you just full of crap?
Why do you insist on calling his first victim a “pedo”? How does that pertain? Unless your argument is that Rittenhouse believed that the man was attempting to sexually assault him, it has no bearing on whether or not Rittenhouse was right in shooting him.
People correctly identified him as a threat, and attempted to disarm him. Those he shot were also acting in self defense. If you were to see someone running away with a gun, and hear people shouting that that has shot and killed someone, what would you do? Are you going to assume that the shooting was justified, and that you yourself will not be a target and shot?
Deoxy likely called him a pedophile because Joseph Rosenbaum WAS a pedophile, convicted in 2002 and, as an ex-convict who was also on parole, was supposed to be prohibited from possessing a firearm, but he was carrying and had been pointing an illegal firearm at Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse shot him. So it would not be because Rittenhouse thought he was going to get sexually assaulted, but rather that he was about to be shot by Rosenbaum. Pointing out the pedophile conviction is what, in the law, is considered ‘character evidence’ against Rosenbaum to attack Rosenbaum’s credibility … which can and was used in court during cross examination.
As for the self-defense argument claim you made (which was not actually made in court by Rosenbaum as far as I remember), Rosenbaum was not acting in self-defense. IF you see someone running away with a gun, and you hear people showing that he shot and killed someone, trying to shoot that person is NOT self defense. Self Defense is requires (1) an unprovoked attack against the person making the self defense claim, (2) which threatens IMMINENT injury or death, and (3) they must use a reasonable degree of force, (4) used in response to an OBJECTIVELY reasonable fear of injury or death.
If a person is running away from you, then elements 2 and 4 of the self defense argument does not exist, and under cross examination, Rosenbaum had admitted that Rittenhouse did not make the initial attack against Rosenbaum (which was also shown on video from several angles).
“Why do you insist on calling his first victim a “pedo”?”
Rittenhouse was the victim. The first person he shot in self-defense was, literally, as pedophile, hence “pedo”. Rittenhouse (as the left was so fond of pointing out) was 17. Seems, you know… relevant? Also, there’s no easy short-hand for “crazy” that people like you wouldn’t find offensive (he had literally been released from a mental facility earlier that day). The man was not stable, mentally speaking.
Do you remember the Ahmaud Arbery case? This was a case where a career thief was casing a house under construction (“casing” for the sake of later theft being a felony all on its own in that state), and the men in question called the police and chased him down (explicitly, it was HIM, not just some random black guy – they had him, specifically, on film).
When he charged them across open ground and tried to take a weapon from one of them (timing-wise, it was almost certainly in response to the police sirens, coming because, again, those men had called the police), the man he was trying to take the gun from shot him.
From following the trial closely, do you know why those men were found guilty? Because one of them called out to Arbery during the chase that they were going to kill him. Everything else about the case would match up just fine to a citizen’s arrest (as the law was on the books at the time). Arbury himself was caught committing a felony, so his self-defense rights were compromised, as well, not to mention that charging men with guns across open ground *when you can hear the police on the way* is __incredibly__ stupid and an extremely strong implication that he was guilty (he knew the police would be arresting him, not them).
But that one thing changed everything. They lost their right to self-defense over it. I wish there was some middle-ground position, since that level of “all or nothing” seems poor in many cases, but there it is. The only person I really think got screwed there was the guy following them, filing everything.
The pedo Rittenhouse killed in self-defense literally said he was going to kill him, then chased him down and charged him. That is boringly-obvious self-defense in every single state in the country.
That the crowd then decided he was a threat *does not make him a threat*. He was open-carrying (legal in that state) and running (legal…uh, everywhere?), but he wasn’t threatening anyone in any way.
The rumor mill saying “that guy over there killed someone” doesn’t remove someone’s right to self-defense. He was literally trying to go turn himself in to the police for the killing, because that’s the right thing to do, even in clear cases of self-defense.
Rittenhouse hadn’t done anything wrong, so he still had his right to self-defense. Members of the crowd assaulted him, both with weapons and with “personal weapons” (feet, in this case).
A crown beat-down is a VERY VERY VERY dangerous thing. It’s VERY easy to die in that case. It was definitely a threat to Rittenhouse’s life. Yes, people are beaten to death with skateboards every year or two – they are large blunt objects that swing nicely.
So he defended himself again, with incredible trigger discipline (the police often mag-dump in such cases), literally only firing at those who directly assaulted him or point a weapon at him.
None of this is hard to understand. It’s **INCREDIBLY** well-documented.
The guys in the crowd who assaulted Rittenhouse were like the dishonest media accounts of the guys who killed Arbery. The best possible thing to say about them is that they were well-intentioned fools who assaulted someone based on rumor.
“People correctly identified him as a threat, and attempted to disarm him.”
No, they INCORRECTLY identified him as a threat, and they did more than “attempt to disarm him”.
“If you were to see someone running away with a gun, and hear people shouting that that has shot and killed someone, what would you do?”
Obviously, you BEAT THAT GUY DOWN, on the *possibility* that he’s the guy who did the shooting! /sarc
“Those he shot were also acting in self defense.”
No, they were not. “Random guy running by” is not a threat. CHASING SOMEONE DOWN is not “acting in self-defense”. You would not remotely make that claim in other cases. You are letting what you WANT to be true to influence you over the facts.
“people like you”. I thought you were opposed to that kind of generalization. Did you really need something shorter than “crazy”?
The primary purpose calling him a pedo serves is to argue that he was “bad”, and that it’s therefore good that he died. But whether or not he deserved to die is irrelevant to whether or not Rittenhouse was right in killing him. That’s now how the law works. Justice is not “good guys” killing “bad guys”.
I agree that the evidence shows that Rittenhouse was under attack by someone who had threatened to kill him, had a right to defend himself, even though Rosenbaum was unarmed. But I believe it reasonable that those who pursued him thought that they were under attack, and that if they did not disarm him, more of them would be shot.
Once someone has killed someone, how do you tell the difference between someone who is running away, and no longer poses a threat, and someone who is simply trying to create distance so that they can continue to kill people? If the situation had been a school shooting, or a sniper taking shots at people, would you be arguing that bystanders should just let the shooter run away? That they can safely assume they won’t be shot at next? Or should they be attempting to stop the shooter? If you allow a shooter to run away, they still have the ability to attack from a distance. If someone does not have a gun, their only defense against a shooter is to either find cover, or close the distance and disarm the shooter.
Huber and Grosskreutz were both attempting to disarm a shooter. But I acknowledge that Rittenhouse had no way of knowing whether or not they would attempt to kill him once he was disarmed. And that is my problem with this notion of lethal self-defense. You can have two people both believing that they are attempting to kill the other in self-defense, and we only get to hear one perspective, because the other person is dead. I just see it as a tragedy, regardless. The ideal outcome is that nobody dies, not that the “good guy” kills the “bad guy”.
“The primary purpose calling him a pedo serves is to argue that he was “bad”, and that it’s therefore good that he died.”
He was bad, and he was doing an actively bad thing. That he died is unfortunate for him and a complete plus for the rest of our society.
And you understand exactly why pointing out that he was a pedo and crazy is relevant – for the same kinds of reasons that people on the left so often try to turn politically convenient criminals into innocent child victims, like Travon Martin (showing pictures 5 years old from when he was in middle school) or Michael Brown (“gentle giant”… who just strong-arm robbed a convenience store immediately before hand, I’ve watched the security footage).
It’s hard to believe some kind, innocent little baby-faced sweety-pie would do X horrible thing, and it’s easy to believe crazy pedo would. The actual facts in the case should control! And in this case (and a good many others, actually, though of course not remotely all), those two things line up exactly as people tend to think, which is convenient.
““people like you”. I thought you were opposed to that kind of generalization.”
You know, that’s at least somewhat fair. My verbiage was poor there, and I apologize. Complaining about the term “crazy” is VERY common on the left, even when it is completely called for (well, except their political opponents, they call them that on the regular), so I should have been more specific in which grouping I was making, as it’s one that you seem to agree with. Am I wrong on that? You seem to be a self-acknowledged “person of the left”, yes?
“But I believe it reasonable that those who pursued him thought that they were under attack, and that if they did not disarm him, more of them would be shot.”
Then you are unfamiliar with a great many things, either facts in this case or law more generally.
“Guy running by with a gun” is not a threat, no matter what the rumor mill says. “Guy with a gun running away from you” is also not *inherently* a threat. Unless you have some other *specific* reason to think he is a threat (rumor mill does not count), he is not.
Chasing someone down who is not doing anything threatening is not “self defense”.
This is not hard stuff. But even MORE ridiculously, Rittenhouse does not lose his own right to self defense, EVEN IF your assertions were true.
If I were running along carrying a gun, unless I had committed a crime, if someone assaults me, I can defend myself, both legally and morally. Their justification for their assault of my person *IS IRRELEVANT* to whether I am allowed to defend myself (assuming I have not committed a crime directly relevant to the current situation).
A mob chasing a guy down is not “under attack”. Shots fired somewhere nearby does not mean random guy with a gun is on a shooting spree (also, in the videos, there were plenty of OTHER people firing, both before and after, none of which were Rittenhouse, but all of which were armed).
“And that is my problem with this notion of lethal self-defense. You can have two people both believing that they are attempting to kill the other in self-defense, and we only get to hear one perspective, because the other person is dead.”
It does very, very rarely happen, even if this was not one of those cases (again, ***INCREDIBLY*** well documented). And yes, it is tragic.
But until someone comes up with a means of self defense that is as effective as lethal means, that’s what we have. Only the criminal having lethal force is a non-starter, and trying to get the criminals disarmed is a non-starter (see “fully automatic guns made in prison” for only the best example among MANY of how ridiculous that concept is).
Happily, having lethal force available to citizens is definitely a net-plus for the body count in this country, as even the most ridiculously small, bad-faith estimate of defensive gun uses EVERY YEAR is several 10s of thousands, with the more good-faith estimates being between 500,000 to somewhere between 1 and 2 million (obviously not remotely all of those would be murder otherwise, of course). The higher-end estimates are even higher than that, but may suffer from similar bad faith as the low-end one, so I don’t include that.
Of course, Uber, Grosskreutz (who WAS breaking the law by having that gun, by the way, as he admitted on the stand, not that he was ever prosecuted…), and the unnamed black guy who kicked Rittenouse in the head while he was down would not NEED a firearm or ANY weapon for the result to have been lethal – crowd beatdowns with just feet and fists is **QUITE** sufficient to the task! Another reason why the “non-lethal” pipedream remains a pipedream for the foreseeable future.
I wish the world was different, but it is not.
“The ideal outcome is that nobody dies, not that the “good guy” kills the “bad guy”.”
And until the day comes when we can change the world in ways that we currently CAN not, I will prefer the same… but settle for “guy not doing bad” kills “guy doing bad” and not be all that upset about it.
In this case, the “guy not doing bad” was Rittenhouse. The “guy doing bad” was Rosenbaum (he was also a “bad guy”, as is not always but often the case in things like this). The other three were, *AT BEST*, being idiots playing a VERY VERY stupid game.
Hmm, several posts on this thread have been deleted, and now not everything is lining up with what it originally responded to.
Not complaining, just pointing it out to any who read this later, as some of the posts no longer make sense, as the post there were responding to is gone.
I posted about trimming the thread as none of it had anything to do with the comic and honestly I don’t want google trawling the site and sending more spirited sectarian debate this way, but I didn’t leave that post up for long before axing it. There’s a lot more stuff in this thread in particular I considered trimming but I really don’t want to be that guy, and also spending a lot of time policing comments is not productive.
I can’t believe calling nazis dipshits is in any way controversial, and no, that’s not an invitation to further nuanced takes on the subject. In the Grrl-verse, nazis are dipshits. End of thread.
“I posted about trimming the thread as none of it had anything to do with the comic…”
As I said, not at all a complaint – that you have put up with the level of discussion we’ve had has been appreciated (at least by me), so thank you for hosting it. I hadn’t even considered the “trawl by google” bit.
I just didn’t want people coming after to be confused, that’s all.
“Strangely enough, almost every white supremacist is *also* all those other bad things that the NSDAP were.”
Really? “almost every white supremacist” invades other countries? Kills civilians indiscriminately? Commits organized mass murder on scale only ever otherwise seen only in communist countries? Scientifically experiments on “undesirables” of various stripes? Frames their political opponents in large-scale false-flag events?
Again, the KKK is a good stand-in for “white supremacist” more generally, and they did NONE of those things, while still being vile racial supremacists.
Reserve the extreme words for extreme cases, or you devalue those extreme words.
When the little old church lady says F***, it hits a LOT harder than the classic cliched sailor saying it, where it means nothing because he says it every other word.
“Crying wolf” on your political opponents always being Nazis or Jeffrey Dahmer just gets people to ignore you.
– “Really? “almost every white supremacist” invades other countries? Kills civilians indiscriminately? Commits organized mass murder on scale only ever otherwise seen only in communist countries? Scientifically experiments on “undesirables” of various stripes? Frames their political opponents in large-scale false-flag events?”
Ahh, you’re conflating actions with beliefs.
Nice try though.
Incidentally, the KKK shared most of their beliefs with the NSDAP as well.
No, I’m pointing out that the Nazis **ACTUALLY DID A BUNCH OF REALLY BAD STUFF** regardless of race issues, while the vast majority racial supremacists *have not and do not DO that stuff*.
It’s not “conflation”, **IT’S THE POINT**.
To continue the Dahmer analogy, there are almost certainly other people with Dahmer’s problems… who *resisted* the compulsion, got help, and did not *DO* the horrible stuff.
It’s the difference between a moron with bad beliefs (like you) and a moron who *follows through on those beliefs* in horrible ways to people (like rounding up their political opponents and putting them in camps, as some Democrats publicly talk about doing to Trump supporters and conservatives more generally).
Yeap. You’re conflating the Nazis at the height of their power with the modern Nazi movement that is currently gathering power, and saying “Look, they don’t have power, so they can’t be Nazis!”
Why are you defending Nazis, btw?
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1200369-everyone-i-dont-like-is-hitler
Pointing out that people who aren’t Nazis are in fact not Nazis is not “defending Nazis”.
Please seek help. Reality misses you.
“You’re conflating the Nazis at the height of their power with the modern Nazi movement that is currently gathering power, and saying “Look, they don’t have power, so they can’t be Nazis!””
The KKK at the height of their power ALSO didn’t do almost any of those extra things.
The white people in South Africa at the height of their power also didn’t do almost ANY of those extra things.
The Nazis did a whole of lot of really horrible, evil stuff that are not remotely inherent to racial supremacism.
I’m not DEFENDING Nazis, I’m pointing out that even other pretty crappy people aren’t nearly as bad as the Nazis, so calling everyone who isn’t pure as driven snow “Nazis” *devalues* the term.
That’s it.
Well, besides that, there’s also concluding that people who want to make the trains run on time are clearly fascists (since “making the trains run on time” was something Musilinni was known for), which is the sort of logic you are using, too, but that’s a deeper problem, and not one I feel like wasting time fighting.
Do I really need to go dig out the charelottesville footage?
“Do I really need to go dig out the charelottesville footage?”
I’ve seen it (yep, horrible white supremacists), but if it would make you feel better, go ahead.
Not sure what you think it would change in this discussion. Are tiki torches super-secret code for something?
– “yep, horrible white supremacists”
Who were waving Swastika flags (and other Nazis symbols) and shouting “Gas the Jews” (Except they were using racial slurs for Jews)
But you’re going to claim they weren’t Nazis, somehow.
“Who were waving Swastika flags (and other Nazis symbols) and shouting “Gas the Jews” (Except they were using racial slurs for Jews)”
Those guys did seem to certainly be neo-Nazis (as someone around here said, the “neo” part is largely superfluous).
That there actually are example of white supremacist groups that ARE reasonably accused of being neo-Nazis does not in any way mean that all white supremacists are neo-Nazis.
That’s ….. the entire freaking point that I am making, actually.
But hey, using Nazi symbols, supporting mass-killing Jews for the ‘crime’ of being Jews… there’s this other group doing that these days that seems to get a LOT of support from your side of the aisle…
“(as someone around here said, the “neo” part is largely superfluous).”
That would be me who said that. :)
Oh wait no. I said it was just a matter of semantics at that point. Then Illy agreed with me by saying the neo part was superfluous.
The question is wether they haven’t don’t those things because they don’t want to, or because they don’t think they’d get away with it.
Is it the action of killing someone that makes someone a bad person, or is it the desire to cause their death that does?
LOTS of people have the DESIRE to kill others and do not act on it, for many reasons.
But more importantly in the current context, the kinds of examples I was giving HAD power and still didn’t do many of the extra horrible things the Nazis did.
The Nazis were extra-special bad. Calling every run-of-the-mill bad person a “Nazi” is crying wolf.
Not sure why this is hard to understand.
The Nazis literally ruled a country. No matter how many people were in the KKK, they never had that much power. They met in secret. They wore hoods to disguise their identities. They simply did not have the same power, and we can only guess at what they would have done had they acquired that much political power.
How do you distinguish between a legitimate threat, and someone who will never act on that desire? If we wait until the violence actually starts, people will end up dead. At what point do we act preemptively to curb a threat?
There were several KKK members in Congress and Governorships though (11 governors, 16 senators, 75 representatives, at least one Supreme Court Justice, and a lot more state legislators, state officials, and Federal Judges), like Senators Robert Byrd, Theodore Bilbo, Joseph Brown, John Gordon, James Heflin, John Tyler Morgan, Edmund Pettus, William Pine, and Rufus Holman; Justice Hugo Black; Representatives Clifford Davis, William Upshaw, and George Gordon; and Governors Homer Adkins, Bibb Graves, Tom Terral, and Clifford Walker. And of course David Duke.
“How do you distinguish between a legitimate threat, and someone who will never act on that desire? If we wait until the violence actually starts, people will end up dead. At what point do we act preemptively to curb a threat?”
That is a great question. Human beings have struggled with it for at least centuries.
You could go watch that not-really-very-good Tom Cruise movie on “pre-crime” to see one version of how that works out horribly.
The problem, more generally, is that *we do not know the future*, and anything else but actually knowing what someone will do runs into “punish people for BadThink”.
There actually are crimes in the our law that makes attempts at this kind of thing, but they are VERY limited and fairly specific… and the left complains about at least them bitterly, all the time: self-defense laws don’t require you to let the other guy literally shoot at you first. But it DOES require that a “reasonable person” see what they are doing as direct threat of death or grievous bodily harm. It’s very much “last minute”, when the action is actually imminent.
“The Nazis literally ruled a country. No matter how many people were in the KKK, they never had that much power.”
The KKK was an arm of the Democratic Party, which held both the Presidency and both houses of Congress at various times during the KKKs existence. The KKK itself literally had many high-level government officials (both elected and not) as members. They had POWER, and yet, never even *contemplated* many of the things the Nazis actually did.
And my other example was even more extreme – the apartheid government in South Africa RULED for *decades*. They simple DID have the same power, and we KNOW what they did with it – nothing nearly as horrible as the Nazis.
