You think these are pictures of the shooter walking to the overlook where he has stored a gun previously? Yes, that would be possible. It would still be strange that they were able to isolate pictures of the shooter arriving, but not leaving.

If their lead about a deer rifle in the woods is accurate, then it would be strange if these were pictures of the suspect given he is not carrying a rifle or any means of concealing one.

I’m pretty impressed with the WSWS take:

It is politically appropriate to condemn the killing, which accomplishes nothing progressive and actually aids the efforts of the Trump White House to attack democratic rights and erect a police state. But that is no reason to glorify the victim or cover up the bloodthirsty, bigoted character of his political perspective.

The Times editors claim, “Such violence is antithetical to America.” On the contrary, such violence is the stock in trade of the American ruling class, whether directed at striking workers, racial minorities, immigrants, or political figures deemed to be dangerous or merely inconvenient. It is barely a week since the president of the United States ordered the incineration of 11 people in a Venezuelan fishing boat, claiming, without offering any evidence, that they were drug smugglers and terrorists.

Matt Dowd was fired from MSNBC for much less.

Alright. What did you mean by “ignorance should not have a safe space there”?

Last week, a student at Texas A&M objected to the professor teaching about “transgenderism” in the classroom. The teacher was doing their job, teaching the scientific consensus. Instead of challenging the teacher’s ideas, the student challenged the legality of teaching science. The student was ignorant. Instead of admitting ignorance, or even assuming their own competence and trying to argue their ideas, the student took the third route: threats of political violence. The student warned the teacher that police could come and force the teacher from teaching the truth.

Campuses should be very intolerant to ignorance like this student displayed. But instead the teacher, department head, and dean were all penalized for standing up against an enemy of free thought. That is the goal of this administration - to force indoctrination on American children, and shut down all the spaces where having discussions like this one we’re having right now might open their eyes up to the lies they’ve been taught.

In a school, it should be safe to admit your ignorance.

I didn’t write very much, and I clearly didn’t write that you shouldn’t be able to admit ignorance at school. If you actually care about reading and understanding what I’m saying, then this is your opportunity to demonstrate you can roll it back, tone it down, and read what I wrote again. If some of it is ambiguous to you, you can ask me questions.

It seems like you’re looking for a leftist punching bag, and that will just make you look like another hateful violent right-wing brute. Are you afraid to talk about your beliefs? Are you afraid to talk about them anonymously and online?

Left-wing streamer Kyle Kulinski says Charlie Kirk was feuding with nazis to his political right before he was killed.

Right-wing Pundit Clayton Morris shares rumor that Charlie Kirk was concerned Israel was going to kill him, and that he was wearing body armor when he was shot.

I mean, Kirk was on Gavin Newsom’s podcast in March and Newsom talked about how his kids loved Kirk. How his 13-year-old son refused to go to school because he wanted to stay home and meet Charlie. And if that doesn’t tell you how wide Kirk’s appeal is among young people I don’t know what would.

And look. A lot of people on the left also discount or ignore how young conservatives feel discriminated against in higher education. Rightly or wrongly, I’m talking about their beliefs, not the validity of those beliefs. Kids who come from red states with conservative Christian beliefs about sex, about gender, about what it means to be a man, they’re proud to go to college so they can earn a better living and do better for their future children than their parents did for them. And then they hit the culture shock of college and both students and teachers are telling them “everything you believe is wrong, you’re a bad person for believing it, and if you even try to argue for it we will ostracize you”.

There is no ‘rightly or wrongly’ – what you’re describing is indoctrination and brainwashing. They are and should be discriminated against, but not because of where they’re from or the color of their skin, but because they have been taught wrong, and most importantly have been taught to see challenges to their beliefs as a threat. The purpose of a school is not to validate your pre-existing beliefs, but to give you a space to challenge your ideas and learn new ones. Ignorance should not have a safe space there, and people who do not come to learn should not feel welcome.

And ironically, part of the issue is a lack of empathy on the left. Instead of asking why conservatives believe these things and trying to understand how to convince them otherwise, the American left just wants to call them fascists and deplatform them. “It’s not my job to educate you” is smug and contemptuous and one of the nicer ways the left respond to conservatives.

No wonder you delete all of your comments. That’s a pretty terrible take.

Or a jilted lover from his closeted life. Let’s not jump to conclusions.

On the forums right now, right wingers are frothing themselves up about the ‘left’ – but both attempts on Trump’s life were by people who fit much more neatly into the right-wing stereotype.

Claiming to care about the Epstein files, and then radically changing direction to protect pedophiles may have been the trigger that got him shot by one of his fans.

