That’s the thing actually, the counter-protesters outnumbered the white supremacists not just in the August rally but in all of the ones there.

Charlottesville is a sign of the sickness we still have, but its also a sign that they are in the minority.

This is a weird kind of liberal inverse of the conservative conspiracy about gun ownership.

People need to stop misusing the term fallacy. The irony here is that this argument is itself a fallacy: bad-faith actors could be motivated to use gun ownership as a way to facilitate a slide to a totalitarian regime,…

I’m curious, because Chrissy’s tweet brings up an interesting point. If Mirai was an immigrant would that have made Bari’s tweet okay? Or would it still be otherism in the sense that referring to any immigrant as an immigrant puts them in a separate class from “Americans” or “citizens”?

I don’t think smoking is the best analogy. When people talk about judging the past by today’s standards we mean passing moral judgments on the past. That’s different than science not being advanced enough for people to know better about a particular empirical truth.

With morality, there is an argument to be made that…

You don’t have to think Hillary would have won if not for the propaganda, but its beyond scary if people think propaganda has no worrying level of impact on elections or media narratives that is worth talking about.

I’ve worked in politics, I’ve even briefly worked on researching the Russian “web brigade” tactic back…

So honest question:

I mean I understand the spirit of what you’re saying, and we shouldn’t go with the “no wall, no DACA” bis, but if a DACA bill is passed it would be a huge violation of the law and politics for ICE to just ignore that and deport on a mass scale.

If you think that could happen without massive push-back that’s not how it…

This isn’t about bipartisanship or believing the GOP will “see the light”. Believe it or not, this is about exactly what you want: a strategic victory, not a moral victory.

I get this, but a “both sides” stance here strikes me as weird.

The problem is the same one that comes up with any fandom backlash: fan theories aren’t canon, a franchise doesn’t “owe” you anything, and when your critiques are lists of what the movie didn’t do - or worse, what it changed - then that’s not legitimate…

Fair enough, and I agree that would make it better. I guess I just don’t see the backlash being based on the same level of nuance you’re staking out. I’m ignoring though the ways marketing materials have characterized here I realize. That definitely puts this in a bad light and is unfair of me.  

I’ll be honest that I…

I’m curious, would having a line of dialogue in the trailer by Rin saying “why are you surprised...but I already told you/you were okay with it last night” type of thing solve this issue? A line implying Vincent’s drunkenness means he doesn’t remember that it was revealed? Because that wouldn’t change the fact that he…

This story hits on a real trend I’ve seen working in the City Manager’s Office of my current city:

I gotcha, no argument here at all on the specifics of this case.

This case just really interests me because it reminds me of a lot of issues I’ve seen. I will say - and I’m not sure how the charter changes are written - not allowing a mayor to appoint employees is normally a good thing. Employees should be hired…

So as someone who works for the International City/County Management Association and in a City Manager’s Office, I’d caution against embracing the “strong mayor” form of government too much because of this situation.

The council-manager form of government was created not just to address issues of graft and personal…

So the way the Right is spinning #NetNeutrality is fascinating. They’re painting it as an act of degregulaton meant to weaken biased, digital-age companies from controlling what you can see or forming monopolies through advantageous relationships with government regulators. This has the added benefit of making the…

I love every word in that synopsis.

Seriously, this needs to be focused on more. Its not just how the cop acted in the part leading up to the shooting, its how he acted from the beginning of this exchange.

There is no way he could have pulled a gun from that position, brought it around to the front of his body, aimed it, and shot the officer before the officer shot him. There is no rational defense for the officer’s reaction.

My Totally Written While Sober Theory:

We need to disburse with this idea that “poly” is rule-based membership in a social group, and the implied idea that it is something that has to be earned. Poly is a characteristic of the person, same as being non-monogamous or monogamous. If someone states they are poly, then they are poly. They don’t have to get the…