Every so often I wade into shitty waters to observe their qualities. The Guardian's comments section used to be a good place to observe Russian trolls in the wild, which are almost an example of this phenomenon.
Right after the Richard Spencer nazi salute business, I went onto reddit's alt right board. They were pissed and disheartened by Trump's "denunciation" of the alt right, although even more so by the defection of some alt right dude I'd never heard of. One gentleman expressed his sentiments so: "I've been out there every day shitposting for the Donald and he's not even President yet and he turns his back on us" (or something to that effect). So at least some subset of Trump supporters views trolling as campaign work.
I'm relieved that he's paying enough attention to notice when The Donald fails to carry through on at least some of the bullshit. One of my biggest fears is that Trump's presidency goes down in popular memory as a roaring success where he accomplished all the things he set out to do, while the eggheads fume that they were just photo ops and lies, and scandal after scandal, plus normal Republican destruction.
I'm pretty sure Trump will leave a bunch of very bitter disappointed white supremicists in his wake. I'm sure that will work out well for everybody.
Hey, Bob? I'm going to delete your posts in this thread. Irony may be dead, but there's no reason to desecrate its corpse any more than we have to.
There is a troll gap. Maybe we can weaponize bob and sic him on to Breitbart?
People on r/altright aren't all idiots. There's some high comedy to be found though, along the lines of, "If we're ever going to achieve the success the Left has, we need to emulate their tactics. When was the last time you saw them fighting against each other? Never Punch Right."
Breitbart comments, on the other hand, are wall to wall stupid, and much more numerous.
I'm pretty sure Trump will leave a bunch of very bitter disappointed white supremicists in his wake. I'm sure that will work out well for everybody.
The alternative is that he leaves a bunch of very happy white supremacists in his wake.
I don't see the point of trolling Breitbart, but maybe organized anti-troll trolling of more neutral sites would be useful.
Who would have thought the party of affirmative action bake sales would embrace online trolling?
Good luck with the weaponizing bob project.
What throws me about the trolling thing as a successful strategy. I kind of get why it's fun entertainment, if you're that way inclined. I don't get why it isn't discrediting to people who aren't themselves trolls watching it happen. How are people convinced by that shit?
I've been seeing what I assume are Russian trolls on Reddit fairly often lately. Accounts with recent creation dates and no posts except on Russia, always defending or obfuscating. There's also a set of fairly dedicated right wing trolls - I'm in the middle of fighting with one over voter fraud right now.
My policy in dealing with trolls is to try to focus on the audience rather than the troll. Respond to them with substance directed at potentially convinceable readers who are not participating in the thread directly. Ignore insults and flame bait and just post substantive stuff.
How are people convinced by that shit?
People don't care about the means if the ends align with their pre-existing goals.
The problem isn't that the trolling convinces people. It's that it drives out all other discussion and puts people into a "people are awful and nothing will get better" mindset.
3: I don't remember who, but I remember someone saying relatively early in the campaign that it would be a "John the Baptist election." If Clinton wins, then next time the Republicans would nominate a literal fascist. If Trump wins, then next time the Democrats would nominate a literal socialist. (Maybe the word was "communist" and not "socialist," or maybe it hinged on the difference between how Sanders describes himself and a more pure socialism, or maybe this comment was after he had been eliminated.)
Whoever said that apparently left out the possibility that Trump was an actual fascist himself.
So much of Reddit has become a vile cesspool. It may be irredeemable at this point.
I don't get why it isn't discrediting to people who aren't themselves trolls watching it happen. How are people convinced by that shit?
I think it probably starts to look like razzing the losers, irresistible fun. I think the appeal to a late-joiner is that there are clear-cut rules for how to be on the same side as the person of power (ie the bully) and not to be their target. It's a very myopic, self-centered view of the world where the targets of the bullying are just words on a screen, and your entire goal is to maximize the kind of camraderie that makes you feel good. Also you feel validated about girls being jerks for rejecting you.
15: There are decent subs and horrible ones. I have a few subs I frequent because there's usually substantial discussion and minimal trolling, and I also check /r/worldnews and /r/news because I like getting in fights with right wing nutjobs from time to time. But it's wrestling with a pig, so if you're not into that best avoid those subs.
The thing that really pisses me off about Reddit is that they made /r/TwoXChromosomes a default sub so now it's flooded with fucking MRAs and PUAs and shitheads like that. It used to be a pretty decent place to discuss feminist stuff, now every fucking thread gets hijacked with "what about the menz?" crap.
/r/TwoXChromosomes
I thought that was for men with Klinefelter syndrome.
One of the weirder things I noticed during G/amer/gate was the number of people who insisted that making death threats* is normal. And with a lot of these folks, I honestly didn't get the sense that they were trolling. They genuinely thought that they were being the calm voice of reason when they explained that, really, people shouldn't get upset about receiving death threats from creepy strangers because after all that's totally normal and no big deal.
How did there get to be so many of these people?
