PhilipTheBucket @ PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat

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The circa 1990 nature of American society has been erased so completely that it is hard to believe how drastically it has changed.

Movies used to depict child molestation (Indiana Jones) or outright rape (Revenge of the Nerds) as normal and to be celebrated when it was done by the heroes. A lot of crimes got viewed through the lens of whether it was “our people” doing them. The thinking features in a lot of old movies.

The cops who beat Rodney King were found not guilty by a jury, in the first trial. After all, they’re the cops, they’re allowed. Drunk driving was fine, as long as you were one of the right kind of people. The cops would beat the fuck out of people and it was fine. The factory in town could be polluting the river and it was fine as long as dad had a job. And so on.

The uniformity of thought that TV enforced, before the internet, is really not well understood. If you thought Israel was bad, then you and Noam Chomsky were literally the only ones. Even as late in the arc as the Iraq War, I would say about 95% of the people who didn’t get their news from the internet supported the war. Watch one of the debates where Ron Paul was speaking against the war with everyone else (except the audience) just weirded out and confused by it, or the “Media-Opoly” short that aired on SNL once and then never again, to get some idea by contrast of how airtight the lock on narrative used to be. TV and newspapers are still kind of that way, but they don’t have the media monopoly they used to. It used to be that someone probably would live their entire adult life without ever hearing the kind of political viewpoints you see every day on Lemmy as normal things.

On the other hand, along with the expectation that everyone was kind of a piece of shit and that’s how life is, came a kind of backbone for resistance that I feel like is missing today. Woodstock ‘99 would be a pretty normal “yeah they robbed us” badly organized festival today. It was way better than the Fyre Festival, and people at Fyre just took it, or called their lawyers. At Woodstock ‘99, the kids threw bottles and batteries at Kurt Loder, broke in the ATMs and stole their money back, and then ripped the venue apart with their bare hands and burned it all to the ground.

• Librewolf is also quite a good browser
• Piefed seems like it’s shaping up to be better than Lemmy in a few different ways and it’s compatible with all the Lemmy people

Measuring the amount of battery that's left is always a total crapshoot. I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that they try to smooth over the phone's inability to tell what's going on by showing a gradual decline in the battery level regardless of what is happening, adjusting the speed of the decline as time passes depending on what vague and incomplete information it's able to gather about what it actually happening with the battery.

Yeah, or just find some grad student. Watching 1000 videos to get a quick sense of how it can be categorized as "justified" vs "not" vs "debatable" would take some time, but it wouldn't be all that hard. Lots of research things take time. Requesting all the footage would be hard, dealing with all the holes in the database would be hard, basically the biggest of the underlying problems is that no one really cares enough to try to make any of this easy. But yes, having the reality to base the conversation on would be a very nice thing to have.

I think that's more of a cultural thing. The cops who were faced with the Boston bombers were still chasing them when they were throwing homemade explosives out the window trying to blow up the pursuing cruisers. It was mostly just city cops in the big gun / explosive / car chase battle, it wasn't like some kind of elite FBI counterterrorism force, and they did fine. Some of the reporters who were following along said they actually didn't realize how much danger they were in because of how calm the cops were about it. I have seen cops on YouTube react with far more fear and takes-hours-to-approach-the-car caution to one random unlicensed driver who refused to stop than cops in the Northeast will generally do for genuinely life-threatening situations.

Small-town Texas cops from conservative areas, yes, they're cowardly bullies as a rule in my observation. That actually applies to a lot of parts of the South / Midwest of the US. I mean it is hard to generalize but here are my stereotypes of regional variation in US cops based on observing bodycam videos on YouTube which as we all know makes someone an expert:

• Deep South, Midwest, Southwest: Authoritarian, often react with extreme almost comical levels of caution to any threat real or perceived, also tend to be low-level violent once the perceived threat doesn't materialize and it's just some hapless person they can be violent against. Putting the cuffs on after a tense situation? Better grab that person's wrist and fold it hard so they're in a lot of pain, that'll help make the whole process go smoothly.
• California: Just poorly trained, just in general a shit show if anything real is happening.
• Florida: Unfazed by fairly extreme levels of wildness or violence, fairly qualified at dealing with it, also often dicks but not to an extreme level
• Northeast (urban): Unfazed by anything and generally qualified, often pretty humane and reasonable, although NYPD is an exception
• Northeast (rural / suburbs): Mostly as for urban, but some are more as in the Deep South

This is one among a few different problems with this data. To some departments, “armed” means a firearm. To some, it means a bottle or a stick nearby. To some, it means the officer lied and put something in their report and no one follows up to make sure it’s accurate.

The mishmashing together of all the different incompatible datasets (which do not cover all of the shootings that actually happen) and then the presentation as if it’s a complete picture is just a big lie to make it look like people can make sense of what’s going on. The total lack of even the slightest attempt to disambiguate justified shootings from unjustified is probably an even bigger problem. Pretty much all this chart can tell you is roughly what the total number in an average year is, which isn’t real useful.

