A warm place to keep all the political rants and debates...
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 12:33 pm
Ok everyone. We've reached the point where protecting your family (including sudden rape threats in the middle of the night), gun ownership, and Bible thumping / religion have been brought up in the thread that it becomes obligatory for someone to post a link to this twitter thread. I really should have waited for more misogyny to come up, but I have other things to do ... and really, who wants to wait around for misogyny?
If you need me, I'll be multi-tasking on some specification stuff while waiting for the laundry to finish.
Non Sequitur
Mar 24, 21 12:37 pm
But the bible is fiction (bad fiction, at best). We wants "facts" so that we can scream without thinking.... and there goes my cap for inteligent comments in this thread. I made it to 2. (2 and half if you count this one). Good thing I just picked up some poutine from the street vendor.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 12:45 pm
The beauty of the thread is that it doesn't matter if you believe it to be the word of God or bad fiction at best. In fact, it probably works better if you do believe it to be direct from God's printer.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 1:08 pm
Way to miss the point.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 1:10 pm
like did you even read it?
tduds
Mar 24, 21 1:12 pm
I know you would, jla, cause I've seen your photos in the cookin' thread, but the question that many men would not be able to answer correctly is: Would you clean the house to protect your kids? Would you cook dinner to protect your kids? Would you do laundry to protect your kids? Would you *lock your guns in a safe* to protect your kids?
Anyone who doesn't do those things is not a good parent. Period.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 1:14 pm
Would you parent to protect your kids?
Or maybe more on point, would you sacrifice your gun fetish to protect your kids?
SneakyPete
Mar 24, 21 1:37 pm
Of course the easy way to win this specific ARGUMENT is to declare loudly that OF COURSE I WOULD. But you're not the end-all be-all. You're not the point. You're not even a proper representation of the intended audience, so you're over here on the edge of the war setting up a boxing ring and pretending your personal views somehow have an effect on the larger discourse.
Disclosure: I still have you on mute, so what I wrote above is based on my understanding of x-lax based on past behavior, not specific to his recent comments. How'd I do?
square.
Mar 24, 21 1:39 pm
dunk.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 1:42 pm
No true gunsman.
Chad Miller
Mar 24, 21 1:46 pm
If guns aren't the problem and people are the problem why would you ever give the problem guns?
Oh, x-jla - I'm sure you've been posting a lot of injudicious nonsense but I've blocked you so . . .
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 2:08 pm
jla, you really need to stop taking everything I post as directly targeted at you. The fetish comment was more generally targeted at people with a gun fetish in the terms of the twitter thread ... but be as narcissistic as you want to be I guess.
As for the dangers posed by guns in gun safes to children ... I'll just point out that there have been cases where safes have found to be faulty and even resulted in the death of children who were able to gain access to them. Also, my father (a responsible gun owner) had a gun safe and stored his guns, unloaded, locked inside, with the ammo locked in a different part of the home in a different safe with a different code/key to access it. I think I first figured out where everything was and how to unlock the safes when I was about 10 years old. So overall, I'd disagree that having a gun in a safe does not pose any danger to kids.
Chad Miller
Mar 24, 21 2:10 pm
I own firearms. I conceal and carry nearly every day. I been trained by experts in defensive handgun combat. I train a lot with my firearms. I've had to use a firearm to defend myself form an attacker who broke into my home.
I have no children.
I still lock up my firearms when not in active use.
When nieces and nephews come to visit the firearms are disabled so they cannot fire. The parts are stored high up out of reach, then the ammo is stored separately.
If you have children in your house you NEVER leave a firearm (even locked up) where a child to get to it. EVER.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 2:21 pm
My dad is a retired cop and I spent the majority of my childhood in the boy scouts, so I know my way around guns & gun safety. I'm with Chad on this. As a kid, our guns were locked in a keyed-safe that only my dad had a key to. More than that, I was taught from a very early age that you don't touch the safe. Frankly, I don't trust any gun owner who isn't somewhat terrified of their guns. In the way that I don't trust a carpenter who isn't somewhat terrified of their tablesaw. If you can't acknowledge the increased risk to your own safety & the safety of your loved ones because of the tool you have, I don't trust you to be responsible with the tool.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 2:31 pm
Chad's comment's begs the question if there even is a "responsible" gun storage solution for a household with an inquisitive 10-year-old who can literally access every part of his home and had done it because he has an interest in architecture and how houses and things get put together and the mechanical inner workings of things like locks and safes and figuring out what secrets might be hiding in plain sight.
FWIW, there are no hidden secret passageways or doors behind bookshelves in my childhood home. Though there were decent hiding places in the basement where the floor joists sit on top of the foundation wall once you open up the return air register to gain access to the cavity above the ceiling (not where my father kept his gun safe by the way).
I can also say that my friend's basement had a purpose build hiding place in the foundation wall that was accessed via a magnetic catch on some plywood paneling that was all hidden behind some artwork (it was empty when we found it, but we soon filled it up with our treasures).
Wood Guy
Mar 24, 21 2:32 pm
I agree with tduds' comments about tools, except I wouldn't say terrified, but certainly a healthy respect. Partly because I've seen the results of tablesaw, jointer and shaper accidents. I'm not terrified of my guns--they are just tools, after all--but I definitely have a healthy respect for them and wish they would be regulated at least as strictly as automobiles. I learned gun safety at a young age. In 6th grade a classmate shot and killed another classmate (and friend) in the neck and killed him.
