mozz @ mozz @mbin.grits.dev

And the voices. "Billy..."

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2 yr. ago

What were a couple of the conclusions he drew that really impressed you? I listened to some of it.

Fuck 'em up

You're allowed to say whatever you want; freedom of speech. You're not allowed to operate as an unregistered agent of a foreign power within the US.

If they're not filling out their 1124 forms, then fuck 'em. To prison they go. It can be a little lesser version preview of how they are saying they like for things to work in their chosen country of emulation and praise.

Oh no! I better stop saying how I see things, if you’re being driven away from Harris. My sincerest apologies.

I watched one of his speeches. Is there one that’s more impactful that I should be watching instead of the one I picked, to get a little of the flavor of what he stands for?

Yeah. I wouldn’t invest yourself too much in it. But yes, depending on things it might be worthwhile to just offer to let him put his money where his mouth is, if he’s super sure about things.

FBI: Ssssh dude don’t blow it for the rest of us

Offer to bet him money about the outcome of some real world event that is contingent on the way he is claiming that things are

IDK how you can apply that to AI; that’s not the best one. But you can bet that there are no workers dying of heatstroke in Amazon-supplier warehouses. You can bet him that Trump has agreed to honor the results of the election. Etc etc.

It’s very easy to just make statements at each other. If you offer to back up your statements, then he can either refuse (in which case it’ll be harder for him to say he’s definitely right and you’re definitely wrong), or agree and then one or the other of you will learn something.

It’s up to you. You can also just let it go. But if you want to prove him wrong it is easier to do with questions and real-world actions than it is by coming up with the perfect statements. As you’ve discovered, he’s not obligated to react to statements any way other than how he’s decided to react to them.

Also, export your DBs first, and snapshot the export instead of the raw DB files

You're not missing much

If his message was "we desperately need a voting system that enables third parties to be viable, also we desperately need more humanity in our treatment of Palestinians right now because they are dying in large numbers, let's work towards both of those interrelated things" then it'd be gold. He is silent on the first one, though, and actively trying to undermine the second through his actions.

The fact that he's performatively trying to advertise how nice the second one would be won't help the Palestinians if Trump comes to power and doubles the weapons shipments and joins with Netanyahu in his attempts to undermine any humanitarian aid and any peace process. Lobbying the Democrats, threatening the Democrats, demanding concessions from the Democrats, all of those things are likely to help Palestinians to some degree. Voting for Cornel West in the 2024 election is a vote for turning Gaza into a massive graveyard.

Some of us do; Lemmy doesn't display votes except to certain users, but that doesn't make Lemmy votes private. Discussion here. PieFed apparently has a technique for keeping your votes actually private (mostly) from even the platforms that do display them.

I’m sure they do

“Hey Cornel West what should happen to the people of Ukraine and Taiwan?”

“Irrelevant”

“Hey Cornel West what do you think will be the outcome for the Palestinians of people refusing to vote for Harris in this election?”

“Did I stutter? Besides if any are still alive in 2036 when we’ve built enough momentum to be competitive (*) and we win, then I’m sure they’ll be super grateful about how much better my policies are at that point”

(*) not really

We can always change the traditions

Reagan sabotaged the Iran hostages deal

So it is rumored

And those are only the ones we know of; dealing in death is pretty standard fare for people high up in Washington

borg

because he talk about Russia - Ukraine issue?

Is this what you perceive to be the issue I'm raising? Try again. Talking about the Russia - Ukraine "issue" is not what I was highlighting there. Want to take another stab at what I was highlighting about it?

That's like the opposite of everything democracy and freedom of speech stand for.

Innocent until proven guilty, and freedom of speech, and freedom for journalist and reporting is no longer relative.

Same question. What was the issue I was raising? Being a journalist and speaking freely, I'm obviously in favor of. So what was I pointing out when I highlighted those segments and made the connection I made?

The list of people upvoting this comment makes for fascinating reading

Do you consider US culpability in the Palestinian Genocide a part of this 'deliberate propaganda'?

No

At what point does someone protesting against democratic involvement and complacency in Israeli war crimes become someone who is protesting against democrats generally?

When they stop either conditioning their lack of support on Democratic behavior, or advocating for voting reform or some other strategy which can lead to effective replacement of the Democrats with something better. Either one of those sounds fine and sensible to me, but when they reach the point of saying, functionally, "well if the Democrats aren't doing what I want then I will let the Republicans win even if they are 10 times worse at the things I hold as priorities in the world," that to me stops making sense.

