mo_ztt ✅ @ mo_ztt @lemmy.world

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673

Joined

2 yr. ago

Lots of things like pinch-to-zoom, auto-switching the phone from portrait to landscape mode depending on how it was rotated, basically the actually-usable-as-a-browser features that are part of every modern touchscreen, were originally popularized by Apple. They were the first to make a touchscreen UI that rivaled a desktop computer instead of a pretty substandard WAP interface.

Yes but how does AI know so much about pain and suffering

The "my socials" link on his profile also leads to some kind of (Mastodon instance?) server with a banner that alternates between "rape" "gore" "removed" in a kind of "Eat at Joe's" type of rotation. I wouldn't get your hopes up that he's gonna go anywhere beyond "grrr look at me I'm so edgy, I'm saying offensive things! I'm hardcore".

Edit: removed was the N word

I went back and checked, and you've had time to update your profile picture, but not to respond to my comment with anything factual.

I fully anticipate some kind of snarky taking-a-superior-tone response (or silence), that still isn't anything connected to factual reality or directly addressing what I said. Blah blah Sartre anti-semites

Who made those eyes and why are they so

I get that you’re saying that it doesn’t feel fair to you, but that’s not how the law works. We might want the law to meet our sense of fair play, but there’s a ton of questions about balancing interests and precedent and so on.

Yeah. Law's not like computer code. The details of all the rules and precedent are a critical side to be aware of, but judges also have to balance the letter of the law against the obvious justice of the situation all the time. If it were just as simple as researching and following the rules to the letter, it'd be a lot simpler profession. But if you've ever been in court for any length of time you'll see (or at least my experience has been) that the judge generally has one eye always firmly fixed on what's actually the right thing to do. Surprisingly so. Exercising, well, judgement on where to draw the line -- not just throwing out the letter of the law based on "eh I don't feel like this outcome is right" but being willing to depart from the letter of the law if something clearly wrong is happening in front of you -- is one of the most critical parts of what your job is as a judge.

I'm not really experienced enough at law to come at it from any standpoint other than "what's the right thing." I'm aware that as a matter of law, she's on completely solid ground. I think though that in the actual practice of how judges are supposed to do their jobs, those two things aren't as widely separate from each other as they might seem.

There's a book called How Democracies Die that goes into quite a lot of detail as to how this situation has played out historically.

Basically, it's a nasty situation. The reality of life is, everyone can just get up and do whatever they want to do. A judge can decide he's a Trump supporter and stop prosecuting Trump supporters if they attack people in the streets. A general can decide he will or won't deploy the military against the citizens when the leader orders him to. The military rank and file can obey or not. A lot of "the rules" that constrain people's behavior and keep democracy running are totally made up, and there's a bad, bad problem that happens when people start to abandon the rules.

So, what do you do when the fascists are abandoning the rules? There's an obvious answer: fight back in kind. Add some seats to the supreme court. Kick Trump supporters out of congress. Have the secretary of state decide that a state where polling locations in Democratic areas didn't get enough ballots, should have gone to the Democrats. If the Republican secretaries of state have been doing the same on Trump's side, and the alternative is losing the election, then that's a pretty sensible option.

Except, it's not. As a general rule, if the non-fascist side starts abandoning the rules in kind in order to fight back against the fascist side that is abandoning the rules, then the slippery slope down towards open war accelerates by quite a lot. Generally, the two things that can save a democracy that finds itself in this situation are:

1. Resistance to the fascists from within the established conservative party which has been hijacked (your Mitt Romneys and John McCains)
2. The non-fascist party continuing to uphold the norms of government, even though this makes for an unfair uphill battle

It's a little counterintuitive. But that's what the book says. Now, is kicking Trump off the ballot "breaking the rules"? I honestly don't know. Technically it's 100% legal. But a lot of things are technically legal, including Republican state legislatures turning in vote totals that don't match the will of the voters. Like I say, I'm of two minds about it, but the bottom line is it's not quite as simple as "fuck 'em I don't care." Because "fuck 'em I don't care" energy is what starts civil wars.

Yeah. That "they do not have to wait the standard 30 days to begin trying to seize his assets" is a great sign to me. A lien on his apartment would be a great thing.

They're following the specific language of the 14th amendment. That's terrorism now? It actually doesn't say he needs to be convicted of any insurrection -- it says that he needs to have participated in an insurrection. And, it provides a specific check and balance (two-thirds vote in congress) if a court is attempting to keep him off the ballot improperly.

It sounds like we have a difference of factual understanding of what happened on January 6th. Where are you getting "empty nothings"? I saw this is why I'm saying it wasn't nothing.

Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!

Karl then reminded Trump that some of his supporters involved in the violent attack were calling for Pence to be killed.

“Well, the people were very angry,” Trump said.