I don't have mine locked up but they are well-hidden and their ammunition is not in the same location. Part of learning gun safety is to obsessively check the chamber. I can't pick up a gun without doing so. We don't have kids or really any visitors so it's not as much of a problem as it could be. But thanks for the reminder to get or make a locking safe for them.
Chad Miller
Mar 24, 21 2:33 pm
I'd say there isn't. The best you can do is keep firearms unloaded, locked up, and if possible disabled with either a trigger lock or a cable lock. Then the ammo is stored someplace else, and again locked.
I like the secrete hidie-hole in the basement you found! That would be cool for a kid to find. That brings up a good point - kids WILL find any and all firearms in the house.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 2:40 pm
Completely agree Chad. I tend to think of it like when I lock up my bicycle in public. Anyone intent on gaining access will be able to, the locks are just keeping the people without that much intent from trying.
As a 10-year-old, I had all the intent to gain access. Luckily, I never had any intent to do anything with the guns once I gained access. It was a puzzle for me, not a means for anything else.
Puzzles were really my thing if I'm being honest. Relating to another story about guns, I was the fastest in my JROTC class in 9th grade for disassembly and reassembly of the M1 rifle. I don't remember the time exactly, but it was just a puzzle to me. It was about the only part of the class that appealed to me in any way. Well that, and tracking the shadow line on my desk at the exact same time each day (really another type of puzzle).
tduds
Mar 24, 21 2:48 pm
EA - speaking from my own childhood, the solution is less about "hiding" and more about awareness. I knew exactly where the guns were, and if I really wanted to I probably could have figure out a way in. But it was *drilled* into my head practically from birth that you don't touch the gun safe. Zero exceptions. Don't even look at it. If you want to go shooting, ask dad. If you mess with the safe, there's hell to pay.
Wood Guy - That's a good point, maybe "terrified" is an overstatement. Healthy respect, for sure, which imo is rooted in the
gruesome knowledge of consequences that come from a lack of respect (the consequences, I guess, are what's terrifying).
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 3:13 pm
tduds, essentially the same for me. My father never tried to "hide" them, I'm just pointing out that if he had, I would have found them. He did tell us to not touch it, but if I'm honest, that just made me want to get into it all the more. He also taught the awareness, well before I ever actually gained access, and would take me shooting as much as I wanted to. I just never really wanted to all that much. I saw no need for it. There was one time in my entire life where I used a gun for anything other than shooting at an inanimate target and it was enough for me that I immediately regretted it because I didn't "need" to do it. There were plenty of other solutions to the problem that would have been better.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 3:43 pm
It's funny I don't really think of target shooting as "training" for anything. I just like marksmanship. Now that I think of it, I have a similar relationship to running.
Wood Guy
Mar 24, 21 4:10 pm
Growing up we always had several guns hanging on the wall and ammo was in the adjacent closet. When friends would come over we'd often do some target practicing. But I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and most of my friends grew up hunting, so we followed good safety protocols and nobody got hurt.
Well, there was that one time we convinced a friend who was NOT experienced with guns to hold the 12-ga a few inches from his shoulder, "to absorb the kickback." We didn't realize that he didn't know he shouldn't pull both triggers for the double barrel at once. A few years ago I saw him and he was still pissed about it, 25 years later. Fortunately he didn't break his shoulder.
With power tools, I learned how to use a table saw and radial arm saw with little instruction; my brother and I were just expected to figure it out, and we did. Though I've had many close calls and I'm surprised I have all of my body parts today. The reason I take issue with the word "terrified" is that I have seen how people act when operating power tools while terrified, or driving, or climbing ladders or walking on roofs. Terror does not lead to good decisions. Confidence and respect, with a dash of fear, earned through experience and education are better qualities to have when in potentially deadly situations, IMO.
SneakyPete
Mar 24, 21 4:26 pm
Knew a guy once who was missing his ring finger. Found out he actually lost all of his fingers and thumb to a table saw and the reconstruction was why his thumb looked like a ring could fit on it.
I used to work at a saw mill as a teen. A good percentage of the sawyers were missing fingers and/or had reconstructive surgery. Thankfully I never witnessed any bad accidents, though one guy got run over by an extension-boom forklift one day. We all had to get forklift licenses after that. Ha!
SneakyPete
Apr 1, 21 4:49 pm
I am obliged to post this.
Bench
Mar 24, 21 3:14 pm
Just my friendly quarterly reminder that, yes, you can block jlax, and yes, it does make the forum much more desirable to read.
square.
Mar 24, 21 4:40 pm
i was off the wagon for a bit.. but i'm back on.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 9:34 pm
Dude we're playing soccer.
Non Sequitur
Mar 24, 21 9:37 pm
you sunk my scrabble-ship.
Chad Miller
Mar 25, 21 10:32 am
I have this image of x-jla sitting at his computer and wondering why no one is responding to him . . .
Bench
Mar 25, 21 11:28 am
"x-jla is ignored by you"
Bench
Mar 25, 21 11:58 am
"x-jla is ignored by you"
Chad Miller
Mar 25, 21 12:34 pm
'x-jla is ignored by you'
At this point he's just talking to himself . . .
SneakyPete
Mar 25, 21 12:35 pm
Because it looks gooood:
square.