I'm not actually sure this is true. There is no complete national tracking of police shootings, and if you look at the supposed data before this graph starts, it's basically all just flat year by year, which seems pretty suspect. I highly suspect that people are processing the unknown percentage of incomplete and inconsistently-parameterized data that they have, basically a whole bunch of incomplete bullshit, into a single magic number, which suddenly blesses it with the illusion of comparability year by year which it does not have.

I suspect that the sudden rise in killings starting in 2020, which coincided with near-universal bodycam adoption, heavy pressure from the feds to reform bad departments, serious efforts by the FBI to actually track complete data or as near to it as they could gather, was a result not of increased killings but an increase in the proportion of police shootings that went into the graph.

I could be wrong. That's just my feeling.

Also, yes, holy shit these are some bad colors to choose.

Even if you accept the scriptures as credible

I do not. They include some direct contradictions between different sections about factual events, never mind even the spiritual inconsistencies, which are massive. If you study the history and where things got translated into other things, you can actually see where some of the mistakes got introduced and why, and how particular people introduced particular self-serving parts into "canon" at different points for particular reasons. So no, definitely not credible.

I'm just saying that, when I read the story of Jesus's life specifically, the way he's described sounds exactly like how a real holy man would behave and how I think society as a whole (very much including the church) would react to him: With mistrust, hostility, and eventually with assassination. It's very different from both the Mike Johnson supply side Jesus version and the Sunday school version that is common in American religious upbringing. In fact they are so different that those three are all simply mutually unrelated to each other. American Christians are just telling the story they're trying to tell, making the point they're trying to make, just like you apparently are here.

I'm not taking a position about whether any of it is true and I don't plan to. I have no idea what argument you're trying to start, but I want no part of it.

What?

Jesus didn't tell the guy to give Jesus anything. He said, go give it all away, then come back when you have nothing to give me, then we can get to work.

If you read the bible, Jesus was very much like what I would have expected a for-real holy man to be. He was also constantly at war with the Mike Johnsons of his day, with periodic physical violence from both sides.

I strongly suspect that they do. I don't know for sure, but it would seem like such a silly oversight for inkjets to be omitted now that they have quality that rivals or exceeds laserjet printers.

Other random information:

https://github.com/Natounet/YellowDotDecode

Also, be aware that modern printers are rumored to embed some other type of information in some other way, now that people are hip to the yellow dots. It seems like it shouldn't be super-challenging to figure out the new details, but for some reason I'm not aware of anyone having figured it out.

Father: Though time may have softened my edges and given me wisdom, I still have danger within me. Be cautious.

Son: MURDER ALWAYS MURDER

Israel props up Hamas because it knows it can get away with the terrorist framing to justify it’s escalation of ethnic cleansing and apartheid to western powers. Israel regularly assassinates and imprisons more moderate leadership so that fundamentalist groups gain more prominence. This is the way Israel likes to justifies it’s blockade, mowing the lawn, and divide Gaza/West Bank. If you think Hamas is being played by Israel, sure.

Absolutely agree with all of this.

But it’s not like they have any option other than armed resistance. I can critisize their methods all I want, but at the end of the day, I’m not the one living in Gaza, I have no clue what it’s really like living in those hellish conditions, I don’t really know what I’d be willing to do to try to break free from the Zionist entity that has routinely bombed, imprisoned, tortured loved ones for generations in the largest open air prison on earth.

Yeah. I get this... I'm not trying to sit in judgement of anyone in that situation. Maybe I overstepped my bounds in saying some of these things, that's fair. I'm just saying that "trying to break free" in a way which basically just plays into Israel's hands and gives them the pretext they were looking for to eliminate Gaza once and for all is not resistance, even if it feels like it is at the time.

What the Palestinians actually need is from someone from outside, from one of these powers that has more money, weapons, and size than Israel by 100 times over or more, to step in. And no one is, while they die like leaves in Autumn.

The PA is a fig-leaf of resistance because they directly work under Israel to violently suppress resistance against the settler colonialism and apartheid in the West Bank. The PA is Counter Insurgency (COIN) wielded by Israel to prolong the Apartheid and continue to delay any semblance of statehood. The PA is viewed by Palestinians nearly just as negatively as Israel because of that. They assist Israel’s expansion and crack down on resistance. It’s another arm of Israel’s Apartheid apparatus

Yeah, pretty much. What I'm saying is that Israel overpowers them both by so overwhelmingly much that neither of them is "permitted" to accomplish anything at all. Hamas is permitted to splinter the Palestinians politically, and to commit terrorism from time to time, not nearly enough to be a threat but enough to keep a lot of people (certainly a lot of Israelis) hating the Palestinians and providing a good pretext.

The PA I know less about, but if they are fully corrupted and complicit in Israel's oppression that would make sense to me.

You're not wrong about the Palestinians having no options at all. I don't even know what they are supposed to do.