“None so blind as those who WILL not see.” Open your eyes, Torabi. This is a very, very easy-to-see point if you are just willing to actually look.
You seem to be wanting to define “Nazi” as someone who has done some specific, horrible acts, but the vast majority of Nazis were not personally involved in the horrible things the party committed. “Nazi” is not an accusation of a crime, but of group membership, of holding certain beliefs or attitudes. And it’s not even enthusiastic support for the worst horrors the Nazis inflicted, but apathy towards them. “It’s not happening to me, so it’s fine.” Do you think the KKK would have fought the Nazis? Would the apartheid goverment of South Africa?
What’s horrifying about Nazi Germany isn’t that horribly evil people did horribly evil things, but that so many average “good” people went along with it. They were complicit.
So when the left calls the right Nazis, they’re not saying that they expect everyone on the right to engage in those same horrors. They’re saying the right would just stand by silently and let it happen, if not cheer it on. They’re willing pawns, just waiting for an evil leader to come along and direct them.
“So when the left calls the right Nazis, they’re not saying that they expect everyone on the right to engage in those same horrors. They’re saying the right would just stand by silently and let it happen, if not cheer it on. They’re willing pawns, just waiting for an evil leader to come along and direct them.”
Then the left is VASTLY watering down the term Nazi, to the point that it is practically meaningless. Those people are ***ALWAYS*** available, everywhere.
Also, the term “communist” would be an even worse slight. The same problem, with even worse outcomes, for a MUCH MUCH longer period of time.
But no, what you’re saying is BS justification for outright demonization.
“What’s the worst thing we can call them? OK, we’re calling them THAT!”
That’s what it has been for literally decades at this point.
“They’re saying the right would just stand by silently and let it happen, if not cheer it on. They’re willing pawns, just waiting for an evil leader to come along and direct them.”
And the left would actively participate. Go find a left-wing dictator that the left hasn’t fawned over in the last 30+ years. (“But TRUMP!” Yes, yes, ONE STANDARD. If what he did with specific leaders as part of his negotiating tactics is bad, how bad is giving them glowing reviews *just for its own sake* on the regular for decades?)
But no, really, that’s all crap. It’s just plain mindless demonization, not a considered position. Most people on the left don’t even know what a “fascist” even IS. The best translation for the vast majority of people on the left calling people “Nazi” is “poopyhead”.
Which is BAD, of course, as it’s actually POSSIBLE that real fascist behaviour could creep up at some point, and after 7 decades of crying wolf, who would believe you?
Of believe accusations from the right on the topic, either, for that matter – certainly Antifa is a pretty good analogy with the Brownshirts.
“They’re saying the right would just stand by silently and let it happen, if not cheer it on. They’re willing pawns, just waiting for an evil leader to come along and direct them.”
How does that have ANYTHING to do with your claims about Project 2025 or Agenda 47 being Nazi-like? I’d love to see your analysis on those, by the way – it would give me a much better understanding of what you really think about Nazis than the milktoast silliness you posted above (the first thing I quoted in this post).
I find it odd that your definition of Nazi would exclude the majority of card-carrying members of the Nazi party.
I did not actually claim that Project 2025 or Agenda 47 were Nazi-like, that would have been Illy. My claim was that they sought to consolidate power in the executive, dismantle the portions of the government intended to protect individuals from the rich and powerful, and permanently enshrine Republican rule by subverting elections. I would like to go through and write up my analysis of them both — I’ve found things I actually agree with in them — but I doubt that I will be able to find the time right now.
“I find it odd that your definition of Nazi would exclude the majority of card-carrying members of the Nazi party.”
That’s not what people are talking about when they talk about Nazis, or it simply wouldn’t be a very serious insult.
Also, as I pointed out, if that is what it was, “communist” would be a more serious insult AND more accurate to the problem.
“I did not actually claim that Project 2025 or Agenda 47 were Nazi-like, that would have been Illy.”
Ah, my mistake, sorry!
“My claim was that they sought to consolidate power in the executive, dismantle the portions of the government intended to protect individuals from the rich and powerful, and permanently enshrine Republican rule by subverting elections.”
You seem more reasonable than most of the people of the left I deal with, so I’m going to politely you complained when the Democrats did exactly and fairly explicitly this numerous times in the past. Because this is a RESPONSE to those things.
Otherwise, it’s just “Teacher, he hit me back first!”
But the problem is that “tit for tat” is where we are in game theory. The other mechanisms have all failed. The people who pushed this stuff need it pushed on them to understand why it is bad, since they wouldn’t listen to any other reasons.
To the extent that your characterization is correct, it does suck, I’ll agree with you on that. I would prefer things to be different.
I just said nazis suck. No mention of white supremacists.
That said, to be absolutely clear, white supremacists also suck. They’re just proto-nazis without the political clout. The number of them with swastika tattoos is pretty telling.
Yup. In a previous career, I worked as an analyst/researcher for a private security contractor. My day job involved knowing how interconnected various white supremacist and neonazi groups are, and tracking their funding. Most of those groups were not acting in isolation even 15-20 years ago, and I can guarantee it’s worse now (and some are getting money indirectly from the Kremlin for sure, it was happening a bit in Europe back when I was active.)
I definitively agree , they had invaded my country – a firsthand experience – between 1940 and 1944 …
2 exemples
Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup
Oradour-sur-Glane massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre
The FBI rates white supremist/neo-nazi groups as the top domestic terror threat
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/dems/peters-investigative-report-shows-dhs-and-fbi-are-not-adequately-addressing-domestic-terrorism-threat/
A lot of these groups deliberately and knowingly draw on Nazi and Hitler rhetoric, symbols, signs etc.
That would be so much easier to take seriously if the Democrats hadn’t compared Republicans to Nazis in **literally** every Presidential election since Eisenhower (and only not him because he literally fought the Nazis).
Go at least one election without calling Republicans Nazis. Until that happens, I no longer listen to it. It translates as “poopyhead”.
Which is HORRIBLE, of course, since the actual Nazis were really, really bad. Maybe don’t devalue the comparison for 3+ generations and still expect people to take it seriously?
Whoa, crap – replied to the wrong person somehow, sorry!
That response was meant for Illy, above, specifically his statement, “If you look at Project 2025 and compare it to NSDAP policy, you will see a truly terrifying number of similarities.”
Sorry again for my mistake on that. I’ve been interrupted a good bit today, but that’s no excuse.
– “Go at least one election without calling Republicans Nazis.”
I will, as soon as they stop being Nazis.
They started being Nazis with Nixon, who, coincidentally, was the next Republican POTUS after Eisenhower. (That was the start of the southern stratagy, and the Republican alliance with the Christian conservatives)
I could go over all the NSDAP policies, and connect them to current Republican policies, but I don’t think *you* would change your mind if they were waving swastikas and chanting “Heil Hitler.” (I know this because some of them *are* waving Swastikas and chanting “Heil Hitler”)
I wish we could like/upvote comments.
For anyone who is interested in the parallels, A. R. Moxon has written (and still is writing) a series of short essays (short by MY standards for reading/writing, yer mileage may vary) outlining the supremicism of US conservatism/the Republican Party and some touch on how it parallels Nazi policies.
“I will, as soon as they stop being Nazis.”
Right.
Which party re-segregated the military again (after the other party desegregated it)? Which party put the Japanese in concentration camps? Which party had the lion’s share of votes against the Civil Rights Act, both in numbers and percentage of their own votes?
Which party had a state governor and major Presidential candidate say, “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”? Which party opposed school integration? Which party was the party of the KKK (the American version of the brownshirts)? Which was the party of Jim Crow? Which party had a KKK chapter starter and officer serving in the Senate *until 2007*? Which party’s former President said of Obama, “A few years ago he would have been getting us coffee”? Which party’s CURRENT President “complimented” Obama by calling him “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”?
All Democrats. But sure, it’s the Republicans that are the race guys. You know, the party literally started to end slavery. Yep. Uh huh.
Don’t forget to check under your bed for Nazis.
“But sure, it’s the Republicans that are the race guys. You know, the party literally started to end slavery. Yep. Uh huh.”
Seriously? You’re not embarrassed by breaking out the “Lincoln was a Republican therefore Republicans can’t be racists” screed? Come on. Do I actually need to point out that the Republican party of a hundred and sixty years ago was the progressive party, and the Democrats were the conservatives?
Or instead of dredging up quotes from the era of segregation, maybe examine the actual policies that each party has submitted and, importantly, fought against in the last twenty years or so. When it comes time to vote, I’m not going to be doing it based on a party’s position from before we went through the bulk of the industrial revolution, two world wars, the nuclear age, the computer age, the MTV age, the dayglo age (yes, I owned some eye-wateringly neon green pants in the 90’s), the information age, etc, etc.
Your point is generally correct, DaveB, but in this specific instance, we were discussing “calling Republicans Nazis since Nixon”, which is the time period when many of these specific things happened.
Yes, “freeing the slaves” was indeed a good bit before that, but rest of it was fairly contemporary to the time period being discussed.
The point is that it’s very difficult to take the claims seriously with literally decades of crying wolf on that very topic, especially when that “crying wolf” (at least on racial topics) was more like “dishonest projection”.
If you’ll notice, I don’t bring those points up more generally, for exactly the kinds of reasons you are stating.
Aww, it’s cute that you’re pretending the party swap didn’t happen.
Why are you defending Nazis, again?
Oh right, the magic “party swap”, when the parties politely sat down and gave each other their hat. The Democrats are wearing the white hat now, and the Republicans are wearing the black one.
We know because the Democrats, who are now wearing the white had, told us so. Yep. Sure.
That’s why the Democrats are pushing for literal segregation again, because they’re the good guys… somehow. Wait, what?
Oh, sure, the verbiage has flipped, but the result is the same. Where the Democrats and their allies hold power, segregation is coming back into vogue. On college campuses, it’s segregated dorms and segregated graduation ceremonies. In public schools, it’s segregated assignments or parent meetings.
It’s for “safe spaces” for the minorities, but the end result is the same. The party of segregation, still the party of segregation. “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” indeed.
We need to tear down statues of Washington, from 200 years ago, because of horrible stuff he did, and Romney was bad because he put a dog on his car roof 50+ years ago when he was moving.
But the Democrats can have KKK officer in the Senate until 2007, and that’s TOTALLY FINE, they’re the GOOD guys, right? RIGHT?!?
The party of race is still the party of race. The only way we ever get out of all this racism crap is if we stop doing stuff by race, not just point it in different directions.
– “That’s why the Democrats are pushing for literal segregation again”
Oh dear, you actually believe that.
“Oh dear, you actually believe that”
Um, yeah? I mean, it’s being reported on in major papers all across the political spectrum? The only difference is the verbiage – to create “safe spaces” for the minorities instead of “keeping the inferior people away”, or whatever BS you like, but the end result is the same, “separate but equal”.
So yeah… I mean, when the places it’s happening proudly announce what they are doing, am I supposed to just assume they are lying about giving times and locations for things? That the people who go them them and post pictures are all in some big conspiracy to deceive everyone?
Oh dear, you won’t bother looking at any evidence at all, anywhere.
https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/class-day/ceremonies/multicultural-celebrations
That help? Feel free to check others. Harvard, University of North Texas, Ohio State, UT@Austin, etc.
Here’s a quote from UT@Austin, where they had “Spring 2022 Black Graduation”:
“an annual program that gives graduates the chance to commemorate the challenges they’ve overcome and the memories they have made throughout their college years with their classmates, friends, families, professors, and other UT Black community members.”
Not sure what else to do with that. They are proclaiming it publicly, themselves. But that’s inconvenient for what you want to believe, so it must not be true…
That’s not segregation. Words have meanings, and reality matters.
Deoxy: The difference is that they’re not pushing for minorities to be excluded from mixed events. They’re providing an extra event for those who don’t feel safe at the other one, or to discuss the specific challenges they face with other people who shared those same challenges.
How do you feel about women-only spaces? How does the same logic not apply to any group?
“How do you feel about women-only spaces? How does the same logic not apply to any group?”
Sex and race are NOT the same thing. Race is made up of things that do not really matter (shade of skin color being only the most obvious, but shape of nose, kink of hair, color of eyes, etc, etc, ad nauseum). The sexes are biologically different, as required by the biological facts of sexual reproduction and the very obvious reality of human sexual dimorphism.
But even then, you’re putting the argument in the wrong place. We already had this argument, and it failed. If that was a principled failure (and not just politically useful BS), then it doesn’t matter which race benefits.
“The difference is that they’re not pushing for minorities to be excluded from mixed events.”
When you are willing to make that argument for ALL races, then I’ll believe you. Otherwise, it’s nothing but “it’s different when we do it.”
And even then, that logic would not have (and did not) hold up under scrutiny before. No reason for it to now.
Deoxy: I’m willing to make that argument not just for all races, but for all groups. I believe the right to exclude, also expressed as “freedom of association”, is critical to all other rights. If you cannot escape someone, cannot retreat to a place they are not allowed to follow, then they can threaten and exert power over you. They can disrupt your speech and actions.
So I’m actually critical of anti-discrimination laws, even if I agree with what they’re generally trying to accomplish. I do think that private groups and spaces should be able to discriminate, and public spaces should not, but it’s not always easy to classify a space. I don’t think there’s a right to run a business, and that the government can impose certain rules on businesses. But if an event is for a specific purpose, for a specific audience, then the one hosting it should be able to exclude people not in that intended audience, and set whatever criteria they like. Otherwise, you just give power to the most disruptive people, and allow them to dominate all conversations.
“Deoxy: I’m willing to make that argument not just for all races, but for all groups. I believe the right to exclude, also expressed as “freedom of association”, is critical to all other rights. If you cannot escape someone, cannot retreat to a place they are not allowed to follow, then they can threaten and exert power over you. They can disrupt your speech and actions.”
Then you are against a LARGE amount of things done during the Civil Rights era, and opposed to a LARGE number of your lefty fellows.
In particular, in this instance, can you imagine what would happen if they had a “white graduation”?
ONE STANDARD. That is not what is actually in place, and it’s coming from the left. That you, personally, would advocate for it does not change that.
Your second paragraph, I almost completely agree with (you DO have a right to run a business – it’s called “private property”!), but that very very much flies in the face of a WHOLE LOT of what people on the left are about. Again, think of having a “whites only” event of nearly any kind today and why your fellow travelers would say, en mass, and VERY VERY VERY loudly (and almost guaranteed to be destructively, as well).
There’s a huge amount of this stuff my primary ask, sometimes my ONLY ask, is “ONE SET OF STANDARDS”. Either doing X is racist no matter who does it, or it isn’t no matter who does it. You can’t make that determination based on the race of who does it – that is, inherently and explicitly, racist… which 99% of people today at least give lip service to claiming as wrong/evil.
The left would call having a “white graduation” racist and segregation, but they celebrate having a “black graduation”. Examples by the boatload of the same kind of thing are available for male/female as well.
There’s a difference between “race conscious” and “racist”. The Democrats acknowledge that people are treated differently on account of their race, and propose that we should implement policies to either change or counteract that. The Republicans largely claim that racism either is non-existent or perfectly justifiable, which allows people to continue acting racist and implementing racist policies as long as they avoid admitting to having racist motivations for those actions.
“The Republicans largely claim that racism either is non-existent or perfectly justifiable, which allows people to continue acting racist and implementing racist policies as long as they avoid admitting to having racist motivations for those actions.”
Or, and hear me out here… at least a very large majority of them *actually don’t have racist motivations”. Wild, I know.
Also, the “perfectly justifiable” thing is BS. I won’t go so far as to say it’s non-existent (because it never will be), but it’s rare and shunned.
There is also a big difference between “non-existent” and “below the threshold that further government intervention does more harm than good”.
Government intervention is a sledge hammer, useful only for the most general of adjustments. Racializing everything all the time forever KEEPS US racist. AT SOME POINT, it has to be dropped, or it never goes away. Useful for the politicians and grifters, bad for everyone else.
But, more generally, in the vast majority of cases? What you just said is better summarized as “it’s different when we do it.” It’s BS.
The way to stop being racist is not “be racist in a different direction”. It’s “stop being racist”.
The Republican Southern Strategy was documented by people involved
“The Republican Southern Strategy was documented by people involved”
Yes. Yes it was.
Which obviously means it was wildly and fully successful, and all the racists and non-racists happily switched parties. /sarc, in case that was needed.
People have actually done analysis of that kind of thing. That one small set of morons did some bad racist crap doesn’t magically change our entire country like that.
“That’s not segregation.”
Translation: it’s different we when do it.
“Words have meanings, and reality matters.”
The second statement is true. The first statement is only as true as we can manage to make it.
The party of Separate But Equal is still the party of Separate But Equal. That you are trying to play Humpty Dumpty words games (see Alive in Wonderland), that you are still playing “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” kinds of crap does not change reality.
“below the threshold that further government intervention does more harm than good” is the argument other people are making about crime and policing that you don’t seem so eager to accept. Why should anyone accept it about racism, when they see it in their daily lives?
I agree that at some point we need to stop thinking about race. We need to get past it. But asking the people who suffer from racism to stop thinking about it before the racists do is a non-starter. You’re just asking people to suffer in silence and wait for the bullies to get bored, rather than fight back.
“But asking the people who suffer from racism to stop thinking about it before the racists do is a non-starter. You’re just asking people to suffer in silence and wait for the bullies to get bored, rather than fight back.”
That is, literally, the only way to do it. AT SOME POINT, some group must, or it keeps going forever (or until genocide of at least one of the groups). The cycle of vengeance demands it.
But more directly, the examples of horrible racism today are a GIGGLE compared to the boringly normal racism of decades ago. There has been **SO** much progress. We’ve had to get to “micro-aggressions” and other such ridiculous word-parsing and intention-assuming, if not outright fraudulent activity, to keep the “dream” alive.
If racism was so amazingly widespread, we wouldn’t have fraudulent “hate” crimes happening on the regular on college campuses. If white people are so privileged, why does all the “passing” by people go the other direction?!?
Your point about crime and policing… see, I think, at some point, this applies there, too. For only the most extreme example to prove such a point exists, the police should never be spending any significant amount of time policing jay-walking on any but the most ridiculously busy areas. The “cure” would be worse than the disease.
I’m not sure I can come up with a topic where that *doesn’t* apply at some point. Could you at least come up with a standard to judge when we get to that point? Because if I asked that question to the vast majority of people from 50+ years ago, *we’d already be there*.
We’ve already been at the point where being non-white is politically a net-plus in nearly every area of the country, and certainly at the national (Presidential) level, if simply to avoid the generic “you’re a racist” BS that always comes from one side of the aisle against any white person they don’t politically own.
I think Trump’s platform is called “Agenda 47,” not Project 2025. Project 2025 is the name of suggested policies from a conservative think tank not affiliated or adopted by Trump’s campaign, according to what I’ve read.