Mar 25, 21 2:35 pm
doing pretty well myself here. in no way did i ever think an article about jp+libertarianism would trigger xlax. never.
Chad Miller
Mar 25, 21 2:45 pm
He's triggered by almost anything.
Everyday Architect
Mar 25, 21 3:31 pm
Can the BGH update the text so that when you have him blocked the text reads "x-jla is triggered by you" ... yes?
Chad Miller
Mar 25, 21 4:20 pm
Oh gowd, that would be funny. BGH - do it!
tduds
Mar 25, 21 4:36 pm
You'd think a guy so obsessed with convincing us he should be trusted with guns would be less easily triggered.
Chad Miller
Mar 25, 21 5:13 pm
Actually, that's a valid point. When you carry a firearm you need to ignore and 'brush off' a lot of stuff. Legally there is a very narrow set of circumstances that allow someone to use deadly force in self defense or the defense of others. Hell, even drawing a firearm is limited to a super narrow set of circumstances.
tduds
Mar 25, 21 5:15 pm
Maybe it's some sort of amnesia.
randomised
Mar 26, 21 4:55 am
talking about getting triggered in a debate about firearms...
Chad Miller
Mar 26, 21 11:00 am
I just assume every post jla makes is a obtuse reaction to being triggered.
"Jordan Peterson claims to slay sacred cows and challenge prevailing
orthodoxies. But what he’s really offering is a minor twist on tried-and-true conservatism — defending existing hierarchies and opposing the democratization of political and economic life."
essentially my opinion of most libertarians.
Non Sequitur
Mar 25, 21 11:48 am
Ah yes... JP... typical pseudo-intellectual jive now it bite-size pop culture snippets!
Non Sequitur
Mar 25, 21 12:01 pm
jla, JP's popularity si due to clueless wankers quoting snippets and treating them like mic-drops. He uses language and typical word definition arguments to appear to make a point all while layering it in a thick coat of social science evolutionary vibe. It's philosophy with training wheels masquerading as critical thinking.
Non Sequitur
Mar 25, 21 12:07 pm
^Douglas Adams
Non Sequitur
Mar 25, 21 12:11 pm
jla, I don't care much for conclusions. I do care about the process and the way in which they frame their observations that lead to said conclusions. Hitchens and Adams are those I'd consider intellectuals.
tduds
Mar 25, 21 4:41 pm
Solzhenitsyn, now there's an intellectual.
square.
Mar 26, 21 11:10 am
by the way, this link included in the article, is worth visiting. love seeing jp get dunked on by zizek (a real intellectual) - what a hack.
x-jla
Mar 26, 21 10:47 am
Biden is the most senile president we’ve ever had. You can’t possibly think he’s capable after watching that sad display
Wood Guy
Mar 26, 21 11:10 am
You are 100% right in every way.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:00 pm
Reagan would like a word.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:12 pm
What, specifically, did you find sad? What, specifically, do you consider evidence of his senility? And how, specifically, do you believe these things are negatively affecting administrative policy?
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:34 pm
If it's as obvious as you seem to think it shouldn't be very difficult to explain.
Wood Guy
Mar 26, 21 12:36 pm
Xjla, I am positive you are going to dispute this and I am not going to respond, but I'll say it once. Biden stutters. I stutter. I know what stuttering looks like, and it's not what most people think of as stuttering. I have watched many videos of him supposedly being senile and so far in all but a couple of cases it has looked almost exactly like I do when I stutter. If you don't believe me, watch a few episodes of the BS + Beer Show and you'll see me stutter, pause, maybe substitute a word or two, or look like I'm searching for a word when really I'm searching for the muscles to get the word out.
The couple of cases where he just says a word that does not make sense for the situation, if you read about the context it does make sense. The truth is that I really don't care if he is senile; I like Harris and think she would make a great president. Bring on the 25th amendment for all I care. But I have yet to see him acting senile--just doing what us stutterers do.
Que the arguing that "that's not stuttering..."
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:43 pm
Oh no he made a bird pun that didn't land, send in the men in white coats.
x-jla
Mar 26, 21 11:35 am
can someone explain why showing id when voting is racist? I seriously don’t understand. It’s not hard or expensive to get an id.
Wood Guy
Mar 26, 21 11:48 am
You are 100% right in every way.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:04 pm
If you're going to need an ID to vote then that ID should be provided, free of charge, when you register to vote. Anything more is a poll tax.
Everyday Architect
Mar 26, 21 12:24 pm
*cough* opportunity cost *cough* *cough*
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:36 pm
You went from "It's zero effort to get an ID" to "If you can't put in the effort, you don't deserve to vote" real quick there.
