pjwestin @ pjwestin @lemmy.world

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3

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1,064

Joined

2 yr. ago

I will give him credit for trying fairly hard to get his agenda through, especially in the first 2 years. He kept trying to find ways to get student loans forgiven without Congress, even when the courts repeatedly blocked him, and he did try to get some parts of Build Back Better that got cut in 2021 into the Inflation Reduction Act. He certainly tried harder than Obama to deliver on his platform.

He then abandoned the populous economic platform in 2024 and tried to pretend that letting most of his agenda get blocked by his own party was a huge accomplishment. He also tried to get to Trump's right on immigration, materially supported a genocide, and refused to step down despite clear cognitive issues, so all-in-all, 2024 was a bad campaign.

Again, nonsense. He ran in 2008 in things like direct homeowner bailing outs, then passed things like HAMP, which tried (and failed) to inventivize lenders to refinance bad loans. Even in 2012, when he made less bold and specific promises, he made income inequality the center of his campaign. He always ran as progressive, not a centrist.

I once read a tweet that was something to the effect of, "The number of Democrats needed to pass meaningful legislation is always (N-1), where N=The Current Number of Democrats in Congress." I think about that a lot.

No, this was the liberal policy.

He ran on a public healthcare option, bailing out homeowners, regulating banks, closing Gitmo, ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Saying he appealed to centrists is revisionist nonsense.

And only one candidate (Clinton) won by going to the right. Obama ran as a progressive (and governed as a centrist-technocrat) while Biden ran on a progressive platform (which he couldn't get passed because of Manchin and Sinema).

"C'mon guys, just a little further to the right and we'll start winning! Ignore the last four times we lost by doing this and remember the one time it worked in 1992!"

Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024 by chasing Republicans who they thought would vote, "not Trump." They won in 2020 by offering a progressive economic vision. There is no evidence to support the idea that Republican voters will be easier to earn.

"Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it's not what restores majorities," she added.

There are currently 2 vacant seats in Congress, which won't be filled until the fall, left empty by Democrats who died in office. We're not going to restore majorities by electing people who keep dropping dead.

-Writes seven replies to three different users defending bigoted remarks about Muslims.-

"Boy, everyone else is really obsessed with Muslim stuff, huh?"

Really hard to take your pivot to, "All religion is bad, actually," seriously when you explicitly brought up Muslims and continue to discuss Muslims as a monolith while breaking down Christians into subcategories like, "Evangelical," or,."right-wing." Why not just say, "the Christian world doesn’t care about you or anyone that disagrees with their doctrines?" Why continue to carefully parse your language to specify which Christian groups you consider bad, while making no distinctions between Muslims? Why is it that, of the three things in your post that I pointed out were incorrect and ill-informed, this is the only thing you want to argue about? (You don't actually have to answer. It's very obvious it's because you're a bigot.)

Christian extremists in this country have rolled back a women's right to an abortion and are now working on eliminating no-fault divorce, but hey, you do you, bigot.

American Muslims, in line with general public attitudes in the United States, have become much more accepting of homosexuality over recent years...In a July 2017 poll, Muslims who say homosexuality should be accepted by society clearly outnumber those who say it should be discouraged (52% versus 33%), a level of acceptance similar to American Protestants (52% in 2016). Source

So weird that you distinguish between Christians and Christian fundamentalists but assume all Muslims are fundamentalists. It's almost like you have some sort of bias or prejudice against Muslims. It's like you're a person who has bigoted views. Wonder if there's a name for that?

LOL, yes, you got an ad hominem attack in response to blatant bigotry. Comparing all Muslims to white supremacists doesn't warrent debate, but it does deserve ridicule and contempt. You also ignored a bunch of facts that contradicted your wildly inaccurate statements on who was promoting identity politics, which factions of the party were actually standing up to billionaires, and how successful the Sanders/AOC tour is in middle America, but those challenged your worldview, so you couldn't acknowledge them. Anyway, keep punching at the left-wing of the party while the Democrats try to run the same strategy put Donald Trump in the Whitehouse twice. I'm sure you'll change the world by losing every election!

Yeah, I’m an old fuddy duddy who thinks that identity politics is a losing battle, maybe if everyone can get under the umbrella of the idea that billionaires are working to ruin this country?

If that's how you feel, you're supporting the wrong people. It was centrists who turned to identity politics to hide their lack of an economic platform. Remember when Hillary said breaking up the big banks won't end racism? Remember when the new DNC chair said they would still take money from good billionaires? If you want Democrats to focus on the billionaires ruining our country, AOC's your best bet.

I love Bernie Sanders, god bless him, but AOC and Bernie spreading whatever message they are is falling on deaf ears, the ears of middle America.

10K showed up for them in Michigan. 12.5K people showed up for them in Idaho. 30k showed up for them in a Trump district in Montana. Doesn't seem like it's falling in deaf ears, but maybe your right, and the Democrats should just not try to win any states in the middle of the country. I'm sure that's a great strategy.

What does AOC stand for exactly? Just the typical Gen Z talking points? “We gotta support drag queens in libraries!”

