WatDabney @ WatDabney @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it's also worth noting that Reddit's policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I'd assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.

It's not theft if you voluntarily pay it.

If it's taken from you against your will though, it actually is theft. It's just that that fact discommodes a number of people by cutting to the heart of the nature of governance, so we're conditioned to pretend that it's not true.

Here's something beyond that to think about - a significant number of the things a government does are actially things that would be, in any other context, crimes. In fact, that's arguably the exact nature of a government - it's an organization that claims the right to act in ways that are criminal if done by anyone else in any other context.

Theft is the most common one, and in fact theft of the wealth of (some portion of) the people in a given area is the thing that allows for all of the rest. Governments also regularly engage in kidnapping, extortion and murder. That's what you would be charged with if you, respectively, took people by force and held them against their wills, or demanded payment from people in exchange for allowing them to do something, or killed people or directed someone else to kill them. But governments alone claim the right to do all of those things.

Also, there are a bunch of lesser "crimes" that aren't necssarily crimes in and of themselves, but that the government makes into crimes specifically to create that situation in which they're the only ones with the right to do something that's otherwise a crime - running a lottery, selling restricted products like pharmaceutical drugs, printing money, etc.

And in fact, if we were to make just the small change to holding that it's the case that if an act is a crime when someone else does it, it's also a crime when a government does it, governments would immediately be without either power or purpose. That's how central committing acts that are otherwise crimes is to their entire identity and purpose.

And more to think on - this is a problem because try as they might for millennia now, nobody has been able to work out a way to establish foundational legitimacy for government. Ultimately the nominal legitimacy of each and every government relies on some combination of laws it has established itself and simple force - there is no external, objective thing on which a government's nominal legitimacy rests.

So what we really have are organizations that cannot establish any sort of objective legitimacy engaging in acts that would be crimes if done by anyone else.

Let that sink in.

Well of course he doesn't - he's a psychopath. A complete lack of concern for others is one of his defining characteristics.

And even beyond that, Biden's a special case.

Another aspect of Trump's mental illness is his entirely self-absorbed conception of reality. For instance, he wanted to win in 2020; and he believes he deserved to win in 2020, therefore, from his delusional point of view, the only possible reality is that he did win, but somebody stole it from him.

And that somebody is Biden, and since another aspect of his mental illness is to childishly cling to grudges over perceived wrongs, he has it in for Biden specifically.

LOL

Libel? For an assessment of toxic, pretentious self-righteousness?

That's just about the most delicious irony I've ever encountered.

Huh.

I thought about going into all of that, but at this point in the US it's still mostly speculative, since they haven't gotten the bans in place yet, and these pretentios fucksticks would never believe it anyway.

I didn't know that it's actually happened in Australia. That's unfortunate, but it'll provide me with an example in the future.

It's a fairly standard corporate move though. The biggest corporations lobby for a bunch of restrictions and requirements on their own industry because they're in a position to meet them, but they'll serve as a barrier to entry for potential competition.

So it's possible - arguably even likely - that these self-righteous asshats crying about the evil tobacco companies are actially effectively (or even literally) working for those very companies.

Which is just another reason why I have nothing but scorn and disdain for them.

It's not that I "can't fathom" it as that I know that it's complete snd total bullshit.

Tobacco companies didn't invent vsping - ordinary people did. And tobacco companies didn't originate the idea of flavoring it - the same ordinary people did. We did it because we prefer it that way.

And then years later, some bunch of self-righteous twats who know absolutely nothing about yhe actial history of ot come stumbling along and start blathering a bunch of fucking nonsense about the evil tobacvo companies flavoring juice to enticevkids.

Motherfucker - I was flavoring juice myself when tobacco companies didn't even know vaping existed - when it was just a handful of people on a forum experimenting with attaching homemade nichrome coils to modified flashlights.

So don't fucking presume to tell me what I can or can't "fathom."

I didn't call anyone a big mean doo-doo-head.

I called anti-vaping crusaders, among other things, "toxic assholes - vile, loathsome, uncaring pieces of shit who hide behind an ill-fitting mask of health advocacy to feed their own pathetic and destructive need for self-affirmation through self-righteousness."

And I meant and mean every single, carefully chosen word of it. That's not just a random insult hurled in someone's general direction, but a very deliberate and carefully considered description of what I've come to see as defining characteristics of a particularly noxious and loathsome group of people.

Ah... that's right - I left out "sanctimonious."

Yes, I think they're hypocrites.

More to the point though, I think they're toxic assholes - vile, loathsome, uncaring pieces of shit who hide behind an ill-fitting mask of health advocacy to feed their own pathetic and destructive need for self-affirmation through self-righteousness, and there isn't a boot in the world big enough to deliver the swift kick in the ass they so desperately need.

Banning is not and will never be part of a "nuanced approach" to anything. It's the approach preferred by shallow, self-righteous, authoritarian shitheads.

And there are likely a dozen things you did today that are more harmful than vaping. The only thing that makes them any different is that they're not things that have become focal points for shallow, self-righteous, authoritarian shitheads

Nicotine juice has been flavored from the very start. Way back in the day when premixed juices didn't even exist and vapers - who were pretty much exclusively smokers looking for a safer alternative - had to buy propylene glycol and nicotine extract and mix it themselves, we also bought flavoring, because the simple fact of the matter is that unflavored nicotine juice doesn't taste like cigarettes - it tastes sorr of like hand sanitizer mixed with ear wax.

This whole uproar about flavored vapes is a bizarre fiction being promoted by busybody assholes and idiots - by crusading fuckwads using something they self-evidently know absolutely nothing about to feed their desperate and pathetic need to feel self-righteous.

After thirty years of trying and failing to quit smoking, vaping is almost certainly the only reason I'm alive today, and these foul busybody shitbags want to ruin that for me and everyone else in the same position, and bluntly, fuck them. They're fucking scum.

If they want to ban flavored vapes, they're not "anti-smoking" groups - they're anti-vaping groups and thus pro-smoking groups.

I'd love to play poker against him.

So?

Unless you want to argue that their likely refusal to carry out their sworn duties somehow frees them from any obligation to do so, that's entirely irrelevant.

Since they do in fact continue to have that obligation in spite of their likely refusal, it's just that much more important that we point that out as often and as loudly as possible.

It doesn't matter how edgy and cynical you are while you bend over to let them fuck you - you're still letting them.

I think that's actually the foundation for his mental illness. He really is, emotionally, a child, and fitting his childish emotional development to the realities of an adult world has so warped his perception of reality that he really is, by any appropriate measure, delusional and deranged.

Which makes the fact that he's clearly deranged and thus self-evidently unfit for office that much more significant, and it's that much more important that it be reiterated atvevery opportunity.

It's long past time to start the process of declaring him unfit and removing him from office. He's not just corrupt and power-hungry and deceitful - he's dangerously unhinged.

The authority of the Presidency cannot be left in the hands of somebody who is, as he so plainly is, profoundly mentally ill.

One of the definitive 80s songs, and one of my all-time favorites.

More than anything else, to me this era is defined by the number of people in positions of power who are brutally obviously full-blown psychopaths.

It's to the point that I'm not even sure if this is most accurately considered a political crisis. It seems more a mental health crisis, marked by the fact that so many positions of power are held by people who are so profoundly mentally ill that they likely shouldn't even be allowed in public unsupervised, much less allowed to hold any sort of authority over anyone else.

More broadly, it's how civilizations die.

Essentially, all of the scumbags are coming out of the woodwork to loot the civilization - getting theirs while the getting is good.

It's all downhill from here.