* not "If you spill that on my new keyboard, I'll kill you" death threats, the creepy "I can find out where you live" kind.
It used to be a pretty decent place to discuss feminist stuff, now every fucking thread gets hijacked with "what about the menz?" crap.
Do the mods not crack down on that shit?
Not especially related, but one line someone dropped here that has stuck with me is that "The media took Trump literally but not seriously, Trump's followers took him seriously but not literally."
I guess it's related, to the communications gap: many of the non-psychopathic trolls are being serious but not literal.
It surprises me a bit that the winding-people-up variety of trolling still seems to work so well after we've had all these years to practice our internetting. Surely after a while anybody learns to see trolling for what it is (fine, with varying degrees of sophistication) and it's, like, easy to stop reading. And everybody must have some practice in meatspace of not giving people who are spoiling for a fight the satisfaction, a la, "okay buddy, whatever you say" and moving on. It's so much easier in a comments section.
20: To some extent, but there's still a lot that makes it past them. Doing a serious job of moderating would take a much larger team than they currently have, unfortunately.
And everybody must have some practice in meatspace of not giving people who are spoiling for a fight the satisfaction, a la, "okay buddy, whatever you say" and moving on.
I've become more confrontational toward aggressive young men in meatspace over the past few years. Just the other day, I scowled at two kids who were driving down a jammed street road honking at the cars in front of them to move faster. They quit after I gave them the look a few times. (I was walking and the traffic was bad enough that I kept pace with them.)
Oh yeah, I give a mean stink-eye.
You're a professional. I'm just a gifted amateur.
22: I mean, not to make everything about our local pet troll, but with all the familiarity in the world with his being a pure creature of contentless spite, Bob still manages to get a rise out of people sometimes. Ignoring well-crafted trolling is really hard.
Thanks for the post Nick. I'll try to say something coherent later.
Debates and discussions in the old media are similarly problematic in that countering lies and misinformation is a lot harder (impossible, really, in the usual formats) than telling lies and misinforming, and often all the liar needs is a draw (the outcome described in 13). At least the media has the option of not giving voice to liars, though they choose not to exercise it.
I don't get why it isn't discrediting to people who aren't themselves trolls watching it happen.
In many cases you have a variety of voices operating at different rhetorical registers reinforcing each other. For example, from the comments at the Bruce Schneier piece there is:
Pure trolling: "With Trump it will be a harder battle? Yeah, ok, maybe by 1%. Clinton despises and has as much contempt for the slaves too."
Semi-Related Right Wing Talking points: "Now -- how this all relates to security... One key point in the entire privacy debate is controlling the size and scope of the government. And yet almost every security folk I'm reading right now is saying "Trump won, it's TERRIBLE," without for one second realizing they've all been supporting bigger government for many years in the form of a strong progressive political movement -- which is, itself, trying to control everyone, all the time, "for their own good." 90%+ of the entire tech world, being wrapped in a culture bubble they can't even see, has been working against privacy and security for the last 20+ years."
Blather and Obfuscation: "It is too funny how all the biggest cock-ups are blamed on Russia - the indomitable boogeyman. There is no need to claim conspiracy when stupidity or simple malice provides an adequate answer. Therefore, if I apply Occam's Razor, then the most likely simple explanation is that the DNC and Yahoo hacking events were inside jobs by disgruntled employees. BTW, Trump won. Get over it. He can't be any worse than Billary."
Reasonably differences in belief: "There is very little difference between Clinton and Trump. They would both push for NOBUS capabilities and so on as usual. The only difference is that Trump is more direct to the point on what he wants and possibly more forceful on the surface."
Plus Random praise of Trump: "I find strange that smart people are so scared by campaign tactics. Trump will announce something on public to get the upper hand, then he will _negotiate_ what makes more sense according to his advisors' data and his personal preference. He is not an extreme nut, he is a business man. He's not classy, but he's also not stupid, people. Consider Obamacare: he said he would rip it off, but not a day after being elected he changed his speech. That was intentional."
All of those reinforce each other
The effort required for crafting responses to trolls (and right-wing arguments in general, as right-wing arguments are mostly trolling anyway) is begging for automation. Disrupt assholery.
Godamnit NickS, 31 is like secondhand trolling.
There's a problem in dealing with trolling-type behavior, in terms of being able to meet your own standards of discourse. That is, if you're a reasonable person trying to talk to anyone who isn't exactly like you, you have to cut them some slack, assume good faith, not take jokes literally, and so on. If you're doing that with someone who's intentionally exploiting your good faith, you're a chump and you're not doing anything useful at all in the conversation. If you're not doing that, though, you're vulnerable to accusations that you're closed-minded and unwilling to interact honestly with people not in your echo chamber.
I think we handle that pretty well around here -- lots of slack for familiar people, lots of slack for strangers who haven't demonstrated that they're trolls, and then flipping hard over into not even pretending to engage seriously with people who are trolling. But you need a critical mass of reasonable people to make that work, and it doesn't exist most places.
