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The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

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Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#211

Post by LordDragonfang »

kcplate wrote: post #202
LordDragonfang wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pointing out that it's weird to act as if it's a "Democrat" thing in a thread about literal, state mandated censorship on the other side. This is a personal bugbear of mine, but almost everyone actually agrees that "censorship" is a good thing, they just call it "moderation" when they happen to agree with what is being censored. The two terms are fundamentally synonyms with different connotations, and there's no…

>spam, child porn, and "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" being the three most common examples. Two of your three are not free speech issues—-spam is completely legal in the US. Child porn is not, but not because speech limitations but because it victimizes and is violence against children. One (yelling fire in a crowded theater) is brought out pretty regularly as a legal limit on free speech…but technically it i…

GP specifically brought up twitter, so it's clear we're not talking about the US legal concept of free speech, but rather the more poorly defined, nebulous "free speech" that (let's face it) most internet discussions are about. Talking about what you will and will not get arrested for isn't relevant in a discussion that is ultimately about moderation policies on twitter.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#212

Post by kcplate »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #211
kcplate wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>spam, child porn, and "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" being the three most common examples. Two of your three are not free speech issues—-spam is completely legal in the US. Child porn is not, but not because speech limitations but because it victimizes and is violence against children. One (yelling fire in a crowded theater) is brought out pretty regularly as a legal limit on free speech…but technically it i…

GP specifically brought up twitter, so it's clear we're not talking about the US legal concept of free speech, but rather the more poorly defined, nebulous "free speech" that (let's face it) most internet discussions are about. Talking about what you will and will not get arrested for isn't relevant in a discussion that is ultimately about moderation policies on twitter.

Not sure you read what I wrote, or if you did you specifically ignored it to try and split hairs here to argue some point I never made. I originally said Musk’s purchase of Twitter was causing some prominent dems and progressives to defend censorship and speak against the value of free speech. DeSantis taking on Disney is doing the same sort of thing, causing some prominent dems to start defending sweetheart tax deals for large corps. These were once sacred values to the democrats. No need for whataboutism on this…I frankly don’t care about the GOP.

Because those two ideals are damned important, I find it disturbing that the democrats are so quick to drop their values just to be contrarian. Leads me to believe that the values never meant much to them in the first place.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#213

Post by twofornone »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209
PolygonSheep wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure policies matter much in the end. If I went into a coma before election night 2016 and woke up today, how would I tell we just had four years of a hard-right authoritarian government and we are now about a year and three months into a moderate center-left government? I have to be honest it's not a night-and-day difference.

About a year after Trump's election, I found myself thinking along similar lines. I mean, his administration made very little difference in my life, or the lives of anyone I know. Yes, I could be empathetic towards people whose lives I mostly just read about. But realistically, I had no actual evidence of any impact. Then I met up with a very old friend of mine. Successful SV VC guy. Incredibly smart. Incredibly huma…

>Trump's election had made him adopt a policy of no longer engaging in any business travel to anywhere in the USA except major metropolitan areas

So not because of any negative experience with these areas, just because of some bigoted stereotype? Sounds like the parent post was right, nothing in daily life really changed, except perhaps the perception of some increased danger. Perhaps brought on by the way that Trump was reported on in the media?

The fact that people feel something does not imply that it exists. Humans are notoriously unreliable witnesses.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#214

Post by twofornone »

mrzimmerman wrote: post #121
twofornone wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And, to keep stoking the fires of the culture wars. It's slimy and dishonest to pretend that only republicans are fighting a culture war when the bulk of the progressive platform is explicitly about changing US culture. It's like calling Ukraine the aggressor for defending against the Russian invasion.

Cultures change constantly. They’re never in a sort of stasis. Culture is just the expressions of a group of humans, how they think, and how they interact. One could argue that rolling back abortion access (which has existed for decades and is part of US culture) is conservatives in America explicitly changing US culture. Same with bills like the one in Florida that disallow teachers from discussing human gender or h…

>Cultures change constantly. They’re never in a sort of stasis. Culture is just the expressions of a group of humans, how they think, and how they interact.