Everyday Architect
Mar 26, 21 12:36 pm
Oh, I didn't realize laziness or ignorance was disqualifying for someone's right to vote. Sounds pretty discriminatory to me.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:38 pm
Before one can dunk one must position the hoop to where it best suits their limited
reach. I think that's an old Buddhist koan.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:45 pm
We, as a democracy, should do whatever it takes to make voting as easy as possible. Any step in the other direction, especially if it appears to disproportionately affect a single cohort, is counter to democracy. Everything else you said is lazy troll bait & I will not acknowledge it.
tduds
Mar 26, 21 12:47 pm
I'm so tired of you. *back on ignore*
Wood Guy
Mar 26, 21 3:15 pm
Nevermind. Totally pointless to post anything here.
curtkram
Mar 27, 21 11:54 am
the racial element to voter ID laws is that historically legislation intended to create a barrier to voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, were enacted in southern states after reconstruction to intimidate and prevent black people from voting. unfortunately we aren't completely out of the jim crow era and we still have people who want to continue those discriminatory practices. the question is, who do you want to be? do you want people to see you as the person who continues the discriminatory practices of the jim crow era, or do you want to be seen as the person who wants to make voting more accessible to all americans?
curtkram
Mar 27, 21 11:58 am
"A lazy uninformed voter is a voter who is more susceptible to, and promotes, sound bites and pandering from low quality politicians." -- this is you jla. you're regurgitating the soundbites from low quality politicians. voter id laws are not designed to prevent people like you from voting, they target a different demographic.
Miles Jaffe
Mar 27, 21 3:11 pm
“Low quality politician” - that accurately describes the vast majority of them. At least from the public perspective.
curtkram
Mar 27, 21 6:56 pm
then require a fingerprint along with automatic voter registration for all valid voters. Republicans would love it if the government recorded every citizens fingerprint from infancy to verify ID. Just because it's easy for you to get an id doesn't mean it's as easy for everyone. There is no widespread voter fraud. This is entirely Republican-lead Jim Crow era legislation intended to restrict access to the ballot box. There is no other angle here. Democrats don't like voter ID laws because they want the voters rights act to come back and they don't want Jim Crow limits to voting.
Non Sequitur
Mar 27, 21 10:01 pm
At the risk of accidentally agreeing with jla on something political... what's the deal/problem with the ID? Do folks need a specific id card to vote hence the arbitrary barrier? Is this a common problem for folks not to have regular id cards?
Signed, a confused Canadian spending his Saturday working 2 building permits.
jla, it's not easy to solve because it's jim crow legislation intended to marginalize minority voters. if the problem they were trying to solve was to reduce widespread voter fraud that isn't happening, then yes, it would probably be easy to solve. unfortunately, none of this legislation has anything to do with reducing widespread voter fraud, which isn't happ
ening. if they came up with a solution that made it easy to verify a minority voter's identity at the polling locations, it wouldn't be jim crow era discrimination designed to marginalize minority voters would it?
tduds
Mar 28, 21 4:31 pm
It's hard to convince people to solve a problem they benefit from.
randomised
Mar 28, 21 6:36 pm
I need an ID on me when I leave the house and I need to show my ID when I vote, don't know how you're allowed to cast a ballot without them verifying if the person with the voting pass is the person on the voting pass...
But I personally think it’s wrong that my government charges me money to get that document, ID, that they force me to have on me at all times and that they fine me when not having it on me. If I were poor(er) the ID would be for free though, so in a way I’m glad I am "allowed" to pay for it.
tduds
Mar 28, 21 8:29 pm
I vote by mail, as it should be in any advanced democracy. No need to show any ID, and honestly (despite much uninformed yelling to the contrary) easier to secure than in-person ballot
randomised
Mar 28, 21 8:55 pm
ah yes, big supporter of voting by mail, but since I anyhow need to have an ID, I don't mind voting in-person. I also kind of love the nostalgia of voting on paper (no voting machines here any more) even got to keep my red pencil this time thanks to covid.
Non Sequitur
Mar 28, 21 9:10 pm
Rando, you have to pay for your ID card?
randomised
Mar 28, 21 9:21 pm
Yes, it costs around 50 Euros and is valid for 5 or 10 years or so.
x-jla
Mar 31, 21 1:55 pm
Big tech companies are private companies, so censorship of speech is not technically a violation of the first amendment, albeit it’s creating a culture that is incompatible with that spirit. BUT recently some Nazi from CA proposed a bill to punish big tech for not monitoring “hate speech”. This is an outsourcing of tyranny. The government has been soft handedly doing this by threatening big tech with possible regulation...it’s a slippery slope
tduds
Mar 31, 21 3:08 pm
Link to the bill.
Wood Guy
Mar 31, 21 3:10 pm
I have enough Jewish friends that I have learned to be very careful about using the word Nazi casually, and to be suspicious of anyone using it to describe others. I'm sure you didn't choose it indiscriminately but calling someone a Nazi and noting that they're from CA does not have your intended effect on me; quite the opposite in fact. A couple minutes of Googling doesn't turn up whatever you're talking about, in any case.
Wood Guy
Mar 31, 21 3:35 pm
"Assembly Bill 587, authored by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), would require social media companies to post their terms of service in a specified manner and with additional specified information. This would mean that social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit would need to update their terms of service and publicly disclose their policies regarding user behavior and activities that can result in a temporary or permanent ban of a user. According to Assemblyman Gabriel’s office, this can mean disclosing their corporate policies regarding “online hate, disinformation, extremism, harassment, and foreign interference, as well as key metrics and data regarding the enforcement of those policies.” AB 587 received bipartisan support after being introduced on Monday, with no Assembly members opposing the bill."
BTW, "[giving] them a taste of their own medicine" doesn't sound like the actions of someone who hasn't taken sides, especially when that someone likes to remind all of us that they haven't taken sides.
tduds
Mar 31, 21 6:10 pm
Is accountability bad now?
Wood Guy
Mar 31, 21 6:13 pm
Side note, as I have heard the term "intellectual dishonesty" for years now, always from right-wingers, and always wondered how it differed from "dishonesty."