Godamnit NickS, 31 is like secondhand trolling.
I know. Re-reading my comment I can feel my aggravation level climbing. But I wanted to make the point about the cumulative effect.
Godamnit NickS, 31 is like secondhand trolling.
Also, part of why I found that post so striking is that the comments on his blog are often helpful and informative. I click through to his posts with the expectation that I will learn something from the comment and then I ran into that . . .
32: My wife and I talk about this a lot, but we haven't come up with a good strategy. Writing a bot is well within both our technical abilities, but we don't have a specific plan. It doesn't help that 90% of my suggestions are more of the category of "Things I would think are funny" rather than "Things that would be helpful. For example, a Twitter bot that responds to cat pictures with the reply "You're the reason Trump won."
27: I actually had him partly in mind when I wrote 22. Usually I don't find Bob annoying, and occasionally even interesting. But the other day for whatever reason he was really getting on my nerves, and so I just stopped reading his comments. Which he makes it easy to do b/c you can tell it's him from the first line, without even looking down at the signature. Even from the spacing/formatting, sometimes.
I do grant your point, though: ignoring well-crafted trolling is hard. It's just that I would expect a sort of arms race of trollcraft vs. troll detection + deterrence over time that doesn't seem to have taken place.
I have to admit, the one variety of trolling I have engaged in (not here, not often, not recently, and I'm not proud of it) was exactly about trollcraft and took the form of "how long can I take the appearance of a good-faith interlocutor while advancing a purely bullshit argument and leaving ever more obvious clues that I'm not on the level." Although I was never about enjoying others' outrage, I think the fun was in realising how easy it can be to manipulate people minus all the normal interpersonal cues, and sort of flexing those newly-discovered muscles. I'm sure this is at least part of what motivates the more malignant varieties of troll as well.
38.last: Those people make me flip my shit, which I actually think is the productive and reasonable response to them, when they're malicious. Someone is bullshitting you under the pretence of being reasonable, just starting to swear at them works better than being reasonable back.
"how long can I take the appearance of a good-faith interlocutor while advancing a purely bullshit argument and leaving ever more obvious clues that I'm not on the level."
On a lot of sites about biology and evolution it's now probably impossible for someone to show up and ask a genuine question about the evidence for evolution without getting jumped on, because the sites have been subjected to years of this kind of thing.
Ditto for a number of feminist sites (although those are mostly defunct now anyway).
"Poison the well for any honest inquirers" is something that trolls have proven very good at.
But you need a critical mass of reasonable people to make that work, and it doesn't exist most places.
Yeah, given that the election was so close at all, I'm not at all surprised that so many people have such a hard time dealing with trolling. It's not like it's easier to win arguments with dedicated professionals than it is to discern that Pizzagate is absurd. And yet, plenty of people bought into that.
40 could be crossposted to the confessor thread.
42,43: I'd thought of referencing the confessor thread in the comment.
But I didn't, because it's not my job to educate you.
How do you feel about it is not your job to educate me?
the Manosphere alt-right was way into Putin before trump. They like strongmen and displays of masculinity. They liked trump for the same reason. they Liked his policies, but they wouldn't have backed a conventional candidate with the same policies
Lots of sites like Twitter facebook and Reddit allow for the creation of mini communities of people with extreme ideas. these mini communities develop trolls but within them they are not trolling and the people with normal ideas are the trolls (how many times do you have to respond to the same basic "fascism is bad" arguments)
I don't think catbot would be unhelpful...
I picture something more open and less automated, I guess. Allowing people to respond with relevant, brief copy pasta and a link to a node on a directed graph of arguments and responses might at least relieve the feeling that a more thorough response must be crafted. Sort of an open, community edited, manually operated chatbot.
That's really not true. Trolling is a set of techniques, not a substantive disagreement. You could have leftwingers trolling a fascist community, but some reasonable liberal (oh, call him Devin Krum) doesn't turn into a troll because he's talking to people from 4chan.
I suspect that most of the work is done via "poison the well" and "turn people aggressive against newbie posts"--both shut down the ability of a group to converse as easily, and much harder to recruit new people. If nothing else, you're extracting a tax on participation that wasn't there before, which discourages ongoing effort.
On Swope in 22: It surprises me a bit that the winding-people-up variety of trolling still seems to work so well after we've had all these years to practice our internetting.
I suspect the issue here is the same thing about "firsts" -- there's a constant stream of new/inexperienced people who haven't built up the familiarity. People join the internet for the first time everyday--and learning the new standards is ever harder, since "what's assumed" has more assumptions built over time.
50.2: Indeed. It's tough being aware of all internet traditions.
It's tough being aware of all internet traditions.
Such as Eternal September?
You may be surprised to hear that lots of people consider Kevin "Bernie Sanders Would Have Lost the Election in a Landslide" Drum to be a troll.
https://twitter.com/kdrum/status/809773349115195392
I don't think Drum was trolling, just being stupid. This election taught us that ideology doesn't matter. Its all about what tribe you are in.
