TechyDad @ TechyDad @lemmy.world

Posts

3

Comments

1,018

Joined

2 yr. ago

$175,000 for 50 years? He's 71 now so he went into prison at 21. That means he spent virtually his entire life in prison. He could have done so many things, but instead he needed to sit in a prison cell. All because he was wrongly convicted.

And because I'm a math geek and need to figure this stuff out, $175,000 over 50 years is $3,500 a year. If we calculate what he would have earned at the federal minimum wage over that time frame (ignoring bank account interest or inflation just to keep things simple), we'd get over $500,000.

They're giving him a third of what he should have earned at bare minimum. (And that ignores all the other horrible things involved with being wrongfully imprisoned for 50 years.)

Those of us who feel like both are to blame tend to be outshouted by the "I ALWAYS STAND WITH ISRAEL NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO" and the "HAMAS ARE JUST FREEDOM FIGHTERS SO ANYTHING THEY DO IS JUSTIFIED" groups. And if we speak up to point out that both groups have issues, we get attacked by both groups for not being on a side and especially for not being on their side.

One of the big problems with the Middle East is that it's a messy situation and people like simple narratives. They don't want to hear a hundred plus years of attacks, revenge attacks, generational trauma, etc. That's not easy to resolve. Instead, people want to know that A is always good and B is always bad. That's nice and simple and easy to fix. You just eliminate the bad people and all is well.

Sadly, the real world is rarely so black and white.

Good point. Of course, the next question would be: How long until a police officer arrests a Latino American despite them having their papers and confiscates the papers claiming that they are "forgeries?"

(If the 2017-present has taught us anything, it's to never underestimate how cruel and corrupt people in power can be.)

A peace officer, which is broadly defined and can include such people as local police officers and security officers of the state medical board, can inquire about a person's citizenship and immigrant status if they think they have entered the U.S. illegally. If so, a magistrate can order them out of the country.

How long until Latino Americans are stopped by police officers and have their citizenship papers demanded or else they'll be arrested and threatened with deportation? How long until a judge railroads the case because they are convinced that Latino = Illegal Immigrant and the American citizen is deported?

They do blame Obama for how he acted as President after 9/11. Time is a difficult concept for them to understand. A bit too wibbly wobbly timey wimey perhaps?

Cue the Republicans quickly impeaching Biden for "trying to stage an insurrection." The proof being.... (Crickets). Then, the red courts declaring that this means Biden can't be on the ballot.

True, but this removes him from the primary. If enough other states do this, you could have Nikki Haley or someone else winning that state. Then again, Colorado's primary takes place on Super Tuesday (March 5th). By the time, Haley is announced the winner, it would likely be too late to stop Trump. (Assuming nothing else stops him first.)

I always have suspicions when I see "do you approve or disapprove of how X is handling Y polls." Disapproval might mean that the person wants X to move to the left or to the right, but they are both labeled as "disapprove."

For example, say John wants Biden to withhold all aid to Israel until there's a ceasefire. He would say he disapproves of Biden's handling. But now say that Jim thinks the US should go in and bomb Gaza until nobody is left. He also disapproves of Biden's actions.

The fact that more people sided with Israel (47%-20%), thought that Trump would do a better job (46%-38%), and watched FOX News (13% vs second place CNN at 10%)leads me to think that this poll got a lot more Republicans than Democrats. This likely just shows "Republicans aren't going to support Biden" rather than "Democrats are fleeing Biden."

Polls like this really need to include "do you want X to move more to the left or more to the right" in their disapproval questions. (Though likely phrased better than that.)

I needed Unicode symbols for a story I'm working on. (I want to use them as "magic runes" so I could type them into a document, but without using the standard "runes" that are typically used.)

Shape Catcher let me draw what I was looking for and then get a list of Unicode characters that matched that drawing. It's not exact so if there's no perfect Unicode match, it will give you ones that are close. This actually turned out to my benefit as I found shapes I hadn't considered but which worked nicely for my uses.

That last one actually did come back with a report - that said little to no fraud took place. They spent millions of dollars and used some shady practices with the ballots, but even they couldn't find anything.

His girlfriend has the evidence. You wouldn't know her. She goes to another school.

The whole "Elon swings hard right while trying to sell electric cars" is crazy. It would be like me selling "roll coal" kits and deciding that my market had to be Progressives because I was going to insult everyone on the right.

And the whole "she spilled some mildly hot coffee and got dollar signs in her eyes" narrative was cooked up by McDonald's. They couldn't win in court, so they tried to shape the public narrative to portray the poor woman as seeking a payday.

In reality, she only initially wanted McDonald's to pay her medical bills. They could have made the entire thing go away for $20,000. Instead, McDonald's opted to spend likely millions not only on lawyers, but on a public relations campaign to defame this poor woman.

Oh, these things are definitely interconnected. The War On Drugs was started mainly for racist/political reasons. Nixon couldn't say "let's arrest all the black Civil Rights leaders," but if he could find a drug that black people tended to use (either for real or stereotypically used), he could arrest them for drug possession/use and disrupt those troublesome groups.

And many mental health issues can have their root in money issues. To give myself as an example, I've recently been feeling a ton of anxiety over my job. I know I'm talented, but I'm plagued by self doubt and worry about being let go and needing to find a new job. At 48 years old and with a family to support, this can be a lot of pressure. The pressure increases my anxiety and which stresses me out in a feedback loop. Perhaps I could benefit from therapy, but that costs money which then gets added to my financial woes. So I'm stuck with "dealing with it" as best I can. Yay capitalism?

Hey, I may feel old, but I'm not THAT old! Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

Definitely this. Republicans love to blame "mental health issues" whenever a mass shooting happens or one of their base does something crazy. It's much easier to just deflect to "mental health issue" than it is to talk about gun control measures.

And yet they also don't want to boost mental health coverage.

So if we're not going to get sensible gun control legislation, can we at least get some decent mental health care coverage?

The Republicans who are embarrassed over this aren't Republicans anymore. There might be one or two who still are willing to publicly declare Russia a geopolitical enemy, but they are an endangered species.

Now, you basically have two kinds of Republicans: The ones who privately see Russia as an enemy but say "the right things" to get more power and the ones that cozy up to Russia because they see Russia as a template to follow for turning America into a fascist, white supremacist dictatorship.

Very true. As a Jew, shouting "gas the Jews" at me would be highly offensive and would qualify as hate speech with an incitement to violence, but he might be able to get off on First Amendment grounds. But spraying a mystery substance on people while shouting this? Even if the mystery substance ends up being benign, that's still assault.

Back when I was in high school, a friend of mine introduced me to his friend. This kid, knowing that I'm Jewish, started to go on a rant ending with "the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job!"

Him saying that me and my family should be killed for the "crime" of being Jewish... Well, offended seems too light of a word. I blew right past offended and landed in ANGERED.

Now, usually, I'm a pretty relaxed guy. I typically don't get angry even if I should. But this made me want to punch the guy right in his Hitler loving face. My friend had to hold me back.

(And before anyone asks, this wasn't the kid being "edgy" or trolling me to get a reaction. He actually worshipped Hitler and thought he was a great man.)

There have been rumors for years that he keeps a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside. He also has spoken glowingly of how various dictators keep their populace in line.

Of course, by himself Trump is too clumsy to install a dictatorship. If it was just him, I'd predict a second Trump term would involve a lot of bad stuff, but no outright dictatorship as he'd get distracted by some Twitter/X/Truth Social feud.

However, once you add in Project 2025 and similar people who would likely have roles in Trump's second administration, then things get truly scary. They admire dictators too and they are capable of planning and executing the death of democracy.