Wikipedia says intellectual honesty means:
"One's personal beliefs or politics do not interfere with the pursuit of truth;
Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may contradict one's hypothesis;
Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another;
References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism is avoided.
Xjla, I have to say that based on this description, the most intellectually dishonest person arguing here is you.
Wood Guy
Mar 31, 21 7:14 pm
I believe you try to be honest, but fall into the trap of twisting things for your own purposes. Using the term Nazi to own the libs? Your politics getting in the way of objective truth. Not linking to the story you're talking about? Relevant facts conveniently omitted. I could go on. I'm just saying it's a bit rich for you to call out intellectual dishonesty when you do nothing but spin facts for your own purposes here.
I do care about government over-reach; I have a friend in Australia who has talked, carefully, about what they are and aren't allowed to say regarding the pandemic and it's a bit scary. But so is the American free-for-all-you-can-eat buffet. As conservatives used to tell me, words matter, and you can't just yell fire in a crowded theater without consequence. Perhaps if we didn't have a liar-in-chief incite a riot and bring the country to the verge of political collapse, we wouldn't need to have this conversation.
Everyday Architect
Mar 31, 21 11:47 pm
jla, with the text of the bill linked above, you're free to pull in the text that supports what you're saying. Instead, you've actually shied away from engaging with what the bill actually says and you've avoided even providing a link to it, relying on others to do so. If you're committed to following that intellectual honesty side of yours, you should be able to show us the text and make an argument that supports your conclusion. To not do so, and then claim that we are being intellectually dishonest because we don't draw your same conclusion is fairly ridiculous.
In other words ... you made a claim with no supporting documentation. When asked for it you said, "because I say so." When told it doesn't work that way, you said, "I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."
Wood Guy
Apr 1, 21 9:30 am
This would be an interesting topic to actually debate--as in, make points, support your points, show examples, etc.. "Nuh uh, you are" is not debate, as you note.
tduds
Apr 1, 21 11:10 am
The problem with jla's arguments is not that he's dishonest, it's that he's not very smart. I fully believe he thinks he's being honest and objective, but holding that thought while arguing what he frequently argues displays a somewhat facile grasp on the world and political machinations. That's why he's not fun to debate.
tduds
Apr 1, 21 12:11 pm
I refuse to simplify my philosophies for your understanding. The patterns are there whether or not you're able to see them. The rest of the crew doesn't seem to struggle so much.
Wood Guy
Apr 1, 21 2:03 pm
It's almost like arguing with strangers on the internet is not the most productive use of anyones' time...
tduds
Apr 1, 21 2:09 pm
I'm learning.
tduds
Apr 1, 21 4:21 pm
Sure, intent and enforcement quite often differ from - in many cases contradict - the written word of the law. I think the argument here is that the intent you're perceiving is not as obvious
as you seem to believe.
bowling_ball
Mar 31, 21 7:32 pm
Well this is exciting conversation...
Everyday Architect
Mar 31, 21 11:23 pm
You're not missing anything
square.
Apr 1, 21 10:39 am
same here... waiting for someone to post something who is worth while listening to.
Everyday Architect
Apr 1, 21 12:02 pm
While tainting any discussion of it with his bad faith efforts to own the libs, and "give them a taste their own medicine," jla actually brought up an interesting bill. It was introduced in CA regarding social media companies, their terms of service when it comes to hate speech, extremism, foreign interference, etc., and it would be interesting to talk about .. but not here with jla.
I'm not sure if Paul would want to wade into it, but given that he owns a social media company based in CA I'd be interested in hearing his take on it, even if it isn't on the merits of the bill itself but whether or not this would affect Archinect (there are some qualifiers for what constitutes a social media company in the text of the bill).
square.
Apr 1, 21 2:08 pm
is there a cliffs notes version?
Chad Miller
Apr 1, 21 2:19 pm
Companies have to clearly define and make available the terms of use for their websites and state what can get you banned and for how long.
SneakyPete
Apr 1, 21 2:22 pm
I imagine a steep downside to this which can be seen in the lengthy EULA hiding stuff that is only "legal" as long as nobody takes the EULA writing company to court. Vague language makes bad law and all that.
randomised
Apr 1, 21 5:00 pm
And what's the deal with foreign interference, asking for a friend...
archanonymous
Apr 2, 21 11:07 am
The democrats are criminally stupid.
Should have said, "Look at our nice new infrastructure plan! Exciting! Oh, how will we fund it? With TAX CUTS of course."
Cut taxes (even marginally) for 90% of people and raise them for the groups they were going to raise them on anyways.
Chad Miller
Apr 2, 21 12:42 pm
Too bad the tax increases on those remaining 10% not pay for all the infrastructure improvements but also more than make up for the reduction in taxes in the remaining 90%.
Wood Guy
Apr 2, 21 1:19 pm
Democrats would fumble a wet dream if given the opportunity. Marketing is not their strong suit.
Wood Guy
Apr 2, 21 2:02 pm
I was about to respond but I can't deal with the number of notifications I'm going to get if I do, and I'm not going to change anyone's opinion, so what's the point in posting here.