“They said, ‘hang Mike Pence,’” Karl told Trump.

“It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect,” Trump said. “How can you, if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?”

-Source

A former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told the House January 6 committee that then-President Donald Trump had suggested to Meadows he approved of the “hang Mike Pence” chants from rioters who stormed the US Capitol, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide, also testified that Trump complained about his then-vice president being hustled to safety while Trump supporters breached the Capitol, the sources said.

After Pence said that he did not believe he had the authority to reject Electoral College votes, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Videos from the Capitol during the riot show a man with a bullhorn, reading the tweet aloud to others in the mob. Inside, rioters swarmed the hallways and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

-Source

It's common in organized crime to use vague language in order to request crimes to be committed, so that there's no literal statement "I need you my supporters to please kill the vice president for me." Nonetheless, the communication is understood by both the speaker and listener to mean that that's what he wants to be done. Usually it's actually a lot less subtle than that collection of facts. If you don't agree with my interpretation, though, how would you characterize that set of facts? What do you think was what Trump wanted his supporters to do?

Honestly I'm of two minds about it.

One, faith by the electorate in the process of elections is part of democracy. I genuinely don't think it's reasonable to tell 60 million Trump supporters that those of them that live in Colorado aren't allowed to vote for the man. I get that the letter of the law is that he tried to invade the congress and kill the vice president to keep himself in power, which is a crime that in any civilized society would keep him off the ballot not to mention behind bars, but this is actually a rare instance where I think "but they'll get really mad about it" is a viable reason not to do it. Or, at least do it on a national level, since the idea of an election where certain candidates are or aren't on the ballot differently in different states is obviously undemocratic and will clearly lead to retaliation in kind by the GOP which will step us a little further towards a civil war.

Two, fuck it. They're already rogue. They tried to kill the vice president. We're in a fight for the survival of democracy in this country and it's nice to see the boundaries being pushed by the people who aren't the ones kicking out the supporting timbers.

Does Rudy Giuliani have $148 million? Most people with $148 million aren't doing Cameo.

I get it, presumably this would mean garnishment of everything he does have, or has coming in. Which would be nice. Everyone can make him record humiliating messages and election workers who he defamed get the money for it.

Edit: Sad news, it's temporarily unavailable.

I'm going to start the Confederation of Lemmy Instances, and post a lot of invective about how the confederation is a better approach and people need to leave the United Instances of Lemmy and join the confederation instead. I'll also try to make sure the discussion spills out into as many instances and communities as possible that aren't affiliated with either one of us.

Sure, let's talk.

Yes, I am similarly dismissive of conspiracy theories in real life. When my boss said “I won’t get the vaccine because Bill Gates put in microchips” I didn’t acknowledge that as a serious discussion.

Hmm... okay, I think I get it. You're putting me (and, presumably, anyone who says things that you already "know" to be false) in the same category as someone who thinks there are microchips in the vaccine. If you never make mistakes or are lacking information, that makes perfect sense. Since you do make mistakes sometimes and there are things you don't know, that's a stupid way to behave.

If you want to be treated as if the things you’re saying have value

I think this is another stupid way to behave. You can talk with someone who thinks different things than you do -- whether they're right or wrong -- without being combative about it. It's actually an important skill to have. It doesn't mean the things they say "have value," it just means it's more productive to be factual and communicative than to be a dick about it and deliberately act as if they're saying things they're not saying so you can "win."

you shouldn’t pop off arrogantly about how the US government regularly has people killed. They don’t.

I mean, the US government does regularly have people killed. Please don't tell me that that's different because they're not Americans. What I said, though, was a little different than that; I said "powerful people in the US government." The US government killing Americans as a matter of public policy is not unheard of (Fred Hampton), but I don't think it happens all that often, no. I think it's a little more likely that some individual person in a position of power might decide to commit a murder. Especially if their life is going to be ruined if they don't. Are you saying that's an impossible or outlandish suggestion?

They're actually paying me in pure adrenochrome. I won't say where they get it; all I can say is you should get in on this. They have openings.

Yeah, sure. The CIA pays me to bring Gary Webb's name unprompted into random internet threads because they feel like promoting his story is an important part of their PR.

