erin

What are you talking about? I have never supported Platner. I have always opposed him. Even if he was “reformed,” which I doubt, why should we need to accept such terrible candidates? I am not a Nazi supporter, and you should stop and think about why it’s so important to paint everyone you disagree with as evil rather than reexamining your cognitive bias. Do you have short term memory loss? Why should she have automatically known it’s a Nazi tattoo. You fully ignored my last comment again, and continue to argue disingenuously. Respond to what I say, not the strawman of me that you’re shadowboxing with.

It’s like talking to a brick wall. Yeah, he probably isn’t totally honest with women about being a mercenary, it’s not exactly a popular job for getting laid. You’re making so many assumptions because it’s easier to jump through hoops to blame a rape victim who is supporting your cause than it is to reexamine your personal biases. The buzzwords you use are just classic logical fallacy bullshit, “gaslit,” “abusive,” “racist,” like I THINK THE GIY WAS EVIL. I just don’t have a hate boner for his VICTIMS because he’s a manipulative rapist!

You’re totally right, she might have known his past, his beliefs, and his profession, but probably not! The rape happened way before his political career.

You hate her because you hate that it took her word, “a white woman’s tears,” as you put it, to convince the public. She is not the public. She did not do his crimes. We cannot know if she knew the horrible things he believed and did, but I’m not giving a rapist the benefit of doubt like you’re so dedicated to doing. You are incapable of examining that cognitive dissonance. In the absence of knowing, I choose to support victims. You choose to blame them. You would rather wallow in a persecution complex and throw mud because someone disagrees with you, rather than accepting that WE WANT THE SAME THING.

All I’m trying to do is get you to realize that:

1. Rapists lie. The rape happened before he was a public figure and before his political career. He almost definitely lied to her or concealed the whole truth
2. The tattoo is obscure, and very few people would recognize it for what it is.
3. Ergo, she probably didn’t know that he was a Nazi or a merc, and either way, we have no way of knowing!

You would rather operate on a “guilty until proven innocent” framework, even when the facts don’t support your conclusions, because you’re absolutely incapable of introspection and realizing that your quarrel isn’t with her, a very brave individual who was victimized by your mutual enemy, but with the public which was willing to trust a “former” Nazi mercenary but not a rapist. Again, not her fault.

Why do you find it easier to defend the hypothetical integrity of a Nazi, mercenary, rapist than to trust a woman?

Almost certainly! Are you just reading my comments and not processing any of the words? How many times do I need to repeat myself? Rapists lie! Why wouldn’t they? The consent of a woman means nothing to them.

We’ve been over this. The tattoo is not obviously Nazi unless you’re familiar with the racist dogwhistles. Have you seen the tattoo? Its not a swastika or an iron cross, to the average person it just looks like an ordinary tattoo. You’re doing such ridiculous mental gymnastics and going in circles just so you can justify your misplaced victim-blaming resentment.

Why do you keep assuming it’s impossible to hide you’re a Nazi mercenary? Jobs and political beliefs are like, the easiest thing to lie about. Men lie about those constantly to get laid. Conservative talking heads even brag about it because modern women won’t sleep with conservatives. Stop making assumptions and support the rape victim.

it kind of hurts that a white woman tear is worth a lot more than many brown lives.

I very much agree, but that isn’t her fault.

I literally agree with you, but you’re reading so much into a relationship you know absolutely nothing about because you cannot separate your resentment of an unjust and racist system and society from the blame of one woman.

Yes, he should have been in jail. Yes, she should not have slept with him, but you have no idea how much she actually knew about him. If she had full knowledge of his history and and understanding of his job and still slept with him, yeah, that’s a poor choice, but she is still a victim.

Regardless, I highly doubt she did have full knowledge of his past and what the obscure tattoo meant. He raped her, he probably lied too, and it kind of sickens me that you find it easier to trust the word of a Nazi mercenary man over a rape victim woman. These kind of people revel in manipulating their way into women’s pants. He slipped his condom off for fuck’s sake!

This woman is a victim, and she’s an asset to your (and my) cause. Stop with the misogynist mental gymnastics and operate on what we actually know, which is that an abuser raped her and she’s facing the full consternation of both Graham’s supporters, and apparently detractors, for that choice.