Project 2025 is a wish list from The Heritage Foundation, who have a lot of pull with the Republicans
For instance Trump mostly picked his judicial nominations from their approved list
Authors of the 2025 Project include Paul Dans, Roger Severino, Ken Cuccinelli, Christopher Miller, and Russ Vought with Ed Martin also having input
Martin and Vought produced the Republican Party Platform
Miller is one of Trump’s top advisors and his group is part of the advisory board for Project 2025, the other names mentioned were part of the first Trump administration and likely to be part of the second if he wins
Both Project 2025 and Trump have said they want to make loyalty to Trump the main factor in the DOJ
From what I recall, a lot of the Republican party doesn’t particularly like Trump in the first place, although they are backing him since he pretty decisively won the Republican nomination.
All I was saying, though, is that Project 2025 is not Trump’s policy and from what I’ve read, Trump has specifically said he wasn’t using it – his campaign made and made public its own set of proposals called ‘Agenda 47’ which is a REALLY long read.
I did a quick google check to see what Agenda 47 was (it’s on Wikipedia if you don’t want to read all this) and apparently it’s (btw these are not my words or opinions, I just took it from what it says on Wikipedia):
1) Imposing the death penalty for cartel drug dealers and human traffickers, and any other cartel members on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations
2) Something about enacting restrictions on Chinese ownership of infrastructure in the United States for energy, technology, telecommunications, farmland, natural resources, medical supplies, and other strategic national assets; preventing all future Chinese purchases; and forcing the Chinese to sell and current holdings in those areas.
3) Recovering ‘energy independence’ by eliminating ‘unnecessary regulations in the federal registry that hampers domestic production’; getting out of the Paris Agreement; and issuing fast approvals for oil infrastructure projects
4) Instituting baseline tariffs on most foreign products if other countries manipulate their currency or otherwise engage in unfair trading practices; lowering taxes; revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status; slowing down all Chinese imports of essential goods, using tariffs to dissuade American companies from investing in China; banning federal contracts for any company that outsources to China; and decreasing trade deficits (especially apparently with China)
5) No longer bailing out failing banks; and repealing what Trump is calling ‘Biden’s tax hikes’
6) Passing something called the ‘Trump Reciprocal Trade Act’ – which apparently means ‘if any country applies a certain percent tariff on American-made goods, the same tariff will be applied on theirs
7) Terminating Biden’s policies regarding mandates for emission regulations, fossil fuels, and electric vehicles; Askng Canada and Mexico for full compliance with the terms of USMCA (Agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada) – which is a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada which replaced NAFTA; Restoring the US Strategic Petrolium Reserves
8) Developing American oil and natural gas, nuclear power, clean coal, and hydroelectricity; Modernizing the electric grid; Greenlighting construction of new power plants
9) Restoring parental rights to control the education of their children; being made aware of academic standards; updating on acts of violence; inspecting professional development materials; being notified about guest speakers; making the school budget publicly available information; alerting parents about bullying, health and mental health concerns; allowing parents to opt out of school healthcare services; letting parents know if any school employee “has worked to change their children’s name, pronouns, or understanding of his or her gender.”
10) Some sort of policy involving being able to have parents and local school boards hire and fire principals and teachers (I think basically like a ‘vote of no confidence’ from what I read)
11) Removing CRT from school curriculums
12) Reinstating something called the 1776 Commission (I tried to check what that is and it’s some sort of counter to the 1619 Project)
13) Immediate expulsion for any student who harms a teacher or another student; immediate suspension of expulsion for illegal drug use or possession in school
14) Universal School Choice (“parents can send their children to the public, private, or religious school that best suits them”)
15) Project-Based Learning – I don’t know what this is but the definition says ‘training students for meaningful work outside the classroom’
16) Internships and Work Experiences for all students (I’m guessing this is related to Project-Based Learning) – “funding preferences for schools that actively work to help students secure internships, part-time work, and summer jobs.”
17) Jobs and Career Counseling provided by all schools
18) Closing the Department of Education and sending all Education matters back to the States instead of a Federal department.
19) Proposition supporting homeschooling by allowing homeschool parents to use 529 education savings accounts to spend up to $10,000 a year per child, tax-free; and allowing every homeschooling family to have “full access to the benefits available to non-homeschooled students – including participating in athletic programs, clubs, after-school activities, and educational trips.
20) Proposition of endowing the ‘American Academy’ by taxing the large endowments of private universities, covering all subjects and trades, online, for free, and using study groups, mentors, industry partnerships, and the latest breakthroughs in computing; apparently the American Academy would strictly apolitical and grant degree credentials recognized by government and federal contractors as the equivalent of a bachelors degree. (this would need Congressional approval and would involve some student debt relief similar to the Biden administration but differing in the source for its financing (ie, taxing university endowments instead of income tax hikes).
This is getting really long… I’m just going to link to the wikipedia page which I should have done before copying all this. The rest involves stuff involving dismantling the deep state, reforming FISA courts, allowing the President to fire rogue bureaucrats in the Executive Branch, putting the FTC and FCC back under Presidential authority, something about resotring impoundment, negotiating the end of the Russia/Ukraine war, re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and mission, rebuilding military strength, keeping Medicare and Social Security intact by cutting federal expenses, immigration reforms, infrastructure/urban planning, … okay this is really long and I’m only about halfway through. Why did I think I can copy all this… Here’s the wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47
(again this isnt anything about my opinions – I’m just copying what Agenda 47 is according to Wikipedia)
PS – The last sentence you mentioned though… that seems pretty normal for any President to want of the DOJ – both for Democrat and Republican presidents – since the DOJ is part of the Executive Branch, and the President is the head of the Executive Branch. Seems like an odd thing for a President to not want the people under him to be loyal to him or her.
So Agenda 47 is the sanatised version of Project 2025 that tehy think will be more electable?
Yes, Yes, Illy, your political opponents are evil incarnate, no need to actually read any of their stuff of actually see what they do or have done or to understand why they have the support of approximately 50% of the American electorate (despite constant vilification from most media outlets), as that 50% is all evil, too.
Don’t forget to check under your bed for Nazis.
Look, we get it, you’re defending Nazis here for some totally not obvious reason.
And you’re upset that someone pointed out “Nazis are bad.”
“Look, we get it, you’re defending Nazis here for some totally not obvious reason.”
Literally, I’m complaining about trivializing the use of the term “Nazi” because the Nazis were so amazingly bad, and your response is that I am “defending Nazis”.
You seem to have difficulty with reality. Please seek help.
Their own words are enough to condemn them. The media outlets don’t vilify them enough: out of a misguided desire to avoid accusations of bias by people who are going to call them biased no matter what they publish.
It takes no exaggeration or distortion to recognize that conservatives have no respect for individual freedom, and seek to reinforce what they see as natural hierarchies. They no longer hide their intent to transform governments around the world into authoritarian theocracies, under which people who do not live as their religion demands will be punished or executed.
People support them because they are no longer the majority; they feel their control slipping, and worry that they will be oppressed as they oppressed minorities when they were in power. They don’t believe that their opponents genuinely seek freedom for all, merely to swap oppressor and oppressed, because they are captive to the ideology of hierarchy, and cannot imagine a way to live in peace with those different than themselves.
And in some cases, they’re right: some of those formerly oppressed will seek to oppress their former tormenters in turn, because that’s the model they were taught by their oppressors. They only have themselves to blame.
Yeah. Project 2025 makes Agenda 47 look like a short memo. :)
No, they are apparently different sets of policies and one was not a form of the other (sanitized or otherwise). I just showed where Agenda 47 is written and Project 2025 is written on the Project2025 website if you need to compare and contrast by reading both.
(Although Agenda 47 is VERY long and detailed as you can see, even as a summary – so its quite the long read)
It is likely that pointing out that they are completely unaffiliated with Project 2025 and not adopting 2025 was stated by the Trump campaign because the claim that Trump is implementing Project 2025 is being used as an attack or scare tactic against Trump being elected (since pointing out it is not a trump policy/plan is a logical counter to the attack). However I would not say Agenda 47 is a sanitized version of or related to Project 2025 from what I have read.
Ok that last paragraph of mine is incredibly convoluted and confusing. I apologize.
What I was meaning to say is “The Trump campaign very likely has pointed out that Agenda 47 is not the same as Project 2025 because Project 2025 is being used as an attack against Trump. THerefore, it makes logical sense for them to separate themselves from Project 2025 by pointing out that the two sets of policies are different and that the Trump campaign did not come up with Project 2025 and has not adopted it, since they already have their own platform that they’re using instead.”
Okay that reads more coherently.
The policies may differ in their specifies, but their general goals are the same: empower the executive over the other two branches, demolish any portion of government that protects individual people from the rich and powerful, and permanently enshrine rule by Republicans, by dismantling the mechanisms that give the people power over their government.
I don’t actually see that in what was written in Agenda 47. Although you could point out the parts of Agenda 47 and describe which parts you think of as problematic or that do those goals.
I’m not really sure about much dealing with Project 2025 since I havent really read through that – just read through most of Agenda 47 (mostly to respond to the thread). But it seems like a moot point if Trump hasn’t actually adopted or been involved in Project 2025.
Projection from a lefty. Must be a day that ends in ‘y’.
The only real difference here is that I’d come to expect better from Torabi. It makes me sad.
Project 2025 was written by major figures in the Trump Whitehouse team.
To claim Trump won’t implement as much of it as he can is pure fantasy.
“Project 2025 was written by major figures in the Trump Whitehouse team.
To claim Trump won’t implement as much of it as he can is pure fantasy.”
Even giving you your claims about Project 2025 for the sake of argument (a huge give), that translates to the party of President Pen-and-Phone saying, “Teacher, he hit me back first.”
If I was sitting down at my computer, instead of away from home, I would go through the two and make comparisons. But they’re both exceedingly long. You thought Agenda 47 was long, but the primary document Project 2025 has produced is over 900 pages.
Yeah I saw that mentioned recently that its over 950 pages long which definitely beats the length of Agenda 47 about 20 fold. :)
Check how many people involved in Project 2025 either were officials in Trump’s last administration and/or are in his current reelection organization (hint, it’s around 80%)
The idea that “it’s unrelated to Trump” doesn’t hold up.
And when the Republicans respond not by denying the comparison, but instead by disparaging people for making it… That suggests to me that either they’re just having an emotional response, saying that it’s impolite to call people pejorative terms, regardless of their accuracy, or that they can’t actually deny the validity of the comparison, and are just resorting to deflection.
They think calling someone a Nazi is worse than being a Nazi, and yet using pronouns that upset someone is perfectly fine behavior.
You might as well have asked me if I’ve ever gone swimming with sharks. And I might as well ask if you’ve ever attended a Democratic event, or spoken with a Democrat.
I don’t believe the average Republican is a Nazi, or even a racist. But I believe the Republican party stands for an awful lot of horrific things these days, and that many of its leaders and representatives are flat out evil people, and make little to no attempt to hide it. They’ve attempted to systematically purged the party of anyone who isn’t. Anyone who remains is either ignorant, or just doesn’t care because they think it won’t hurt them — only other people, who aren’t really people. They call their political opponents vermin, and talk about purging the country of them once they have enough power. They’re not subtle.
I had a 2-3 hour long discussion in person with a Democrat explicitly on political topics 3 weekends ago. We agreed on almost nothing, and I enjoyed the discussion very much, on the whole. I do so whenever I have the opportunity (which isn’t just a whole lot, admittedly, but a lot more than you, obviously).
I think most people *are people* and try to make the best with the facts they have accepted, even when those facts are completely insane (like the vast majority of the “what is women” insanity going on these days).
“You might as well have asked me if I’ve ever gone swimming with sharks.”
The othering that has been ramping up noticeably from the Democrats the last 10-15 years on display, from you right there.
But also, on display in the sort-of mockery from the satirists today:
“Party That Called Trump ‘Hitler’ For 8 Years Shocked As Someone Tries To Assassinate Him”
That’s supposed to be satire. It’s from a satire site. And yet, just taking people on the left at their word, it’s just straight up factual reporting.
Trump literally already had 4 years in the Whitehouse, and yet, somehow, magically, he’s Hitler. Electing him democratically is “a threat to democracy”.
Go look in the mirror for the problems you are talking about – they are not remotely missing from any group of politicians on any side, but the left today has been overrun by exactly the sort of thing you claim to be concerned about, and has been before Trump even came on the scene (politically).
The right has been not only vilifying the left, but also trying to criminalize them, for at least a century. There has been an enormous amount of othering, calling the left evil, vermin, pedos, groomers. The right talks about violent overthrow, and purging the country of everyone who disagrees with them. You don’t think people on the left have legitimate reason to fear violence from the right?
This is more “The people complaining about the problem are the real problem”.
” There has been an enormous amount of othering, calling the left evil, vermin, pedos, groomers.”
“Groomers” is explicitly earned. Go look at bog-standard descriptions of what child sex groomers do and have done. It’s been around a long time.
And the descriptive literature, what to look for and how to prevent it, has been around a long time, too. Decades, at least, that I am aware of. Go read it. Compare to what the left has been endorsing with child sexuality in schools. It matching REALLY REALLY well.
Go look at the recent attempts on the left to mainstream MAP and tell me which is the party of pedos. EXPLICITLY, there are groups within the Democrat party that have pushed and do push for legalization of child/adult sex (NAAMBLA being only the most well known). Not sure what else to do for you there.
You have no grounds for complaint about either of those. They have been EARNED.
Evil? Both sides have called each other that upon occasion, but only one side has compared the other to Hitler and Nazis for nearly all of living memory.
Which side does the actual killing of political candidates? That seems particularly relevant at the moment. Go look at the history of it in this country.
Stop projecting your side’s BS. I don’t fall for it.
“The right talks about violent overthrow, and purging the country of everyone who disagrees with them.”
Literally, mainstream media and other figures on the left call for putting Trump-supporters in camps. Go look at what was discussed and heavily pushed when Trump was elected the first time and what is already being explicitly called for this time. Putting Trump supporters in camps for “reeducation”, among other things. Of course, the Democrats have experience putting people in camps (ask the Japanese), so that makes sense, I guess.
Stop projecting your side’s BS.
All I ask is that the same standard be applied to both sides evenly. Both sides have (and will ALWAYS have) their fringe and unstable elements, but by what is actually standard and allowed, I know FROM LOOKING MYSELF which side is easily worse on every point you are complaining about.
“You don’t think people on the left have legitimate reason to fear violence from the right?”
Again, check who does the actual violence, both historically and currently, both mobs/riots and political assassinations. ***It’s not close.***
“The people complaining about the problem are the real problem”.
The problem is that both sides make the same complaints about the other. *Independent* of those complaints (because they could both be true – they are not mutually exclusive), I have looked at who actually says and does what, and it’s easy to tell apart.
On the “Perfection” standard, both sides far very short… and always will.
All I ask is ONE standard of judgement. By THAT standard, I am incredibly confident in where I stand.
(That’s my same complaint about most Trump complaints, actually. Compare to actions and statements by previous Presidents, compare to leading party members from both sides, both past and present… and he doesn’t stand out on almost any of the stuff that is complained about. ONE STANDARD is all I ask.)
“The people complaining about the problem are the real problem”.
That has been the left my entire adult life, and decades before. In fact, there’s this famous quote that gets attributed to several different people, “accuse your opponent of what you are doing”… I can’t find the original source, but it is attributed variously to Marx, Alynski, Stalin, and Goebbels, all socialists, all people of the left.
And that has been my experience with the left, my entire adult life. Oh, it’s also been my experience with politicians more generally, so sure, you’ll find some on the right… who then get run out of office for the horrible things they did. On the left, you just “ride it out” and go on.
Which party had an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK in office until 2007 again?
Blackface is a horrible, evil, career-ending thing… well, unless you are a Democrat (see Ralph Northern for only one example of several).
Treatment of women? See “Bill Clinton” or “Hollywood” or “Any of the Kennedy clan”.
Projection is among most consistent attributes of the left in my lifetime. And you’re going to say the RIGHT has a problem with “The people complaining about the problem are the real problem”?!?
Oh look, projection from a lefty. Must be a day that ends in ‘y’.
If you actually believe your ridiculous, easy-to-verify BS, you need to stop drinking the Koolaid.
First off, even if the majority of pedophiles were on the political left (which I seriously doubt, for a number of reasons), that would not mean that the majority of the political left were pedophiles. That’s just a basic statistical fallacy. My own perception is that the majority of pedophiles are on the political right, but I suspect that they’re mostly evenly distributed, and we just hear about those in positions of power, who thus have more opportunities to abuse vulnerable children. That we each see one side or the other as preying on children is a matter of which media we consume — and trust. I read a fair amount of right-wing media, as much as I can stomach. I just don’t trust it, because it’s usually long on emotional accusations and short on evidence or reason. But it’s trivial to find credible accusations of sex crimes against children by Republican politicians. Hundreds of them. And then there’s the many sex crimes by Catholic priests against children.
The right believes that the best way to defend children against sex is to keep them ignorant. The left believes that the best way to defend children is education, so that they have an understanding of what’s happening, what other people might attempt to do to them, and can communicate with responsible adults if someone attempts to molest them. The left is trying to protect children against actual groomers.
As for violence, that’s typically the resort of those with no other power. Those in power don’t need violence. Those with economic, political, or cultural power can leverage it to control others without resorting to violence. And with the left being more responsive to those without power, there’s going to be more of certain kinds of violence on the left: engaging in violence because they have no power. They engage in violence to gain power. What I see on the right, however, is a desire to engage in violence when they already have power. They seek power so that they can engage in violence.
The right constantly accuses their opponents of what they themselves are doing. Maybe projection is just a human trait, rather than one side or the other.
There are bad people of all political stripes. Enough that we can easily construct a narrative in which the majority of our opponents are evil, because we’re not mentally equipped to comprehend that there are approximately 8 billion people on the planet. For every evil lefty you raise, I could easily find an evil righty. It’s a pointless exercise.
“That’s just a basic statistical fallacy.”
That’s not the claim I am making. Pedophiles go whereever they think they can get children, and they end up in WAY too many places.
The claim is about the party ideology, both official and unofficial, about what is ALLOWED to be pushed for without complaint. MAP/NAAMBLA, for the most obvious examples.
“And then there’s the many sex crimes by Catholic priests against children.”
Not to minimize those at all (because they are horrible), but they are a drop in the bucket compared to what happens in public schools. Where’s the outrage?
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/07/10/forbidden_fruit_and_the_classroom_the_huge_american_sex-abuse_scandal_that_educators_scandalously_hush_up_1042969.html
I don’t know the reputation of that site on the left, but the story itself has links to document its claims. The schools do the same kinds of things that were really the WORST part of the Catholic abuse scandal (transfer and cover-up… so that it can happen some more).
“But it’s trivial to find credible accusations of sex crimes against children by Republican politicians. ”
Yes, it is (see my point at the very top). They generally get significant play in the media.
It’s also trivial to find credible claims against Democratic politicians, though they do NOT get the same kind of play. That’s the part that skews people’s perception of the problem.
“The left is trying to protect children against actual groomers.”
That claim does not pass the straight-face test. It is absolute garbage. My entire life, every time the left has gotten something in place for sex education, they then push for it to be earlier.