I don't think he either was trolling or being stupid. The people calling him trolling in the linked thread, to the extent they had anything substantive to say rather than just flat disagreement, were complaining that his chart called LBJ less liberal than Obama, and that's obviously crazy. But of course the chart called LBJ less liberal in comparison to the congress he was working with than Obama, which looks perfectly reasonable to me -- I haven't checked the data, but it's not unlikely at all. The fact that someone's calling Drum a troll as an insult doesn't make him one.
(Was he being stupid? Obviously, you can't say "Bernie wouldn't have won" as a fact, no one knows the truth of a complicated counterfactual. But even though I voted for Bernie, I think he would have had serious problems with voters who were still skittish about the socialism thing.)
49 & 53: Maybe Kevin Drum's online persona is actually a team of 4chan trolls playing a very long game for some obscure reason.
Has anyone here ever actually seen him in person?
If there's one thing this election has taught me, it's that the modern right is really welcoming of Jews.
Was he being stupid? Obviously, you can't say "Bernie wouldn't have won" as a fact, no one knows the truth of a complicated counterfactual.
Yeah, that's why I think he was being stupid. Its a complicated counterfactual that he treated as an obvious slam-dunk and topped it off with a clickbait headline.
Although, you are right. Maybe that's not stupid. Maybe it is trolling.
55 - it would have been (even more) super awesome if Trump had won on a campaign of insinuating that Sanders was a Soviet mole, only for all the Russian hacking stuff to come up again.
An overstated clickbaity headline might be 'trolling' in some broad sense, but it's really not much like 'being a troll' in the sense we're talking about. Drum, if engaged about whether the headline was a little overstated, would be reasonable about -- might say that he was personally convinced that no one too far left of the contemporary Congress had a chance, but wouldn't refuse to talk about it like a reasonable person.
Disagreement isn't trolling.
That's not an argument, that's just contradiction.
|| Obama's press conference starting momentarily is supposed to be a Big Deal; it's here if you want to stream it. |>
I feel like 61 is somehow involved me trolling myself because I'm blanking on a reply to 62.
I believe your next line is "No it isn't." We're doing Monty Python, right?
62/64- Nuh uh!
I'm hoping 63 is a live illustration relevant to the thread.
65: But "No it isn't" is clearly not trolling.
I should go back to buying Christmas presents for my nieces work.
OK, fine, you want a big lesson? Here it is: our country is now so polarized at a partisan level that it almost literally doesn't matter who runs. Republicans will vote for the Republican and Democrats will vote for the Democrat. There's probably not much more than 3-4 percent of the population that's truly persuadable anymore.
Kevin Drum from a few days ago. I guess 3-4 percent could make a landslide? Anyway, that chart's silly.
Starting late (as usual?) but the press conference video is going now. Obama not up yet.
Obama's press conference starting momentarily is supposed to be a Big Deal
If he says "President Trump? You actually fell for that? Come on people!", let us know.
"No foreign terrorist group has sexed... successfully attacked our country."
72: I'm not expecting anything that will make me feel much better, but it had to have been hyped for a reason, right?
73: awwww yeah.
He's taking questions now. I don't think he said anything headline-generating.
I don't believe the fate of Adlai Stephenson (or any candidate before the southern realignment, really) tells us much about politics today, but to do it right one should at least compare DW scores to econometric model residuals. Also, depending on the timing, doesn't the DW score kind of stack the deck? Eg, Carter wins in '76 because he's over Drum's threshold but then the country becomes more conservative, elects a more conservative Congress, and pushes Carter's score to the other side.
He's talking about cybersecurity as a bipartisan, apolitical issue.
Anyway, that chart's silly.
I have no idea why that's so. What better measure is there for mainstream positioning of a politician than where she stands relative to her peers? I also feel as if there's some willful stupidity (not nec. in 69) about LBJ: is someone trying to argue that LBJ as a Senator and VP was some crazy liberal? That's just ignorant.
Furthermore, who is out of position in a way that matters? Everyone between Carter '80 and Obama '08 is in a band of 12.5% and 17.5%, which is to say in the center of the liberal block*. Or is someone going to be so ridiculous as to argue that Sanders isn't to the left of everyone in Congress? I mean, last I checked, that was his entire campaign.
Or is 69 just saying that it doesn't prove anything?
*whether Congress includes true moderates/centrists or not--in this decade, the partisan gap is significant, but there used to be plenty of overlap, and people at the 50% point--there have still always been centrist Dems and liberal Dems, and liberal Dems are going to be something like 1/3 of Congress (when Dems are a smaller minority, it's the centrists who suffer more than the liberals).
I'm not watching, but I would be shocked if anything substantive comes out of the press conference. That's not Obama's style.
The only read-between-the-lines significant thing he said is that Putin might have been considering hacking the voting mechanisms as well but he threatened Putin when they met face to face and consequently Russia did not hack that.
