t3rmit3 @ t3rmit3 @beehaw.org

He / They

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2 yr. ago

They mean to leave a dissenting comment.

Yeah, for sure, but I don't want to be Brin, I want a llama farm. 🦙

Give me a salary that guarantees $1 million a year post-tax, and I'll do it for a couple of years until I've saved up for a seaside llama farm I can fuck off to. But even at Google, almost no one is making that as an "IC".

100%. Even them saying "But (using a cert to unlock the device) is crossing the line." is the sort of arbitrary moral line-drawing that tech bros are prone to, where they think they deserve to dictate what people can do with their products/ code. The same as LLM companies saying it's wrong to train on their output, while training on everyone else's.

I've tried this route before, but honestly I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze for the average person. There's also almost no way to assess its effectiveness.

SBP (which is only one relatively small and highly means-tested example) was passed by elected politicians. BPP didn't put it in place themselves, elected politicians in office who were in favor of it used the opportunity of national attention to push other elected politicians to pass it. And that is just one of many student food assistance programs, most of which were not passed due to attention created by direct action.

I'm not arguing against direct action, I'm just disputing that it's been "more effective" than other means. It tends to facilitate the more effective means. The advantages that community action provides are around being highly agile and highly targeted. It can't provide countrywide, uninterrupted assistance programs, because no community groups have the resources necessary for that. The BPP could never have provided free lunches for students nationwide by themselves, and they didn't want or attempt to.

Where’s this version of Bernie been hiding the last 4 years?

Sanders has literally had a consistent message of beliefs since the 1960s. I don't agree with every tactic he chooses, but I understand why he backed Biden over Trump once he was locked out of the general.

Sanders will talk about addressing those things then tell us we need to support the people enabling those things.

If you can show me some progress you or anyone else has made on getting those things (e.g. universal healthcare) through alternative means, I'd be very interested to see it. Republicans are at this point straight evil. The Democratic Party at a leadership level is a bunch of entrenched wealthy neolibs who would rather see Republicans win than lose ground to actual progressives like Sanders, AOC, etc.

People believing that that makes the 2 parties the same thing, are either so bought into their own defeatist nihilism that they can't recognize anything but instant and total victory as progress, or they're intentionally trying to torpedo change via democratic means (maybe to validate their beliefs that they know the "proper fix" without actually having to actually have those preferred systems tested).

Sanders is inside the party, using his platform and the broad dissatisfaction post-election to push the party leadership. He's literally striking while the iron's hot. If you see that as a negative thing, or if that makes you doubt him, I don't know what to tell you.

You know, at least it's not Brave, throwing in cryptomining bs, getting caught selling data without telling anyone, or using the profits to push COVID conspiracy theories and anti-LGBT activism, or getting their funding directly from Founders Fund (Peter Thiel).

I tend to trust Mozilla (more than other browser-owning companies), but they really should just clarify exactly what they do that would be considered as sale of data in any jurisdictions.

They seem to be implying that the data is just metadata that has been abstracted for (presumably ad-targeting) commercial purposes, and there are jurisdictions that consider derived metadata as still being "user data", but in that case just make a blog post laying out what and where you are sharing. If your "partners" are opposed to people knowing about them, or you are scared that people would not like who you're in bed with, that is a problem.

Not sure how anyone sees the highest level ever recorded of homelessness, followed by another record level of homelessness, as good. How 53% of renters can’t afford their housing as good. The widest level of income inequality we’ve ever had as good. Enabling the mass slaughter of Palestinians while ignoring the pleas of its own people as good, then deny there is a genocide occuring. Throwing trans under the bus while embracing war criminals like the Cheneys, blowing Republican dog whistles, and expanding the police state as good. Refusing to listen to voters that the DNC’s hand selected candidate wasnt fit for office until the money people said get him out, as good.

So in other words, the same criticisms that Sanders makes.

I don't see you leading raids on US army bases, so don't act like you're out there facilitating the destruction of the US empire on any substantive level if you're eschewing politics. At least Sanders is actually working day in and day out to better conditions for people that the US oppresses, in and out of the US.