As I said before, go look at what groomers, explicit and on-purpose sex groomers, do with children (BEFORE the really bad stuff, the “grooming” part), and look at WHY they do it. Look at human sexual development, what sex-grooming does to children, and then compare to what explicit sex education (especially one that denormalizes the sexual binary) does. *Even with the best of intentions*, it’s bad. This is not new, it is not remotely unscientific, it has been understood for a long time, and it’s a bad thing to do to children.
“As for violence”
So, basically, lefty violence good, righty violence bad. Got it. :-/
No, I don’t think I’m even exaggerating much. That’s what you just said. Also, you are ignoring the historical facts of which side *actually does the violence* (the left, BY A LOT).
To say nothing of the incredibly convenient (and dishonest) self-serving “we aren’t in power, so we need to be violent to keep the other side from being violent while they have power” BS.
And yes, it’s BS. If the right used power to do violence, the left wouldn’t GET to use violence to get power, because the right would squash them. Certainly, that’s what the left does every time it gets in real power in the world (the Nazis, the Communists, socialists of no particular brand).
In fact, not only is that BS, but the flip side of the equation is BS, too – the reason the left can get away with so much violence is because they have the power to keep their thugs from being prosecuted. Go look at all the “dropped charges” from the recent pro-Palestinian (pro-EXPLICIT GENOCIDE) riots, go look at all the dropped charges from the 2020 riots (the most damaging riots in US history by a LARGE margin, with several dozen killed). It’s so bad, there were charges dropped against some people out in California recently because the courts could not avoid declaring that it was politicized prosecution (something the courts HATE doing, as best I can tell), because literally, the people on the left from the same event , WHO INSTIGATED the violence, all had their charges dropped, while those who fought BACK were being prosecuted.
This is not a close thing. One side is violent MUCH MUCH more than the other, and it’s not the right.
“The right constantly accuses their opponents of what they themselves are doing. ”
No, the left constantly does that, and they do it so bad, that when the right points out what they are doing, they think that’s what the right is doing.
(It does also happen on the right at least some. You are correct that there is some amount of plain “human nature” going on.)
You are even doing it here with your claims about violence. When you look at Presidents and Presidential candidates, both attempts and successes, it very largely comes from crazies that can’t be politically attributed or from the left.
And mob violence, at least in my lifetime, has been OVERWHELMINGLY from the left. The closest thing to a “right wing” riot in my lifetime has been January 6th, and the number of people actually being violent was VERY VERY small (and that’s without any of the clear evidence of false-flag actors like Ray Epps).
Even the Charlottesville violence was not started by the right but by the left in response to unwelcome (and repulsive) speech.
And all of that without even discussing the instant assumption of “right-wing” for certain actors, like the Walmart shooter in Texas a few years ago, who was a gun-control-supporter and environmentalist. If you actually check mass shooters like that, a significant number of them get treatment like that, just plain assuming they are right-wing. (Not that there are NONE, mind you. I do not remotely make that claim.)
Your last paragraph makes a couple of good points… and then says the stuff you are saying is pointless. ??
But no, actual violence can and generally does lead records. We know things. There are indeed evil individuals embedded in essentially every group, willing and waiting to do bad things. But some groups do a better job than others of discouraging actual actions.
There are at least three layers on which people can agree or disagree: semantic, factual, and value. I think our disagreements are primarily a result of our different experiences, leading us to have different language, and believe in different factual generalizations about the nature of the world. While I think we could convince the other of specific facts by providing evidence, I think it would be very hard to provide enough evidence to overcome decades of evidence for a broad belief. I think we may agree on many principles or values, but that the ones where we disagree are probably irreconcilable. So I think there’s a limited range where there can be productive conversation, and trying to convince the other that one side is better based on a collection of evidence is a futile task. Such arguments typically also presume that both sides aren’t bad — that supplying sufficient evidence of wrongdoing by the other side makes your own side virtuous by default.
Our understanding of language is deeply embedded and constantly refined and reinforced by our experiences. Words are completely arbitrary, they have no meaning beyond what we assign to them, and what we agree they mean. We might be able to find neutral terms, or come to an understanding of what another person means when they use a word, but it’s very hard to get someone to change their understanding, and often comes off as a power play: if you can control the language, you can control the argument, by making it easier to talk about the ideas you agree with, and leaving no language to discuss the ideas you disagree with. And words further break down into referrer, referent, denotation, and connotation. People’s definitions can be inconsistent, and people often don’t specify, or even understand, which aspect they’re objecting to.
We also differ in which criteria we’re willing to entertain. You keep saying that my or other people’s arguments amount to “It’s different when we do it”, but I’d say that some of your arguments come across the same way, simply because we care about different distinctions. We’re willing to split different hairs, and not willing to discern between others. I think most people want the rules to be simple, but the universe is irreducibly complex. We can either make complex rules, or make simple rules with a huge list of exceptions, but ultimately we’re just moving the complexity around. And most often we aren’t conscious of those exceptions — we just think of them as common sense, that of course the rule doesn’t mean this or that, despite an unbiased reading of the language, of course the rule doesn’t apply to this situation, of course it’s different when this person does it, etc. It’s very hard to articulate the complete rules that we process in our heads, the way we classify people or events.
Fundamentally, I don’t think the right can ever serve or represent all people. It doesn’t seek to. All they offer is “conform or die”. Desired behaviors are rewarded, undesired behaviors are punished, and it’s assumed that anyone who does not fall in line is just being obstinate and needs to be forced. The goal isn’t to help people achieve their potential and contribute to society — if they can’t figure it out on their own, the right has no use for them. The goal is to sort people into desirable and undesirable, and eliminate the undesirables. They value trust, conformity, efficiency, and self-sufficiency, and expect people to fall in to a limited number of predefined roles to make society run smoothly.
The left assumes that all people have unique, individual value, and that society is best served by meeting people’s needs and helping them find ways to contribute. Diversity is celebrated, because that’s where new ideas come from. People are expected to specialize, to be really good at one thing, and not expected to be able to do everything, so they must cooperate. Trust is harder to come by, but also more essential. Processes aren’t as efficient, and new ideas might be worse. But they also can bring enormous increases in efficiency.
The thing is, historically, the left hasn’t had much of a presence in the world. A few leftists show up, and spread their ideas, which are superficially adopted by average people who don’t really understand them, and are just mimicking them. Most left-wing movements end up being just a different flavor of right-wing. They develop an orthodoxy, and don’t really value diversity, and seek to control individual behaviors. They don’t reject the concept of rule, just swap out the rules and rulers. People just trade one dictator for another, one oppressive state for another, because they don’t really know how to be free. They’ve lived their whole lives under the framing of oppressor or oppressed, and just seek to rearrange the hierarchy instead of abolish it. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m still looking.
“Fundamentally, I don’t think the right can ever serve or represent all people.”
Fundamentally, no side can. It’s utterly and completely impossible. People want and benefit from opposing things.
But if we can agree on broad goals (“children should be free from hunger”), we can at least look at the things we do and judge if those goals are being served.
“It doesn’t seek to. All they offer is “conform or die”.”
The left is actively worse about this, by a large margin. Give at least lip service to the thing the party wants today or get cancelled.
You can watch it happen in real time. You can read story after story from people who were lifelong lefties, and when “the thing of the day” finally hit something they wouldn’t bend on, BAM, they were unpersoned and lost the vast majority of the people they thought were their friends.
“Desired behaviors are rewarded, undesired behaviors are punished, and it’s assumed that anyone who does not fall in line is just being obstinate and needs to be forced.”
Oh look projection again. Again, the list of behaviours they care about differs, but the force is DEFINITELY there. (And that’s without even talking about socialist countries.)
” The goal isn’t to help people achieve their potential and contribute to society — if they can’t figure it out on their own, the right has no use for them. The goal is to sort people into desirable and undesirable, and eliminate the undesirables.”
Yet somehow, it’s the left with all the concentration camps and death camps.
“Diversity is celebrated, because that’s where new ideas come from.”
Giggle snort. The only “diversity” the left celebrates is literally skin deep. Well, OK, skin-and-genitals deep.
Any other kind of diversity is cancelled hard.
The entire second half of your post is summarized as follows: “We are the good guys with all good things, and you are the bad guys with all bad things.” It more 2-dimensional than the worst Hollywood morality play hero/villain.
And then, to achieve SOME level of less-ridiculousness, you apparently define the “left” in some kind of weird way, where all the lefty places in the world magically don’t count (since they always turn out HORRIFIC).
And then you talk about people OUTSIDE the left as the ones with the oppressor/oppressed binary going on, when the right rejects that and seeks individual circumstances.
” They’ve lived their whole lives under the framing of oppressor or oppressed, and just seek to rearrange the hierarchy instead of abolish it.”
Specifically, that fits in almost exactly with the right’s critique of the left. The LEFT is the one putting everything in “oppressor/oppressed” categories, not the right.
And looking at countries where the left takes over, hierarchy is VERY important.
“I don’t know what the answer is. I’m still looking.”
No, you obviously don’t, but you’ve already fallen hard into the exact problem you talk about in the first part of your post (“if you can control the language, you can control the argument, by making it easier to talk about the ideas you agree with, and leaving no language to discuss the ideas you disagree with.”) **Your language is controlled**, preventing you from actually looking places outside of the “acceptable” area for answers.
The right *overly* champions the individual. This can make certain claims about “systemic” problems difficult to accept or talk about (it doesn’t help that the left has literally decades of at least ridiculously exaggerating such problems, along with blaming the Republicans for them in areas where the Democrats have held power for literally all of living memory).
The left, for all its verbiage (which is mostly BS), champions the group – see how the left in the US frames everything in terms of race/sex (when the can remember what it is)/orientation/religion(selectively). This makes it incredibly easy for the left to blow off or even JUSTIFY individual injustices, even incredibly horrible ones, as long as they happen to the “correct” group. (See any number of comments on white people or men.) That’s not “championing the individual”, it’s the opposite.
Look at ACTIONS, not just verbiage. Why does Hollywood lecture the everyone else on “treatment of women” when they are among the worst offenders in that category? The usual projection, but people who just *listen* and don’t LOOK fall for it. You remind me of this on the political level.
Even in the failings of politicians, you can find interesting lessons. For only the most extreme example of oh-so-many, see Ralph Northern – black face is supposed to be this horrendous, unforgivable sin, but when he was called out for it, well… nevermind.
The right actually runs out their bad actors with significant regularity. That’s actually one of the funny things about the whole Donald Trump thing – the left brought out claims that he had cheated on his wife (which had worked so well on right-wing politicians for so long), and the right finally just said, “Meh, we don’t care anymore – YOU changed the rules on that with Clinton, remember? ‘It’s just sex’ you said. Well, OK, you won.”
And the left didn’t know how to deal with it! Why? Because the right has, MUCH more than the left, *actually held it’s politicians accountable* on at least a good many topics, the majority of the time.
But for the left, it’s all empty preaching. Clinton was bottom of the barrel in the “treatment of women” category, and the feminists didn’t care. Etc, etc, ad nauseum.
You have accepted as truths things that simply are not true. No amount of disagreement on language or whatever other excuse you might list makes them anything other than blatantly untrue. It is the foundation of the worldview you are espousing, and it is DECEIT.
Anywhere the ideology of the modern left has held sway in the last century or more, the result has been authoritarian rule and abject ruin. Make whatever No True Scotsman complaint you like, it changes nothing.
Seek answers somewhere VERY different than where you have been looking.
I would love to do a point-by-point rebuttal of all this, but I just don’t have the time to type out a well-considered response. I mean, it’s either work on this or the comic, but I do have to comment on this one thing:
““We are the good guys with all good things, and you are the bad guys with all bad things.” It more 2-dimensional than the worst Hollywood morality play hero/villain.”
You know what the craziest thing is about the world we live in? If you wrote a movie where the antagonist was a politician who claimed to be a successful businessman, but had in reality filed for bankruptcy six time, three of those times from casinos – a business model where people give you money in exchange for nothing – and you also wrote that this guy was supposedly charismatic, yet every time he spoke it sounded like he was suffering from dementia tourettes, and then you write that this guy basically burns everyone who does business with him, doesn’t pay his lawyers, releases embarrassing trading cards with his head photoshopped on Rambo bodies, is a pathological liar, a rapist, a self-admitted sexual assaulter, an almost definitely pedofile rapist, repeatedly makes sexualized comments about his daughter, actively fomented sedition, had definitely committed treason with mishandling of classified documents, is on tape committing election fraud, insults gold star families on national TV, calls dead soldiers “losers,” sleeps with porn stars, pays off porn stars, AND THEN, you wrote that 40-something percent of the country is slaveringly devoted to this guy…
You would be told that you’re a bad writer, and that the politician character is hilariously, unbelievably cartoonishly evil and sub-two dimensional.
And yet… we seem to find ourselves in a position where it might actually be impossible to write worse character.
Okay, that’s already more time than I meant to spend on this.
DaveB:
I really enjoy your comic, and Trump is not remotely my favorite person, but at least half of those claims you just made about him are actively, admittedly, and publicly false. You discredit your argument when you repeat just brazen and ridiculous fabrications.
And several of the others are indeed quite bad… and yet, don’t actually stand out among the other politicians. THAT is the scale to judge a politician on – the other politicians (the “liar” claim, in particular, is downright hilarious in that regard).
For only the most obvious of false claims, there is “rapist”. Literally, the only claim that has been brought forward on that is the one from E Jean Carrol, she didn’t make it until what, 20+ years after the supposed fact, her claims match an episode of Law and Order to a T, and STILL the jury (in the civil case) *EXPLICITLY* said it wasn’t rape.
“you wrote that 40-something percent of the country is slaveringly devoted to this guy”
Um, no. A lot of people on the right are quite enthusiastic about the him being President, since he did such an amazing job as President the first time (in terms of actual results, the best President since Reagan, easy, and better than any other President in the modern era), but their opinion of his person has been largely… not great, to put it politely. The most common thing I hear from people on
But, even more important for the context you are (poorly) responding to, we are talking about “Democrats and Republicans” (well, “left and right”, really, but you seemed to boil it down to just Trump), so one would need to compare to the OTHER choices before saying “this side is all good, that side is all bad”.
Biden has bragged in public about extorting a foreign country (with public money!) to fire the prosecutor looking into a corrupt company that had his son sitting on the board being the bag man for the Biden crime family. He’s also a sexual assaulter, as well, with a MUCH better case against him. He showered with his daughter REPEATEDLY, to the point she avoided bathing during sane hours when he was around and sought mental help – the implication of what he did TO HIS DAUGHTER is worse than even what Trump is accused of. He has been serially corrupt in taking money from foreign governments for “access” to his position. As a Senator, he was called “The Senator from MBNA” for similar reasons. He claims to have been nearly every religion, raised in multiple different places by multiple different cultures, explicitly defamed the trucker he first wife pulled out in front of for YEARS, “had definitely committed treason with mishandling of classified documents” (as opposed to Trump, who had already been President and until 37 second s ago was assumed, as a former President, to have given himself the rights to the stuff he took, just like EVERY former President has been assumed to).
THAT IS THE POINT, and you are falling for exactly the same thing Torabi is. “Your guy is bad” is only half the equation. “Compared to your guy” is required before saying “we are all good and you are all bad”.
Biden is AT LEAST as bad as Trump, *on the very things you are complaining about* (well, except the trading card thing… that was ridiculous), with the bonus that half your complaints are made-up BS.
I don’t care about propaganda. I care about FACTS. Reciting a bunch of BS propaganda to me *weakens* your claims, not strengthens them, because I wonder what other stupid crap you have fallen for. If you had just listed the stuff about Trump that was true, I would simply agree with you on them – he’s not a great guy.
But Biden is actively worse, and the Democrats didn’t care, claiming the mantle of “the good guys” because Trump is a bit of a sleazeball in his personal life.
Honestly, you demonstrated my point pretty well to Torabi, so maybe I should just thank you for it and move on.
I never actually mentioned Trump. I was just saying that if you wrote a character like the one I mentioned, it would be considered childishly bad writing.
And as much as I’m tempted to do a point by point rebuttal, arguing on the internet is not the best use of anyone’s time, and it’s clear you’ve made up your mind about things, so, I’m off to draw!
I think the fundamental disagreements are over intent: whether it is relevant when passing judgment, to what degree it can be assessed, and what information is valid in assessing it. From your comments, it seems that you would prefer the rules not to take intent into account, to solely judge based on behavior, that you believe it is difficult if not impossible to know another person’s intent, and maybe the former is because of the latter. Or that actions are more relevant to assessing intent than words, because people can lie. You seem quite willing to categorize people based on their actions, and make assumptions about their intent based on those categories.
What you see as “It’s ok when we do it” is because the left cares about intent more than actions. They attempt to distinguish between intentional harm and accidental harm, and criticize someone for the former, and forgive them for the latter.
It seems contradictory to me that you describe the left as being both excessively strict on their orthodoxy, willing to “unperson” people over a single issue, yet also unwilling to police their own. And the exact opposite for the right. And yet Republicans constantly call lifelong members RINOs because of a single deviation from the orthodoxy. Right now, the most important criteria to being a member of the Republican party is loyalty to Trump. It does not matter how many other boxes someone checks, if they oppose Trump, then they’re no longer welcome.
The left prescribes tolerance for everything except intolerance. This can mutate out of control into intolerance for a wide range of things in an attempt to resolve the paradox, but can accommodate all people, as long as they do not harm others. The right fundamentally has no answer for non-conforming people, other than “don’t be you.”
DaveB: “I never actually mentioned Trump.”
Right. You totally listed **EXACTLY** the list of complaints the left makes about him, randomly, by accident.
That’s bad faith, DaveB. Author of a comic I like or not, I call BS when I see it, and that’s BS.
I could do the same thing for Biden comparing him to the movie The Manchurian Candidate, if it would help you. Or not Biden, I guess, just some theoretical fictional person who matches the right’s complaints of him exactly. :-/
Torabi:
“I think the fundamental disagreements are over intent: whether it is relevant when passing judgment, to what degree it can be assessed, and what information is valid in assessing it.”
It is highly relevant. It is VERY difficult to assess.
“From your comments, it seems that you would prefer the rules not to take intent into account, to solely judge based on behavior, that you believe it is difficult if not impossible to know another person’s intent, and maybe the former is because of the latter.”
I would say you are overstating my position significantly, but the direction is correct. Intent should be taken into account *to the extent it can be determined* (which is hard).
Of course, intent is still secondary to actual actions. No amount of “I had good intentions” makes some things OK, and no amount of bad intentions makes “I tried to kill people and failed” worse than “I killed people without meaning to”, though legally, the punishment for the first might be worse (since we’d expect that person to try again).
“You seem quite willing to categorize people based on their actions, and make assumptions about their intent based on those categories.”
Unless I am badly misunderstand you, you explicitly do that. The claims from the left in general and you in particular on who is “racist” do that fairly explicitly. In fact, considering people lie, how else do you suggest determining intent? Last I checked, mind-reading is still sci-fi.
“What you see as “It’s ok when we do it” is because the left cares about intent more than actions. They attempt to distinguish between intentional harm and accidental harm, and criticize someone for the former, and forgive them for the latter.”
It is also cover for egregious BS. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. And the road signs along the way are people LYING about their supposed “good intentions”.