The Democratic Party platform is objectively popular and the party is absurdly bad at selling their proposals. The Republican Party platform (well, back when it existed) is objectively unpopular and the party is frighteningly good at marketing to racial and class grievance to garner identitarian support since they lack ideological support.
tduds
Apr 4, 21 11:09 pm
It's funny when you get mad at facts.
tduds
Apr 4, 21 11:11 pm
"taxing the top half into economic pain."
lol
SneakyPete
Apr 2, 21 2:47 pm
New page for the rest of us.
tduds
Apr 2, 21 2:52 pm
We might have a shot at not screwing this one up.
Wood Guy
Apr 2, 21 3:24 pm
I finally got tired of getting sucked in enough to put xjla on ignore. So what do you want to talk about?
SneakyPete
Apr 2, 21 4:59 pm
In my neighborhood it's become difficult to address problems because things have gotten to a point where institutional and very old failures have created a situation in which one can't say "Man, this place is a mess" or "I do not feel safe" without someone else accusing that individual of intent that was not there, and at most they were simply ignorant of the underlying issues while being a bit selfish with their feelings.
Wood Guy
Apr 3, 21 8:58 am
Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone, often not in a good way.
randomised
Apr 3, 21 2:41 pm
“Social” media...
square.
Apr 5, 21 9:58 am
i'm thankful everyday i didn't grow up with social media. this was plenty of social media for me.. was always quite sad to lose stewart to a snake bite:
Chad Miller
Apr 5, 21 2:17 pm
Fancy.
I had this:
randomised
Apr 5, 21 2:40 pm
“ Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone”
I still remember phone numbers from friends and family from the pre-internet/text times...some of whom dead for decades.
tduds
Apr 5, 21 3:34 pm
I won Oregon Trail IRL.
tduds
Apr 5, 21 3:40 pm
rando: Smart phones mean I haven't had to actually memorize a phone number in years. I can remember my high school fling's phone number, but sometimes forget my wife's.
Chad Miller
Apr 6, 21 4:31 pm
tduds - how many of your party got dysentery though?
“Competitiveness is about more than how U.S.-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,” Yellen said in a virtual speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods.”
While this certainly has its drawbacks & flaws, and it's definitely going to be a huge political lift, I think something along these lines has real potential to quell the rampant off-shoring of profits and the "race to the bottom" mentality that (imo) is largely responsible for the hollowing out of the US' public coffers.
square.
Apr 6, 21 4:10 pm
same issue happens locally between states- would love to see something there as well.
tduds
Apr 6, 21 4:48 pm
...with President Delaware in the big seat I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Miles Jaffe
Apr 6, 21 8:36 pm
Yellen finally got something right. States need to do the same thing to keep corporations honest. Many corps get decades-long tax abatements to set up business in a state then move 6 months before the abatement is up.
SneakyPete
Apr 6, 21 9:55 pm
BUT MILES THEYRE CALLED OPPORTUNITY ZONES. WHY DO YOU HATE OPPORTUNITIES?!
Miles Jaffe
Apr 6, 21 9:58 pm
Opportunities for who? The usual suspects.
tduds
Apr 6, 21 10:36 pm
I get caught up in it sometimes, but to be honest I typically don't give much attention to the "current events" of Politics. 95% of it is soap opera, palace-intrigue, and dumb sports analogue. What *does* interest me is the history of politics, & how policy echoes through the generations, & how it evolves, & how precedent is established and so on. Everything is history. If I can't place an action in a context of decades, it's functionally meaningless.
All this to say I'm going to make more effort to post things like that in here, to hopefully open up some more interesting discussions and drown out the "gotcha!" bullshit that seems to consume this & so many other political online discussions.
First up, this great history on the "New Left" of the '60s. Read it over a couple of drams of cheap scotch the other night and not only is it a fantastic history in itself, I noticed a lot of relevant similarities to today's Leftist (and Leftist-in-name-only) movements. Useful precedent, and plenty of lessons to be learned.
Thanks Wood Guy. I only catch her posts occasionally, but I always enjoy them. I agree she is great at finding the context of the moment (Others I think are good at this: Daniel Dale, Jared Yates Sexton, & Ezra Klein)
This is what pass for intelligent thinking in some circles. If you even spent half-a-minute and read just a little bit of "How To Be An Anti-Racist" you'd find that Black racists exist, something I had a difficult time accepting.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 12, 21 5:37 pm
Because Chuckles The Racist 'scraper likes stats, tldr?
So a black guy in a black neighbourhood is killed by cops because of the higher crime in that neighbourhood, the black guy in the white neighbourhood is killed by cops because he looks like coming from a neighbourhood with higher crime? What can black people do to finally not get killed by cops, because it seems to me they're in a Catch-22 situation here...
