It was no April Fool’s joke.

Harry Potter author-turned culture warrior J.K. Rowling kicked off the month with an 11-tweet social media thread in which she argued 10 transgender women were men — and dared Scottish police to arrest her.

Rowling’s intervention came as a controversial new Scottish government law, aimed at protecting minority groups from hate crimes, took effect. And it landed amid a fierce debate over both the legal status of transgender people in Scotland and over what actually constitutes a hate crime.

Already the law has generated far more international buzz than is normal for legislation passed by a small nation’s devolved parliament.

  • @Son_of_dad
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    1259 months ago

    I am anyways dismayed at how Joe Rogan stays relevant. He’s such a moronic ape, who pushes misinformation and hate, and yet he’s always at the top of the charts and half my relatives listen to him

    • @jettrscga
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      689 months ago

      This is how I know I’m in an information bubble. I never hear anyone mention Joe Rogan in real life, but apparently he’s hugely popular? It’s crazy to me too.

      • TheLowestStone
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        509 months ago

        Most people I know don’t mention that they listen to him unless specifically asked. Then they start scrambling to justify why it’s ok.

        • PatFusty
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          -439 months ago

          Because Joe talks like a normal person. He has bad takes sure but that’s for you to decide. I am sure if you talked on stream for as long as he has you will have some bad takes too.

          • @conquer4
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            269 months ago

            It astonishs me that someone can have so many experts on their show, and remain so stupid.

            • @daltotron
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              99 months ago

              It’s incentivized for him to remain that way, it’s what his audience gels with. I feel pretty confident that if you look at the episodes that get the most views, they’re gonna be the ones that have the most stupid controversial figures, political candidates, and higher tier celebrities, rather than any episodes where he talks to actual experts about what they know.

            • PatFusty
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              -269 months ago

              He talks like a regular person would… if you think he’s stupid then you are basically saying “regular people are stupid cuz I’m a big smarty smart pants look at me with my big smart brain”

            • PatFusty
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              -189 months ago

              …………………………….¸„„„„ …………………….……………„–~‘¯…….’
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              .:.:.: : : : :" : : : : , :.: : : : : : : : : : : : 'Ì : : : : : : :, : : : : : :/ "-„::::„-
              __„„~”

          • @FreakinSteve
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            69 months ago

            Idiots pay $99M/year for that.

            You have devalued money by only allowing fucktards to accumulate it without effort.

    • @daltotron
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      359 months ago

      It’s basically just because he’s like, a moronic ape. He is able to kind of, wear the aesthetics of your everyday college dorm bro, who thinks the dark knight is the greatest movie ever made. Or at least, wear the aesthetics of their middling 30 year old, balding, divorced versions, because that movie came out in like 2008, or whatever. You can basically put him in any context, and he’s able to function as the same idiot self-insert character. He’s the vessel through which they can imagine themselves talking to famous celebrities, academics, comedians, and right wing conspiracy nuts.

      • @affiliate
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        79 months ago

        i think this has a lot to do with it.

        and i think he’s also boosted a lot by the fact that he doesn’t really communicate that many original thoughts. instead, it seems like he tends to blindly agree with whoever he has on camera. so he simultaneously cultivates these personas of “having intellectual curiosity” while also being a stand-in for the average college dorm bro.

        (i’m not trying to defend him here, he still causes serious harm by platforming bad actors and endorsing their views.)

        • @daltotron
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          79 months ago

          “having intellectual curiosity” while also being a stand-in for the average college dorm bro.

          I think these are kind of one in the same. College dorm bros, ime, and just your general kind of like libertarian white dude, are pretty vulnerable to JAQing off unintentionally, engaging in a lot of logical fallacies, and priding themselves on a kind of half-baked intellectual curiosity that really just serves to reaffirm their own worldview. It’s how they can square the circle of supporting free speech, and it’s uses, right, while not actually being intellectually curious enough to dig themselves out of their holes through legitimate means. The college dorm bro is closely related to the debate pervert, is basically what I’m saying.