I never really knew that much of the story until the other guy started arguing with me about it, so I spent some time at breakfast reading about it. I think he killed himself. That said, there's plenty of malfeasance by the government. Among the things that jump out at me:

• A lot of the "debunking" that other MSM newspapers did seemed a little off the mark of what Webb actually said. It's a little unclear to me, but it kind of looks like he said that the contras dealt in cocaine, and the CIA more or less knew about it and didn't do anything and occasionally protected them and their assets from law enforcement. But I saw several times in the "debunking" stories that someone would make a big deal about there being no evidence that the CIA itself was drug trafficking in any major way. But that's not what Webb accused them of. He said the contras were trafficking and the CIA knew about it. And, also, the CIA released a report at some point that said, o yeah we also protected contras and traffickers from law enforcement sometimes.
• On a related note, there was a weird little side note about the CIA's PR response where they talked about having good relationships with a handful of US journalists which helped them in their response, because it looks a lot better if someone in an MSM newspaper is defending them as opposed to them issuing a statement directly defending themselves. Fuckin' what? Here's a story about it, which given the source you may or may not believe, and here's a link to the report itself on cia.gov. Excerpt: "A review of the CIA drug conspiracy story -- from its inception in August 1996 with the San Jose Mercury-News stories -- shows that a ground base of already productive relations with journalists and an effective response by the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Public Affairs Staff (PAS) helped prevent this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster."
• It's genuinely weird that no one acknowledges that the whole backdrop for this question is the CIA supporting terrorism in central America. It's like, sure they're in bed with a bunch of violent terrorists with the goal of overthrowing a democratic government, but cocaine? Everyone involved treats it as if the "cocaine" part of the equation is obviously a bombshell accusation.

Yeah. If someone told me that they were working in politics to try to get a non-shitty bunch of people in charge (in or out of the Democratic party) I'd applaud the hell out of it. I was registered as Libertarian or Green Party for basically all my young adult life. If someone's not doing that, though, and also not voting for the Democrats, then I would blame that person too if Trump wins (in addition to the fascists and the DNC).

His ex-wife said that she believed he'd killed himself.

Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell, told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.

Here's a story from a local paper which is the cite. Unless the details reported are purely made up, it seems like an actually pretty compelling set of facts leading to the suicide being genuine. I literally just learned this; until yesterday, I thought they killed him too.

There's plenty of criminal behavior by the US government adjacent to Webb and his reporting without needing to exceed what's actually true about it.

You mixed real things and fake things to support a claim you yourself acknowledge is probably nonsense.

My god, are you this pleasant to deal with in real life? I didn't "acknowledge is probably nonsense." I said, hey this is what I think, but I don't really know. Your right answer to that is something along the lines of: Hey there's a lot of evidence that this is how it happened, here it is. Instead you concocted some kind of scenario where I am "making my case" and you need to get sarcastic with me and assign me strawman views and argue against them all condescendingly.

I just looked into Gary Webb, and hey, you're right, he actually probably did kill himself also. So I learned two things today. But because you were such a jackass about it, that's actually sort of difficult to admit, where if you'd just said "hey I think this is wrong, his ex-wife said he was acting weird and she believes it was suicide, here's the source" then it could have been a more factual conversation. It happens that I'm patient enough to go and look at sources myself even if you're being combative with me, but most people won't do that. They'll just be toxic back at you and both of you will waste a bunch of time "making your case." That's an inherent risk of talking with people on the internet but you don't need to lean into it when the other person's just being open minded and reasonable with you.

Dude why are you talking down to me so aggressively?

I guess we're arguing now 🤷. That honesty wasn't my intent here; IDK how you got so much of "making my case" out of me saying so repeatedly that I was just saying what I remembered and don't really know the facts. I'm just sort of talking. I'm such a dickhead that I'm listening to another interview with her right now looking for something relevant that I can use to "make my case" so I can know what I'm talking about, if you're gonna get rude with me about it.

I'm aware that Alex Jones said a lot of things about her, and I agree that that doesn't mean anything at all. What she said in his interview is relevant. Where she said it doesn't change that. Would you agree with that? I haven't seen anything she's been quoted as saying in the interview that really means all that much, so maybe the "if I die it was the government" stuff is Jones's creation. In which case, yeah, it's garbage. If she said that on the Alex Jones show, I'd consider that pretty significant. Right? Or no?

(Edit: She was quoted in the normal-person press as saying she wasn't planning to kill herself, but that was in response to Alex Jones directly asking her whether she was, so if that's all she said, that means nothing. Whatever she was thinking at that point or later on, I wouldn't expect her to say "oh yeah, it's funny you ask, yes I am" when he asks her.)

(Edit: After skim-listening to an interview with her somewhere else and reading some of the Wikipedia talk page where people are arguing about this subject, I think you're right and it was all just an Alex Jones creation. Oh well. I updated my original post to reflect my learning.)

Which of the people I listed do you think are conspiracy theories? Gary Webb was an American killed by Americans in government. Jamal Kashoggi was a naturalized American who was killed by the Saudis with tacit approval by the US government. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a non American killed by non Americans, so maybe that's not that relevant, no. They were literally just random examples I picked out to show that it's not a totally outlandish idea. People kill each other for various reasons every day; if it never happened when one of them was powerful, that would be weird. What out of all that do you consider to be a conspiracy theory?