Kevin Drum hates Bernie for some reason and thinks he was a con man
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/04/heres-why-i-never-warmed-bernie-sanders
"I mean this as a provocation--but I also mean it. So if you're provoked, mission accomplished! Here's my argument."
He has been provoking Bernie supporters since he lost the primary. Because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?
because he's over Drum's threshold
So what, you're quibbling about whether the threshold should be 15% or 13%? Sanders is 1%. It doesn't fucking matter where the horizon of electability is: Bernie can't see it from where he is.
Meanwhile, I think we can see from the performance of the MSM over the past 5 weeks that they're reflexively opposed to right wing ideas and talking points, and would certainly have treated Sanders' social democratic ideas very, very respectfully.
Arguing against a consensus in a community is trolling. Shearer was reasonable and would listen to counter-arguments but the comment section would often just blow up anyway.
The only other possibly interesting thing is he's playing this very cool while in the background the CIA is poisoning Putin's horse, like during the Bin Laden/WHCD overlap.
Have you ever tried to poison a horse's vagina without killing the horse?
Not a rhetorical question. Need answer now.
I don't believe the fate of Adlai Stephenson (or any candidate before the southern realignment, really) tells us much about politics today, but to do it right one should at least compare DW scores to econometric model residuals.
I think Eggplant's correct on this point. I am also slightly boggled that the thread has drifted into an argument over whether or not Kevin Drum is a troll.
I was hoping he would cancel the inauguration and call a new election. This is fucking lame.
Because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?
Presumably because, as a writer for one of America's two biggest lefty magazines, he hears a lot from Bernie types? And because--I say this based on my FB feed, which may not represent Sanders supporters as a whole, but surely does represent what Drum would experience--Bernie types have been ridiculous and annoying all year?
"The lesson of this election is that white America was hungry for a socialist Jew" is the apotheosis of Sanders wankery. It's part of why I stayed completely offline for a week after the election.
While I'm at it, the part of the left that's crowing, "Now how do you like having your elections stolen by foreign powers?" should basically fuck off and die. If there's one lesson from Weimar, it's that Leftists treating social democrats as the true enemy were vindicated by history, for sure.
I am also slightly boggled that the thread has drifted into an argument over whether or not Kevin Drum is a troll.
That kind of proves that it was an effective troll, though, doesn't it?
Here's another link that I was thinking of when I wrote the original post, but couldn't decide whether it was actually related to trolling or some other species of rhetorical failure: Yearning for Trumpocalypse
"The Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta," Publius writes, "think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are."
Trolling-adjacent*, or just hyperbole?
Shearer was reasonable and would listen to counter-arguments but the comment section would often just blow up anyway.
I had more time for Shearer than most people did, because you're right that he would often argue reasonably. But people blew up at him, not because his tactics were trolling mostly (oh, I'm sure people called him a troll sometimes, but people are inexact), but because he kept on arguing racist points of view. (And sexist, but worse on the racist.)
Trolling isn't the only reason to get pissed off at someone. Holding substantively kind of evil views is an independent reason. (It's a shame about the racism. I kind of liked having him around -- a bright, reasonable person who's relentlessly disagreeable but mostly argues fairly is fun if you like to argue, and I do.)
I was hoping he would cancel the inauguration and call a new election. This is fucking lame.
Yes.
* I say "adjacent" because it's clearly different from the definition offered in the second link in the OP, "Whitney Phillips, whose research has involved years of participant-observation of trolls, describes lulz as schadenfreude with more bite."
"Meanwhile, I think we can see from the performance of the MSM over the past 5 weeks that they're reflexively opposed to right wing ideas and talking points, and would certainly have treated Sanders' social democratic ideas very, very respectfully."
The MSM certainly "eviscerated" Trump during the general election. People still liked Trump better.
Maybe dems should have run the most popular politician in the US instead.
88: Do we need a quick ruling? Kevin Drum is not a troll.
Kendzior: "Obama is relitigating the election as we face an unprecedented national security crisis and public demands leadership. Dereliction of duty."
So what, you're quibbling about whether the threshold should be 15% or 13%? Sanders is 1%.
No. Moving the threshold up or down a percent changes the win ratios in the two categories dramatically, so unless you think those scores are that accurate and that the voting public is able to discern those minute changes, his categorization is meaningless.
The MSM certainly "eviscerated" Trump during the general election. People still liked Trump better.
They were a lot harder on Hillary than on Trump. And it worked! I don't see that they would have gone easier on Bernie than they did on Hillary.
"What percentage of the US electorate is interested in building socialism, do you think?"
https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/808895811413245952
You folks... know Obama, right? Remember how he acted as president? He's acting that way.
Remember the part where he gave a State of the Union address while he was having Bin Laden assassinated? I was hoping for something like that.
The MSM certainly "eviscerated" Trump during the general election. People still liked Trump better.
