picrew is an avatar maker which you can use to make avatars like a [paper doll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_doll) dressup toy. ([example](https://picrew.me/image_maker/94097))
He is calling identity politics not real and a sort of dressup game. I'm assuming because this person is an idiot and actually meant to say 'identity is the picrew of ideas' but then the whole tone shifts into something pretty fucking dark. NFT avatar projects compete with the identity of lgbt/minority peoples, and not what I think is intended here, that identity politics is used to express an unique identity (aka, you dont do identity politics to support a group, nope you do it to express your unique snowflake identity, and there is a market surrounding all this).
At least that was my cursory interpretation, the rest of the thread linking to this tweet also seems pretty nonsensical to me, like the claim the only way this could start up is if people offer billions of dollars to the first movers. It is also funny, I thought the 'few understand' remark was a joke made only by anti crypto people to joke about how silly pro crypto people speak (for more about this see r/buttcoin ). But this person really doubled down on the few understand.
My joke about 'the right hates NFTs' is about how the right constantly plays identity politics, without acknowledging it. (which isn't really relevant here at all of course, just funny that another 'politically neutral' project attracts so many people who only punch left).
It’s incredibly irritating to me how something like “picrew” just gets adopted as a metaphor without the barest of explanation, and it’s a really common trope in rationalist spaces to do that. You really don’t need to reach for that as a metaphor, even before the point that it’s horribly cheesy: if I say “is this a dagger I see before me” at least everyone knows where I’m going with the reference. When you speak in this patois, which is what they do, at length, it just concretises the in-group/out-group bubble thing these idiots are always complaining about.
Checking my notes (old Mastodon posts), I find that in 2019, I saw people talking about "picrew avatars" and my first thought was that CBS had finally gotten a good idea and made a character creator that lets you see yourself as a crew member in *Star Trek: Picard.*
Hey lol look at this fucker who actually had/has a Mastodon account
Joking aside, that show was such a massive disappointment
Personally I’m more into an IRL character creator that provides me with a catamite who never wears underwear indoors, but that’s a niche opinion
"Hey lol look at this fucker who has a ~~Mastodon account~~ [AO3 account](https://archiveofourown.org/series/776577)"
I mean, if you want evidence of how bad my priorities are about spending time online, accept no substitutes.
They love their shiboleths yeah, and always something with some vague meaning behind it. So it isnt just the tribal thing, but also not that rational, as you assume that by tremying to become more rational you clear up your thinking, and not introduce more nebulous stuff. (If the tweeter above is a rationalist, I just dont seem to recall them). Which is all funny in a way, as even when they dont clearly explain things the blog posts are already very long.
Like…I love being obscure when it serves my literary purposes: I get it. But I learned concision and precision the hard way in academia and I find it incredibly frustrating when educated upper middle class adults who make a *lot* more money than I do decide they can just throw all that shit away. It’s hard to organise your thoughts when you’re a kid, but it is *incredibly* easy to do that when you’re an adult with an education or even without an education, and the only real reason to use metaphors like this is at that point is when you’re so unserious you don’t have any motive to think about it first.
> you do it to express your unique snowflake identity, and there is a market surrounding all this
This'd be funny if not for the genuinely sinister forces and powerful actors at work trying to dehumanize and criminalize non-cis/het behaviour of any kind.
Perfect example of what happens when you create and elevate
ONE GREAT IDEA™ to explain literally
everything.
Anyway, the only proper way to understand what’s happening here is to
study why so many in the radical left participate in “speedrunning”. The
reason is the left’s lack of work ethic (‘go fast’ rather than ‘do it
right’) and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual
archetypes in the marketplace (‘fastest mario’) 1/14…
You can tell he has no idea what he’s talking about when he describes
queer identities as “attempts to separate from each other identity-wise,
without novel intellectual work or personal development.” He’s talking
about people who spend SIGNIFICANT portions of their lives looking at
themselves and others to come up with more and more exotic
micro-identities. Where does he think the 34,977,827 different
identities and definitions that they’re always complaining about comes
from? Corporate focus groups?
