mo_ztt ✅ @ mo_ztt @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I wasn't trying to be flippant about Daniel Shaver getting murdered. I was trying to make the point of what a huge gulf there was between what happened to him and what happened here. If it sounded like I was being casual about the wrongness of that instance, then I apologize; that wasn't the intent at all and I think I was a little careless about how I brought up his name, yes.

You couldn’t just kneejerk your cop jerk off without trying to whitewash his name?

You think that I was bringing up Daniel Shaver as a way to... make the police look better? Because I'm obviously a malicious apologist?

I'm fully in agreement with you as to what should happen when a cop does something criminal. We're definitely going to disagree on some things, but on that I can assure you we agree.

You're free to find some unincorporated land somewhere and some like-minded people, and run the place with no cops. Should be a big improvement yes?

Edit: Downvotes: Unanimous. Upvotes for the dude I replied to: Unanimous. Deafening silence of people who should be saying "Actually that's a great idea, let's organize and we can make it happen": Unanimous.

Come on guys... if I was surrounded by enemies, I'd really appreciate someone pointing out a solution where I wouldn't have to be surrounded by them anymore. Also, there are plenty of places on some continents where you wouldn't have to deal with even police on the county or state level. The techbros at least made a genuine effort to set up their little crypto-backed libertarian paradises. I really think you should look into this. Y'all can do it! 😃

I mean... what it looks like to me from a first reading is that they arrested him because he was being a dick and refusing to ID and being combative with the cops. It's not like they just put him in some kind of no-win Daniel Shaver bind where no matter what he did he was going to go to jail.

Was it illegal for him to do that? No (this crappy 8th circuit decision notwithstanding). Should they have arrested him for it? No. Is it appropriate for the officers involved to get some sort of consequence because they let him get under their skin and retaliated in an illegal fashion? Yes.

Is this the kind of thing that happens sometimes when you're a dick to some other human being in the world, even if you are within your rights to do so? Yuuuup.

Some are, yes (the Oathkeepers and etc). A lot of them aren't, though -- they're just making death threats that are "credible" to change someone's behavior, and a lot of them actually use that exact logic that this is a better way than rising up and having actual violence (with the implication that that's what'll happen if the threats don't change the behavior). But that's all good with you, right?

I'm just trying to be a jerk about it, I'm just taking you at face value about the things you're supporting. If that's offensive, I think you should stop supporting them.

Not that it's directly related to this case, but: Daily reminder that probable cause refers to the reason the police can conduct an arrest or apply for a warrant. It does not mean they can search without a warrant, except in very specific circumstances. There's a mythology that "probable cause" means they can search, but it doesn't. They can search your person when arresting you, or your car when they're towing it, but that's not because "probable cause."

Be polite, don't be a dick. Being anything other than aboveboard and civil to them will make your interaction with them a lot worse for you. But also, if you're in their crosshairs in any capacity, be clear about saying when you do not consent to a search, and for the love of God shut the fuck up until you talk to a lawyer.

So, I have a private theory that there is a deliberate effort by government and industry to spread obviously outlandish conspiracy theories, to discredit people who are threatening government and industry's operations by talking about the actual conspiracies that happen.

• US sprays biological weapons from the air onto Americans -> people find out and get upset -> weird chemtrails conspiracy theories -> helps discredit people trying to report the initial kernel of truth
• Lots of rich people are sex criminals -> people find out and start listing specific names -> QAnon -> helps discredit people talking about pedophilia by the powerful

 

I think a related thing happens in protest organizations, with part of the affected industry's multi-million-dollar effort to combat their opposition, e.g.:

• Factory farming exists -> people find out how bad it is and get upset -> ag industry infiltrates PETA with people who say outlandish things -> people think PETA is crazy -> helps discredit opponents of factory farming
• Climate crisis -> people do protests to try to stop it -> energy industry infiltrates protest organizations and advocates for protest methods that are guaranteed to piss people off -> helps discredit climate protests

 

Ironically enough, I have precisely 0 shred of evidence or indication that any of this is happening. But, it makes so much sense that I believe it to be true.

Yeah but all of that is a lot less wild than actual aliens. If Jenna Ellis or Hugo Chavez was involved in some way, then I'd say the headline was getting closer to a justified exaggeration, but this is just con men.

I was pointing out that this particular business model they’re introducing could literally cause the creator of a game to go broke trying to pay it depending on the popularity of their product. That’s broken. And Unity should have known it was broken.

Yeah, agreed.

Rioting causes a lot of collateral damage to people and places that are not involved. Historically though, the elite create systems where violence slowly but surely becomes the only avenue for change. I’m not saying this is one of them. I am saying this is capitalism and the reason everything is the way it is in the world right now. Rich people wanting to get richer at the expense of poor people.

Yeah, 100% agreed. That's why I keep talking about real economic injustice and how I feel about it, even though I think applying those tools to this specific situation is way unnecessary.

If your whole rant is about the death threats I think you missed the point. Because I wasn’t making a point about the death threats.

