beardown @ beardown @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

The cool ones died or retired

That's not true - a lot of them were also killed or incarcerated by the government through programs similar to Cointelpro. Especially those boomers who were people of color and were active in the Civil Rights Movement

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

The officiating has been historically terrible this year. Multiple game deciding calls were missed or wrongly made.

If you want to decide games to ensure that the spread does/doesn't hit then you just need to throw in a few pass interference penalties or holding calls. Aka, the most inconsistently applied and most subjective calls in sports

That's all very thorough, thank you.

But isn't the obvious "solution" to this (from a global elite perspective) to criminalize and aggressively prosecute any usage at all of non-governmentally approved bitcoin/blockchain? Including by criminalizing even visiting sites remotely related to it? Which would be successful given that the average person doesn't even use a VPN

The way to prevent power from being lost to this new type of system seems to be to create a government approved option, with all of the obvious govt/billionaire approved backdoors within it. And then to legally, socially, and culturally stigmatize the "actual" blockchain networks to make them equivalent to child pornography in the minds of the public. Which has already started to some extent by arguing to the public that the only reason you'd need bitcoin is if you're trying to buy heroin or child pornography - or products/services that are even worse. Just seems like the West etc could meaningfully kill this tomorrow if they devoted resources to it. The war on drugs didn't work but the war on crypto seems like it could because of the knowledge required to even participate at an entry level.

I agree that this hasn't been done yet, and maybe it won't ever be. But it seems plausible enough to prevent me from seeing this as remotely an inevitability. It all does make me think that perhaps I should really meaningfully invest in BTC or its equivalents though

Please elaborate on how that meets the definition of "irony."

Why do you think blockchain would be immune from regulatory capture? Hasn't the general story of crypto-adjacent items thus far been one of immense gains for the few and immense losses for the many?

And isn't the historical rule of statistics/maths such that it is clear that these "objective" measures are actually very easy for the powerful to manipulate for their own ends? Lying with statistics is very easy to do, for example.

What prevents Peter Thiel-types from framing and shaping the code that governs whatever blockchain-connected system emerges? And what prevents Cambridge Analytica type entities from manipulating public opinion such that only the "right" kind (the evil kind) of blockchain is the one that "spontaneously" becomes the natural choice of the grassroots?

The error of the Leninists was, among other things, thinking that because they had an exceptional understanding of how historical economic structures have been controlled and shaped by the powerful that they, therefore, would themselves be able to use this knowledge to create a new type of state that was exempt from these failings. That obviously did not occur. And I fear that the STEM types who understand blockchain, and who generally have sincerely good intentions, will similarly be blindsided by the realities and insurmountable corrosive strength of global capital

Which doesn't mean that no better world is possible - it is. It just means that I don't think we can trust a computer code to impartially distribute a truly moral justice throughout the country/world. Because the oligarchs will seize and corrode such a code and subvert it to serve their own ends; it doesn't matter how isolated and untouchable such a blockchain is - if it can be made then it can be remade. And I don't know how you stop them from doing that given that their wealth gives them practically unlimited power

"There is no genocide - if Germany wanted to, the Jews would be gone tomorrow" - You, in 1935

The United States' legal system is regularly enforced against the poor and the weak. It is serving its actual purpose

"Two wrongs don't make a right"

The utter irony of saying this.

The defendant's last name is "LittleJohn."

Little John was the sidekick of Robin Hood.

Robin Hood is the embodiment of the idea that, actually, two wrongs can very much make a right - stealing from the corrupt rich and giving to the poor is a good thing, actually. And breaking the law is good when the law only protects and empowers the corrupt and the wealthy

And that is exactly what this defendant did. Much like his coincidental namesake, he stole from the corrupt rich and shared what he took with everyone else. And much like the "Outlaw" Robin Hood, he was punished for it.

The only problem is that the United States isn't waiting for the Good King Richard to return and right all of our society's wrongs. Because, unlike Merry Old England, we don't have such a Good King coming to save us.

Similarly, chocolate and coyote and tomato are also Aztec/Nahuatl words in origin. Which means our pronunciation is likely inaccurate

Your point being that is is very difficult to get people to see the Democrats for what they are because so much of the public has internalized the tribal/group identity of "Being a Democrat"?