You need to take a second and redirect your anger. Don’t jump through hoops and make assumptions to justify your gut reaction. You’re absolutely right, it’s 100% unjust that it took this woman’s word when his actions should have been enough, but again, that is not her fault. I am not going to make assumptions for Platner’s benefit. A man that is willing to non-consensually slip off a condom multiple times despite her saying no is absolutely willing to say whatever he needs to to get in a woman’s pants. I highly doubt that he’s going into a hookup and telling his partner “hey, I liked blowing up brown people so much I went back as a mercenary.”

I simply don’t know, and I will not assume, so I will support the victim and be happy that she came out against this person I refuse to support. It should not have taken her word, but I am still glad she did and have a great deal of empathy for a fellow SA victim that was able to come out against her abuser, even though he’s a public figure. I wasn’t able to.

Color me surprised that the rape victim blamer is also a misogynist.

You clearly didn’t read my comment, and how do you know she knows what that tattoo means? I would have no idea that’s a Nazi tattoo. Again, you fully ignored the fact that he raped her, he probably lied too. You just make all these assumptions that she knew exactly what his tattoo meant and she knew exactly what he did in the military and she knew he was a mercenary. How does the cognitive dissonance not bother you?

Also, I’m not a liberal, and don’t call me a cunt. I’m a leftist, and I’m going to afford a rape victim with empathy and not jump through hoops to justify my disgusting prejudice. Read my comment again, and make a response that isn’t just “lalala I’m not listening” with a healthy dose of misogyny on top.

edit: this misuse of gaslit is really the icing on the cake. you’re assuming a woman has psychic knowledge of her abuser’s past, knows what a tattoo means that means absolutely nothing to most people without specific knowledge, and then deciding that the communist woman you’re arguing with is a “liberal cunt” because she disagrees with your misogyny.

Not to victim blame, but [victim blames]. Come on. Two things can be true, he’s an evil Nazi mercenary and he assaulted, and likely manipulated, a woman. Do you know that he was honest with her about his history? You’re making a lot of assumptions about a woman where the only thing we know about her is that she was a victim of sexual assault. You don’t know how much she knew about him or how he manipulated her. She is an asset to your cause by doing a very brave thing and speaking up, and all you can do is blame her for not knowing this guy is bad news. You really think a guy that is willing to rape a girl is somehow above lying?

You are part of the problem. Your resentment should be directed at the establishment and the voters that are willing to accept a Nazi mercenary but not a rapist, not the rape victim. I find your comments in this threat to be genuinely disgusting. Easier to pin the blame of a system on the woman that was a victim than to recognize that she is an asset to your cause! Assigning blame to her is both counterproductive and incredibly presumptuous.

Again, you do not know her story and you do not know the lies he sold her or how he manipulated her. We know that she was a victim, and a victim of someone you take issue with. Support her, don’t go through mental gymnastics to find a way to somehow blame the victim.

I don’t know what specific issue the image is referring to, but there are often vehement disagreements over relatively small differences in design. Look up the history of spinosaurid research if you want some grade-A science beef.

such an iconic music video. it has a permanent place on my music videos to watch when high playlist.

This is a joke that Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners series makes!

Geostationary satellites are not standing still. They’re orbiting the Earth at the same rate that it rotates “beneath” them.

Tithing is still a thing, it just means giving money to the church, specifically 10% in some denominations. I think what you’re referring to is “indulgences,” the practice of paying the Catholic church for entrance into heaven.

The east coast had a HUGE snowstorm. I was a kid. I remember building tunnels and igloos and having snowball fights with my siblings and friends. My younger brother was undergoing chemo. My parents were stressed about money. Obama won the presidential election and I cried, not understanding politics but only knowing that Obama was the option my parents didn’t vote for.

The struggle is real. I’m curious how that will go. My hair gets way too oily.

As a woman with long, curly hair, if I don’t condition, I go from having nice curly waves to a ball of unmanageable frizz. I’ve also had to experiment with different shampoos to get the results I want, to clean my hair without damaging it. It definitely isn’t engineered for marketing purposes. Ask anyone with long, curly, or kinky hair and they’ll tell you how important their hair routine is. If you have short, straight hair, it probably doesn’t matter nearly as much. Your hair is fully replaced in a few weeks. I need to keep my hair healthy for years. My hair is down to my sternum, and it took years to get this long. If I didn’t take very good care of it with the right soaps and conditioner, it would not be able to be this long or this nice.