They prob would argue it was a sinister group who thought that up yes. Because this group created the meta idea of complex identities, and the queer people are just playing with the toys created (see the focus on picrew).
Ha nfts are a threat for the players of minecraft, Hatsune Miku better watch out, nfts will bring your creative game down! It is a weird infantelization of queer people because they dislike nfts (guess this is easier to do than work out why they really dislike nfts and figuring out why you cant grok where they are coming from, but that would mean you would have to explore yoyr own underlying ideology and empathize with a different one).
It always amazes me how a bunch o dorks calling themselves
“rationalists” literally reinvented idealism in a version even more
extreme of Hegelian one, without any of the erudition or the wit or the
rare insights of idealists, but keep feeling they are doing science
because the language is borrowed by biology (unlike German idealism,
which never used metaphors from the natural world /s).
I’ve always known that trying to explain stuff in blogs will
unavoidably result in some maimed and less perfected version of a
centuries-old idea. But I really don’t understand how is it possible
that the rationalist sphere always selects the worst ideas, and then
maims them so brutally, and has still not developed a gram of awareness
about what it’s doing.
One side issue I’m confused by: Rittenhouse committed a crime by
crossing state lines with a weapon mandated by the two different states
in a fundamentally different way, isn’t that automatically a federal
issue for a federal court?
A [fuckhead friend of his](https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/11/19/Man-accused-of-buying-guns-in-Kenosha-Wis-shooting-to-stand-trial/3271605810316/) bought the AR-15 in Wisconsin and held on to it for him.
> The buyer of the AR-15, Dominick Black, does face possible federal exposure related to the straw purchase of the firearm. Black testified during Rittenhouse's trial and he faces two charges of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to someone younger than 18, resulting in death, in state court.
> Federal authorities have looked into Black's purchase of the rifle, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told the Journal Sentinel earlier this year. Black testified he knew Rittenhouse was younger than 18 when he took Rittenhouse's money and purchased the gun for him.
([source](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2021/11/19/kyle-rittenhouse-has-been-found-not-guilty-whats-next-bail-money-civil-cases/8653018002/))
Which as far as I can tell only makes it worse for Rittenhouse in federal court? That’s a conspiracy charge, right? I’m not a lawyer and I only briefly lived in the US a long time ago, but as far as I can work out that’s not only not mitigating, it should bring a *heavier* charge for his crossing state lines with the obvious intent of committing a shooting.
It has been weird half following both the rittenhouse trial and the unitetheright conspiracy trial. Does make me wonder why there arent more conspiracy charges, perhaps in this case guns are a special case. Because gun laws in the usa are weird and Americans are super weird about guns.
But these days you can get done on e.g. RICO in America for just *holding* a gun that got handed over across state lines (especially if the kid in question was breaking the law by holding it) even if you’re not personally responsible for a crime with which it was committed. And that’s a fucking *Nixon* law. The fact Rittenhouse hasn’t been convicted on *both* state and federal charges, alongside his co-conspirator is totally bizarre but everyone is treating it like it’s ordinary due process.
Well, it must be my western European sensibilities, but I think the US system lets far right extremists get away with a lot of bullshit. And while I don't agree with ACAB (also saying ACAB is illegal in my country), it does seem suspicious that cops can get away with so much in the US, and then there is also this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/michael-reinoehl-arrest-portland-shooting.html
The judicial system doesn't seem that blind in the USA, loves to protect white property owners. Sadly, it seems it is spreading, after some cops opened fired on a 'antilockdown' riot here, I don't think there will be consequences for the cops putting a few kids in the hospital.
Re: RICO, iirc that is one of those things which almost never gets convictions, or even people charged with it, but for some reason people not well versed in the law love to shout RICO. But like lupus, it almost never applies. (at least according to my very limited knowledge of American law).
RICO gets applied when the defendant can’t fight back, i.e. when they’re in a corner, and the size of the corner changes depending on the capitalisation of the defendant
There is a certain legal theory that certain people are Real Mad about right now which does a good job of explaining what's happening with Rittenhouse.