Miles Jaffe
Apr 16, 21 10:28 am
Nothing. The culture is to kill Blacks. Whites don't get executed at random traffic stops. Police, economic persecution, racism, it's all part of the program to maintain an underclass that is used to instill fear in the general population, which makes them easier to manipulate. Hitler did it with Jews, the US is doing it with Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians ...
tduds
Apr 16, 21 11:01 am
More white people swim because of vestigial generational effects from segregated pools.
tduds
Apr 16, 21 11:05 am
No one is saying (okay, no one worth taking seriously is saying..) that cops deliberately go out looking to murder some black folk because they're hood-wearing violent white supremacists. What people are saying is that the legacy of racism in this country has left us with a slew of different factors - from poverty to health to crime to education to stereotype to implicit & explicit bias - which American minorities, especially black Americans, being disproportionately impacted by. That's what we keep trying to explain by saying these things are systemic & structural. You just accidentally explained it to yourself above, but you're too arrogant or ignorant to figure that out.
tduds
Apr 16, 21 11:07 am
I do agree with your solution though. It's not *the whole* solution, but its definitely part of a solution.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 16, 21 11:32 am
A system, that has its own historical legacy, tied to capturing runaway slaves, cannot be given the benefit of doubt when it comes to race, and racism. Chairman Hampton was sleeping in his bed, executed by kkkops. Police, real estate, medical, education, governance, all have tentacles in 18th and 19th century racist policies, that they, we, refuse to grapple with, all because, why? Because, that was in the past, yet, it wasn't thousands of years ago, it was only in a handful of generations ago.
Everyday Architect
Apr 16, 21 11:35 am
kudos to jla for making a clear point in one comment using paragraphs and everything.
tduds
Apr 16, 21 11:42 am
I can't remember where I heard it first but someone said it seems like America is trying to run out the clock on racism. & sorry but that's not how it works. Inertia won't fix itself, it takes action.
Everyday Architect
Apr 16, 21 12:06 pm
Inertia:
a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.
a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.
randomised
Apr 17, 21 2:45 pm
“If you make up 13% of the population and commit 2x the amount of crime you can expect 2x the amount of police interactions and therefore 2x the amount of misfortunes at the hands of bad cops, overly vigilant cops, or negligent cops.”
If you are being singled out more by the police, it only makes sense they are likely going to find something that sticks...it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a downward spiral in one...as black people also simply show up more in the statistics because they have more police interactions but they have more police interactions because they show up more in the statistics(!)
you can’t find what you’re not looking for...
randomised
Apr 18, 21 3:24 pm
That IS how it works x-jla, it's called racial profiling and it targets non-whites specifically and intentionally, richer or poorer...why'd you think Chris Rock had to make his "PSA"?
tduds
Apr 18, 21 6:40 pm
*Describes the system exactly*
"See, it's not about the system."
tduds
Apr 19, 21 7:58 pm
"Telling young kids growing up in the inner city that nothing is their fault is putting them in harms way."
Good thing nobody's telling them that.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 19, 21 10:31 pm
xlax, you know what you've accomplished here, you and you alone? you've single-handedly have wore the fuck out of the term "woke", in fact 2020 is asking you to stop already...
I can only imagine what jla is saying in response to this
.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 20, 21 3:48 pm
There's a verdict.
SneakyPete
Apr 20, 21 4:31 pm
I expect that we'll be hearing helicopters all evening again...
Everyday Architect
Apr 20, 21 5:15 pm
seeing on the twitter that it's guilty
Everyday Architect
Apr 20, 21 5:17 pm
"Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter."
People using the term "woke" are either incapable of seeing the systemic problems that exist, or racists. Or both. You decide.
Wood Guy
Apr 26, 21 10:36 am
"Woke" is similar to "snowflake"--meant as an insult, but I wear the terms with pride--I'd rather be sensitive to others' plights than to be an insensitive asshole.
Chad Miller
Apr 26, 21 10:51 am
I wonder what jla's clients would think of his views
Everyday Architect
Apr 26, 21 12:36 pm
Sorry Chad, strong thumbs down on that one. That's the sort of talk that keeps me anonymous around here. Whether they would love, hate, or be indifferent about his views, that's something you don't mess with.
Wood Guy
Apr 26, 21 12:41 pm
As a purely hypothetical comment I think it's fine to wonder, but it does read a bit like a threat. I may not agree with most of XJLA's opinions but he has the right to hold them.
square.
Apr 26, 21 12:57 pm
i'm missing the problem here, seems like a bit of an overreaction. unless chad knows xlax's identity, i think the speculation is proving a point. not that i've read a post from xlax anytime recently..
Chad Miller
Apr 26, 21 1:16 pm
I actually do know jla's identity and business. I find many of his comments racist and stupid. However he's allowed to have those opinions as long as he's not causing harm. Square is correct in my intent though - would jla say these things to his clients?
For me posting anonymous is a pet peeve of mine. What you say online is no different than saying it in person. If you're not comfortable with someone knowing who you are online because of what you say then you shouldn't be saying it.
That being said I do see a difference between posting anonymously to protect yourself from retribution for exposing harmful or illegal actions of others and posting anonymously just so you can get away with saying shit that would get you in trouble.
Witty Banter
Apr 26, 21 1:20 pm
"I agree with everything in this statement except “anti-black bias in architecture”. What’s an example of this?"
To begin, that isn't the quote.
"Looks like a lot of typical identity politics bullshit. Any mention of...idk...removing expensive barriers to entry like licensing? Surly if a 15$ id is a barrier to vote then a 2-10 year low paid internship following a 100k degree program must be too, no?"
I'm not aware of AIA National publicly supporting this position but there are AIA chapters working on removing the education requirement as we speak. My state has an alternative path to licensure and as a member of my chapter's board I have been involved in discussions of how we can support other states adopt similar alternative paths.
square.
Apr 26, 21 2:39 pm
yeah, i mean you sort of have to be aware that anything you say online could eventually come back to you, even if anonymous. there's no guaranteed protection.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 3:47 pm
exhibit a
square.