What ghouls

The shooting occurred on the day before 9-11. I wonder if the timing had any significance in the shooter’s mind.

Bitcoin = Monero in your mind. They aren’t the same, not even close.

LOL. I understand they are very different entities.

One of the hilarious details I discovered while researching this is that according to the US Government Accountability Office report “Use of Online Marketplaces and Virtual Currencies in Drug and Human Trafficking” in 2022,

Representatives of two analytics firms and one exchange also noted that illicit actors use privacy coins less frequently, as they are more difficult to obtain and are supported by fewer exchanges compared to Bitcoin, making it difficult to convert funds to government-issued currency.

So whatever benefits Monero claims to have in protecting the privacy of illicit activities, the people who could face real time in jail don’t consider the benefits worth how extremely annoying it is to use.

What is Politics, and Why Should Anyone Give a $#&%?

Both the United States and the Soviet Union cracked down on organized labor. The corruption of the word ‘socialism’ was encouraged by both super-powers, one to falsely associate it with dictators and tyranny, and the other to claim its virtue for itself.

George Orwell wrote, “Rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand grenades are inherently democratic weapons.” Anarchists generally don’t oppose safe recreational drug use, and see addiction not as a criminal act but instead a public health issue. Historically anarchists have flirted ideologically with assassination, but the modern consensus is that the means and the ends of revolution are too closely related to embrace political murder as a tenet.

It sounds like you’re interested in becoming more politically literate. One question to ponder is if it may be moral for people to conspire to assassinate tyrants, is it also moral for people to organize a labor union to prevent tyrants from paying them poverty wages?

According to your definition, casinos and online gambling isn’t a scam, because what they do is well-defined. If I use ‘scam’ to mean a reliable way for the downtrodden to become even more downtrodden, or ‘bitcoin’ as a shorthand for cryptocurrency, telling me I’m wrong because you have a different definition of those words is not an impressive rhetorical feat. And you claim I’m the bad faith actor in this conversation.

And as soon as you were challenged about statements you made on-topic, you disappear. I welcome your retreat. I would choose not to have more conversations with people like you.

I was curious what claims about Monero you thought specifically were defensible. Thanks for the clarification.

1. maximizes privacy
2. prevents third parties from committing human rights violations
3. stops rent seeking
4. financial autonomy to the downtrodden
5. refuge of last resort

How does Monero (1) maximize privacy between people who can’t spend crypto directly and need to convert it to and from their national currency? How do you think this scheme would work in a privacy preserving way? We’re talking about a non-tech savvy undocumented worker in the US playing the role of Alice, and Bob is his subsistence farmer wife in rural Mexico.

At least you admit implicitly that there is no known deanonymization attack on Monero.

There is very little overlap between respected cryptography researchers and cryptocurrency developers. The chain between theory to implementation to practice is difficult enough for state actors to handle reliably. The history of Enigma, Type B, JN-25, soviet one-time pads, and modern schemes like DES, 2-DES, FEAL, KASUMI, and BassOMatic, suggest not only that encryption isn’t a guarantee, but conspiracies to keep a scheme popular long after it has been broken are common and widely successful.

I don’t know a deanonymization attack on Monero. If that’s all it took to make you feel Monero is secure, you’re in for trouble. Encrypted or not, every transaction is immutably stored in the blockchain and replicated in millions of times to any bad actor who wants a copy. Even if there was no currently known deanonymization attack, that would not mean that a deanonymization attack is impossible for everyone and for all time.

I also appreciate your implicit admission that using Monero in place of wire transfers by immigrants is so stupid as to be not worth defending.

I think you’ve gotten lost in the weeds. I didn’t come here to drop my 0-day on Monero.

I don’t know or care what legally-actionable claims are written on the side of the tin cans of authentic Monero purchased directly from the Monero factory. It matters what hucksters, con-artists, and true believers who are selling it claim. And considering the level of bullshit that fills the cryptocurrency world, demanding some rando meet your standards of proof in exchange for internet points comes off a little unhinged.

The most recent true believer claim is that the solution to Hispanic immigrant day laborers having their wire transfers being surveilled by the government is that they start using Monero. I the reason that’s an absurd statement is obvious to almost anyone who has experience with immigrant communities, cryptocurrency, and/or reality.

One of the true claims you can make about Monero is that it is not traceable by people on a day laborer’s income. These are the targets of scams facilitated by Monero and other cryptocurrencies. If you’re a wealthy person who preys on desperate people, I guess Monero does what it says on the tin. But if you’re trying to reliably send your wages to family in a place without reliable internet and secured computer endpoints and your English and computer literacy isn’t great, Monero is one of many ways you can lose the shirt off your back.