Crime. That's the answer. I don't suggest or recommend it, but people who genuinely can't survive or achieve any meaningful quality of life while participating in the social order will violate it instead. Some people shoplift; others engage in elaborate plots to rip off their landlords and creditors, but there's no squaring the circle. I'm not in the same boat, but I've been there, and it's only a stroke of good fortune that kept me from a very different road.
This was my first thought as well. I hate that being so cynical is my reaction now, but this is just DDOS by another method. The point is to make the platform unusable so people will go somewhere else. CSAM is just the weapon. It's doubly vile because it's just going to become ammunition in the war against federation altogether. The stakes are high enough that the institutional players have plenty of cash, no ethics, and no accountability, and I wouldn't at all put it past any social media alternative to employ these kinds of tactics to kill the fediverse before it can gain a foothold. And (at the risk of getting too conspiratorial) that's not even considering governments and ordinary black hats.
An older family member once asked my siblings and me, as older teenagers, whether we believed in Santa. We scoffed, laughed, and incredulously said of course not.
She responded that she believed in Santa, and she gave this explanation: Santa is a cultural shorthand for generosity. Do you believe in the spirit of giving? Do you want to see smiles on children's faces on Christmas morning? Do you want to make the people you love light up because you had special, almost supernatural, insight into their heart's desire and made it real?
I don't believe a magical man in a red suit gives presents and coal to kids. I similarly don't believe in a white bearded cloudy Jewish giant in the sky.
But I believe that there's something sublime and immaterial in the love we can have for one another, something only partially explained by ecologic survival pressures and biochemistry. I think there is something out there beyond what we can perceive on a daily basis, and for lack of a better lexicon, "spiritual" is as good a term as anyone for the realm of the imperceptible.
So I think there's a God, and I think there's a Santa. I don't understand either, and I think they're neither anything quite like we expect. And God the Creator is certainly an asshole sometimes. But I think there's Someone out there.
And the professionals might also mistake you for the intruder. Or they might shoot you by accident or because you were "mentally ill", "uncooperative", or "black". Or they might shoot you for fun. So, you know, choose your risk carefully.
If there are white people who qualify due to their own generational poverty, they should receive benefits. The systemic finger on the scales clearly didn't benefit them. This has always been about money. That the money in past generations flowed to white families is a consequence of their greed. The racism was incidental. They weren't doing it for the poor white subsistence farmers in the next town over. These power structures were instituted by and for the rich. The rich just happened to be white. Plenty of their white neighbors got left behind.
Absolutely. There is no business yet in which you invent money from nothing. Everyone works for someone else. It might be a capitalist boss, it might be a client, it might even be constituents or donors, but no one truly works for themselves. The only winning move is to not play, and the ones fortunate enough to not have to play were born rich. Being self-employed and/or owning your own business is just trading one boss for another.
Source: Was in private practice for a decade; now I'm a corporate attorney, and it's just a different set of people making my job hard.
He is absolutely not certain to lose. If he runs on the GOP ticket, we have every reason to believe that it will be close, and whether it is or not, the GOP will lie, cheat, and resort to violence in order to win, disrupt the process, or, barring either, overthrow the government. The Biden slam dunk narrative is a GOP talking point designed to get needed Blue voters to stay home. The Republic is absolutely at stake, and that means everyone needs to take it seriously.
I don't know California politics other than as it relates to national. What's Newsom's angle here? I ask because, at least at a glance, this seems like a loser for him. The best he can hope for is to demolish DeSantis. Let's assume he does--and it's certainly not a sure thing (the deck is stacked against him with the ref playing for the other team, after all)--but so what? DeSantis's fire is almost already out, and if it doesn't die on its own or thanks to Mr. Orange Indictment, the Mouse will finish him. Newsom's already a rising star; if he annihilates DeSantis he's basically punching down, and he's taking a huge risk by even volunteering for this, since if he fucks up he's done in national politics before he even started.
The best I can come up with is that this is a play by the party at large to try to revitalize Florida Man's campaign by getting some free press on him, either to force Trump to spend more to squash him or try to get a repeat of 1972 (i.e., Trump as Muskie). However, that's giving the Democratic party a lot of credit and making some pretty cynical assumptions about their future plans for Newsom.
Except when the public property was previously private. That the state can own property is not a human rights violation in a vacuum, no. However, history, at least in the US, clearly demostrates that combined with the state's power to seize property, it is very often a vehicle for injustice.
Take, for example, Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).
Hear, hear. This isn't a case of Mercedes selling an upgrade. It's more akin to selling the car pre-booted and then demanding a monthly payment to remove it under threat of returning to re-apply it if a payment is missed. It's absolutely a protection racket. Sure would be a shame if something happened to those fancy features we installed.
The good news is that the companies who will float this first are the ones most likely to do business with politicians, and unfortunately I'm cynical enough to believe that the best way to get regulation in place is to personally inconvenience the decision-makers. I hope that results in action.
If it doesn't, well, the next step is self-help. If we're changing the definition of private property, it's only so long before people begin questioning whether there's any point in having private property at all.
I disagree with the author's description of class simply because the disparity between the wealth controlled by the upper 1% and everyone else is comparable only on orders of magnitude. Whether you call them technocrats, petite bourgeoisie, the "new" class, or anything else, they still have to sing for their suppers. A millionaire, even a small multi-millionaire, has luxury, but his grandchildren will need jobs.
In reality, there are only two classes. If you've ever had to work, if you've ever had to borrow for education, if you've ever had to care about money because there would be a consequence for not having enough, then you're in the lower class. And with you is everyone else--everybody: the day-laborer immigrant, the blue collar professional, the mom and pop local businesswoman with single digit employees, your veterinarian, your dentist, your lawyer, the freelance software developer at the coffee shop, the university professor, and probably many or, depending on where you live, most or all of your local politicians. They're not the enemy, because they all have something fundamentally in common that the 1% don't: They work because they must.
That's the thing the author gets right; it's part of what makes me so frustrated whenever I see well-meaning folks succumbing to the crab bucket propaganda that wants to pit us against each other instead of the oligarchs who are literally selling the future.
No war but the class war. The sooner everybody realizes we're fighting it, the sooner we can gain ground.
I was raised in an extremely conservative Southern Baptist Christian tradition, but I often recite the Hail Mary and/or the first line of the Shema (in admittedly very poor Hebrew) when I pray. There's something about knowing that the same prayer has been prayed by millions and millions of humans through history that makes me feel more connected.
There's a lot to take from Bojack, but I'm not sure I could pin down one sentiment to wrap up the whole show. Frequently, it's just a good comedy. At other times, the show is an exploration of depression and self-destruction, and I think that's what makes it resonate with so many people.
For what it's worth, the first season is generally the worst in the show by a fair margin. It has a few high points, but I think most fans appreciate that the show demands more commitment than many are willing to devote. It wasn't until into the second season that things started to really hit the highs that made the show stick with people.
Xhieron @ xhieron @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 295Joined 2 yr. ago
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
That is to say, the error is to conflate law with morality. They are not one and the same.