Reducing it to just chemicals and chemicals is well, reductive. Basically everything is a chemical. Your natural oils are chemicals. Sweat is a chemical. Dirt is chemicals. We need to wash out some chemicals, but we don’t want dry scalps or damaged hair, so we need to use the right soaps and the right conditioner to remove those bad chemicals and replace them with chemicals to mimic our natural oils until they build back up. Most people probably don’t need to wash their hair as often as they do, but conditioning is definitely not a marketing scam.

I personally am really sick of frame generation and scaling being the only way modern games are playable. The graphical improvements are minor, but the performance cost is enormous. Your average person shouldn’t need to buy a GPU worth as much as a used car just to squeeze out average performance. Scaling and frame generation are never seamless, and it can’t create information where none exists. Especially in PvP games, I’ve noticed how much worse the graphical fidelity is with distant targets or people peaking around corners. I’d genuinely rather play the game at a lower framerate or resolution than be losing vital information in my computers attempt to make sense of the handful of pixels representing the gun of my opponent peeking the corner, and turning it into a blurry section of wall instead.

In singleplayer games it’s not as bad, but I have found that a game that isn’t chasing perfect true-to-life graphics but has a gorgeous art direction looks far better to me personally. I’m just sick of AAA and tired of having my super computer from 4 years ago struggle with the latest releases in native resolution. Slightly more realistic lighting and realistic hair and cloth simulation are not nearly as important to me as good performance and visual style.

I always find disclaimers to be helpful to avoid making people feel attacked. As a citizen in a country where my rights are constantly under attack, often with “free speech” being part of the rationale, this issue hits close to home. Thanks for engaging in good faith, and for your point of view. I also agree that ideally, communities would be able to self-regulate without state control over speech, but do believe that in the short term better protections are necessary until societal change can happen. Any protections implemented would require broad support, and be very limited in scope. For example, saying, “I don’t like trans people,” should never be illegal, but something like, “we should kill all those [insert relevant slur],” or other such speech directly inciting hate crimes might be worth regulating, even if just to add an enhanced charge to related crimes. Again, thanks for engaging in good faith, and for your insight!

Disclaimer: I don’t necessarily think you hold any of the following beliefs, but strongly believe that “free speech” is not something anyone should side with the right on, regardless of reason.

The thing about free speech absolutism is that no one actually believes it, they just draw the line in different places. You still will be unable to share recipes for homemade explosives, make credible threats, or leak state secrets. Society draws the line of free speech where harm prevention is more valuable than freedom. Why should all speech, even harmful speech, be protected? What principle makes that ideal sacred, other than that it was written into the US constitution?

Some speech is already deemed too harmful to society. We simply draw the line before the harm reaches the ruling class, and after the most vulnerable are harmed. How many more mass shooters influenced by online echo chambers of hatred and vitriol must we suffer? The right does not believe in true free speech. They believe that their speech that is harmful to the vulnerable must be protected, while speech that threatens the status quo must be punished.

Like calling for the executions of legislators telling military personnel to follow the law. Or designating antifascists as terrorists. Or stopping science reporting on global warming. Or preventing teachers from accurately teaching about gender and sexuality.

But the fascists calling for a white ethnostate and the end of human rights for multiple vulnerable populations, that speech must be protected.

Obviously, the government policing speech is dangerous, because those in power may choose to abuse that power. We’re seeing it now, with countless first amendment violations by the Trump administration, or things like Palestinian Action arrests in the UK. I do not think the US government, or most governments, are in a position to be trusted with speech restrictions. However, the “free speech” movement in the right does not actually care about the specifics of whether the government or private citizens restrict speech. The specifics of the first amendment don’t matter, because it’s all a dog whistle for other bigots. They clearly do want to control speech, as evidenced by the current administration in the US, or the response to the Kirk shooting, or the removal of qualified professionals from their positions for doing their job correctly, or the calls to silence accurate reporting and remove broadcasting licenses, and I could go on.

We do not, under any circumstances, “gotta give it to them.” The right does not care about free speech. They care about protecting the in-group while restricting the out-group. Free speech has always been a myth, and instead of trying to protect it as some sacred ideal, we should shift the line to protect the vulnerable instead of the powerful.

I took lessons every few days from a local voice coach. There are online voice coaching options as well, and likely lots of free resources, though I find that direct feedback is the best for learning.