ricecake

If your point is just that agent provocateurs are not in the same vein as little green men then we are in agreement.

After saying over and over, you seem to have finally gotten it! Congratulations!

You vastly overestimate how much effort it takes to "wear jeans and a t shirt, go over there and throw stuff".

Up until now you haven't mentioned anything about any myths you're combating, so.... You kinda just came across as someone standing up for the noble police who would never stoop to trickery to find an excuse for violence.
When your argument consistently lines up with the actual fascists, people might mistake you for one when you give no other context. (Consistently arguing that it's protestors causing violence is literally the argument being used to justify violence). Doubly so when you respond to the hint that left protest organizers try to keep violence in check, so it's notable when it does happen with a "why do you think protest violence is impossible?".
Makes you sound like a bootlicker toeing the line.

My argument is...

I don't care. Basically everything else you wrote is arguing against something I never said or implied.

Do you believe that during a protest, individual agency no longer exists?

Do you believe that using strong language and massively over exaggerating the slightest wrong interpretation of what someone said, or what you'd rather they had said, makes you the literal second coming of rhetorical Jesus?

while it's probably not the case that it's overwhelmingly likely to be an agent provocateur, it would be unsurprising if it were that, someone there to push for escalation with no police affiliation, or just petty hooliganism.

You called the existence of agitators a conspiracy theory. They're not, which was the point of my comment.

It's not a conspiracy theory to think that someone causing trouble came to the protest solely to cause trouble, for whom or why not withstanding.

I believe this is the third or fourth time I've clearly stated my point, so I'm going to start copying from previous comments to save you the trouble of scrolling.

In the context, conspiracy theory seemed the more likely meaning, since being pedantic about the word would mean most of the people there engaging in violence would be conspirators regardless of why they were there.
Asking incredulously if someone really thinks the police are more likely to conspire to violence than people there under guise of peaceful protest is a level of naivete that I didn't assume.
But you are correct, I didn't interpret your words strictly literally, and assumed you didn't know about agitators rather than reading your comment as the naive defense of police it otherwise appeared to be.

Oh, that's a good notion. My thought had been that it's a place where people often stop so it formed a bypass of sorts.

You called the existence of agitators a conspiracy theory. They're not, which was the point of my comment.

People can reply to you without agreeing with the person you're replying to.
Instead of assuming what I'm saying based on where it is in the thread you might try reading the actual words.

Wait, you're arguing with me because of what someone else said?

I said agitators aren't a conspiracy theory. You asked why I thought the violence from the protestors was "impossible". I said I didn't think that, and it's obviously possible and now you're upset that I used the word "possible"?

The point of a protest is to cause trouble

🙄oh, go fuck yourself. If you're getting to that level of nitpicking you aren't actually doing anything but looking for argument, unless you're actually so brain damaged that you think that all nonviolent protest is just "parades". Just in case: in this context, trouble is a word used and understood by native English speakers to mean "undirected violence and destruction perpetrated for it's own sake".

I didn't say that in the slightest, and in fact said the opposite.

It's not a conspiracy theory to think that someone causing trouble came to the protest solely to cause trouble, for whom or why not withstanding.
The first two examples I gave, police and right wing accelerationists, have a political motivation. The third, holligans, are doing what they're doing for it's own sake.

It's obviously possible for someone aligned with the peaceful protestors to decide to throw rocks at cops. Neither I nor anyone else said otherwise.

There's no need to put words in someone's mouth or misrepresent what they're saying.

It has been documented to happen, so it's not incredibly outlandish. The regularity with which modern protest movements on the US left attempt to surpress violence to avoid giving an excuse to law enforcement makes it notable when it occurs. Again, far from unheard of, just not part of every instance.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/police-infiltration-protests-undermines-first-amendment

So while it's probably not the case that it's overwhelmingly likely to be an agent provocateur, it would be unsurprising if it were that, someone there to push for escalation with no police affiliation, or just petty hooliganism. Last of which is significant only that it distinguishes someone who decided to do violence for a principled reason from someone who just wanted to throw rocks at cops.

The key is to split it into two or three days of driving.
One 12 hour stretch of driving is miserable, but I've taken a few days to drive to some remote destinations and when your goal is 4 hours for the day you don't feel any pressure to skip a detour to see something interesting, take a longer lunch or do an extra rest stop just to shake your legs. You just need to set your expectations that the drive is part of the trip and not just the preamble.

Exit poll data is usually accurate, but it's not perfect because not everyone participates. Because it's a statistical approximation there will always be a margin of error. With numbers as close as both the exit polls and final results show it would be inappropriate to use the polls differing from the results as evidence of a belief in interference.

If it were a larger deviation or there were other anomalies it would be reasonable to try to look closer, but with only exit poll data with a 2% margin of error, a perfectly reasonable margin, and a ~1% difference in votes it's just too close to let the data have too much significance.

This not being evidence in isolation isn't evidence that there wasn't any interference, since the motives you describe are entirely real and election tampering is something that Putin is entirely familiar with. This just isn't your proof one way or another.

So, I wasn't referring to enjoyment. I spoke of engagement or interest. It's why programming is more appealing than data entry.

You're just doubling down on the false dichotomy I spoke of. It's not at all uncommon to find someone with plenty of experience who can easily and honestly tell you why they think what the company they work for does is interesting.

Asking someone why they think working at the job they're applying for is appealing isn't "hiring for enthusiasm", and it's honestly odd that you keep casting it that way.
I get where you're coming from, and I partly disagree. It doesn't seem like you're parsing what I'm saying because of this "either one or the other" attitude though.
No offense intended, but it makes you come across as burnt out and sad. I don't work for small companies, with inexperienced people, and I'm not constantly shipping broken code that needs rewriting. I've been doing this for roughly 15 years and I can honestly say "working in security in general is interesting because it forces you to think about your solution from a different perspective, the attacker, and working at $AuthenticationVendorYouQuitePossiblyUse in specific is appealing because you get to work on problems that are actually new at a scale where you can see it have an impact".
That's not gushing with enthusiasm: it's why I'm not bored everyday. If you're actually just showing up to work everyday and indifferently waiting to be told what to do because it's all just the same old slog... That's sad, and I'm sorry.

Jan. 28, 2025

That's both unrelated to this, and a different tactic entirely.

Making policy changes so quickly that it's difficult to make press releases about or legally challenge is very different from "get someone to publicly accuse you of pedophilia".

They don't need to distract you, because you don't matter. They do need to make it difficult to address the issues by people with the power to stop him.

So no, that article doesn't confirm that he's been told to make a lot of noise in the least.

I don't think he's bothering to do a "tactic". Why would he care? he's just surrounded himself with sycophants and morons because anyone else wouldn't work with him, and so there's a lot of bizarre drama.

Humans want there to be order and control in their world, so we look for the plan behind the discord.
They're not hiding anything because they don't need to. The people in power who could stop them have no interest in doing so.

The man with a long history of fucking over and alienating everyone who works with him teamed up with the fragile billionaire who finds success when his employees tiptoe around him and manage him to avoid his shitty temper, immature attitude and tendency to call people pedophiles the moment they offend him.

Shockingly, with their powers combined and no one to effectively manage them....