But you’re also missing another side of it: the double standard. When the left’s political opponents do something they judge as bad, *there is no possible excuse*. Intentions don’t matter. But then, when the left does it, well, “we had good intentions”, so it’s fine.
Again, just for how simple and obvious it is, I give you Ralph Northern in blackface. (Really, please take him. Ha ha.)
But more than that, the left also lies about their principles, and the examples of modern day segregation are a great example of it. “Separate but equal” was struck down for supposedly principled reasons, yes?
And yet, separate housing, separate graduation ceremonies, separate parent workshops for public school children, etc, are all things the left has been advocating for recently.
No “good intentions” would pass the checks for the reasons that “Separate But Equal” failed, and the “good intentions” are “we want to give a specific benefit to people based on race”, which is WRONG, according to… the left.
If it’s just “well, it’s wrong if that *specific* race benefits”… do I really have to spell all of that out?
“It seems contradictory to me that you describe the left as being both excessively strict on their orthodoxy, willing to “unperson” people over a single issue, yet also unwilling to police their own.”
They are QUITE willing to police their own. Where do I say they aren’t?
They just don’t do so on a lot of the things they *claim* to care about (like blackface for Northern or treatment of women for Clinton), since they don’t actually care about many of those things.
But say “All lives matter” (which seems a LOT more inclusive than just putting any one race there), and BAM, you are no longer a member in good standing. Or at least, you weren’t when that was the thing – not sure what would happen right now.
Loyalty to Trump-the-man hasn’t been a point that people on the right care about, by and large (at least up until the assassination attempt… the cult of personality does seem to be ramping up a bit – I hope it doesn’t get into Obama territory of crazy, with grade-schoolers being taught songs about how great he is and such – that was creepy). I’ve head many on the right complain about the guy on the personal level about several issues, or wishing that we had someone else who would actually fight as hard (*politically*) without all of his baggage. Wishing publicly (and EARNESTLY) that we had somebody else who could fill the slot as well is hardly “loyalty”.
But his actual Presidency was quite good (did you even hear about the Abraham Accords?), he can actually win, and the reasons “traditional” right-wingers would have to not like him have been discarded (at lefty demand, actually – personal sleaze is no longer a disqualifier, per the Democrats winning that debate with Clinton – makes me sad, but those are the rules now). Also, I think a lot of that is in response to the ridiculous and dishonest demonization from the left, trying to make him unnacceptable to support in “polite” society.
RINO – what are the *issues* that are being complained about? The stuff the right doesn’t care about, politicians can be all over the page – drug legalization, foreign policy, stuff like that, even abortion to a lesser extent (anywhere from “state issue” to “complete ban because it’s murder”, the actual exact position is difficult to nail down). The stuff that the right DOES care about, politicians that are still nominally Republicans but still vote against are going to be called RINOs – gun rights is probably the easiest example.
Democrats have very, very few examples of the same principle – how many pro-life Democrats are left, for instance? On certain issues, they are pressured into leaving or hiding their views much more thoroughly and successfully and than any RINO. How many “DINOs” does the left have? All the ones I know of are formally third party, since DINOs are simply not tolerated on the left.
“The left prescribes tolerance for everything except intolerance.”
Absolute and provable BS. There are MANY examples where that statement is simply not true.
What’s the left’s position on Islam, the least tolerant religion on the planet? Compare and contrast with the left’s position on Christianity. It’s hilariously hypocritical.
Islam is considered “oppressed”, so what they do doesn’t matter, while Christianity is considered “oppressor”, so they are bad. Actual actions and even intents are irrelevant to the calculus.
Abortion is another great example, actually. The difference of opinion is whether or not the unborn child is a “person” or not. There’s no issue of “tolerance”. I assume this is why the constant lies from the left about all the OTHER reasons the right REALLY is against abortion (none of which are even vaguely true) – “controlling women’s bodies” and such. A woman who is not pregnant *can have her uterus removed* (ovaries, too, if you she likes), and the right will not care in the slightest, for just one really obvious example among many.
“This can mutate out of control into intolerance for a wide range of things in an attempt to resolve the paradox, but can accommodate all people, as long as they do not harm others.”
(The paradox cannot be resolved. It is fundamentally unstable.)
Well, as long as the “others” are people that matter. Rioting and killing is fine, as long as it’s “bad” people. See most of 2020 for very, very public verbiage and action and verbiage approving that action.
“The right fundamentally has no answer for non-conforming people, other than “don’t be you.””
No, primarily the right’s answer on that is, “keep it to yourself”, but then, that’s their answer on most of those topics in total – funny how “keep it in your bedroom and away from the rest of us” is such a strange idea to the left now, after all the years of “keep the government out of the bedroom” from the left, eh?
I know homosexual people, personally. I have no problem with them. I haven’t actually seen anyone have a problem with them. I’ve had homosexual coworkers (don’t know of any at the moment, but that’s happenstance). Don’t care. Haven’t seen anyone care, even people much more strident than myself on political or religious issues. Don’t come to work in stripper-riffic attire, and there’s no problem… and of course, that applies to EVERYONE, not just homosexuals. Hey, equality!
Believing that “marriage” has meaning and reasons for being that preclude homosexuals from it doesn’t mean I have any particular hatred for homosexuals, any more than noting the reality of human dimorpshism and the sexual binary means hatred for transsexuals – the attitude I’ve seen from the right for *adults* mutilating themselves is largely, “wow, that’s sad. I feel bad for them.” Now, the people dishonestly advocating for people to wreck their bodies, there’s a lot of condemnation there, for sure!
But go on, “be you” and chop off your parts. Whatever. Just don’t push your mental problems on others, *especially children*. Seems pretty “tolerant” to me.
The problem you are having is one of language again, I think. “Tolerance” is *inherently* “tolerance of stuff the left approves of”.
And that’s where we differ. I would absolutely trust an incompetent but well-intentioned person who has accidentally caused me harm more than an incompetent person who’s trying to kill me — because I expect both people to get better at accomplishing their goals over time.
Catching people in a lie is one way of determining how honest they are, and what their goals are. Establishing trust requires observing someone over time, and comparing their words and actions. But the right repeatedly claims that their words shouldn’t be used against them, that they were just exaggerating or joking. That words don’t tell you anything about what a person’s thinking, that the choices they make in communicating don’t actually communicate anything. That’s ridiculous on its face.
You don’t see any distinction between making a decision based on race, and making a decision in reaction to other people’s decisions based on race? You don’t offer any response to racism other than silence. No way to challenge or counteract it, just suffer silently and hope it goes away. Racists get to be active, their victims must be passive.
There’s a difference between “You can go anywhere, but here’s a place where only you can go” and “You can’t go where the majority of people go, and must instead go to this place allocated for you”.
It’s not that intentions don’t matter, it’s that there’s a tendency to judge people’s intentions by their political affiliation. Which both sides do. You make a lot of assumptions about people on the left that simply aren’t true, because you found one example and extrapolated it to other people.
“Black Lives Matter” was a terribly vague and ambiguous slogan. It would have been more comprehensible as “Black Lives Matter Too” or “Black Lives Do Matter”, or even longer “Black Lives Matter as Much as Whites”. The implication is that black lives are treated as if they don’t matter, but should be treated as if they do. “All Lives Matter” sounds innocent and is perfectly easy to agree with out of context, but the hidden message there, as a response to Black Lives Matter, is “We already treat everyone the same, stop complaining”. It’s gaslighting. It’s “people complaining about racism are the real racists”.
And how do you explain Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger? The right has systematically tried to replace every Republican politician at every level with Trump loyalists. He demands loyalty to himself, personally, over loyalty to country.
The left’s position is that you should be able to believe whatever you want to believe, but shouldn’t be able to force your religion on others. And the left has certainly been bitten by surprise, when the muslims they’ve defended turn around and attempt to oppress others. But right now, it’s the right that’s mandating the display of the 10 commandments in schools, mandating Christian bibles be used in curriculums, and trying to force children to pray. The right seems to view everything as either forbidden or obligatory, and assumes that the left will treat everything that way as well, when the left is advocating for personal freedom and the right to make your own choices.
How do you explain the right’s attempts to criminalize abortion, restrict contraception, and eliminate no-fault divorce? To restrict pregnant women from travelling?
And yet “keep it to yourself” isn’t an acceptable answer to religion? How is that not different from “conform in public or suffer”? Appear straight, cis, “normal”. How are homosexual displays any more “sexual” than heterosexual ones?Should be the same rules for everyone, shouldn’t it? I don’t see any contradiction between “keep the government out of the bedroom” and rejecting “keep it in your bedroom and away from the rest of us”. Why should one group get to define marriage, and withhold it from another? Who owns a word or institution? Why should one group get to dictate what other people teach their children? Or decide what medical procedures adults can have?
How do you think the average cis person would react to being misgendered? How is their offense more appropriate than that of a trans person? It’s disrespectful either way, and that’s fundamentally what’s at issue: respecting the right of other people to live their own lives and make their own choices, even if we disagree with those choices.
“”no amount of bad intentions makes “I tried to kill people and failed” worse than “I killed people without meaning to””
And that’s where we differ. I would absolutely trust an incompetent but well-intentioned person who has accidentally caused me harm more than an incompetent person who’s trying to kill me — because I expect both people to get better at accomplishing their goals over time.”
Trust? Yeah, maybe. As I said, the law may well reflect worse penalties on the deliberate attempt, due to the need to deal with possible future behaviour.
But I’d rather have a dozen “tried to kill people and failed” over one “unintentionally killed dozens”. That’s WORSE, you see. The actual outcome MATTERS, and it matters more than the intentions.
I have a very hard time believing you would actually disagree with me on that, that you’d prefer the one incident with the dozens dead.
How we handle the aftermath does indeed vary based on the intentions (as best we can determine them), but the “dozens dead” scenario is still WORSE.
“But the right repeatedly claims that their words shouldn’t be used against them, that they were just exaggerating or joking.”
Is that really the argument you want to make right now, after the last several YEARS of the left lying to everyone’s faces about Joe Biden’s mental capacity? REALLY?!?
Literally, right now, right-leaning websites are documenting all the stuff being deleted about Kamala Harris, how they previously dubbed her “the most liberal Senator” and such.
Again, PROJECTION from a lefty – must be a day that ends in ‘y’.
“You don’t offer any response to racism other than silence.”
Literally, I’m spending hours typing responses to you. Yep, “silence”.
“You don’t see any distinction between making a decision based on race, and making a decision in reaction to other people’s decisions based on race? You don’t offer any response to racism other than silence. No way to challenge or counteract it, just suffer silently and hope it goes away. Racists get to be active, their victims must be passive.”
You are putting RIDICULOUS words in my mouth that I did not say and do not agree with.
Not sure exactly what you are responding to with that statement, so I’m not sure what else to say.
“There’s a difference between “You can go anywhere, but here’s a place where only you can go” and “You can’t go where the majority of people go, and must instead go to this place allocated for you”.”
Legally (AND ETHICALLY), no, there isn’t. Or did we make a mistake when we disallowed all the “whites only” places? Because “You can go anywhere, but here’s a place where only you can go” is literally what those were – ONLY whites allowed.
The only way to stop discriminating by race is to stop discriminating by race, not just pointing it in a different direction. Legally, there is no recognized difference between “keeping out X races” and “only letting in X races”, and I believe that is absolutely correct.
SO many policies to “keep the black man down” could be (***and often WERE!***) stated in ways that would match up perfectly with “You can go anywhere, but here’s a place where only you can go”. Stop and use your brain for 2 seconds!
“You make a lot of assumptions about people on the left that simply aren’t true, because you found one example and extrapolated it to other people.”
No, I try explicitly to avoid that, on both sides, and I’ve commented on repeatedly (“you can find examples of” verbiage being the easiest examples). I try very hard not to ASSUME, only to observe. I’m sure I am imperfect in that, of course, but I do explicitly try.
““All Lives Matter” sounds innocent and is perfectly easy to agree with out of context, but the hidden message there, as a response to Black Lives Matter, is “We already treat everyone the same, stop complaining”. It’s gaslighting. It’s “people complaining about racism are the real racists”.”
BS. The only problems in the world are for black people? There are no other “minorities” that have systemic abuses? NO. That is baloney, and it’s the left covering for extremely explicit racism, just pointed in a different direction.
And that extremely explicit racism was very much on display regarding George Floyd. There are other cases nigh-identical to that fact pattern involving white and hispanic men, and **NOBODY CARED**. Indeed, by action, ONLY “Black Lives Matter” to far too many people.
“All Lives Matter” is the right slogan, because it is ACCURATE. It explicitly eschews racism. But that wasn’t what was politically useful in 2020. It’s “racist” the same way ending benefits for white people was “racist”, which is to say, not at all.
“And how do you explain Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger?”
You mean the ones hand-picked by the Democrats to serve on a committee that was supposed to be bipartisan, with members chosen by both parties? Have you bothered checking their voting records? AT ALL? Or the incredibly dishonest things that committee did? Obviously not.
Also, no other response to pointing out that DINO isn’t even a thing because Democrats are so consistent in removing those who won’t toe the line? That the only ones who survive politically do so by going third party?
“He demands loyalty to himself, personally, over loyalty to country.”
Just like almost every other highly egotistical person, especially politicians. That doesn’t mean the right is going along with it. See, for instance, the Republican governor of Georgia – very popular, but not with Trump…
“But right now, it’s the right that’s mandating the display of the 10 commandments in schools, mandating Christian bibles be used in curriculums, and trying to force children to pray. ”
Only one of those things is actually happening, and the 10 Commandments are widely recognized as a very important part of our society, historically speaking, even by many non-religious people. “Freedom of religion” doesn’t mean “freedom FROM religion”, otherwise the religious are second-class citizens.
The hypocrisy about Christianity vs Islam is easy to see by checking the “bake the cake” cases. See any gay people going to Muslim bakeries and demanding explicit gay stuff on their cakes?
“The right seems to view everything as either forbidden or obligatory, and assumes that the left will treat everything that way as well, when the left is advocating for personal freedom and the right to make your own choices.”
Wow, you don’t even recognize how hard you are projecting there. Go read any of the great books criticizing communism and socialism and see how extremely true that is coming from the left.
That you are even pointing it at the right is based on some things that you just claimed which, again, absolutely are not true.
“How do you explain the right’s attempts to criminalize abortion, restrict contraception, and eliminate no-fault divorce? To restrict pregnant women from travelling?”
I have seen literally nothing (other than wish-casting) on eliminating no-fault divorce beyond pointing out that it has been disastrous, which is true.
“restrict contraception” is not a thing from the right. That is a dishonest talking point with no basis in truth at all. In fact, the Republicans have pushed to make The Pill over-the-counter more than once and had it *blocked by the Democrats*. Again, projection from the left.
The abortion thing: I think I was absolutely explicit before, but I’ll repeat myself, since you can’t seem to grasp the concept. The point of contention in abortion is whether or not the unborn human is a “person”, ethically speaking, and thus, whether or not a MURDER is occurring.
You don’t need to agree with it to understand it. It’s a very simple point. That people want to prevent murder seems…. really, really reasonable.
“How are homosexual displays any more “sexual” than heterosexual ones?”
Holding hands in public? Knock yourself out. Showing up in BDSM gear or other just barely-not-explicit sex-garb? No. Nothing “anti gay” about that, save that it’s almost never the heterosexuals doing the second one (and, to be fair, plenty homosexuals don’t either… and nobody complains about them!).
“Should be the same rules for everyone, shouldn’t it?”
Precisely!! Being gay doesn’t mean you get to show up at work in BDSM gear when no one else is allowed to. Being gay doesn’t mean you get to parade around in public in *extremely* inappropriate attire or grind your junk in little kids’ faces, just as heterosexuals also should not be allowed to.
“Why should one group get to define marriage, and withhold it from another? Who owns a word or institution?”
I have decreed that the word “money” now means “murder”, and any references to it are a threat to my person, which I shall respond to with violent self-defense. Wouldn’t that be a ridiculous, insane thing for me to do?
“Words have meaning”, as Illy said earlier in the thread. Redefining them out from under people is a common thing from the left (there are whole books about it – go read some). It actively undermines communication, but it does give those doing the redefining more power in some ways.
“Why should one group get to dictate what other people teach their children?”
Right, it should instead be the OTHER group doing the dictating. “Not teaching that crap to our kids” is constantly crapped on from the left, and you break out that argument? REALLY?!? PROJECTION AGAIN, HARD.
“Or decide what medical procedures adults can have?”
Um, yeah, I explicitly said adults can do that? No disagreement from me, or almost anyone on the right, actually.
Both trans-sexual stuff AND other kinds of body-modification. The only asterisk would be on abortion, since “whose body is being affected” is *the entire point of contention*. Not pregnant? Have a DnC, have your uterus removed, heck, have your entire reproductive system removed – not my circus, not my monkeys.
If you’re pregnant, *there’s another person’s body AND LIFE involved*, too.
“How do you think the average cis person would react to being misgendered?”
Go watch the South Park episode on Strong Woman competition, and tell me that’s really all that’s going on.
Go check the cases where a “transfemale” rapes an actual female in the women’s restroom (and the school or prison, where it most commonly happens, tries to cover it up), and tell me that’s really all that’s going on.
I’ve heard women call “woman-face” to try to get the point across, and conceptually, it’s not far off. Sex is not something we can just change, and for the vast majority of humanity, both historically and today, sex and gender are treated as synonymous, leading to lots of confusion when some people fiddle around with gender.
Even in the few historical cases I can find where some “other” gender exists (still a thing in India, actually! though not common) or “gender bender” stuff is a thing (areas of Eastern Europe/Western Asia where women will occasionally give up being a woman to lead a family when no man is available, for instance – take up the sexism claim with them, not me), no one actually thinks or pretends men become women or the other way around.
But “How do you think the average cis person would react to being misgendered?” I’ve seen it happen. It’s generally just not that big a deal, unless it’s specifically being done as an insult, and even then, it’s often laughed off. At least, that has been my “lived experience”.
The only reason it’s such a huge deal coming from the trans side of things is that they are demanding that other people buy into their delusion that they can change their sex. They can not.
And demanding OTHER people give in to THEM is hardly “respecting the right of other people to live their own lives”. That’s a street that is definitely only supposed to go one way these days, and it’s tiresome.
You want to wreck your own body? That is your right. And I have the right to notice that you are still the same sex you were when you started.
I also have the right to find that disturbing or disgusting and not want to be around it. “Freedom of association”. No different than an atheist not wanting to be around the religious or even a pathetically shallow person not wanting to be around the ugly.
What is a woman? For the vast majority of people, it means “adult female human”. That’s SEX, not just gender.
Guys, enough. None of this has anything to do with the comic. I really don’t want Google mistaking the site as some sort of sectarian free for all and attracting more spirited political debate. I’m going to leave this post up till tomorrow and then I’m going to arbitrarily snip this thread somewhere up above. If you want to keep this debate up, I’m sure there’s a discord server or a subreddit somewhere that would welcome it.