You know this isn't true, right? Like, this is a really weird thing to say. Trump's approval ratings were lower than Clinton's throughout the campaign (possible, brief exceptions after Comey letter et al), and she, uh, got 3M more votes. So "People still liked Trump better" is a 100% false statement. And a pretty good example of how the left would rather pillory Clinton than face the facts of the election that actually occurred.
Furthermore, Clinton was plenty popular before Sanders and Trump began attacking her. This has always been the insane blind spot of Sanders fans: the idea that popularity is some static characteristic. During Obama's first term, Clinton was more popular than Obama. She was, literally, the most popular politician in America for 3+ years. For some reason, once she ran for office and people started attacking her, that went down. The MSM never bothered attacking Sanders, and Clinton was fairly hands off as well. What a shock that his popularity never dropped much.
It must be the evergreen popularity of Vermont-style socialism in America. Remember when Dean won because of that ad where the voter said, "please bring your tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show to the nation at large"?
For the record, I've said several times now that there is no more avenue for hope other than Republicans self-destructing at an unprecedented level, and there's nothing we can do to speed that or make it more likely, we're all doomed, we'll never have either positive social change for this country or a return to meaningful democratic institutions... and yet I still think it's stupid to re-fight the primary. As a Sanders supporter, I'm happy to admit that given what we know now, he would not be a good candidate in the 2020 election. I assume most Clinton supporters would say the same about their candidate. What else is there to it?
This thread is now trolling itself.
I wonder whether Kendzior will get a MacArthur award.
93 is pretty much where I'm at. Shearer was often sincere and not always wrong.
"As a Sanders supporter, I'm happy to admit that given what we know now, he would not be a good candidate in the 2020 election. I assume most Clinton supporters would say the same about their candidate. What else is there to it?"
Sanders supporters want someone Sanders-like to run. Clinton supporters want someone Clinton-like to run. So it makes a difference why Clinton lost or whether Sanders would have won (even if it is pretty much unknowable- it is a fight to determine the conventional wisdom)
108: If you're one of the secret genius pickers, I know somebody who has could use $600,000 and would be willing to stop all "Opinionated" things in exchange.
I am not. Were I, you'd already have your award.
I'll keep asking people at the bar then.
I still think it's stupid to re-fight the primary.
Well, yes, but I'm not doing that. I'm fighting the longstanding claim by centrist Democrats that they hold the key to winning elections. My quote in 69 is an example of a centrist Democrat (of whom I'm fond) selectively using the insensitivity of voters to anything but party to defend his preferred candidate's performance and then ignoring that observation when he wants to criticize those to his left. It's a really common habit.
My wife listened to 15 seconds, and it was the most Obama thing ever. He was talking about how he knows many FBI agents, and that they have a hard job.
I think it's unfair to tie the Bernie nutters too closely to Sanders. If it were 2008 and Clinton had won, they'd have been Obama nutters. While Sanders' policies are out of mainstream acceptability, they're not from cloud-cuckoo land.
It would have been better if Sanders had been the nominee, because it would have finally ended the delusion that there's secretly a large constituency for socialism, when the evidence is that people hate it and will vote against it even if it's against their own self-interest. The fact that the Democrats have a track record over the last 36 years of losing Congress 100% of the time after they try to pass social democratic legislation is not sufficient.
I voted for Sanders because I thought Trump was so unacceptable that Sanders had a good chance. It seems clear to me now that I radically overestimated how unacceptable Trump was.
Obama wasn't willing to say that the election was free and fair. He said that the things we were afraid about before (individual voting machines being broken into) did not come to pass.
I voted for Sanders because I thought Trump was so unacceptable that Sanders had a good chance. It seems clear to me now that I radically overestimated how unacceptable Trump was.
Or underestimated how much Republicans wanted to vote against Clinton. As has been noted, Trump isn't that popular among Republicans but they still came out to vote.
The fact that the Democrats have a track record over the last 36 years of losing Congress 100% of the time after they try to pass social democratic legislation is not sufficient.
Fucked that up. Ignore 118, please. Actual existing socialism is pretty damn popular, despite the racist fear that it helps some undeserving out group.
It was completely clear in 1994 that the Democrats lost for being "too far left", and in 2010 because of Obamacare. Even though each time their Presidential candidate ran on health care reform, because the voters are morons. I expect Trump to get killed in 2018 when Obamacare gets repealed, even though it was one of his campaign promises, again because voters are morons.
Democrats are always too far left. Policy has nothing to do with it.
Sanders
yes:
tax-hiking, government-expanding, New York Times-reading
no:
latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving
maybe:
body-piercing, Hollywood-loving
Sushi is mostly pretty great. Don't eat the octopus one and you're fine.
Sanders supporters want someone Sanders-like to run. Clinton supporters want someone Clinton-like to run. So it makes a difference why Clinton lost or whether Sanders would have won (even if it is pretty much unknowable- it is a fight to determine the conventional wisdom)
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Focus on state and congressional races
Sanders could drive a Volvo, but it would be like, a 1982 Volvo. One of those big-ass boxy things.
