Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@iamschulz Indeed, but it's hard to talk about the real problem these days: "fascism" is used to describe people not wearing a mask or people on the other side of a quibble about what age some book is appropriate for.

I assert that is not helpful: what term do I use to describe League of the South or American Identity Movement?

I challenge you to come up with a term that doesn't currently mean "someone who wrongthinks about single-family housing policy"?

@jensimmons That's terrible; it's always been shocking to me that people are so offended one way or another by masks; to try to sabotage someone's career over mask usage is beyond the pale. I've seen videos of actual violence.

I don't wear masks generally – I mean, at some point we gotta move on, they don't help much (if at all), at least the vulnerable people close to me are vaccinated, etc. I've had it twice and I'm stocked up on tests and happy to test if anyone asks before I come over or whatever. If I come in a store I'm happy to wear one if the store provides it (I stopped carrying one around long ago) although I probably won't stay as long, and if the store ever didn't let me in as a result I'd totally understand.

But if you want to wear one, A+. You do you.

I was kind of hoping the idea of wearing masks when you're sick would catch on, but it seems like instead of that they just got weirdly political.

@iamschulz It's weird how carelessly the term is tossed around these days, isn't it. It has lost all meaning.

@philsherry from the article: “In India so far it’s [Arcturus] only causing mild illness."

How different do you think things are now vs. before the pandemic? If I had a vulnerable immune system, I simply would not have gone to conferences back then either. I went to a conference in October and I'm pretty sure I got the flu there; it was rough! If I had been immunocompromised it could have been a lot more serious.

@jensimmons Trump shut down travel pretty early on in addition to other mitigations, funded tests & vaccine research. There were many mistakes and I'm sure there's a lot he could have done differently, but I don't think you can make a case that he "hated" covid mitigations.

You seem to be right about kids in cages, though: we were doing that before Trump and continue to do it after him. So I guess Obama/Biden supporters also like kids in cages.

@CAnxiolytic I think more sense than extrajudicial shooting of suspected shoplifters, yes. Low bar here.

IMO getting maced doesn't justify shooting someone, so I hope the outcome of this investigation reflects that.

But I think the misreporting of stories like this is ultimately unhelpful.

@Wolf_Baginski @edbott I'll keep the cw but why is it a dangerous question? I'm missing something here. (I wonder in what context Ed's "loon" was bringing this up.)

Hans Frank – head of Nazi Poland – told this story during his trials in Nuremberg, right? (He did it possibly as a way to distance himself from Hitler; he was very anti-semitic of course.)

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/study-suggests-adolf-hitler-was-a-quarter-jewish-597966 Hopefully we aren't suggesting jpost is problematically anti-semitic.

Interesting but ultimately not particularly consequential to anything.

@taur10 @Radical_EgoCom@kolektiva.social Looks like he got fired, yes.

I don't know about prison, she attacked him. In my opinion deadly force was not warranted, so I think he should go to prison or something.

@CAnxiolytic @Radical_EgoCom@kolektiva.social Nah, he shot her for macing him.

@kennykravitz I think they're blasé because most people have an ID and need to present it in a wide array of situations that all seem pretty reasonable, from the bank to getting pulled over in a car. Giving some evidence that you are who you say you are when you vote just *feels* reasonable. Normies really don't care.

In fact, by far most people want a voter id requirement. Most Democrats, most black people, most everyone wants it.

I don't think it does much good to have one, but doesn't seem to hurt in terms of turnout by race or party or anything.

@TCatInReality Voter ID doesn't work to suppress votes (turns out lefties can adult enough to get an id, who knew?).

Other accusations include things like making it harder to get a mail-in ballot, purging voter registrations (but again, lefties are adults too), gerrymandering (drawing districts funny so your team wins more of them), shenanigans to keep polling places open longer or closed earlier depending on which team that area goes for, voting age cutoff or not accepting student ids (young people lean left, I guess), not letting felons vote (do felons lean one way or another?) not making voting day a holiday (again with adulting), causing terrible weather on voting day, earlier voter registration deadlines (again the implication that lefties don't have their act together), not having enough polling places in big cities (urbanites lean left, I guess), disability access (do disabled people predominately vote one way or another?) not having ballots printed up in enough different languages, not accepting native american tribal ids (I don't know if Tories can use that trick), etc, etc, etc.

I don't think many of these work terribly well. It's pretty easy to vote.

@ChrisMayLA6 If it's about voter suppression then it's doubly bad: it's not just shady, but it's also stupidly incompetent, because turns out it doesn't even work.

@atomicpoet paywalls: How confident are we that RT is being boosted, and not just "not squelched anymore"?

@baslow well put, sounds about right.

@baslow It's quite the echo-chamber.

@Eamon1916 Heh beat me to it.

(Not that the problem with Crow is his commie/nazi collections, if there is anything wrong with him.)

@mmasnick Is it the Nazi Bar? Or is the point that it is inevitable and will be shortly?

@skroobler I think with almost anyone you're going to find some stuff off the rails and some stuff not, right? Unless you're truly in an echo chamber.

I follow Doctorow and am in emphatic agreement with about 50% of what he says, and emphatic disagreement with the rest. 😂

Taibbi's recent work is calling out corporate censorship, right? If you think corporations should "censor" more (hate speech, misinformation, extremism, etc) then you might think this is "off the rails". I think he makes a good argument, though: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/26/intv-n26.html