The comic is inevitably going to attract some political debate, but yeah, this has really gone off the rails and I’m grateful for an excuse to stop. I know arguing on the Internet isn’t good for my mental health, but it’s hard to resist.
All this fuss over a code in panel 2, but no mention of the complete absence of Anvil’s body in panel 5?
That’s because she is off camera.
No she’s not? Not on my screen, anyway – her head is floating there, with the speech balloon coming out of it. It even looks like a slightly unfinished version of her head, lacking detail in the hair.
Nobody else has this glitch?
That’s not a glitch. That is a label for the text balloon of someone who is off screen.
Ok, that makes more sense. I don’t remember seeing that before but it makes sense.
I learned all I know at Git Gud’s Adventurer Academy.
The post-security area in the Milwaukee airport where you put on your shoes, put your electronics back in their bags, etc., is called the Recombobulation Area
I do not think Frix would be pulling a groin muscle any time soon. Especially not with any activities he may be doing with Halo.
The implied joke, is that she will be pulling at his groin muscle later.
That hanging head pose for Frix makes him seem less intelligent and competent than we’ve come to expect. Sort of a Baby Huey cartoon character from the ’50’s. Bring on the better neck posture, and let’s see him calmly pick up two baddies by the neck & give them the one-handed-sleeper with each hand.
How do you figure what is good posture for his species?
He’s leaning down at work, and looked up, to acknowledge Anvil and Maxima’s comments. I think you’re reading too much into this static image.
he’s leaning over to properly treat Sydney who’s lying down on a treatment table not designed for somebody Frix’s size to use.
Lol wouldn’t it be nice if we could all heal our pulled muscles and cramps that easily?
“Peckerwood” was originally a term for a poor white person in the Southern United States. The same sort of person who might be referred to as “white trash”. They provided fertile recruiting for the KKK and the term was coopted by the various white supremacist groups.
Isn’t that just another name for ‘dickhead’?
Pecker is a synonym for penis
I’ve always heard ‘Pecker’ with the specific connotation of referring to a tiny penis. Like a woodpeckers beak. So when I read the comic I first thought that Max was calling Neo-Nazis TinyDicks with the name Peckerwood.
Its usually used as a negative prejoritive term to mean it is small. So it’s a double insult :)
Apparently it came from Woodpecker
Are you getting confused with ‘Red Neck’?
Which was, originally, an Afrikaans name for white farmers in South Africa (their necks would literally turn red from working in the sun, something they had little experience with coming from England :P )
Seems like it developed independently in South Africa and the Southern USA (possibly both inspired by a different usage in Scotland)
To quote Will Smith in Wild Wild West:
“Then there was that whole “redneck” comment. And I get the feeling y’all took that negatively. But let’s break down that word, “redneck”: First word, red. Color of passion, fire, power. Second word, neck… neck… okay, I can’t think of anything for neck right now, but without it y’all still got red, and that’s something to be proud of.”
Made some more AI fanart of Sydney AND Dabbler and had some fun with it. https://x.com/Joe375AIArt/status/1810313423907090811
Why don’t you just tell us the prompt you used instead of the slop it generated?
Prompts alone won’t get results like that, asshole. Maybe educate yourself and learn how much actually goes into getting a polished piece out of AI. Slop? Let’s see your amazing art if you’re so talented.
– Prompts alone won’t get results like that, asshole.
Well if you want to include the entire training dataset of the model you’re using then go ahead, but that kinda gives the game away, doesn’t it?
– Let’s see your amazing art if you’re so talented.
I could take a crayon in my asscheeks and I would make better art than any “AI” program. This is a catagory difference.
– Well if you want to include the entire training dataset of the model you’re using then go ahead, but that kinda gives the game away, doesn’t it?
I love that you’re trying to pretend like the fact it had to be fed some pics of Sydney and Dabbler to know how to render them is some shameful secret. You must be one of those ludd absolutists that think image training is theft lol. Sorry pal, the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit how you and your liberal arts professor have deluded ourselves into thinking how IP and ownership works.
Laws are actually being passed regarding this.
Regardless of if you’re pro AI or not “The rest of the world doesn’t give a shit” is just a cope.
I don’t think there are going to be actual laws passed on it, since the transformative use legal definition for Fair Use is intentionally meant to be used in a case-by-case basis. A lot would depend on if the resulting AI artwork is transformative and original enough (and also is being used commercially and a few other requirements to make it ineligible for the fair use exception).
This is not something that a single law (or even a lot of alaws) can actually broadly cover. It’s most likely going to have to be determined by owners of the original artwork suing for copyright infringement if they think their original works and the AI works are too similar so as to not fall under fair use.
– “image training is theft”
Ahh, the Uber and AirBnB defence. “This is new! And therefore not covered by existing laws!”
If image training isn’t copyright infringement, why don’t the big AI houses publish their training sets? Because they know they’d be buried in copyright lawsuits as soon as they did.
—
AI training is just a form of specialised, lossy data compression.
Distributing lossy compressed data is still distributing data, or converting pictures to jpeg would strip them of copyright protection.
And distributing copyrighted data is copyright infringement (I don’t call it theft, that’s loaded language for what it is)
So distributing trained models is absolutely copyright infringement if any of the training set is copyrighted.
Also, making a collage of copyrighted works doesn’t get around copyright unless the work is substantative and transformative, which AI generation has already been ruled to not be. (See why AI “art” doesn’t qualify for copyright for the details)
Distributing a non-transformative collage is also copyright infringement if any of the underlying images are copyrighted.
AI generated images are just a very complicated collage of the images in their training set, so distributing AI generated imaged when copyrighted material is in their training set is also copyright infringement.
—
Uber is a taxi company that’s pretending to not be.
AirBnB is a hotel chain that’s pretending not to be.
AI image generation is copyright infringement that’s pretending not to be.
The law will realise this soon enough.
Honestly the moment you use the word “collage” you basically out yourself as yet another of the thousands of misinformed idiots crying about AI. It’s like the top red flag to alert you that the person you’re talking with has no fucking clue how diffusion based image generation actually works.
If it wasn’t fundamentally a collage, it wouldn’t need training data.
I work with AI models as part of my day job. I’ve written them (Not just trained them. Written the actual code that trains and runs them). I know how they work at their most basic levels.
They’re Langton’s Ant, with the training data as the field.
—
Nice to know you’re not disputing any of the rest of my points though. Glad you admit that distributing models trained on copyrighted data is copyright infringement.
—
– “the american legal system that have already clearly established that what AI does is not a violation of copyright.”
Ahh, you’re conflating so many different things under the bucket of “AI” there. Wonderful (and common) attempt at misdirection.
Fundamentally, computer generated images/text aren’t inherently copyright infringement, true. But when they are trained on copyrighted material they are.
If I spent all my time disputing every retardedly misinformed position on AI art I’d have no time for anything else on the internet. At a certain point when something is idiotic enough, it’s not even worth taking the time to type a rebuttal to.
You’re not disputing anything.
You’re just saying “nu-uh” and floundering.
“But when they are trained on copyrighted material they are.”
Not really, no. It would be the same as someone studying works of the great artists in order to become a painter in a certain artistic sphere of influence. For example, Rembrandt was influenced by the works of Carvaggio when he made his artwork, and studied Carvaggio’s artwork in detail in order to duplicate ‘chiaroscuro’ (ie, Carvaggio’s treatement of light and dark). But in modern times, Rembrandt would not be considered to have infringed on Carvaggio’s copyright (if Carvaggio had copyrights on his works back in the 1600s).
Or Van Gogh was HEAVILY influenced by Rembrandt (and especially paintings like The Jewish Bride and The Supper at Emmaus). But Van Gogh would not be, in modern times, guilty of copyright infringement of Rembrandt’s works just because he studied Rembrandt’s works when creating his own.
Maybe if Getty Images v. Stability AI was to rule in the way you’re describing, you’d have a point. But even then it would be narrowly tailored for that one case. And from what I’m seeing so far from the pending case and the arguments that have been made available, it’s probably not going to rule in that direction in the first place. The main problem with the argument is, and always will be (as I’ve stated elsewhere) the transformative work argument used in the Fair Use Doctrine, as a well known exception to claims of copyright infringement.
The best that can be likely hoped for is showing in SPECIFIC instances that specific works were not transformative enough to fit ‘Fair Use.’
What makes you think humans are any different?
Also love how you think somehow the law is just going to rule against nearly 50 years of fair use rulings by the american legal system that have already clearly established that what AI does is not a violation of copyright. You’re just hoping that somehow this will go to a judge that is as deluded as the rest of you ludds are, and I’m grateful to say that most judges are a lot better informed on copyright and fair use then you lot.
“Uber is a taxi company that’s pretending to not be.”
The main difference between Uber and Lyft, and taxi companies is the cab is not actually owned by the company. So the business structure is not set up like a taxi company is – even if the taxi company or car service is set up as a bunch of LLCs for each individual cab or car service (which they usually are for both tax and liability reasons). That tends to make the taxi cabs closer to how Uber works, not making Uber closer to how taxi cabs work.
“AirBnB is a hotel chain that’s pretending not to be.”
Pretty much the same argument as the one for Uber and Lyft. The difference between an AirBNB and a hotel is private ownership of the houses/rooms. AirBNB is basically an online method of connecting the owners of these homes and rooms with potential customers. It’s sort of like how Craigslist or Ebay are not actually stores themselves – they are companies that provide a website portal for others to make business transactions.
“AI image generation is copyright infringement that’s pretending not to be.”
AI image generation is arguably not copyright infringement because the results are transformative works of the original artworks that have been utilized in making the AI art.
The Fair Use Doctrine is a legal concept that allows for the use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder, in certain circumstances. These circumstances include but are not limited to: criticism, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis and courts consider four factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. In the context of AI-generated art, the Fair Use Doctrine is particularly relevant because AI algorithms often use copyrighted works as inputs to create new, “original” works. This raises the question of whether the use of copyrighted material by AI algorithms falls under fair use.
One argument in favor of AI-generated art falling under fair use is that the use of copyrighted material by AI algorithms is transformative. Transformative use (the creation of something new and original that is not merely a copy or imitation of the original work) is a key factor in determining fair use. AI algorithms create new works by processing and synthesizing existing works, resulting in a product that could be considered distinct from the original. As a result, AI-generated art can be seen as a form of transformative use, which would be considered fair use and therefore an exception to copyright.
(Getty Images v. Stability AI)
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrlkmwnve/GETTY%20IMAGES%20AI%20LAWSUIT%20complaint.pdf
There are some other cases pending also with Getty Images vs Midjourney and against DeviantArt.
Another argument that AI-generated art is fair use is that at least some portion of it is non-commercial (which is the fourth factor in determining fair use – the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work). If the use of the copyrighted material is non-commercial (ie, it doesnt directly generate revenue) then it is less likely to harm the potential market for the copyrighted work.
The main argument AGAINST AI art falling under fair use is that AI-generated art is just a recombination of existing works WITHOUT adding significant creative output. I’m not sure how good an argument this is, though, considering that the prompt requirements and AI programs don’t just ‘bunch several images together’ – the algorithms used do ‘fill in the gaps’ to make the created image less … well… weird looking (you’ve undoubtedly seen a lot of AI art that comes out REALLY weird looking, right? It’s because it’s not just combining a few artwork pieces together – it’s filling in the blanks as well, often based on prompts or algorithms).
Currently it’s a case-by-case basis on whether the AI art meets the criteria for fair use and is transformative enough to be considered an original work, but I don’t see any future in which there’s any sort of broad brush judgment that AI art is copyright infringement.
– “The main difference between Uber and Lyft, and taxi companies is the cab is not actually owned by the company. So the business structure is not set up like a taxi company is”
They’re providing the service of a taxi company to their customers.
They’re a taxi company as far as regulations should be concerned.
Same for AirBnB. They provide the services of a hotel to their customers, so they are a hotel as far as regulations care.
—
The courts have already said that AI generated content is not copyrightable.
That should be enough to say it’s not transformative.
“They’re providing the service of a taxi company to their customers.”
No they aren’t – at least not how you’re describing it. It’s more similar to Ubereats or Seamlessweb or Doordash providing access to people who can deliver your food (rather than Ubereats being the restaurant itself). Uber does not itself possess ANY cars. They are more like a portal for people who have cars being used for car service ferrying.
Same for AirBNB, but with rooms or places to stay temporarily. AirBNB is not providing the services of a hotel – they are providing access to people who provide the services of a hotel. It’s more like a portal to accessing those services – it’s not providing the service itself.
“The courts have already said that AI generated content is not copyrightable.”
I think you’re misunderstanding that ruling (which was based on an earlier 2018 ruling that a monkey cannot hold a copyright of a picture that it took of itself, and using that as the basis that a computer program cannot hold a copyright). Saying that a computer program is distinct from the person who crated the algorithm for copyright holding purposes is not the same as saying that the images which the algorithm generates is not different and transformative from the original image or images that the algorithm was trained on.
The fact that a computer cannot hold a copyright has nothing to do with whether the resulting image that the computer makes is or is not a transformative work. If it is a transformative work, then it falls under the Fair Use Doctrine exception to copyright infringement. If it is not a transformative work, then it does not fall under Fair Use and would be copyright infringement. That has nothing to do with if the computer itself holds a copyright itself for the transformative work.
“That should be enough to say it’s not transformative.”
It really isnt. You don’t need to hold a copyright yourself in order to say the resulting artwork is transformative and fair use.
And the entire point of ‘transformative work’ is that it’s supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis by the courts, which is why they never legislated some catchall definition for what qualifies for every instance of ‘transformative works.’
And that’s why it’s very unlikely (even in Getty Images vs Stability AI which is still pending) that any legislature is going to make some law that makes AI-generated or AI-assisted artwork copyright infringement. It would completely violate the whole concept of Fair Use to paint with that broad a b rush. Even if that case was to be ruled in Getty Images’ favor (which I don’t think it will be), it would wind up being narrowly held for that specific case, not for all cases.
– “No they aren’t – at least not how you’re describing it.”
“I ring Uber’s number, person with car comes and drives me from where I am to where I want to be”
That’s a taxi company. I DO NOT CARE what their corporate shell structure is. That’s their business not mine.
– “Same for AirBNB”
Yeap, same for AirBnB. “I book room on AirBnB’s website, I get place to sleep for some nights.
That’s a hotel company. Again, I don’t care how they organise their shell companies under the hood.
The fact that they’re both “gig economy” hellholes who abuse their employees by pretending that their employees are independent contractors to get around labour laws is a whole seperate issue, but it does add to the evidence that they intentionally structure their companies to try to avoid regulation.
– “The fact that a computer cannot hold a copyright has nothing to do with whether the resulting image that the computer makes is or is not a transformative work.”
Lets simplify things to the point where it’s easily understandable for laypeople.
Computers are just very big flow charts. That’s literally all they are. (Turing machines are a little bit more than that, but we’ve never built one, so that doesn’t matter. Every computer we have ever built is just a big flow chart (don’t argue with me on this or I’ll have to break out machine definition tables, and those are a PITA to draw in variable-width font like here))
So an analogy would be someone doing a colouring book, that provides the coloured pencils and labels which one should be used for each area. Does the person who fills in the colouring book exactly as specified have copyright over the coloured picture? What if they randomise the colour numbers? What if they choose the colour numbers before looking at the book?
That last one is pretty much exactly how AI content generation works.
If I’m remembering right, you’re a lawyer or legal assistant or relevent, so I’m actually interested in the answers to those questions under current law. Who has copyright over completed colouring books?
“– “No they aren’t – at least not how you’re describing it.”
“I ring Uber’s number, person with car comes and drives me from where I am to where I want to be”
That’s a taxi company. I DO NOT CARE what their corporate shell structure is. That’s their business not mine.”
That you can’t be arsed to understand how the world works doesn’t make you the final arbiter of things.
There are MANY MANY MANY MANY things in life where you call X and Y shows up where Y is not in the employ of X and X is not a company that does what Y does.
I place an order through Amazon for a chair. It is delivered by UPS. It was made by and sold directly from Bob’s Furniture Co.
Amazon is not a furniture company. UPS is not a furniture company.
UPS is not an online store. Bob’s Furniture Co is not an online store.
Amazon is not a shipping company. Bob’s Furniture Co is not a shipping company.
Let’s do one a little closer to the specifics here. Ever heard of a “travel company”? They’ve been around longer than you have, and they are still around today.
Ever heard of Expedia? It’s one among many, just the first I happened to think of (don’t recall if I’ve ever used them for anything).
You can call them and get a taxi to show up. You can call them and get a hotel reservation. You can call them and get an airline reservation.
They are not a taxi company. They are not a hotel company. They are not an airline.
Like everywhere else on this thread, your logic is simplistic and childish, and your response to people disagreeing with you is insults, anger, and demands (“Don’t argue with me”).
People who like facts and logic don’t care about your anger or demands, and your insults and tiresome. Also, your understanding of things just generally seems to be poor, though that does not seem to infringe upon your arrogant, ignorant self-confidence in the slightest.
Altogether, a very unpleasant package.
Keep in mind most of the decent AI art you see on the web these days is actually a hybrid of generation and of manual digital painting, sometimes even back and forth multiple times, like say doing a basic pencil sketch of the scene, feeding it into controlnet to get a basic color and shading pass over my linework, recoloring some element manually or maybe quickly and crudely redrawing anatomy (that Dabbler Pony only generated with 5 limbs, I had to paint in the 6th), and then img2img’ing that. Where does one draw the line on how much has to be manual and how much is AI assisted? Especially if the AI is just essentially tracing over your own work as part of the creating process?
“That’s a taxi company. I DO NOT CARE what their corporate shell structure is. That’s their business not mine.””
It’s not a taxi company any more than Doordash is a restaurant, or Hotels.com is a hotel, or Ebay or Craigslist are thrift stores. It’s more than just the corporate shell structure – it’s the function of what they actually do, provide and own as part of their assets. Lyft and Uber do not own any actual cars.
“Yeap, same for AirBnB. “I book room on AirBnB’s website, I get place to sleep for some nights.”
No, you are not actually getting somewhere to sleep for some nights from AirBNB. You are getting put in touch with someone who will give you somewhere to sleep at night. AirBNB does not own the homes or rooms. THey are merely a portal that you are using to connect you to the home owner offering to let you rent a room. AirBNB is paid a fee for this service – they are not providing you the rooms at all. Again think of it like Ebay. You log onto Ebay, and see a Buy-it-Now sale for a comic book for $10. You buy it. Ebay has not sold you anything. The person who posted the comic book is the one that sold you the comic book. Ebay just facilitated the connection of buyer to seller. It’s the same way with AirBNB or Uber or Lyft. Their entire business is being a portal with stuff like reviews to make the consumer experience between you and another private individual happen.
“Again, I don’t care how they organise their shell companies under the hood.”
They are not shell companies. They are private individuals. Shell companies are something different entirely. A shell company would be owned by the parent company. The homes or cars are NOT owned by AirBNB or Uber.