You could take your average everyday Muslim and a white supremacist and ask them both how they feel about women/jewish people/gay people and you’d get the same answer.

Get fucked, bigot.

Not really. QAnon was only on 4Chan for the first year, then it migrated to 8Chan. But the tl;dr is it was probably started as a joke, taken over by bad-faith trolls, and has been under the control of Ron Watkins and his creepy son for a significant amount of time. QAnon Anonymous (now named QAA) is a great Podcast that's been tracking the Q movement and other right-wing extremists for years.

Well, I at least partially agree with most of that. I would say that Flybondi's use of NFT tickets still seems like an excuse to outsource a large portion of their customee services while still taking a 2% cut of any flight changes, with minumal (if any) customer benefit. I remember while ago hearing that concert ticket vendors were experimenting with NFT tickets, and I guess I could see the use case their, but I'd still say that has trade offs with physical tickets, and could best be described as a lateral move. I'd be curious to read any info on how B2B NFTs are used, if you have any links.

I do have disagree on Zuckerberg's VR gamble, though. AR is significantly different than VR, and he went hard on full-blown VR tech. He may be able to adapt it to AR going forward, but that's probably going to be salvaging a loss for at least the short to mid-term. Even if it does give him a strong leg up on AR, that's not really his gambling paying off, that's placing a bad bet and getting lucky anyway.

You know, when reddit first started, no one minded long replies, in fact they were considered a mark of excellence and understanding.

First of all, thank you for this. It is quite possibly the funniest sentence I've ever read on the internet, and I will be laughing at it for the rest of the day. The gamatical errors really give it an extra layer. Absolute perfection.

Second, quantity isn't quality, especially when it comes to writing. If it was, editor wouldn't be a job. The length of your comment doesn't change the fact that it is mostly pro-NFT arguments I heard in 2023, none of which materialized. Oh, NFTs could give you instant access to an apartment? That's super helpful in a world where lockboxes don't exist!

Finally, despite your assumption, I don't actually think long comments are bad; I just left a very long comment to someone who said something that was actually interesting. You also assumed I was insulting NFTs because I, "just like shitting on things other people designate as safe to shit on." But I actually didn't insult NFTs, I just pointed out that it bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros. Which isn't an opinion, its just a thing that happened. If you want to know what I actually think of NFTs, I answered that when I replied to the more interesting commenter. You're welcome to go read it instead of making incorrect assumptions.

Anyway, if you don't like the quality of the replies you're getting, maybe consider the quality of the comments you're leaving. Maybe you shouldn't expect someone to listen to you or engage with you in good faith when you start off by insulting them. Maybe the problem is you, not everyone else.

Well, first, I'm very skeptical of the NFTs' ability to resolve overbooking. Overbooking is a choice airlines make to maximize profits. We could force airlines to stop overbooking tomorrow if we wanted, and they could try to prevent losses by making tickets non-refundable or charging extra for refundable tickets (tactics they already use in addition to overbooking). It seems to me the main problem is that capitalism motivates airlines to maximize profits instead of transporting people to their destination. The obvious solution to me is to nationalize the airlines, not create a third-party aftermarket for airline tickets.

Also, the article you shared actually makes no mention of overbooking. I have to assume the solution being suggested by NFT tickets is something along the lines of, "We sell only the amount of tickets on the flight, and while we won't refund your ticket, if you can't make your flight, you're free to sell your ticket to whoever you like."

Seems like a decent enough idea, except that you need to go through the third-party NFT company to sell your ticket, you may lose value on your ticket or even not find a buyer, and you still need to make any changes to your ticket 72 hours in advance, meaning it would be useless in resolving no-shows from flight delays. You also wind up paying a transaction fee to the NFT company and the airline for any changes you make, so really it seems what's being suggested here is that, instead of being able to get a refund on your ticket, you do the job of selling your own ticket on the free-market, and both the ticket company and airline profit from your labor. And again, since this article makes no mention of overbooking, I have to assume Flybondi will continue that practice anyway.

I also have to point out that this article was written by and unnamed, "crypto believer," and self-published in Medium by an NFT company. It's not exactly a great source.

All that being said, I'm sure there are uses for NFTs, just like their are uses for generative AI and VR. My point isn't that they're useless, just that their uses are overstated and create a financial bubble. I can see how generative AI might be useful first-draft copywriting, but it's not capable of replacing a writers room, or even giving accurate search results. VR is great for gaming, but no matter how much money Zuckerberg threw at it, it couldn't do anything for meetings that Zoom didn't do better. I'm not sure what the B2B uses of NFTs are, but I believe you when you tell me they exist; they just couldn't create value for random JPEGs. The NFT collapse bankrupted a bunch of crypto-bros, Zuckerberg's VR investment cost Facebook $60 billion, and the generative AI bubble is going to hit every single tech company and the stock market as a whole.

Yeah, but if your only example of NFTs being useful is that one of the worst airlines in the industry adopted them, that's not a great argument. "Shitty company uses system, so system must be useful," doesn't really track.