Yeah exactly. Which in no way negates the fact that there is a very real genocide being carried out by Israel with the support of the United States. That is true and is real and needs to be stopped.

But it is in Russia/Iran/China's interest to exacerbate tensions on all sides of such a genocide, including by generating and boosting inflammatory social media content that is seen by Americans. A consequence of which is that a record number of Americans are seeing Israel's actions for what they truly are, which is good - but this is not being done for remotely altruistic reasons

The ICJ's current case of South Africa v Israel re: the Gaza genocide is an example of one such "independent" examination. However, while better than most alternatives, the ICJ is still largely under the control of The West - as is evidenced by its history of cases, and specifically, by its history of consistently ignoring certain bad acts by certain Western states. To say nothing of its very coincidental selection of its judges

For example, Joan Donoghue, the current ICJ president judge, is a career United States Department of State diplomat. Aka, she has spent her career as an agent of The West at the very highest levels, and now is the president judge overseeing the current South Africa/Israel genocide case. Hardly a fair hearing - imagine our reaction if the president judge of the ICJ was a career Russian or Chinese state depth official - how would that affect our perception of such a "court"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Donoghue

That's true. But what is to be done about it?

Calling these people names won't fix the problem. It won't eliminate them and it won't convert them. So what will?

its a downright terrified fear of empathy. Because they think giving a shit about their neighbor might make them liberal, or gay, or whatever other weird connection their fucked up driven-mad-by-fox-news-brain comes up with.

It's a fear of empathy, but not for the reasons you describe.

Working class conservatives are afraid of caring for their neighbor, let alone caring for a stranger, because they fear being taken advantage of. They fear being victims of a scam. They fear being deceived. They fear that the person asking for help is actually a rich person who is dressed up like a poor person because asking for handouts is an easier way to make money than working for a living. Where you and I see the unhoused and the genuine victims of capitalism, they see grifters and charlatans.

Which is all obviously a distortion of actual reality - the unhoused are not tricksters who are out to deceive us. But that is the narrative that needs to be addressed and countered if we want to build genuine empathic behavior

What is the evidence of this?

The New Deal and The Great Society seem to disprove this notion.

And Biden's recent Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and American Rescue Plan Act are the strongest domestic investments in US history since the Great Society, which was 60 years ago at this point. Making Biden's legislative wins the strongest accomplishments in most Americans lifetimes

Dems need to do way more, and Biden is still not sufficient. But idk if it's true that his legislation has made things "worse"

The grievances of the people need to be heard, and it is inevitable that the elite class will grow deaf to those needs over time.

This isn't because technocrats will act out of malice; rather it means the system that they serve will be bought out by oligarchs who will bend all existing structures to serve their own goals rather than the goals of the people.

A strong judicial system can help to prevent that. Unfortunately judiciaries can also be bought, as the United States has recently seen

We need major FDR style New Deal reform (assuming I understand what that was

You're talking about the below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

And its contemporary application:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

And the average person economic situation has drastically deteriorated since then, especially post-Covid

Source: grocery prices and housing costs

Agreed, but it seems that Trump's rise has coincided with a change to those 6 conservative values. Sanctity in particular seems to be drastically less important than it used to be, as vulgarity has been embraced by the right to an unprecedented degree. Gone are the days when Ned Flanders and David Brooks personified the typical conservative. Vulgarity, foul language, lack of church attendance, sexual impropriety, substance and gambling use, etc are all drastically more acceptable today than at any point in America's post-WWII history

Having said that, there still are elements of Sanctity that these conservatives care about - kneeling during the NFL's national anthem being one of them. But these occurrences seem to be increasingly uncommon

The interesting thing about America is that it was founded on the idea that people are equal

While our early national rhetoric certainly hammered the idea that all humans are equal, our early national actions discriminated against everyone except for landowning white anglo-saxon protestant men.

We have been an oligarchy from the start. Albeit an oligarchy with a phenomenal Public Relations department

Our founders did flee European monarchies - but they didn't do it for the equitable reasons you describe. They fled the dictatorships of the aristocrats in order to create a new dictatorship - a dictatorship of the merchant class. Said another way, a dictatorship of the wealthy. Said yet another way, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That is what the United States of America is, and that is what we have always been.