          • @steeznson
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            19 months ago

            What does “square the circle of supporting free speech” mean in this context?

            If I had to guess I reckon you are saying that they delude themselves into believing that they are free speech absolutists but only when it is politically convenient for them - or something like that?

            • @daltotron
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              29 months ago

              Kinda like that, yeah, but, I think, less when it’s politically convenient, and more just, that it’s like a fundamental character flaw. They wear the coat of free speech, but then they aren’t actually capable of engaging in what I see as legitimate speech or communication, and they’re not capable of engaging with or internalizing outside ideas. They’re not capable of actually using it, basically.

              It’s sort of like how, you know, you can support free speech, but then also, most people would end up blocking commercial spam, or like, very blatant trolling. Only the stupidest people would see that as a kind of hypocrisy, because their definition of “speech” doesn’t encompass spam and blatant trolling. Most people would kind of leave it there, but I also think it’s potentially a good idea to block out (hard to distinguish as it is) bad faith communication, under the guise that it’s not actually communication. At least, if not to block it outright, then to ignore it, or maybe, take a different approach to it. Logical fallacies are like intellectual spam, disguised as real thought, to make it harder to distinguish and boost engagement. I don’t qualify that as being like, real speech, basically. So I find it mildly amusing that people who are so vested in free speech are not really capable of using it, basically.

              I don’t necessarily think it’s like, bad, that they defend free speech, at least conceptually, right, but I do think it’s terribly ironic that they’ll defend everyone’s ability to do something, but then they have no capacity to engage with it or really use it themselves. My cynical tendency is that they’re realistically not defending real free speech, when they say they’re “supportive of free speech”, but they’re really just defending their own ability to suck down bad faith arguments, conspiracies, bro-culture grindset shit, and maybe even hate speech, from their information pipes.

              So, that’s kind of a long-winded way to say that you’re correct, yeah.

              • @steeznson
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                29 months ago

                Thanks for clarifying!

      • @[email protected]
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        18 months ago

        I just don’t get the Joe Rogan hate. I’ve watched a fair number of episodes of his, maybe a few dozen. I’ll sometimes agree with his take on something, other times I’ll disagree (often in the same episode), but it’s usually at least interesting. I watch them for the topics not in some kind of idol worship of the guy. Despite whatever hot takes people are going to throw at me from his hundreds or thousands of hours of hosting his podcast, I still think he asks good questions and that his long-form interviews and laid back discussion format fosters more interesting discussion than I see in other places.

        I’m not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater if I find someone I watch on YouTube or wherever says something I disagree with or holds a viewpoint I don’t like, though.

      • @samus12345
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        59 months ago

        Humans are a kind of ape, so just “morons” will do.

        • @ripcord
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          9 months ago

          No they’re not.

          • @samus12345
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            49 months ago

            The family Hominidae (hominids), the great apes, include four genera comprising three extant species of orangutans and their subspecies, two extant species of gorillas and their subspecies, two extant species of panins (bonobos and chimpanzees) and their subspecies, and humans in a single extant subspecies.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape

            • @ripcord
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              39 months ago

              I’m wrong, thanks! I was thinking gorillas and that humans were only technically primates.

              • @samus12345
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                59 months ago

                Nope, we’re also great apes! We just always tend to think we’re above other animals.

              • Jojo
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                9 months ago

                We’re also monkeys, if there is such a thing. Some monkeys are more closely related to apes (and thus to us) than they are to other monkeys, so if there’s any group that can be called the “monkey clade,” we are in it.

    • @steeznson
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      59 months ago

      I don’t think he’s a malicious actor, just an uneducated jock type dude. Suspect his audience is partly comprised of people who are also uneducated and enjoy seeing someone who is not an expert pontificate on things.

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      Reminder that he was on Infowars on 9/11. He actually pushed back on some of Alex Jones crazier statements that day, but not quite enough, and he’s lost that subtle praise since then.