He placed himself on the side of the relevant established powers, so they don't particularly *want* to punish him. They can't get away with just letting him go, but they can choose to prosecute him for things he's not guilty of (at least with a favorable interpretation of the relevant laws), and pass on prosecuting on other potential charges that he might be found guilty of. A different person with a different political alignment may have found themselves charged with different crimes (or just shot on the spot instead of being arrested).
My understanding is that gun was purchased and stored in WI, and the “crossing state lines” was a particularly sticky piece of mistaken early reporting
My point is that if you cross state lines with the *intention* of illegally picking up a gun, from a state where it would be illegal for you to do so, that’s a *more serious* charge with a longer docket to read out in front of any judge who isn’t clearly motivated to let Rittenhouse off the hook
To be clear: my read of the KR case is that he had a very strong self defence case under Wisconsin law, and that fact is a damming indictment of Wisconsin law. I think the approach taken by the Canadian Supreme Court in R v Khill is far preferable. If the US doesn’t want to go that far, they should at least define the circumstances in which open-carry is considered provocation.
Re: the state lines issue, the importance of state lines in US law is they implicate the federal governments power to regulate interstate commerce. That is, carrying a gun illegally across state lines leads to federal charges, rather than state charges. Had KR carried a gun across state lines and been charged federally, that trial would have been separate from his state murder trial.
Generally though I think the state lines issue is not important. The real issues are the state of gun law, self-defence law, and the coziness between police and armed white vigilantes.
I agree with the bottom line: the second amendment is clearly intended and protected as a justification for militia, rather than for individuals going looking for trouble. But I still think that in the statute Rittenhouse would or *should* fall under some category of evading federal laws, and I am not convinced the judge in this case effectively applied the actual law in question. This is more complicated than just carrying a gun across state lines vs picking one up across state lines, the real legal question is whether that’s a distinction without a difference, and the judge here has landed on “there’s a difference”.
Activist judges are a notorious problem in the states, and while I’m very much on the hard-left, I do think that in this case the activist judge on the *right* is a problem.
What?
Anyway, I didn’t know the right also hates NFTs good for them. ;)
(E: I don’t see roko here btw, what did I miss).
Perfect example of what happens when you create and elevate ONE GREAT IDEA™ to explain literally everything.
Anyway, the only proper way to understand what’s happening here is to study why so many in the radical left participate in “speedrunning”. The reason is the left’s lack of work ethic (‘go fast’ rather than ‘do it right’) and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace (‘fastest mario’) 1/14…
https://twitter.com/bronzeswords/status/1449345260207828995
I wonder if it’s occurred to anyone to NFT the original basilisk incident.
You can tell he has no idea what he’s talking about when he describes queer identities as “attempts to separate from each other identity-wise, without novel intellectual work or personal development.” He’s talking about people who spend SIGNIFICANT portions of their lives looking at themselves and others to come up with more and more exotic micro-identities. Where does he think the 34,977,827 different identities and definitions that they’re always complaining about comes from? Corporate focus groups?
It goes without saying that “use your words with a certain concision” appears to have not been adopted as a watchword by twitter rationalists
Hot Take: Wheel of Time is a story about plucky heroes defeating Roko’s Basilisk
It always amazes me how a bunch o dorks calling themselves “rationalists” literally reinvented idealism in a version even more extreme of Hegelian one, without any of the erudition or the wit or the rare insights of idealists, but keep feeling they are doing science because the language is borrowed by biology (unlike German idealism, which never used metaphors from the natural world /s).
I’ve always known that trying to explain stuff in blogs will unavoidably result in some maimed and less perfected version of a centuries-old idea. But I really don’t understand how is it possible that the rationalist sphere always selects the worst ideas, and then maims them so brutally, and has still not developed a gram of awareness about what it’s doing.
I hate NFTs because they’re a distraction from creating me, the acausal robot god. Those GPUs have a better use!
whenever it’s Roko on Twitter you know it’s gonna be a banger
[deleted]
One side issue I’m confused by: Rittenhouse committed a crime by crossing state lines with a weapon mandated by the two different states in a fundamentally different way, isn’t that automatically a federal issue for a federal court?
[deleted]
At least two comments in response to those threads mention physiognomy being useful. *barf*
Sometimes I regret subscribing here :(