merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts

10

Comments

3,043

Joined

2 yr. ago

Martinez-Gomez works full-time assisting immigrants in court for a non-profit

This is quite the Hanlon's Razor situation.

There have been a number of US citizens who have received these emails, all of them do some kind of work related to immigration. It's pretty clear that whoever sent out these emails just collected every email related to immigration work, and sent out a mass email. That satisfies Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

But! The fact that they're doing this without even a passing effort at accuracy, with no concern about getting it wrong, shows how it's motivated by malice too. It's the ICE version of a reckless homicide, they're doing something they have to know would normally get them fired if not charged. But, they don't care because the current racist administration is going to revel in the pain.

So, it's a weird situation where Hanlon's Razor is both right and wrong.

Yeah, it's a risk. But, there's also a risk of getting your wired earbuds cord caught on something. I've had that happen and it yanked the phone off the table and sent it crashing to the floor. I've also had the buds get yanked out of my ears multiple times.

If I lived somewhere where winters were mild, I might still use wired headphones. When you only have to worry about a t-shirt or something managing the cord isn't too bad. But, when you have to manage a hat, scarf, coat, etc. there are just too many things to get in the way of the cord.

You know what's easier than a cable? No cable.

I'll give you sound quality, but the whole reason that wireless earbuds took off is the hassle of wires.

I assume that bunkers protect you from a chain reaction, but that at some point the explosion is big enough that a chain reaction is exactly what you get.

This definitely seems like it would have been big enough to cause a chain reaction (and/or big enough to show that a chain reaction happened). If so, I wonder what fraction of bunkers exploded. I'm glad we live in an age of civilian satellites, so it's probably just a matter of time before we get to see the damage for ourselves.

someone had set money aside

That's a very nice way to say "embezzle".

While it's true that publishers do something of value, the amount they charge is absurd.

What makes it even worse is that so many of the people involved are donating their labour. It reminds me of college sports in the US. The actual people doing the work, the athletes, are forced to do it for free. Meanwhile, a few select groups: coaches, TV networks, etc. are making huge amounts of money.

This is why I hate the recent trend where people are saying "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

"Piracy", or more accurately "copyright infringement" was never stealing. What you're doing is violating the government-granted monopoly on copying something. That's so different from stealing.

There are money people?

Not all the tials were crewde.

That took seconds, listening to everything Jordan Peterson puts out takes hours and hours.

That's also bad. You regularly hate-watch him? Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

It should only take you about 15 minutes of watching him to understand his gimmick. He used undefined and undefinable terms like "cultural marxism". He cherry picks out of context sciencey stuff to back up his point of view. He acts super serial all the time to make people think he's a serious person. That's it. You don't need to watch any more.

"A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency

It doesn't meet the requirements to be a currency. It's a commodity.

Gold isn't a currency, it's a commodity.

And, part of the reason for that is section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

If a TV station or radio station has a call-in show and the caller swears, it's the station that gets fined. If the station runs a late night informercial where someone is defamed, the station is liable. But, do it online and you're fine. The YouTube algorithm can pick out the juiciest, most controversial, most slanderous content and shove it into everyone's recommendations and only the person who posted that content is responsible.

Section 230 makes sense in some situations. If you're running a bulletin board without any kind of algorithm promoting posts, then it makes sense that you shouldn't be held accountable for what someone says in that bulletin board. But, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. have all taken it too far. They don't personally create the content, but they have algorithms that analyze the content and decide who to show it to. They get the protections of a bulletin board, while curating the content to make it even more engaging than a segment on Newsmax or MSNBC.

Luckily, they probably won't have any.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Or, if you prefer a clip from The Wire, juking the stats.

"Gotten super conservative" is underselling it a bit.

It's more like that neighbour that had all kinds of problems has suddenly flipped out. They locked one of the kids in the shed, and it sounds like the kid is still trapped there. They took the doors off the other kids' rooms so that they had no privacy because the Internet told them kids are dressing up as furries and peeing in kitty litter. They've stopped paying their bills and chased a meter reader off with a shotgun. They've started trying to rip the copper out of the walls to sell it online.

You'd call the cops on them, but the neighbour is a cop, so there's not much you can do. That's why you had to choose your words carefully when the neighbour dropped by with a gun on his hip saying the property line was drawn wrong and your house was actually on their property: and you could see that the new property line was just drawn in with a sharpie.

They are technically "police", but they get to do away with all the boring things that police normally have to do.

Some of them still work at the border doing customs work. Others are now fully dedicated to arresting and deporting people whose residency status is not OK.

The Fox News tells me that it's China's fault I lost my job!