Also, don't get any roll with cream cheese.
Dude, Philly roles are awesome and, importantly, reliable in a situation where raw fish may not be a great idea. You are just mad that the Pittsburgh roll is rice stuffed with french fries.
124 gets it exactly right and cannot be repeated enough.
"Mele Kalikimaka" is Kenyan for "I faked the birth certificate the whole time and there is nothing you can do about it now, bitches."
If raw fish isn't a great idea at a sushi place, you should leave the sushi place. But I would like to subscribe to your Pittsburgh roll.
Keith Ellison Calls for 50-State 3,007-County Strategy as DNC Chair Candidate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkRsH8R6yZw
If raw fish isn't a great idea at a sushi place, you should leave the sushi place.
Sushi place. How elitist. Get you sushi from the 7-11, like a real American.
I don't know offhand, but I have enough faith in Ellison to have a strong guess.
I hope they have a machine that extrudes the sushi onto a tray.
700 of which have fewer than 10,000 people. But I still like the concept.
Apparently, the 3007 doesn't count Alaska and Louisiana's functional equivalents of counties.
137: My home county is about one more census away from going under that threshold.
None of the 8 counties that border the county of my birth have more than 10,000 people. In fact, six of them combined have less than 10,000 people.
If you visit, don't order the sushi.
Raw pork sushi is a minority taste.
The last actual restaurant (that is, not a truck stop or cafe or fast food) just closed.
Eating raw fish is never a good idea.
145- Now that's some high quality trolling.
I only eat the raw fish of my enemies.
That explains why you went out of your way to start a war with lime juice and chili peppers.
It occurs to me that last night's leaks that Obama would show some spine today were probably from people trying to push him to do so.
They failed. As did he.
Hey! What happened to the salmon filet I had? The grill is finally ready.
Walt Someguy has declared war on you . . .
Sorry, I thought it was NickS's filet.
I missed the press conference. Is Obama really going to do absolutely nothing?
I mean, I didn't actually expect him to announce that we were having a re-do of the election. (Though he should.) But wasn't he insisting just yesterday that there would be consequences for Russia?
Is he not even declassifying the intelligence, etc? He knows it will be covered up, right? I don't understand what he is thinking.
That is sure what it looked like. It looked like he is disgusted with Americans for voting in Trump and he was leaving us to deal with the problems.
I don't understand what he is thinking either. But he didn't strike any sort of defiant or hopeful tone. He gave good analyses of why it sucks (media, no shared factual basis) and then, welp, public, you sure will have a lot on your hands when I'm out of here. Bye!
I suspect that Obama is not saying anything publicly because he's getting his ducks in a row to kick Putin in the cyber-goolies. No point tipping your hand. I certainly hope that's what's going on.
Also some bullshit about how Democrats need to do some soulsearching on how to reach the people he reached, because he knows they're good people inside.
Inspired by this thread, I had lunch at the revolving sushi bar near my office.
Apparently, the 3007 doesn't count Alaska and Louisiana's functional equivalents of counties.
Alaska's system is weird and no one outside the state understands it, so it tends to get left out of this sort of thing, but I thought Louisiana's parishes were identical to counties except in name, so that's a surprising omission.
Nah. It means they only read the first line of the infobox that comes up when you Google "number of counties in the us. ("As of 2013, the United States has 3,007 counties and 137 county equivalents for a total of 3,144 counties and county equivalents.") Alternatively, maybe they didn't want to be liable to being well-actuallyed if they used the county equivalents number. And if they had explicitly said "3,144 county equivalent strategy" that'd be a little oh god I'm being too boring even for myself.
For maximum irony, Louisiana should have called its county equivalents shires.
Ah. That's the kind of diligence I expect in a DNC chair.
Also some bullshit about how Democrats need to do some soulsearching on how to reach the people he reached
The Democrats sort of do need to do something like this, don't they?
I keep saying this, but Californian democrats never found a way to "reach" CA Republicans. We outvoted them and everything got better. For the same energy, I'd rather convert to national popular vote.
he's getting his ducks in a row to kick Putin in the cyber-goolies.
Well, he did insult the Russians good. "They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms. They don't innovate."
Wow, the fucking media really is to blame.
Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.
Six people were willing to leak this? Some "off the record" meeting that is.
Sinclair owns 8 stations in Michigan, 9 in Ohio, 7 in PA, 5 in Wisconsin, and a ton of others. In exchange for tons of Trump interviews with local anchors they agreed to run them as recorded, and not to make any editorial comment on them. That's how he won.
I guess maybe those old "equal time" rules existed for a reason.
"I don't read the news anymore and it's great."
Shearer sighting!
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/no?replytocom=2440284#respond
166-168: It should be noted that this is not a new thing for Sinclair. They were notorious in 2004 for airing a 2-hour "documentary" on Kerry Swift Boat stuff the week before the election.