“The fact that they’re both “gig economy” hellholes who abuse their employees by pretending that their employees are independent contractors”
But they ARE independent contractors. Let me give you another example. I sometimes do per diem law work for other law firms when my own law office work is slow to make extra income (basically law firms from other states or other parts of NY will try to find lawyers in my area of NYC to do the work because it costs them less than having to send one of their associates to New York for a 10 minute courtroom appearance). But I do not have the connections with all these other law firms. So I sign up with certain agencies that get in contact with a bunch of law firms, who then get in contact with me, so I can do 10 or 12 quick per diem cases a day at $100 or so a pop. (and the agency gets a percentage as well as a compensation for their service. The agency is NOT a law firm. I am not an employee of that agency – I am an independent contractor and I am free to make my own hours and choose whichever jobs I want to do as I see fit – the agency cannot force me to do any work I don’t want to do. Because I am not their employee.
“to get around labour laws is a whole seperate issue, but it does add to the evidence that they intentionally structure their companies to try to avoid regulation.”
It’s actually because they don’t have to own all the additional assets as well and maintain and upkeep them. They are also usually not responsible for liability unless there’s some sort of fraud which the portal company was aware of when they facilitated the connection between consumer and provider of the service/goods.
3
IE – if I order an uber, and the driver is drunk and crashes and I get injured, that is the fault of the driver and the driver will be liable. But if Uber was under some sort of duty to vet the driver and the driver had a history of drunk driving, THEN both the driver and Uber would be liable (albeit for different things).
“Lets simplify things to the point where it’s easily understandable for laypeople.”
But I’m not a layperson. I’m a lawyer. I literally specialize in intellectual property law – primarily copyrights and trademarks. I’m in contact with the USPTO constantly. I’ve passed the patent bar.
I’m pretty well-versed in how intellectual property law works, and I’m just trying to explain how the law works in these examples. You don’t even have to trust me on it – it’s publicly available information. You can probably confirm it on Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis, or even on some sort of legal dictionary if you look up transformative works and copyright infringement, or Fair Use Doctrine.
“Computers are just very big flow charts. That’s literally all they are.”
That’s a simplification, and I’m assuming that you’re talking about algorithms, not computers. But lets see where you are going with this.
“(Turing machines are a little bit more than that,”
They’re just machines that can implement any computer algorithm.
“but we’ve never built one, so that doesn’t matter.”
It’s a thought experiment anyway.
“Every computer”
Algorithm
“we have ever built is just a big flow chart (don’t argue with me on this or I’ll have to break out machine definition tables, and those are a PITA to draw in variable-width font like here))”
I’m not arguing – i’m just being a bit more exact on what you’re describing. I’m interested in reading where this is going. I havent been reading ahead in your post.
“So an analogy would be someone doing a colouring book, that provides the coloured pencils”
(guessing that you’re Canadian or European – just joking around – continue :) )
“and labels which one should be used for each area. Does the person who fills in the colouring book exactly as specified have copyright over the coloured picture? What if they randomise the colour numbers? What if they choose the colour numbers before looking at the book?”
No, there’s not enough of a transformative work that’s produced in the example that you’ve described. The entire POINT of coloring books is to fill in the colors. Like I said in my previous post, it works on a case by case basis to determine if the final product is different enough to be considered tranformative. What you described would not be. But AI Artwork is far more complex as an algorithm than just ‘fill in lines with colors. The more complex the algorithm is, the more the computer ‘fills in’ the blank spaces with its algorithm, and the larger a group it learns from, the more transformative the work is going to be and less similar to the original artworks that it was learning from, which would then bring it under the Fair Use doctrine.
“That last one is pretty much exactly how AI content generation works.”
It really isn’t. It’s a lot more complex.
“If I’m remembering right, you’re a lawyer or legal assistant or relevent,”
Yep. Lawyer that specializes in intellectual property law (and in particular copyrights and trademarks) so I’m really trying to explain this in a way that will be easy to understand. :) I worked for a year in the ADA’s office and I’ve worked in assorted law firms for stuff like M&A and estate law and whatnot, but more than half of my current workload deals with either copyright or trademark disputes and filings.
“so I’m actually interested in the answers to those questions under current law. Who has copyright over completed colouring books?”
A couple of things I need to answer in regards to your question.
1) To be guilty of copyright infringement, the alleged infringer has to be using their final work for profit or in a way that harms the profitability of the original creator. Using a coloring book for its intended purpose is not going to infringe any copyright. It’s not only not harming the profitability of the original creator … it’s the entire purpose for the original creation in the first place – to be colored in.
2) Assuming that someone colored in a page from a coloring book though, and then … I don’t know… tore out the page and framed it and tried to sell it to an art gallery…. THEN they would be infringing copyright in this example There is not enough difference between the final product and the original artwork to consider the final product to be a transformative work, and therefore it would not come under the Fair Use Doctrine.
In short, I can guarantee that unless you’re selling the colored in pictures from a Mario and Luigi coloring book as your own work, then Nintendo will not be going after you for copyright infringement.
Then again it is Nintendo. (just kidding)
However, this is NOT what AI Artwork is. The algorithms for AI artwork are far more complex than just filling in colors. And it’s not just from a single original picture either, it’s usually from tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of images which are used to train the algorithm in how to make original works which are going to usually be considered transformative works.
Again, this would still be on a case-by-case basis though, and the defendant will have to convince a judge that the end work was transformative.
@Joe375:
“Keep in mind most of the decent AI art you see on the web these days is actually a hybrid of generation and of manual digital painting, sometimes even back and forth multiple times, like say doing a basic pencil sketch of the scene, feeding it into controlnet to get a basic color and shading pass over my linework,”
That is actually an excellent point as well that you’ve made, and does go even further to show the end product being a transformative work.
I think we’re talking past each other on the Uber/AirBnB thing. I’m talking about what they are in practice and effect, you’re talking about the legal hacks they do to get around regulation.
So back to the AI/computer thing:
(And for reference, I’m a software engineer by trade. I could build a computer from logic gates if I really needed to. I know this stuff inside and out)
One bit of nomeculture before we dig in: Complexity means “what difficulty of problem can it solve” not “how big it is” Solving the Halting Problem is more complex than solving the Travelling Salesman is more complex than finding a 6-colour mapping for a graph.
– “Computers are just very big flow charts. That’s literally all they are.”
– “That’s a simplification, and I’m assuming that you’re talking about algorithms, not computers.”
Ok, fine, computers are machines that run flow charts. A program is just a flow chart. I could (if I had time) draw you a flow chart that perfectly describes everything your computer does.
There’s no “more complicated,” there’s just “A really big flow chart.”
This isn’t a simplification. Look up “minimal computer languages” and you’ll see how simple computer programs are. And by Church-Turing, you can run any program that runs on any known computer on those minimal languages. All you need is an IF statement.
– “The more complex the algorithm is”
The algorithm is just a big flow chart. It’s not complex, it’s just big.
– “more the computer ‘fills in’ the blank spaces with its algorithm”
This is exactly equivilent to the computer colouring in the colouring book according to the numbers in the blocks.
Because a program is just a flow chart.
The AI prompt is putting the crayons in the number spots.
– “the larger a group it learns from”
You mean the big compressed pile of (probably) copyrighted works it’s copying bits of data out of.
– “That last one is pretty much exactly how AI content generation works.”
– “It really isn’t. It’s a lot more complex.”
It can’t be. Because programs are just flow charts.
The “AI” is just a really big flow chart.
“I think we’re talking past each other on the Uber/AirBnB thing. I’m talking about what they are in practice and effect, you’re talking about the legal hacks they do to get around regulation.”
Well, the thread that I had responded to was dealing with laws, since that tends to be the stuff I get pretty verbose about on these boards. :) But again they arent legal hacks to get around regulation. They would not be ALLOWED to be classified as a taxi service or a hotel respectively – they do not own cars or hotels. A legal hack would instead be something like the yellow cabs did, where they registered each taxi cab as its own LLC in order to limit liability to $10,000 per cab. That would be more like the ‘shell company’ argument you were making, although it’s not what Uber or Lyft do, unlike Yellow Cab.
“(And for reference, I’m a software engineer by trade. I could build a computer from logic gates if I really needed to. I know this stuff inside and out)”
Very cool.
And I’m sure that when it comes to the actual programming and algorithms, I would never try to claim expertise over you on that. I’m just focusing on the law and legal defenses that AI artwork and AI art algorithms have, which is why making a broad brush law against AI artwork as copyright infringement would be doomed to failure, and the proper way to deal with any issues of copyright infringement involving AI artwork is on a case-by-case basis, because a lot of the time the defense will be Fair Use because of transformative works.
“This is exactly equivilent to the computer colouring in the colouring book according to the numbers in the blocks.”
It really isn’t, at least legally (I’ll pass on arguing about programming-wise since you are a professional programmer and I am not) because courts would not consider the end result to be a transformative work, because the inclusion of color alone is not enough to make it something that did not exist previously
For example, when TVs went from black and white to color, a person could NOT take an episode of the Honeymooners, put it on air but in color and screen it to audiences for money. Because the inclusion of color did not make it a transformative work, and they would be guilty of copyright infringement in that case.
However, The Flintstones was inspired by The Honeymooners. And Hanna and Barbera openly acknowledged this. Jackie Gleason had considered suing for copyright infringement, but decided not to – mostly because there was a high probability that the courts would have considered it a transformative work (and also because of the negative publicity involved if he had even tried).
– ” they do not own cars or hotels.”
But their “legally-not-employees-but-actually-employees” do. And their customers (not their “legally-not-employees”) treat them as a taxi service.
If you’re saying there’s a flaw in the legislation that means they’re legally allowed to avoid regulations on taxi companies because of how they structure their business, then I’ll believe you. You’re the specialist.
– “It really isn’t, at least legally”
This is where I read what you’re saying and to my ears you’re saying “PI=3.2” You’re that far away from the realities of the math here.
Could you look up Langton’s Ant and tell me who owns the copyright for the pattern it generates?
And then do the same for Conway’s Game of Life?
“– ” they do not own cars or hotels.”
But their “legally-not-employees-but-actually-employees” do. And their customers (not their “legally-not-employees”) treat them as a taxi service.”
You keep making these bald assertions that they are “employees”, but they simply are not.
How is Uber or Lyft or AirBnB different from a travel company? Or do you think that the employees of, say, Delta are actually employees of every travel company instead?
There are people that do Uber AND Lyft. Somehow, they are “employees” of both?
There are people with houses that use AirBnB AND other such companies. Are they somehow employees of both/all?
You have decreed something to be true that *IS NOT TRUE*, and has important and valid distinctions that you refuse to see. “None so blind as those that WILL not see.”
It is so hard to follow this thread now in order to see who responded to whom :)
@Illy (because this thread is so long now):
“But their “legally-not-employees-but-actually-employees” do. And their customers (not their “legally-not-employees”) treat them as a taxi service.”
Well the difference is they don’t actually have to take any fares they don’t want to and they wouldnt get ‘fired’ for that. They choose their own customers that they want to accept. That’s why they’re classified as independent contractors. Honestly they can probably just do it without Uber or Lyft if they wanted to, but they wouldn’t have the online infrastructure and app then to reach out to potential customers. That’s pretty much how non-Uber/Lyft car services wind up working anyway.
Sorry it’s just when we’re discussing this, I’m always going to come at it from a legal standpoint, since we’re talking about legal issues.
“If you’re saying there’s a flaw in the legislation that means they’re legally allowed to avoid regulations on taxi companies because of how they structure their business, then I’ll believe you. You’re the specialist.”
Well I mean that’s definitely an argument you can make, although calling it a flaw is a subjective view. It’s definitely one of the perks of the type of business they’re running instead of running a taxi company, but I think the main reason is not having to have assets of cars and individual insurance on each of those cars, since the company does not own them and is essentially just a ‘placement service’ for connecting customers with independent contractor drivers for a fee.
“Could you look up Langton’s Ant and tell me who owns the copyright for the pattern it generates?”
Let me look it up, one second.
Okay apparently no one owns the copyright on it. It was invented by Chris Langston in 1986, but he been placed it in the public domain and waived all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
So no one can also own the copyright on any patterns it generates either, as it’s all in the public domain.
“And then do the same for Conway’s Game of Life?”
But as for Conway’s Game of Life itself, I don’t think there’s a copyright on the patterns it generates either, because of a court case you alluded to earlier (the 2018 one which said that a monkey cannot own a copyright, and likewise neither can a computer program).
But I have seen some examples of the outputs being copyrighted apparently – although I have to do some more research on it. For example, the ‘Canoe still-life in Conway’s Game of Life’ is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license’ by an author called ‘Hyperdeath.’
I honestly have no idea on what this means beyond what a license is, since a lot of this seems to be heavily computer science stuff, so it’s outside my wheelhouse.
But what I’m reading seems to actually SUPPORT the idea that AI artwork is not copyright infringement, rather than helping the original owners in a potential copyright infringement case. Probably because the original code in the two programs you told me about are either a Free License or in the public domain.
That’s as bad as demanding a painter tell you what brand of paint or the grade of paper they use
Uh… This isn’t really making the argument you think it is (or at least isn’t doing it well)… Because that’s a thing that happens… like, all the time. (less demanding, more asking, but still)
Audience members and fellow artists often want to know what techniques, tools, materials and so on, are used on a piece. And you know what? Often, artists are all to happy to share!(there are, of course, always exceptions, but out of hundreds of artists I’ve interacted with, either directly or indirectly, I’ve seen only one or two balk at the concept, and they were “holier than thou” types and none too popular for it)
“What did you use to draw this?” “Oh, I used Copics and a Staedler 0.7 Fineliner.(#notsponsored) There are swatches with the Copic codes for the markers I used over there.” “But the lines are so clean?” “That’s because I use card stock, X weight, from Y company.” (this is a conversation I’ve been in and/or been around many times, at cons, in schools, offices, anywhere I’ve seen artists displaying or making work, really)
“What paint did you use here?” “Oh… I don’t know the name off the top of my head, but it was some dollar store brand acrylic. I could probably find out if you want.” (same)
Many digital(sometimes traditional too) artists also gladly share streams of them working, and will happily name the program they are using and share details like what custom brushes they use. Heck, many artists also make tutorials for things they get asked a lot, and some will even show, live, their methods of drawing, say, an eye, if someone wants to know.
A huge part of artist culture is *not* jealously guarding your techniques(the end product they achieved are different of course, as are, to a degree, specific styles– people who merely trace or copy their style wholesale are a no no –), but sharing them, so others can learn and grow by using them and/or developing their own versions.
Now, you could say, instead that it’s like getting a painter to *share* their tools with you… but that, too, happens a lot– where reasonable –(the number of life drawing classes I’ve walked into where someone forgot their kit are innumerable, and heck, I’ve seen people straight up let curious fledgling artists try out their several hundred dollar digital tablets to see if it’s a tool for them).
The question is less about sharing the methods and tools used, which, I actually do quite regularly, those pictures have the metadata attached to the .png files and are likewise posted on CivitAI with their associated metadata and prompts, though it would not do much good getting the pictures as that metadata will just give you the txt2img prompt that got me the rough starter image that I then spent a few hours tweaking and altering with my workflow, I just do a courtesy tiny-inpaint pass on the final image with the same prompt and seed that got me the txt2img so it has the metadata to help people. It’s more about just the implied insult that “the prompt got you this image”, the moronic belief that the computer did all the work as if it was just a straight txt2img, which anyone who has actually tried, and I mean actually tried, not just casually dabbled with, using AI art tools can tell you, is utter idiocy.
To be clear, I was just clarifying that Guessticules analogy is a bad one and why. Not interested in making this stuff myself(not going to talk your ear off about it, but as previously I’m no supporter of GenAI use(though again, you seem a cut above the average users even if I disagree with your actions)).
Good for you on being one of those that try to help people though! Says something positive about you.
(I’d say you’d be amazed by the sheer quantity of “jealous prompters”– I’d see them because twitter’s algorithm is garbage and also because some asshats kept sending “Look I made this in your style, rather than commission you!” type stuff to artists I followed –who would guard their processes like dragons, lashing out at others… but you’ve probably seen plenty of that yourself by nature of actually being in those circles.)
Honestly I WANT more people to learn how to really work with AI art to get quality pictures and not just txt2img slop, which we AI creators who are serious about working with AI don’t enjoy any more then the rest of you, we agree it’s ugly and jank as hell, it drives me nuts so many people just posting walls of that stuff, it’s like if everyone discovered MS paint and started sharing their first doodles. The problem is a lot of these casual users simply lack that awareness of what is ready to share and what is not. When possible I try to nudge them along, teach them that to get something good out of AI you can’t just type in a prompt and pick the best dozen results it spits out and post them, you should actually approach every image as a project, have the image in mind from the start and work with all the tools at your disposal until you achieve that image.
That’s the issue right there. You’re arguing that what they’re doing is perfectly legal. Ily is arguing that it shouldn’t be. You’re fundamentally not arguing about the same thing, and can both be right.
Why should I bother to look at art that you couldn’t be bothered to draw?
Oh good, someone who cranks his hog to cartoon ponnies wants to show us his… “art”
Oh good, some retard who mindlessly echos the shit he hears from his commission artist friends wants us to hear his “thoughts”
You’re really telling on yourself with that comment lmao. Nobody who has a life spends their hard earned money commissioning cartoon porn. Now go jerk off to all the pics you have of your horsie OC’s.
Honestly the sheer hilarity in someone being that utterly lacking in self awareness that they’re mocking drawn erotica (which, uh, I don’t see any in anything I posted, not that you looked at it of course being the little insecure self-righteous moron that you are), in the comments section for an artist that regularly posts nudes to their patreon page…
God, you anti-AI retards really are beyond parody lol.
Um, hey, DaveB, I know this is a contentious topic and all and you seem happy to allow political and… I suppose moral discussion to occur in you comments, but both MLG and Joe appear to be taking it a bit beyond “discussion” and the language is… frankly not good and not a good look for the comment section(esp the slur, which Jo has used 3 times now).
I’d like to see how you’d handle people insulting stuff you make.
Try dealing with this abuse for 2 straight years unrelentingly literally any time you post what you took the time to make, and then see if YOU can stay polite.
Okay 1) I called out *both* of you. 2) You don’t know me/my lived experience 3)There’s plenty you can say without resorting to slurs(or in MLG’s case, making unsubstantiated and unrelated claims about your sexual preferences, because that’s frankly none of her business), *especially* in the comments section of a webcomic(frankly, I’d think none of this set of threads had anything to do with the page or anything said by DaveB, and should probably have occurred in a space fitting to it, but that’s Dave’s decision to make, not mine)
I frankly do not support your side or the material you posted(though, the fact that you appear to be claiming to paint your own elements as well is, I’ll admit, a positive in my book), but I full reject the approach taken by MTG Samantha in voicing ire toward you, just as much as I reject the escalation.
Criticism is not abuse. If you can’t handle criticism about your work or method, then don’t post your artwork in public.
Abuse is not criticism. “Oh good, someone who cranks his hog to cartoon ponnies wants to show us his… ‘art'” is not legitimate criticism by any stretch of the definition, and rest assured, this kind of behavior is essentially the standard in most communities any time AI art is posted.