That doesn't obligate a people to quietly accept a culture imposed onto them by out of touch urbanites/intellectuals/ivory tower elites.

>Same with bills like the one in Florida that disallow teachers from discussing human gender or human romantic relationships.

Human gender and normalcy of romantic relationships are culturally defined. This bill isn't about forbidding discussion of genders, its about resisting the imposition of progressive culture onto the children of moderate/conservative parents. This isn't about bigotry, this is a genuine concern that normalizing fundamentally abnormal behaviors can do more harm than good to individuals and society.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#215

Post by psyklic »

rayiner wrote: post #183
InitialLastName wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An act relating to parental rights in education; amending s. 1001.42, F.S. ... prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner [0] This is the sort of deliberate, disingenuous misapprehension that I'm talking about. You understand that the phrase "sexual orientation" is widely interpreted as "what gender of person a person has relationshi…

This is the relevant text: > 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3… I read this to prohibit discussion of sexual attraction with kids third grade and under. I don’t read this to prohibit incidental mention of someone’s same-sex spouse.

In practice, there is no problem if a teacher shows video incidentally including a straight couple. If it contains a gay couple, however, suddenly that could count as "classroom instruction" of sexual orientation. The teachers are left with the unenviable position of interpreting a vague law, resulting in it being safest to exclusively show kids straight couples.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#216

Post by PolygonSheep »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209
PolygonSheep wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure policies matter much in the end. If I went into a coma before election night 2016 and woke up today, how would I tell we just had four years of a hard-right authoritarian government and we are now about a year and three months into a moderate center-left government? I have to be honest it's not a night-and-day difference.

About a year after Trump's election, I found myself thinking along similar lines. I mean, his administration made very little difference in my life, or the lives of anyone I know. Yes, I could be empathetic towards people whose lives I mostly just read about. But realistically, I had no actual evidence of any impact. Then I met up with a very old friend of mine. Successful SV VC guy. Incredibly smart. Incredibly huma…

What actually made midsize towns in Iowa unsafe to visit for persons of Indian descent in Trump's America? Did the Iowans suddenly get more racist? Was Dubuque declared a "sundown town"? Have the Iowans calmed down now that we live in Biden's America?

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#217

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

twofornone wrote: post #213
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year after Trump's election, I found myself thinking along similar lines. I mean, his administration made very little difference in my life, or the lives of anyone I know. Yes, I could be empathetic towards people whose lives I mostly just read about. But realistically, I had no actual evidence of any impact. Then I met up with a very old friend of mine. Successful SV VC guy. Incredibly smart. Incredibly huma…

>Trump's election had made him adopt a policy of no longer engaging in any business travel to anywhere in the USA except major metropolitan areas So not because of any negative experience with these areas, just because of some bigoted stereotype? Sounds like the parent post was right, nothing in daily life really changed, except perhaps the perception of some increased danger. Perhaps brought on by the way that Trump…

> The fact that people feel something does not imply that it exists.

I absolutely agree.

Nevertheless, to hear that an intelligent, savvy, world-travelling person could now feel unsafe in many parts of the USA was, to me, indicative of a type of change that is as real as them actually being unsafe. Which is to say: I don't know if they were actually in any more danger than they would have been before, but they now perceived American society as if they were. That didn't happen because they ate the wrong thing for breakfast.

The fact that the "overton window" of the visible culture seemed to have move enough after Trump's election that this person now felt unsafe, regardless of whether there was an actual change in their safety, seems really notable to me, and no doubt even more notable to the people who live with this shift in perception.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#218

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

PolygonSheep wrote: post #216
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year after Trump's election, I found myself thinking along similar lines. I mean, his administration made very little difference in my life, or the lives of anyone I know. Yes, I could be empathetic towards people whose lives I mostly just read about. But realistically, I had no actual evidence of any impact. Then I met up with a very old friend of mine. Successful SV VC guy. Incredibly smart. Incredibly huma…

What actually made midsize towns in Iowa unsafe to visit for persons of Indian descent in Trump's America? Did the Iowans suddenly get more racist? Was Dubuque declared a "sundown town"? Have the Iowans calmed down now that we live in Biden's America?

