#freeze peach

[loving-n0t-heyting]

If it were not already disturbing enough columbia is firing deans over private text messages, the content of these "antisemitic" remarks is as anodyne as you can get without being fawningly deferential. "This is difficult to listen to but I'm trying to keep an open mind to learn about this point of view" (at a panel on alleged on campus antisemitism after oct 7). Imagine being butthurt to the point of terminating someones employment about that! Skin so thin you can see the raw muscle

[jiskblr]

Why care about free speech so much? I used to think that the power to regulate speech is one that no one should have. But really, the power to send men to go lock someone up in a prison is something that ideally should not exist. It is not good, but often it is better than the alternatives. Why not the same for speech? If we're already fine censoring death threats, why not censor hateful speech that logically leads to death threats? Mere anecdotes of speech regulation going wrong proves little.

Firstly, every time someone restricts free speech it gets applied far more broadly than can possibly do any good. There are no anecdotes of speech regulation going well. It never does.

Secondly, free speech is the antidote to invincible ignorance. It is very easy, if you're prohibited from speaking freely, to create situations where large numbers of people are badly wrong but prohibited from learning why. And since the history of cultural, academic, and moral progress indicates that in every era, there are nigh-universal beliefs which are badly wrong, if speech is not free we are almost certainly stuck in that invincible ignorance ourselves.

Thirdly, there's no reason for speech regulation in the first place. I'm not, actually, fine censoring death threats. I am in favor of the right to shout fire in a crowded theater. No compromises. Not unless the fate of the world is at stake, and maybe not even then.

[forgottenbones]

[roisheep]

every time a tumblr mobile ad pauses my music I kill another hostage

[wildmonkeysects]

One more reason to despise Elon Musk

Suppose you are witnessing a schoolyard bully attacking the skinny kid next door, in the skinny kid’s own front yard. Against all odds the skinny kid is holding his own against the much larger bully.

And just as the skinny kid is about to land a devastating blow that would neutralize the bully, you jump in and hold back the skinny kid because you are either in cahoots with or are afraid of the bully.

The unanswered questions are:

How was Mr. Freeze Peach Musk privy to real time top secret military info about Ukraine?

Is Starlink not so secure?

Does Musk have a back door?

Or is Musk in the loop with Russian military spy agencies?

[you-are-all-weirdos]

Let "fire in a crowded theater" die. It's a glib line from a bad ruling in a case that should never have survived long enough to reach the supreme court. It's almost universally used by people who don't know the facts of the case or the context in which it was uttered. And they sure don't know the way the man who authored those words changed his mind later on.

Instead, let's remember when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said this:

“Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises.

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country."

[loving-n0t-heyting]

the use of rude language as a criminal offence in brazil has no statute of limitations. absolutely bonkers. imagine being 40yo and getting charged with using an ill-considered slur at 18. madness that anyone would think to celebrate expanding the scope of this law as a victory for anything worthwhile

[loving-n0t-heyting]

if you look at the insane shit staff pulled with predstrogen on the idiotic and unsystematisable grounds (leaving plenty of room in plenty of ways for run-of-the-mill bigotry to filter into that assessment) of preventing "death threats" and "sexual content" and yr first impulse is to get angry about how little staff does to stamp out the even more nebulous and hijacking-prone category of "hate speech" i think you are being kinda silly

[forgottenbones]

I Investigated Australia's Worst Journalists

[loving-n0t-heyting]

hate speech laws are evil

If you ever needed proof that the new hate crimes laws are a good thing lmao

[lilithsaintcrow]

"But as many scholars have pointed out, it requires some selective reading of Areopagitica — a sort of censorship, even — to make Milton into an unproblematic mouthpiece for free speech."

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Man. I hate to be THAT guy because we have this conversation every other week in this website and I genuinely think there’s no malice involved and you guys can’t really change the fact you’ve been raised in a very self-contained culture, but… I’m afraid you forgot the laws of Russia don’t apply to the rest of the world. But hey, you weren’t the only one to make this mistake: so did Edward Snowden! In fact, that’s what got him in this situation in the first place.

You see, the people involved in orchestrating the leak of the Five Eyes surveillance regime are not, in fact, protected by whistleblower laws. They waived that right the very second they started disseminating secrets vital to the global protection of freedom. That’s because, that even though the right of whistleblowing is a human right, enforced in most nations of the world as law, each country has their own constitution and exactly what will be protected under whistleblower laws and what won’t be varies depending on where you’re from. Under the laws of the United States, letting the public know the NSA reads their sexts is not protected as whistleblowing, and is, in fact, considered a crime.

[wildmonkeysects]

A grandiose narcissist walks into a bar...

Cluster B personality disorders, as Musk is a textbook example of, almost always blame everything and everyone except themselves for the chaos they create and spread.

[91625]

1. Were Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. taking orders from the government?

2. Were the people making fun of you being paid by the government, organized by the government, or similar?

In either case, your First Amendment rights were still violated.

[forgottenbones]

The Two Worst Guys Had An Awful Conversation

[marlowe1-blog]

"The Barber" (The Stories of Flannery O'Connor)

Even more racism

The opening line is "it's hard to be a liberal in the South" and sure that's the main thing you get with this ostensibly liberal college professor going to a barber shop and getting an earful of racism from the barber and the barber's friends. They even ask the black kid what he thinks but they don't ask like they actually want an answer. They want the kid to agree with them.

And the professor, who is supposedly pretty smart, just takes it. So there's a ton of racist bullshit that you have to read because everyone in the barbershop sure loves to talk about the N---- staying in their place and how they love the really racist candidate as opposed to the not-quite-as-racist candidate (who they call a N----- lover)

When they ask the professor if he is a N---- lover, he says no. He wants to say that he doesn't love any race but he really can't. And his colleague teaches at a black college and then goes home every night and yells N----- out the word. Because this is the South and if you have to stop saying N----- for any length of time, it just builds up.

What does genius college professor do? He decides to debate them. Yeah, he's like those sad little liberal arts majors that came up to Steven Crowder's "Men are naturally better. Change my mind" booths and actually thought that they could change his mind. Only this guy is an adult.

He's an adult being written by a 21 year old grad student who probably only learned recently that you can't argue with some people because they are never going to change their minds. But he's hopeless.

He actually writes a speech. He actually writes a speech. Then when the racists at the barbershop largely ignore him, he punches the barber. So good luck getting a decent haircut from now on, dude.

Maybe this wouldn't feel so obvious after 8 years of Trump campaigning for president and the worst people suddenly shouting their racism from the hilltops (or their laptops) and how the narrative of "we should reach out and understand Trump voters because it's really about jobs and the vanishing middle class and we can totally change their mind" collapsed under scrutiny, especially when these dumbshits were dying of covid to own the libs (yay covid).

So a story about a guy who thinks that he can argue with racists and argue racists out of their racism or at least into a slightly less racist stance is not going to land the same as it might in a better era. Sometimes you just have to punch the Nazi. Which is obvious to everyone but the protagonist.