I think if you're a Palestinian who is still alive right now, and a protestor "on your behalf" enables Trump to come to power, and then Trump supports someone who kills you, the idea that the protestor was mad that the Democrats weren't doing enough for you before Trump and Netanyahu cooperated to kill you would be cold comfort. I think this whole "harm reduction isn't worth doing" idea is a childish and entitled reaction from someone who is safely far away from that harm that is very real to very real people in the real world, who have the luxury of poo pooing the entire idea of predicting outcomes in the real world and strategizing how to get them.

Is there any grey area that you're willing to acknowledge between these two categorical binaries you've proposed?

Yes, quite a substantial one.

Can there be a legitimate protest against the democrats, that hurts their odds at winning, but doesn't directly result in a change of policy?

Yes. If it's only hurting their odds of winning, and not even trying to change their policy, then it's suspect to me, but as you said there's quite a substantial grey area and it's not easy to tell ahead of time what protest might result in what outcome. You have to just kind of do what you can and hope that you've worked it out what is going to help the Palestinians and what is going to hurt them, and do the first and not the second as best as you can figure it out.

If the democrats and the protestors both refuse to bend to the other, is it categorically the protestors' fault if and when trump wins?

Not categorically, no. The Democrats have a lot of responsibility, the Republicans and Netanyahu obviously have quite a bit more. The protestors might have some responsibility, but depending on how they were protesting, potentially not much at all.

Honestly, I'm less concerned with assigning "blame" after the fact than I am with strategizing what I could do, or what someone else could do, to get better outcomes. Like I say, I consider this whole thing of it being real important "whose fault it is" when something horrifying happens to be an entitled mentality from someone who's not directly in danger. Mostly when people's families' lives are threatened they're more focused on "how can I keep them safe" than they are on "whose fault will it be if someone comes to power who kills them, and how can I make sure it won't be this person's fault but instead this other person's fault."

Even if it isn't apparent that they've lost explicitly because of those protestors? Is it also the fault of the protestors if the democrats adopt a pro-palestinian policy in response to the protestors, AND THEN lose?

So this brings up a really good point. To me, it makes a lot more sense to help the Palestinians by educating the American people about what's going on in Palestine, so the Democrats won't have to decide (to any degree) between enabling war crimes and losing the election.

A lot of protests right now are serving a double purpose -- one, they're bringing awareness to the issue with the American people (and it's working), and two, they're threatening the Democrats electorally and forcing them to change their calculus of what types of Israel policy they should do if they don't want to lose the election from the other direction (and that's working, too). Both of those are good things. I keep saying that, and you keep insisting for some reason that I must have a problem with them. I guess because it makes the point that you're trying to say easier if I am just against all protestors. As I keep saying, I am not.

What i'm gathering from you is that it is ALWAYS the protestors fault for the loss, no matter what the democrats do in response.

I don't care whose "fault" it is. I am talking about what actions are good (in terms of creating better outcomes in the future), and what actions are bad (in terms of getting people killed). Like I said, this emphasis on "fault" having any significant importance is the mindset of someone who isn't watching their family getting killed.

For reasons which I don’t really understand, news articles will pretty frequently have the official headline be this vague or incoherent thing that doesn’t communicate all that clearly what is contained within the article, but then somewhere above the fold if you click will be a collection of words which much more accurately describes the content. When that happens I usually title it with the more coherent set of words instead of the headline (as with this story).

Sure, edited.

They didn’t change the headline; I had just felt like the subtitle made for a much more coherent headline on Lemmy. But if you prefer, I’m happy to put the site’s headline as the headline (and put the subtitle in the body text instead).

I looked over his X profile.

It's not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It's a war between NATO and Russia, with Ukraine being used as a pawn, and Ukrainians paying the price of NATO expansion and antagonism.

Explosive.

Russia is now demanding that Europe pay for gas in rubles.

Europe gets 40% of its gas from Russia. That’s 200-800 million euros per day.

Putin is basically saying: you want to play sanctions? Either pay up in rubles or freeze.

Yeah, can’t imagine why the UK government would want to detain and ask him some questions right now at this one particular moment in time; not like something has happened recently that woke them up to the real world urgency of allowing Russia to put dangerous toxic bullshit into their social media landscape that might have made them want to take any actions about it.