I'm not convinced that trolling was or is an essential or new part of the Trump coalition. I've thought for years that authoritarian personalities are the core problem with right-wing politics, and the election bears that out, with tribal loyalty trumping everything, as usual. Superficially*, it seems to me that most of these trolls fit the pattern, with a handful of bullying leaders and lots of followers. I'm guessing the MRAs look that way, with handfuls of actual PUAs and many more 'incels' or whatever hanging on. Breitbart and Trump recruiting these people fits too, followers clustering behind whoever emerges as the strongest leader.
The addition of the Russians and the deliberate disinformation is separate and vastly more worrying, but disinformation and propaganda aren't new. Similarly the doxxing and DOSing and whatnot: people have always been dicks, technology gives us new ways to do old things. Everything is terrible and always has been. Also, 124.
*Very superficially. I'm only peripherally aware of this stuff at all. Don't do social media, have never played games.
I keep saying this, but Californian democrats never found a way to "reach" CA Republicans. We outvoted them and everything got better.
What happened in California recently is one of the few things that gives me hope. I grew up there and lived there during that late 90s - early 00s, and it looked like it would just permanently be under the control of a bunch deranged yahoos. It seemed like they were so thoroughly entrenched that we would never get rid of them.
Then suddenly they were voted out.
In other news, the entire city is an ice skating rink right now.
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I'm so fucking frustrated right now. The gadget I'm designing is behind schedule because I can't get fucking access to resources. My boss has decided that the problem is not enough people working on the design, so now I have 5 fucking people sticking their fingers into my work, speculating about how things might or might not be problems, and still no fucking resources to do any goddamn testing. Data will make all the speculation moot and we can refine the design to optimize it based on facts instead of guesses. I'm on the verge of quitting. If anyone knows of a good job for a talented tinkerer in Oregon or Northern Virginia, let me know.
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Sounds as if you're prepared for a long but very specific commute.
I live in NoVA but have family in Oregon (my sister and her kids just moved there, my mom to follow in March). If I could get a good job in OR I'd be fucking thrilled.
The drive across country is pretty fun if you have a good traveling companion, though. Highly recommended.
Explaining too much ruins the sense of mystery.
Actually togolosh has discovered a wormhole linking NoVA with Oregon through extra dimensions, so he can stroll from one to the other in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately there are side effects at the Portland end which need to be sorted out, if there are any string theory engineers out there.
The gadget he's working on is a transporter but it has very specific geography requirements for the entry and exit points.
180: Busted! I'm a transdimensional wormhole engineer. Give me a few bucks and I'll connect anywhere to anywhere. I'm thinking of doing a Kickstarter to connect Trump's mouth to my asshole so I can enjoy my craps just that little bit more. Bonus: making him lick my ass clean is even better than Ogged's filthy water fountain. Crap in my beard and I'll crap in yours: you clean yours with water, I'll clean mine with Trump's tongue. Paper be damned!
Also I may be drowning my frustration in wine, so if this comment makes no sense you know why.
People will probably count this as trolling, but this is pretty much where I am emotionally: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/09/the-democrats-do-their-job-again/
56: yes: he's very earnest and wouldn't smoke weed with me. :-/
my husband has actually trolled bob; I wish we could recruit his troll the trolls skills and replicate them, but reverse-sea-lioning people to death over the course of 35 comments isn't conducive to automation.
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teo! and other linguists! A favor, please!
Two years ago or so - the kid was ~13 - we got him Gaston Doren's Lingo, which he completely loved. We have also enjoyed it as he's pinned us down and read it to us chapter by chapter. He now seems to be well beyond it and into the weeds in terms of linguistic technical know how though - any book recommendations?
(kid was sitting next to a good friend latin class a couple of weeks ago, and the friend lamented her continuing inability to keep all the cases straight, so the kid gave her a run down of the cases but kept going when he got to the end, making up more and more (apparently plausible) cases; the prof overheard. luckily the prof is a good egg with the end result that he's now starting on greek with the prof.)
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I had to google to learn what "sea lioning" means.
Greek has fewer cases than Latin, but more numbers. Will that be enough for him?
186: just keep him away from Chomsky.
chris y, that looks great, thanks! He already has "opinions" re Chomsky, I gather generally negative. I just murmur appropriately parents things re keeping an open mind, learning from those one disagrees with, etc!
191: ah, good. The kids are alright, after all.
Chomsky is wrong? He's half of the linguists I can name.
Three then. I was thinking of Lieutenant Wharf.
186: Geoffrey Sampson's Schools of Linguistics is one that I read early in undergrad and liked. Despite the rather dry title, it's basically a cranky old professor complaining about how all the other linguists are doing it wrong, especially Chomsky.
Something like 189 would probably be good too. Are there any particular languages or families he's especially interested in, beyond Indo-European?
In The Land Of Invented Languages is a popular book that discusses Tolkien, Esperanto, Klingon, and more.
Thanks teo and Robert! He hasn't expressed a particular interest in any language group over others, at least yet ...
Actually the Sampson books looks like something the better half and I should read to semi keep up ...