Admittedly, that’s criticism of you, personally, and not your art. Still not “abuse”.
Yeah… no, Torabi, accusations with no basis are not criticism of a person.
At best that would be “criticism of a person they made up in their head(to represent their dislike of their target)”, if you squinted, but since it’s being used to insult/harm Joe, it is, at the end of the day just abuse.
Many people pretend to be neutral on AI art but hold it to a completely different standard as far as how much abuse is permitted towards it, handwaving rampantly toxic treatment of people who post AI assisted works that would never be tolerated towards what they deem “real” artists.
Those extra forelimbs on the Dabbler-pony are giving off praying mantis vibes.
Okay, so, my own two cents on this.
I do like the actual end result, here. The pictures are pretty good. Honestly I’m going to stick them in my reference folder. Also, it’s not like there’s a lot of people doing Grrl Power fan art, so I’m pretty chuffed about that, but call me biased.
On a personal level, I am a little annoyed that these pics are probably better than most of the art I’ve ever drawn. Not absolutely every piece, but… a lot of it. If I had done these pieces, they certainly would have taken a lot longer to generate. I know there’s a lot more prompt wrangling and tweaking than people realize, but still, I imagine these took 1/10th the time I would have.
On the other hand, does it make sense to get mad at a picture that took less time to create than if I’d done it? No, that’s fucking crazy. I mean, Fred Perry can knock out art at about 6-10x the speed I can. He can do a full, finished colored comic page in like 4 hours, and I love his art.
Really, my biggest problem with AI art is (besides the obvious problem that none of it would work without all the backend theft and copyright infringement) that all of the technical failings of AI art are incredibly transient. A year or two ago, every piece of AI art was a master class in body-horror, but more and more there are ones that actually know how to render decent looking hands. There still lots of little tells, but what about a year from now? What about 5?
There is part of me that’s excited for a future where if someone has a good idea, then they’ll be able to make an amazing comic book in a few afternoons, or heck, even a movie with only a few weeks of work. There’s another part of me that recognizes that 90% of comics, novels, fanfic, movies, etc., are crap, because 90% of everything is crap. But now we’ll have the bottom 90% confusing us because the AI generated art is surprisingly good. That’s the same part that looks at deviantart with thousands of accounts each full of thousands and thousands of AI pictures and yeah, some of them have some decent content, but realistically? There’s just so much more noise now.
I think a generation from now, there will be 1/100th as many kids growing up that have any idea how to actually draw or create stuff like that for themselves. If I was 7 and wanted a picture of an awesome dragon, would I spend the next 5-10 years learning how to do it, or would I find a website and type in “awesome dragon” 5 or 6 times?
Would that be a bad thing? Maybe? Probably? I still feel like we’re hurtling into the Jetsons future, where George comes home, flops on the couch and complains that he had to press 5 whole buttons at work and now he’s exhausted. But, you know there was some farmer like 8,000 years ago that saw the first ox-drawn plow and was like “Future generations won’t have to work 21 hours a day and still probably starve, m’yah!”
AI (or at least algorithms mislabeled and posing as AI) aren’t going away. They just aren’t. I do think that AI art shouldn’t be able to be sold or copyrighted in any way unless the model can be proven to have been trained on art the person generating the stuff either drew themselves or otherwise owns. If I trained an AI to generate code using Google’s code, you’d better fucking believe they’d sue me, but large corporations know they can pilfer all the art they want because artists can’t realistically sue corporations. That’s not how the justice system works. Lady Liberty’s scales are only there to weight the amount of money each party has.
“but large corporations know they can pilfer all the art they want because artists can’t realistically sue corporations.”
I’m just going to point out, as has been discussed in the comment chain, there is far from a unanimous consensus that image training is “theft” or does not fall under the longstanding and clearly established Fair-Use exemptions on copyright. So I’ll assert it’s not “big corpos stealing because they can get away with it”, It’s “Companies doing something that is already perfectly legal under established case-precedent for derivative works and transformative use.”
That’s kind of my point. Artists have no recourse. And just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s not shitty. Law has nothing to do with ethics.
You do realize fair use does also protect artists from a lot of shitty things corporations would otherwise love to enforce?
They actually do have recourse. It just has to be on a case-by-case basis instead of from a broad brush legislation, because the latter would destroy a large portion of the Fair Use Doctrine exception in copyright law, which would hurt artists as well. It’s basically ‘best meh solution that still works without bringing the entire thing down in ruins’ deal.
An artist cannot own a style, nor do they own the way a nose looks, an eye is drawn, and so on and so on, and that is ALL that image training takes from any image. You can’t just “copy” an image that was used to train AI, unless you basically force it by using AI to directly trace over the image. As such, what is being “stolen”? No images are retained in the training, their total impact on the training amounts to less then a byte per image in checkpoints, it does not “compress and collage” like many people claim. I mean, have you ever drawn Sydney or Dabbler as a Pony? Clearly no image of yours is replicated there.
I have a curiosity.(sleepy enough that I’m not going to go over my objections atm, maybe later, though you could probably grasp some of it from the lengthy response to Torabi)
Where do you stand on voices?
If someone generates a voice that claims to be a character, in the voice of the character, in the manner of the character, but says things that the one who made the voice and manner of the character, who has claim to “being” the character would not– or would not without incentive not given –, was something stolen? What if they claim to be a slightly different similar sounding character? What if the generator smoothed some issues, adjusted the cadence, the inflection? Are there no hallmarks, no specific combinations that would be considered “theirs”/”the original’s”?
If there are for voice artist: In the case of drawings, would there not also be something “theirs” for visual artists?
As I said, an artist cannot own a style. American law is clear on this. In Dave Grossman Designs V. Borin, the court ruled: “The law of copyright is clear that only specific expressions of an idea may be copyrighted, that other parties may copy that idea, but that other parties may not copy that specific expression of the idea or portions thereof. For example, Picasso may be entitled to a copyright on his portrait of three women painted in his Cubist motif. Any artist, however, may paint a picture of any subject in the Cubist motif, including a portrait of three women, and not violate Picasso’s copyright so long as the second artist does not substantially copy Picasso’s specific expression of his idea.” And this is a very good and very necessary thing. The sheer abuse large corporations like Disney could inflict on the larger art world if they could have ownership over something like style would be terrible.
I do feel though that AI generated voicework is definitely more of an ethical minefield when it involves living human’s voices. There is, I feel, certainly merit to the argument that you do own your voice. It is after all, something you are born with, something innate to yourself. An artist can continue to profit and thrive off their skills even if their style is replicated because they can continue making individual expressions of their ideas which are protected, even if things like artstyle are not. But voices…. I feel there’s rightly some protections that need to go into place for people who make a living on those, and perhaps some legal framework for the estates/descendants of deceased people’s voices to control access to use of those voices, much like those existing for deceased authors to their works.
Apologies for vanishing. Things went real bad in my personal life for a bit there, and this thread was the last thing on my mind.
I’m happy to continue this discussion now that things have settled a bit, if you are still around, but I do realise it has been almost two weeks(though I’ve been busy enough I only just realised that) and I don’t know if you have notifications on(I’ve turned mine on in case you respond) and/or if you might just be done with the conversation. I have some thoughts on both halves of your comment, but don’t just want to throw them into the void if you won’t be able to see them and get a fair chance to respond.
“Where do you stand on voices?”
Voices cannot be copyrighted. BUT…. the recording of a voice CAN be copyrighted. There’s a legal case which actually decided on this definitively – Midler v. Ford Motor Company, 940 F.2d 460 (1988).
PS – you also can’t trademark your voice, although you can trademark specific expressions.
So, for example, when someone uses some sort of computer program to mimic a celebrity voice, it’s not copyright infringement. There are OTHER laws it -could- be violating, but not copyright or trademark laws.
I just think a lot of this comes down to that fundamental gap between the people who have tried to achieve really specific images with AI and those who’ve never touched it or only mildly experimented with it as a curiosity. To actually try to get something really specific out of AI and guide it along to polished completion, I think helps someone grasp exactly what AI is really doing here, and that it’s not here to replace artists, but is simply another tool in their arsenal and a new way for people less talented in the other methods to get their foot in the creative door.
I can tell you, it’s a lot more then “prompt wrangling and tweaking”. I spend only like maybe 20% of the time promptcrafting and running initial render batches per image project, the rest of the time is taking that “kinda close” image I got from getting the prompt right and then going to work on it in inpainting and image editing programs and consolidating img2img renders together in multiple layers taking the best parts of each, sometimes cropping out areas for more detailed iterating and fine tuning, occasionally just manually repainting parts myself, like getting the blue areas right around the edges of Dabbler’s nose by simply painting them in myself, or manually adding in the extra set of legs.
I’m also still improving my own drawing skills now that I’m back in this scene, having tried to learn in college but faltering at drawn art despite excelling at CGi and digital image editing, so I can utilize tools like Controlnet and my own drawings to help get initial compositions for a given scene, bypassing the need to rely on promptcraft to set up an image initially. Still saving up for a decent digital artists tablet.
You learned to draw by looking at other people’s art, and still use references when drawing. I doubt you had a license of some sort to any of that work. Why should it be any different if it’s a computer, instead of a human being? We all learn from the works of others, build on the past. As long as someone’s not simply copying another person’s work and trying to pass it off as their own, what’s the problem?
“You learned to draw by looking at other people’s art” Actually… not necessarily/strictly. At least not in a cut and dry sense. I cannot actually speak for Dave here, but I don’t think you can either.
For my beginning experience as an “artist”, after witnessing the drawing of stickmen, I self taught without reference to draw 2d side-views– because I thought it more easy to be dynamic and easier to hide unneeded bits while being more readable –of people and flat objects with pencil. I did not base it off of any style I had witnessed at the time, any lessons I would have gotten, or any output outside my own. It wasn’t nice to look at, and in retrospect years later, I realised it wasn’t actually very readable, but it wasn’t formed from the art of others, and I was pretty proud of “inventing” it(I know now that I’m not the first person in that year to have “invented” it, let alone art history, but there was no reference I could point to at the time).
While it wasn’t unique, nor good, it was wholly formed from personal decisions and experimentation, as were how I expressed features. My “references” were myself in the mirror and willing family and friends, not the works of artists.
Later I did indeed further my education by looking first to manga(I even had a two attempt tracing period before I came to the realisation that I was “taking from others and gaining nothing” (if not in such adult terms)), then tutorials(which were willingly given, so people like me could learn to draw, with the approval of the artist) and references(not going to deny using them, but I was years into art before use references to influence style, rather than just subject), fanart(often with approval beforehand) and eventually classes, again with permission.
Does that happen to everyone? No. But it can and sometimes does. Does it happen to AI(that actually sees use)?
And there’s a difference, no? “Why should it be any different if it’s a computer, instead of a human being?” Is it not different? Yes, humans *can* learn from the works of others, but they don’t *have* to. Can AI produce a charcoal drawing of a scene with a clear(ish, at least) subjects, having only adsorbed 3D images with no indication of what a charcoal piece should look like? I don’t know the answer, really, but it seems to me that without outside tampering it could not… but a child could self-teach to achieve the result. (How about a change of style? How many examples does each need to absorb to diversify and try new things?)
Further “As long as someone’s not simply copying another person’s work and trying to pass it off as their own, what’s the problem?”… but that is, in a sense what is happening, if not directly in all cases. Many people(not all, obviously) use GenAI to produce content they would like to see, as if it were produced by the people they wanted to see produce it. It’s not a “copy of their work” in the strictest sense, but it is, in a way, often a “copy of the work they could do, with the right incentive”, but with a substitute for the artist and removal of the incentive. They are not contributing “themself” but “impressionist of target artist” into “content I want done but won’t do”(with, in some cases and addition of “what I will do” on top), and them, in many cases, yes, selling it as their own(again, not always).
The argument is that it’s not a copy, but copies don’t have to be perfect replicas. Nor do they have to be formed of one source. If I find 50 drawings of bodies and trace the different components as needed, readjusting positions, but maintaining the lines, yes, it’s not strictly a copy of any one image, but I still did trace. If I add further complexity to my actions it may better hide things, but at the end the core of the act is still there, and I should only be praised for the contributions my complexities added, not the lines I copied.
I didn’t know Skeletor was a neolithic farmer lmao
“shouldn’t be able to be sold or copyrighted in any way unless the model can be proven to have been trained on art the person generating the stuff either drew themselves or otherwise owns” 100% this.
Yes, if you want to build something that takes your own work(*maaaaybe* work you have rights to, as in the person(s) agreed to you using it explicitly in such a way– worry here is companies pressuring all contributors to agree or be blacklisted or somesuch –) and build your own setup using it… more power to you. You took your work, and you streamlined your process and what you’re pumping out is undeniably yours. I cannot hold that against you.
The moment that you introduce the work of another, unwilling participant into your commercial product(and/or your avoidance of paying for a commercial product/putting in work, for benefits not necessarily commercial), however, it loses some of that. The moment you stop introducing “you” to the piece(e.g. the people who don’t add to the results, don’t fix things, don’t study the craft and just pump out content) you lose a lot more. That is why, while I disagree with Joe, and do not support his methods, I consider him… “better” isn’t a good term, but I don’t have one, than the alternative. He still studies the field, he still contributes “Joe”, so while I cannot praise any parts that are not “Joe”, I can respect the parts the are.
Yeah I did that during my web development class in high school. For equally immature reasons lol
Glad these gangs at least have the wits to leak things intentionally, though I’d still call BS on them not having employed supers beforehand(esp if we have things like V’s group, Deus’ contractors, the Ascenders, the LLC… like ignoring Deus’ “super intelligence” clearly these supers weren’t hard to find! And most of these must’ve been formed before Archon announced supers, and even if they weren’t, it’s been months now).
P.S. You said the “I’m the guy! I got it!” bit in the author comment, and I didn’t even need to parse the shirt to figure out figure out what you meant ^^ People get way too proud about that one and all the “sneaky ways”(not being sneaky if you broadcast it!) they’d write those numbers.
You think employing supers would save them against NoRob (SciFright’s renegade project)?
Not necessarily, heck I’d even say not likely. I just think that if you are the leadership of some of the most famous, powerful, dangerous, profitable and most notably enduring gangs, that you cannot afford to be less intelligent than or have less intelligence(data) than… a guy who was just looking for the super equivalent of a street fight.
It’s not that foresight would have saved them(all– it probably could’ve saved some and/or kept the extortionist away until they judged if the super-guard was a threat or could be bypassed –), but that the complete lack or foresight seems entirely unreasonable for people in the positions being portrayed.
While your average joe or a normal company can get away with it, not hiring supers the moment you learn about them as the head of a criminal organisation seems like a good way to get some super shooting up you ranks and usurping you, or to find out a super assassin infiltrated your guards.
Not all powers are created equal, and hired supers won’t solve everything, but for the sake of deterrence at least you’d want one in your crew. (Preferably more so you can wave some around to cow poorer/weaker gangs who might be thinking of hiring a super to take you out and/or crush lesser gangs action movie style.)
We have no way of knowing if those gangs didn’t have supers (and as you said, they would be stupid not once supers were made public)
Heck, we don’t know if Baldy from a couple pages back wasn’t a super himself (and look how he faired)
Remember how close Maxi came to being defeated by NotRob (or whatever stupid name he goes by) and was only saved because the hypno-lens was cracked
I personally have referred to NotRob as ‘Super Mannekiller’ :)
Keep forgetting what names get used, even had to write down the personal names for Daphne because kept forgetting :(
As far as the triad goes, it certainly didn’t look it(Other gangs? Maybe. But not the triad. And Maxima seems to think other gangs aren’t hiring supers either.). Not only was there no obvious super powered action, but none of those people had the “idealised look” that Dave’s supers are supposed to have(I’ve already argued this bit a lot during one of those pages, but can go over it again if needed).
Additionally, the extorter specifically noted that they didn’t have any supers employed. That’s a pretty stupid assertion to make if that isn’t information they have(unless it’s deliberately taunting a super into action, but no super acted). I’d say we can be pretty confident that there were no supers in that room unless Dave wanted to be very deliberately misleading.
“Heck, we don’t know if Baldy from a couple pages back wasn’t a super himself” Considering that everyone thinks this is Sciona’s creation(I’m putting odd at about 50%, but everyone else seem *certain*), the one that gets super powers from drained super blood, who didn’t so much as comment on the guy… no I’m 99.9% certain he, at least, wasn’t a super.
“Remember how close Maxi came to being defeated by NotRob (or whatever stupid name he goes by) and was only saved because the hypno-lens was cracked” Actually, Dave noted in the comments that it was “anyone’s guess” if an un-cracked lens would have faired any better against her willpower(I’ve reread that specific author comment many times ^^;). As for “close to being defeated”? That’s a very generous maybe. If it could injure her, then maybe it could have defeated her(via draining her blood and gaining her powers and assuming it could use them as well as she could). It was certainly about to try, but we don’t know if it’d actually have been successful.
@DaveB. There are no 4th degree burns. Its 1 2 3 and dead. All are measured as percentage of body covered. With each 5% being the surface of one hand approximately.
You may be working off of a different classification system than DaveB is referencing. https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/health-library/classification-of-burns
In this system, degree is determined by depth of damage (rather than body coverage) and there is a 4th degree for burns that penetrate the skin and damage muscle or bone.
Is this common? I was taught three degrees (and even them, they moved past it to “superficial” “partial thickness” and “full thickness” burns probably exactly because of this kind of confusion). Three degrees always seemed to be the standard. (E.g., https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/burns )
If you read the “Third Degree” section of your link’s information, it gives some reference as to when 4th degree might be used.
Depending on the resource, people will tell you it stops anywhere from 3rd to 6th.
From what I’ve seen some of these classifications may not be recognised everywhere(I’m no medical or legal expert, though there are mentions in both those fields from people *claiming* to know their stuff), but those above 3rd are supposedly distinguished in that they involve exposed and/or damaged bones while those below do not.
Depending on the manner of the deaths, even ArcSWAT may not be able to rebrand them as a part of the team.
Hey, it’s a good color for the shirt. One of my favorites. A nice royal purple.
I love panel 4 and the faces in panel 6.
https://www.colorhexa.com/7a31c7
for all those who were still wondering.
Yes. It’s purple.
I thought for a minute that Max and Anvil had a silent mug-based argument as to who was the best glamazon, but on second look, I’m pretty sure Anvil’s mug says “Blamazon,” not “Glamazon.”
But that would make the mugs inaccurate, since Max can certainly make bigger “blams” than Anvil.
Think more along the lines of Blacula ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacula ). Myself, I’d say Anvil should be holding both of the mugs.
When Anvil and Max were peeking around the corner,can you imagine Max saying…
Max: Anvil,when was the last time you shaved your underarms?
Lol. However it’s canon that supers dont have body hair.
Doc Chevy, aka Recovery Girl.
I need to know where they are getting these Glamazon mugs
So, how does Frix have tattoos over his fur?
Hair dye :)
Or, being a being with access to space stuff, something something high tech equivalent. Maybe programmable nanotech macguffin, etc etc.
Space Tattoo Artist.
Anything is possible if you add the word ‘space’ before a profession.