I think my friend's explanation was that he felt that people who might potentially feel inclined to verbally or physically harass him now felt less inhibited after Trump's election. That is to say, there was no actual shift in attitude but a shift in the likelihood of public behavior based on those attitudes. I have not checked in with him since the last election, but based on conversations we've had in the past, I would guess he does not imagine that Biden's election has changed things much. The genie escaped from the bottle; putting it back is much harder.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#219

Post by PolygonSheep »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #218
PolygonSheep wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually made midsize towns in Iowa unsafe to visit for persons of Indian descent in Trump's America? Did the Iowans suddenly get more racist? Was Dubuque declared a "sundown town"? Have the Iowans calmed down now that we live in Biden's America?

I think my friend's explanation was that he felt that people who might potentially feel inclined to verbally or physically harass him now felt less inhibited after Trump's election. That is to say, there was no actual shift in attitude but a shift in the likelihood of public behavior based on those attitudes. I have not checked in with him since the last election, but based on conversations we've had in the past, I w…

So essentially the people in mid-size towns in Iowa were and are mostly racist (and not "implicit bias" racist but "shouting racial slurs and engaging in physical aggression" racist) but the national attitude during 2008-16 was holding them back from verbally and physically harassing people of color as they wanted to do, because they knew Obama would crack down on them like a ton of bricks.

After Election Day 2016 the formerly mild-mannered Iowans (a state so racist that America's first Black president won a majority of votes there in 2008 and 2012) decided to drop all pretense of being nice to people of color.

I'm sorry but it sounds frankly ridiculous.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#220

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

PolygonSheep wrote: post #219
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my friend's explanation was that he felt that people who might potentially feel inclined to verbally or physically harass him now felt less inhibited after Trump's election. That is to say, there was no actual shift in attitude but a shift in the likelihood of public behavior based on those attitudes. I have not checked in with him since the last election, but based on conversations we've had in the past, I w…

So essentially the people in mid-size towns in Iowa were and are mostly racist (and not "implicit bias" racist but "shouting racial slurs and engaging in physical aggression" racist) but the national attitude during 2008-16 was holding them back from verbally and physically harassing people of color as they wanted to do, because they knew Obama would crack down on them like a ton of bricks. After Election Day 2016 th…

That feels like a more or less willful misreading.

Let's suppose that my friend crosses paths with 100 Iowans during a business trip there. Let's suppose that 1% of Iowans are racist or bigoted enough to at the very least yell some abuse at this particular clearly non-caucasian individual. Before Trump's primary campaign and electoral win, social pressure kept the 1 person my friend may have encountered from acting on that impulse, but afterwards, that person felt much freer to just speak their mind (or worse).

Such an analysis says nothing about Iowans in general as people. It says that it's easy to be worried that the general attitude had shifted enough in Iowa (but not, say, in NYC or Chicago) that the tiny percentage of people who might act on their racist/bigoted impulses are now more likely to do so, changing my friend's risk exposure by visiting.

It's not for you or me to judge whether that's sufficient reason to avoid Iowa now. That's an individual decision to be made, and I do not sit in judgement of those who decide one way or another.

But you're also missing the deeper aspect of the point I'm trying to make. You don't have to believe me, but I'm telling you that my friend is a hyper-rational, highly intelligent, well informed individual. The fact that such a person could move from "I have never worried about being brown when moving around the USA" to "I will not visit anywhere outside of large metropolitan areas" - that's the change. You are free to argue that it is is irrational, or even "ridiculous" as you put it, but the point is that the state of American society pre-Trump left this individual feeling safe, and the same state post-Trump left them feeling anxious. If they were a person prone to irrational, emotive decisions or generally over-reacted to anything, then I would be inclined to dismiss the change in their sense of their own safety. If they had always worried about this aspect of life in the USA, I would be inclined to dismiss the change. But they are not and they did not, and so I take this change quite seriously.

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