Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this, and happy 4th July in advance.)
LWer: slavery was bad and abolishing the slave trade was a net good
LW commenters: really?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yDZcsojmRXo5qKNBm/surprising-facts-about-the-slave-trade
(I can kind of understand that intellectual honesty can prompt people to question a narrative, and in some ways I respect it, but there comes a time when you need to ask yourself "am I being the best person I can be by defending slavery" and back away from the keyboard)
At times you need to ask yourself, does the devil need more advocates? And how much does he even pay?
Top-rated review
it focuses entirely on britain, so that's understandable
Don't think it is, as the revolt predates British decisions by a while, and 'there is now potentially a country which will materially support slave revolts' changes the economic risks a bit.
Slave revolts were basically constant, and I think it would have been easy for contemporary British to blame the success of the Haitian revolt on the uselessness of the French, not that slavery was doomed because the slaves now had a "win".
Brazil had horrific slave revolts and didn't abolish slavery until the late 1880s.
Yeah. The Haitian revolution was absolutely a high point of postcolonial Caribbean history, but the resulting state wasn't exactly able to project power and export their revolution through material support. It gave slavers a reason to double down on repression, but outside of Haiti itself it's a propaganda win more than a change in the scales.
Hmmm can we trust a narrative extensively documented in the UK Parliament, courts, and newspapers? Hmmm can we?
No I will not look anything up personally.
these kinds of questions are about the potential benefits to some hypothetical version of humanity (from slavery) vs. the real, documented harms to a real group of real people (caused by slavery). Of course we already know that rationalists are bad at accounting for the later while distracted by the bright and shiny allure of the former. And it just so happens that the people they imagine benefiting from slavery are people very much like themselves.
Point 1 is very funny, like, what's the difference? Randoids are children.