I think you may be the exception then. We're talking under a headline about death threats, and the reason I was a little salty about it was that it seems like there are a bunch of people here who genuinely think death threats are a good response to this situation, and to me that's pretty nutty.

If I'm reading this message from you right, we're pretty much in agreement: This is a sorta shitty situation, and sometimes genuine economic injustice demands radical solutions, but at the end of the day this is a pretty minor issue.

I will say this though. I’d rather have death threats that no one follows through with that are “credible” and change a company’s behaviour than have to riot in the streets.

You do realize that this is exactly how these MAGA hard-core faithfuls think, right? "Well if you're going to run your bakery / social media company / election in a way I don't like, I'll threaten to kill you, because at the end of the day if you change your behavior that's justified"? You kinda lost me again with this one.

After the last 7 years, I saw "wild" in the headline and was expecting something spicy. No such luck.

TL;DR they're fake

Okey dokey, let's talk.

Antagonism level of the cops here: 3/10, I have some notes

Antagonism level of the suspect: 12/10, dude is literally SCREAMING at and totally ignoring the totally legal and reasonable behavior of the cop who's just trying to conduct a traffic stop on him

I get that both the cop and the big dude are basically just scared and reacting poorly out of fear. Two particular things really pissed me off from the cops' side: At the end they can't seem to understand, or don't want to understand, that they're fucking up his shoulders. There's no urgency to standing him back up, and he's understandably upset because he's in a lot of pain, and he seems pretty ready at that point to work with them, if they show him a little calm and empathy or just back off and let the medically qualified hospital staff deal with him. And, in the beginning, the whole situation was escalated by the initial cop, who clearly seemed scared and unsure and didn't do a perfect job and specifically requested an uncalled-for violent response just because the guy was yelling and being unreasonable ("step it up" basically means "I am in a physical fight right now and may lose, drop everything you're doing and come in guns blazing," it's one of the highest-priority calls you can make and clearly didn't apply to the situation he was in).

Two separate times in my life, I've seen cops deescalate situations where someone was yelling or arguing heatedly in their faces, and it went fine and no one got arrested. They can do it if they're good at the job. But, that doesn't mean you can just refuse to participate in a traffic stop, wander off somewhere else and keep conducting your personal business, start SCREAMING aggressively at the police in a Walgreen's when they try to talk to you, and have an expectation that it's all on them to make sure it turns out well, otherwise that's unfair. IDK what ultimate outcome he realistically expected from what he did other than getting violently arrested once more cops arrive. And yeah, at that point, they're going to look for whatever they can charge you with and aim to fuck up your life.

(Edit: And -- one of the very first things they do once the situation is stable is go to try to check on his cuffs to make sure they're not too tight. When they try to do that, he just starts screaming aggressively at them again and they give up, but one of the first things on their mind is trying to make sure he's ok, which they in no way had to do.)

What outcome would you suggest that the cops do in this situation? Just leave, or let him leave, or what? You say they should have just ticketed him, but that was literally what the first cop was trying to do and it looks to me like big dude was 100% ready to just get back in his car and leave without accepting the ticket.

Yeah I agree with that side of it... it's not really a perfect system. On the personal side, it honestly seems sorta random to what extent someone who's working on vital open source software gets paid for it. Sometimes they're working on it as part of their job making six figures, sometimes they're getting a personal sponsorship or stipend like for Lemmy, sometimes they're making $300/month from Patreon, sometimes they're getting nothing. Any or all of those could be true of anyone regardless of how useful what they're making is. Capitalism, hooray!

It's definitely true that a company can make serious money in open source software, although there are some additional challenges that don't exist in the proprietary space. I don't know too much about the nitty-gritty of it, but just looking around at how the successful operations have done it, maybe the best-positioned ones are things like Qt or MySQL where you're not really focusing on making money off your free-software-side users (I think you're right that they take it almost offendedly if you try to). Instead you sell it on the commercial side to commercial vendors, who are obviously fine with that, and then use the free side just to help get the software done + build the ecosystem that helps to drive sales on the commercial side. It's a tough thing to do though (much harder than just making your thing proprietary from the start I think yes.)

I would pull out a pre-gen adventure I'm familiar with, spend a little time talking about character creation (for all its flaws I actually think how the starter kit does it with a little set of pre-gen characters they can pick from is a really good way), and just sort of wing it keeping it a little bit light on rules and big emphasis on having a strong start + giving them freedom to fuck around / not expect them to stick purely to the DND mold of behavior. I've had really good results with this though, as long as it's an exciting world for them I could see it going really well.