I’ll ask you again how many idf terrorists was killed by Hamas and how many was killed by the PA and do you deny that PA are collaborating with Israel and do nothing against illegal settlers

I said literally nothing at all about the PA. My point was that Hamas is corrupt, violent, and counterproductive, which is why the government of Israel supports them. Them periodically killing civilians or IDF people is extremely useful for Likud, which is why Likud likes them. Nothing Palestinian is strong enough to present any genuine threat of any kind of resistance. If Hamas or the PA could present anything like a real threat to Israel as a whole, the leaders would react differently, but different trivial numbers of Israelis killed by one or the other has absolutely no bearing on anything I'm saying.

You seem like you are persistently claiming I am saying one thing, and arguing very vigorously against that thing. Like I or someone here is trying to compare the PA to Hamas. I thought it was weird that you held up the PA as the "fake" resistance or seemed to be missing the point so thoroughly, but I think the only time I ever even mentioned them was asking you some questions about your own point of view.

Israel love hamas so much according to you that they killed all it’s top leaders

Because it barely matters anymore. They are just killing everyone in Gaza.

For a time, they needed to delegitimize Palestine on the world stage, and Hamas was violent enough and not-PA enough to serve that purpose.

Now, what they need to do is pretend that their "war" is against Hamas and not against a totally defenseless wreckage of starving, traumatized familes, and so holding up some dead Hamas people is useful for them.

It's different behavior for different situations. This is not some kind of PhD argument I am making here, that needs a deep understanding in order to grasp it. I honestly have no idea why you are so amped up about this or not listening to anything I am saying, and determined to "win" the exchange instead. I hope you grow out of it, and learn to blossom into the beautiful butterfly of online discoursing that you always knew you could be.

Israel don’t like hamas there is a misconception about israel/hamas relation.

They literally have talked openly about it.

In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas."

At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."[36][37]

“Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_of_Hamas_to_undermine_the_Palestinian_Authority

The idea that they were ever a "charity organization" is pure fantasy. The destruction of Israel is in the charter. Literally everyone else in these comments is aware that they are focused around armed resistance to an occupation. That is literally their reason for being.

Weirdly you still think hamas is the fake resistance and PA is the true resistance.

When I am king, the one and only rule on Lemmy will be that anyone who tells their opponent what it is their opponent believes, when neither their opponent or even anyone else said the thing they're saying, will not just be banned. Someone will go to their house and kick them, and tell them sternly, "No!"

I actually feel duped that I took your comment seriously enough to dig up citations for why it was wrong. Reading the end, it's clear to me that you're either just trying to provoke conflict for reasons of your own, or else you're more or less just sitting down at your computer to go BLBLBLBLBLBLBLBLBL onto Lemmy thinking that it is productive input.

If you oppose armed resistance against genocide you are pro genocide. It is that simple

It's not quite that simple. Hamas is a deeply corrupt and counterproductive organization. Israel arranges funding for them and supports them against their political opposition, because having Hamas largely in charge of (edit: Palestine) Gaza is often a disaster for the Palestinians, which Israel enjoys.

You can absolutely oppose Israel's genocide and also oppose Hamas's horrifying fig-leaf of "resistance" to that genocide which is mostly useless militarily, and just provides useful pretexts for Israel to do more genocide (not that they need them.)

Else you can pretend to be pro Palestinian by supporting the PA which is nothing more than an extension of Israel oppressing Palestinians.

This is where your argument goes from incomplete to bizarre. Why do you say the PA which Israel dislikes is an extension of Israel, while Hamas which Israel likes and supports (in between military operations) is an authentic resistance organization?

Oh, I didn't mean you specifically, I didn't realize it came across that way. Just that in general a lot of mods / instance owners seem to feel like communications on their server are "theirs," to mold to be the way they want them to be.

There's a responsibility you hold to the users of your system to keep the bullshit out. (And everyone's definition of "bullshit" will be slightly different, which is why it gets tricky.) But roughly speaking, you need to be doing what your users want you to do, and your users need to be showing respect for your system and wishes and the social contract from their end. As soon as either side of that contract breaks down, it's bad. And specifically in this case, there are instance owners who feel that it's their job to make sure the opinions expressed on their server are in line with their own, and fuck the users if they don't agree, because the users aren't in charge.

This is very very wrong. My whole feeling on that, is why I felt the need to write up this whole mini-essay about it. As black-and-white right and wrong of an issue as Palestine is, I feel like it's a bad precedent to set to say that the issue of which opinion is the "right" one and the feddit admins being on the other side has any bearing on this. It doesn't. Simply the fact that they want to delete certain opinions is already enough for them to be in the wrong, in my opinion.

https://archive.md/GQHLB

Hey everybody, this guy's having fun

Get him out of here

Agreed. I have such a distrust at this point of any media that fits a particular format and style, and that whole instance checked a bunch of the boxes.

Like, as far as I know, "Drop Site News" and "In These Times" have not done a thing wrong, and still every time I see them I instantly think "What the fuck! Are you guys Russian? What are you up to?"