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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)CC
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2 yr. ago

  • If the security team and the operations team are willing to obey the order and revoke access then the illegal firing is very much effective.

    The jackboot thugs that work security for these government agencies have repeatedly demonstrated that they're happy to listen to the children running DOGE over the members of the agency that they're supposed to be securing, so at that point what do you expect one of these beaurocrats to do? Get into a fist fight with all the mall cops that are itching to serve the fascists?

  • It's the trans people who pass so well as cis who will be in the most danger. By law they'll have to use the opposite bathroom of where they obviously belong, and then a group of big burly bigots will use that as an excuse to beat them up. The bigots defend themselves from criminal charges by insisting they were "defending women from a predator", and even if the trans person can prove they were just following the law and not harming anyone, the bigots will still get off scot-free because the court will rule they had a "reasonable suspicion" for their actions. Gay/trans panic is still effective in many places where these anti-trans laws are passed. And in many cases the trans person may be too scared to even press charges.

    Ultimately the point of all of this is to force trans people out of society. You can't participate in a communal space where you're not able to safely relieve yourself.

  • I'm directing my criticism specifically on the technological advancement which is devoid of communal spirit, not on all technological advancement categorically.

    Crediting human achievement to technological advancement is a mistake in my opinion. Technological advancement is not inherently good or bad. Communal spirit is what determines whether technology yields positive or negative outcomes. That's the real ingredient behind everything humans have achieved throughout history.

    Sadly techno-optimism has become a prevailing mindset in today's world where people and institutions don't want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions because of belief that as-yet-unknown technological advancement will bail us out in the future, even when there's no evidence that it will even be physically possible.

    But what I said is that your view is a sad one, not an incorrect one. The truth is, technological advancement may truly end up being the defining characteristic of humanity. After all, when we think about extinct species, we tend to associate them most strongly with what made them extinct. Just as we associate the dinosaurs most strongly with a meteor, maybe an outside observer will some day associate humanity most strongly with the technology that sent us out in a blaze of glory.

  • What a sad view of humanity to think that our one defining characteristic should be pursuit of technology rather than the ability to intelligently collaborate and thereby form communities with a shared purpose.

    I can assure you that the success of human survival throughout the history of our species has had far more to do with community and resourcefulness than with technological advancement. In fact it should be clear by now technological advancement devoid of communal spirit will be the very thing that brings an untimely end to our entire species. Our technology is destroying the climate we depend on and depleting the soil that we need for growing food, to say nothing of the nuclear bombs that could wipe us out with the wrong individuals in positions of power.

  • I'm not trying to shill for Google but I really think it would be a mistake to break up Google without breaking up Microsoft simultaneously if not first. If they actually manage to crack open Google's search and browser monopoly, who do they really think is going to start filling in that void? Local mom and pop search engines..? No it's primarily going to be Microsoft with Bing and Edge, and I'm absolutely certain that whatever people don't like about Google having its monopolies is going to be orders of magnitude worse if Microsoft gains ground there.

  • The "reform is impossible" is a self-fulfilling prophesy because it leads leftists to never try to get involved in the party, which means they'll never get a seat at the table, which means they'll never be able to steer the party.

    I certainly can't prove that the influence of big money can ever be overcome within the party by grassroots organization, but you also can't prove that it's impossible (you can only prove that it's difficult, which is something I certainly won't dispute).

    You certainly can't prove that a true socialist movement will ever gain traction in America. It seems like the general public is so brainwashed they would rather be indentured servants of large corporations than lift a single finger to seize the means of production.

    So we're left with two unprovable paths to consider, and here's the thing: the two paths are not mutually exclusive. Leftists can try both at the same time with neither being disruptive to the other. So this is the pragmatism: consider all possibilities and put the eggs into more than one basket.

  • Or he's a pragmatist who is concerned with both harm reduction and the likely reality that the only takeaway that Democrats will ever have from losing an election to someone right wing is that Democrats need to go even further to the right to win.

    If leftists give the impression that nothing will ever be good enough for them then

    1. Democrats have no incentive to court the left
    2. Democrats have no estimate for how many votes they would even be able to pick up from the left relative to how far left they might try to reach

    I personally believe that if the Democrats had taken on a progressive populist anti-genocide platform they would have won the election handsomely, but I am left with no way to empirically prove that to anyone because so many leftists opt out of voting entirely.

  • Google is an enormous company which operates flatter than you'd expect for an organization of its size. It's entirely possible that someone from Google was involved in organizing this (i.e. booking the venue) without having buy-in from leadership. Once leadership became aware after being asked about it, they may have shut the whole thing down because they knew the optics would be bad.

  • Speaking as an annoying Rust user, you're being bigoted. I'm annoying, but the vast majority of Rust users are normal people who you wouldn't even know are using Rust.

    Don't lump all the others in with me, they don't deserve that.

  • How exactly is an individual supposed to determine which cops will be good and which will abuse their power?

    Just as we can't make a general statement that all cops are definitely bad, you can't make a general statement that all cops in any particular country or town will be good.

    From a basic risk management viewpoint, it doesn't make sense for anyone to accept the risk that any given cop won't abuse their position, even if we were willing to accept that very few would actually do so.

    Cops have an extremely privileged status in society and the amount of damage that a bad one can do to an individual - on purpose or even by accident - is incalculable, including setting up an innocent person for capital punishment as we're seeing unfold in Missouri right now.