1. This is a pretty good breakdown of what the philosophy is. You may or may not agree with Stallman (a lot of people do and a lot of people don't), but he in large part created the modern free software movement, so out of anybody, his attitude probably has the strongest claim to being "the" philosophy behind it.
2. Open source software isn't designed to make money. Some companies have done a great job of monetizing it, some have struggled. Open source software more than any other entity pretty much powers the modern internet (apache, Android, Debian, the BSD foundations of MacOS), so the unique challenges that go along with using it to make money don't, to me, translate into a problem with the model itself. If you're going into things to make money, and you decide to write open-source software, maybe that's not a good decision. But, most open source software isn't written with that motivation.
3. (a) Sell support (b) Develop open-source software as an adjunct to your core business which is something else (c ) Have a free product for use by free projects and sell a commercial version for use by commercial or enterprise-level projects (d) Obtain grant money because your software seems clearly useful to the world on that level (e) Individual donation / subscription / Patreon model, this doesn't work as well as a/b/c/d I don't think
4. See 3 sections a/b/c/d
5. I think covered above

Yes. This story about the Georgia Guidestones has all the hallmarks of being, not news, but pure propaganda. And, that's why they had to kill Khashoggi. MBS was actually a secret agent for Bernie Sanders trying to stop all the propaganda the guy was creating for the Post and ultimately help the United States.

Organizations are big and complex; they're always made of people with their own individual motives, and a good enterprise with good journalistic intent can be owned by an evil man. I've seen maybe 2-3 stories in the Post which seemed to me like they had clear propagandistic intent, with all the rest pretty legit journalism which is rare for the US. I mean... I am actually paying money which is ultimately going to Bezos, so honestly maybe you're right on that side that that's worth worrying about. But it's not a top-to-bottom evil enterprise like Amazon is.

If software you use changes their pricing in a way that, in three month's time, because you made only $500k last year and your game uses a freemium model such that you get a shitload of installs but don't necessarily draw revenue from every install, so that that 20c per install adds up to the fact that you'll be losing money come January, should you threaten the people at that software company with death? At that point, I think no.

If instead of that, they do something more akin to what Reddit did to the Apollo devs, and change the pricing such that they don't have time to adjust, lie about it, and publicly defame the devs, basically make it literally impossible for the company to stay in business, should Christian have threatened to kill spez? I think no.

If instead of that, they destroy your whole industry, so that you literally can't work as a software dev anymore, at your game company or any other or in any other software-related industry, and you have to retrain yourself to something totally different, should you threaten them with death? At that point I think it's a little more of a tactical decision rather than a moral one, because they are crossing that line into "Fuck the system this is wrong" territory, but I would still argue that literally waging war on them wouldn't accomplish as much as trying to get your democratic government to address the issue some other way.

If instead of that, they created an economic system so that it was impossible for you to get any job, software or otherwise, except back-breaking physical work with a high chance of maiming or killing you, and you still got starvation wages, should you threaten them with death? At that point, maybe; that's the point we were at in the late 1800s and it's hard to say it was wrong to fight a small war about it. At that point it's more about tactics, and the workers in the 1800s didn't have a tiny fraction of the democratic power you do, so they went to literal war and for the most part it worked in the end.

If instead of that, they ruined your economy and your government, made it so you had no voting rights, could be abused or killed by members of the government of a different racial group who were all super racist against you, so you had the starvation wages and the unsafe labor conditions and also unsafe conditions outside of work and no way out economically and no real democratic way to address the situation, is it appropriate to threaten them with death? At that point, definitely not. Again, blacks in the US and Indians in British India faced that situation, and they decided the only way out was through nonviolent resistance.

Again, I'm not trying to tell you to do nothing. I'm saying death threats are a silly and unproductive thing to do in this case. Somewhere here I posted a video of a guy in Walgreens who felt the policeman was being unfair and got super loud about it to resolve the situation. Death threats, in this situation, I think are gonna have pretty much that level of effectiveness.

But why did it fall apart?

With death threats

expecting people who’s livelihoods are threatened by greed to shut up and martyr themselves or go through broken channels that don’t work is stupid and not going to happen.

So, I'm actually specifically not telling you that this whole thing is ridiculous and you should just be a good citizen and get back in line. If you look back over my posts you'll see that I'm addressing it more than anything from a perspective of "If you want economic justice, what is the most effective way to get it?"

This guy wanted to be treated and talked to respectfully, and to understand what was going on and feel safe in the situation he was in. Those are 100% reasonable things to want. Would you say that the way he went about pursuing those things got him the result that he wanted?

Yeah, that too. I mean at the end of the day it's a software company changing its pricing. I'm addressing this from the perspective of "If we take it as granted that this is an economic injustice, what's the right way to address it," but from the POV of Indians working at the salt factory or miners in the late 1800s having gunfights for their right to strike, they'd laugh their asses off at what's being called "injustice" here.

... which is why I made that sorta non sequitur about MLK and Gandhi, and why I say down below that you need to read history. There are a wide range of examples of people attempting to overcome all kinds of injustices, with all kinds of means violent and nonviolent and every place in between, including ones where the system was wayyyy more stacked against them than they are in the current modern day United States as pertains to a software company changing its pricing.

Honestly I'm not even saying you're wrong necessarily about this being an unfair or bad thing or an injustice. I don't know enough about Unity to have any idea. I just think if you're talking about violence against the company's employees because this crosses the line so far into some kind of landscape where any means are necessary, you need to get some perspective about this specific situation, and read into some examples of how what you're recommending plays out as a solution to economic injustice.