If you're actually just trying to coax people into abandoning democracy on a philosophical level by pointing to the US's captured and neutered democracy, you're no better than the people in power right now who are doing the same thing to their own ends.

Russia bombards all the civilian infra immediately anyways, because it creates a crisis that the defenders have to manage. It's better to have a your defensive forces close to your civilian populace, than having to fly over to them once the attack has already started.

Remember, day 1 of the current Russian invasion, they tried to seize Kyiv airport, to bring in transport planes. The civilian airports are strategic targets even without any military presence.

This is what Switzerland does. Saves a ton of money on infra and maintenance costs, and keeps your defensive forces closer to the cities that enemies will be attacking.

Also, it's dead simple to send someone else (or tell them over the phone) 6 numbers, when you're being phished. Much harder for people to send someone a QR code.

8th amendment

Oh, don't worry, they'll axe that 'weak shit' as well. Remember Trump telling cops to not "be too nice" in his first term?

Yes, absolutely, but to be fair I don't think they understand that. I think that most of these neolib centrists truly think they are the bulwark against fascism, and that the second you use any other means of resistance than appealing to economic/business interests, you have somehow abandoned Capitalism morality.

When money drives everything they do, this kind of exploitative relationship just looks to them like a social contract.

I think you are 100% correct, except for the first and last lines.

And if government services they or their loved ones rely on disappear or they’re kicked off of, there’s a real chance they might revolt.

I know these people as well, and they will never under any circumstances risk harm to themselves. Just as their vote was entirely selfish, so will their avoidance of violence be.

They are the kind of people who would have signed up as a Nazi Party member not because they agreed with it, but because they'd think it would be the best way to stay safe: just keep their heads down and go along quietly. Selfishness and fear can often go hand-in-hand; self-preservation and self-prioritization are divided by only the narrowest of very blurry lines.

This is absolutely true (including for me). I'm not funding anyone anymore but the Squad, until I see or hear how the party is actually planning to dig its way out of its appeal-to-both-sides-but-side-with-centrist-money pit it's gotten itself into.

They basically said in the article that they're not going to change strategies, insinuating that donors are just "fatigued", and will come around:

Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said donors will also gravitate back to the fold organically, when they see Trump increasingly hostile to progressive values. But for now, Simmons said, the donors are still grappling with the aftermath of an emotional and tumultuous campaign.

“For a lot of Democrats, it’s like we had a heartbreak and one way to deal with heartbreak is to curl up on your couch and eat ice cream,” he said. “But one way that will help them get over the heartbreak is how infuriating the new guy is.”

I am skeptical this is about Trump or 3rd terms at all, apart from creating the veneer of legality their base uses to continue their calculated disregard for the harm they are doing. They know that an Amendment is impossible to pass via congress in this climate, so I wonder if this is just a vehicle to re-interpret the requirements for a ConCon (Article V Constitutional Convention) amendment.

For a little background, Article V of the Constitution stipulates that Amendments can only be passed by 2 methods:

• 2/3 votes in both the House and Senate
• 3/4 votes by State Legislatures, in a Convention to be initiated by 2/3 of State Legislatures

This has been attempted not infrequently, but has never successfully happened. All 27 Amendments have been passed through Congress, and a ConCon has never been called since the first one (when the Constitution was initially ratified). It's a particularly fancied route by Conservatives, because 1) Red state legislatures tend to be more 'radical' conservatives then their respective congresspersons, and 2) there are no fixed limits on what can happen in a ConCon: you could call one for any stated purpose, and then just decide to propose whatever the hell you want when you're there.

Article V is also very short, being one single sentence. This is the entirety of the text:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Given our current SCOTUS and Trump and his ilk, I would be worried that they will try to "re-interpret"

when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States

to mean 3/4 of the states present at the ConCon. In a scenario where 34 states (2/3) hold one and exclude others from taking part, this could lower the number of states required to ratify a new Amendment from 38 to 26, putting Amendments squarely within reach of Trump's 2024 bloc of 27 states. At that point, they could literally "amend" in anything and everything.