Apr 26, 21 4:00 pm
i can't believe i have to respond to this.. but what's the common thread here, mentioned 7 times?
poverty.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 26, 21 4:24 pm
Wood, I agree, I don't care if people think I'm woke. Dumbasses who do, don't know shit about me. I didn't wake up in 2008 and think that racism was over, just the opposite. It's these racist smear merchants like xlax spreading a blatant disregard for the reality that exists, who often resort to that bullshit.
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 26, 21 4:38 pm
I wonder how all this garbage reconciles with the idea of a "color blind" society? Color blind, but a limited understanding of one aspect of a culture, means the entirety of that culture is "x". We're one step away from calling Jews good with money, and Chinese are great at math and science, hell everyone knows that all Russians are forced to drink vodka from the bottle at birth.
Witty Banter
Apr 26, 21 5:16 pm
Just because a colorblind society was your goalpost does not mean it was the goalpost.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 5:22 pm
Listen I didn't look very hard I'm sure there are better examples.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 5:25 pm
Anyway my Irish great grandfather famously (within the family, at least) slowly drank himself to death after immigrating because of the lack of social cohesion, constant money worry, and frequent exclusion he faced in America. So, you know, if you see an overlap between a "whiskey culture" and "alcoholism" there's a causal instigator there and its - if not explicit than implicit - racism.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 5:27 pm
And just for the record, jla, I do not think you're racist. I do think your views are much less examined than you think they are, but not racist. Ok back to lazily trolling...
b3tadine[sutures]
Apr 26, 21 5:32 pm
Of course you'd misunderstand MLK's words. You read them as passive, divinely provided, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Go read a book, or a fucking article.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:14 pm
Which culture does your beating of a dead horse arise from?
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:23 pm
*Looking into 'not shutting the fuck up' culture in White America*
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:24 pm
Sure I could focus on rhetoric, citations, examples, history, etc. but that's only part of the story. Turns out that not shutting the fuck up is considered honorable in some subcultures of White America.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:25 pm
I've even heard that, in some remote villages, shutting the fuck up is considered a violation of ones fundamental rights.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:38 pm
Look I gave you plenty of heads up...
SneakyPete
Apr 26, 21 11:51 am
Why do we have any lower courts again? Oh, right. To make sure the pea brains in the supreme court's conservative club don't have to work as hard to dismantle protections for everyone who isn't white, male, a gun, or a corporation.
tduds
Apr 26, 21 6:38 pm
I think I missed the context that this is referring to?
Everyday Architect
Apr 26, 21 6:53 pm
Not sure tduds. Only thing I've seen lately that might fit is the "public charge" rule that SCOTUS essentially sent back to the lower courts. I'm not fully up to speed on it though so I'm not sure if it really fits SP's complaint.
SneakyPete
Apr 26, 21 9:16 pm
Recent decision to make sure we can keep kids of color in prison for life with no pesky reading or thinking required for the judge or jury, upcoming loosening of gun "rights'," making sure there's no oversight abilities for charitable donations, etc etc.
SneakyPete
Apr 26, 21 9:18 pm
Point being that the lower court decisions (as well as previous SCOTUS rulings) do nothing except make sure the only cases that percolate up through the system are the ones these shitgibbons can use to the greatest political effect.
SneakyPete
Apr 27, 21 11:55 am
x-jla is ignored by you
square.
May 4, 21 12:32 pm
*looks to see if there is anything lively, thoughtful conversation going on*
Chad Miller
May 4, 21 1:08 pm
.
Bench
May 4, 21 1:19 pm
OK now this is getting too meta, most of the thread is me seeing the message "x-jla is ignored by you" and the rest of it is people posting the same thing as images or quotes.
tduds
May 4, 21 12:34 pm
Petition to rename this thread "x-jla tries to dunk on libs in an empty room"
Chad Miller
May 4, 21 1:07 pm
Granted. Also acceptable is 'x-jla talks to himself'
Miles Jaffe
May 4, 21 7:17 pm
You need game to dunk.
proto
Jul 4, 21 12:41 am
Empty room indeed
b3tadine[sutures]
May 4, 21 5:57 pm
go ahead dummy.
tduds
May 5, 21 12:55 pm
A masterclass in how to lie with statistics.
BabbleBeautiful
May 5, 21 1:40 pm
I don't understand this tweet. Even if it were sarcasm I don't get it.
tduds
May 5, 21 2:32 pm
Naw it's a half-
joke that clearly has merit seeing by the nerves it hit.
BabbleBeautiful
May 5, 21 2:43 pm
It feels hyperbolic.
tduds
May 5, 21 2:50 pm
Therein lies the joke.
b3tadine[sutures]
May 5, 21 4:34 pm
Babble, for me, the example as described in the tweet, best represents what fraudsters like xla, and others in the conservative echo chamber, like to do to challenge the movements for Black Lives. Especially when white people like me challenge the white supremacy, and capitalist narrative that has been destroying the country.
They want to use "woke" as an insult, instead of dealing with reality. I'm not offended, but Bree is correct.
tduds
May 5, 21 5:32 pm
"Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any system ever."
I'm going to elaborate on this one and nothing else, simply for the sake of time. This is, to me, the "How to Lie With Statistics" archetype. The framing is not incorrect, just simplified. As an analogy, imagine poverty as drowning. You're not wrong to say that "Capitalism" (as you define it) has saved a huge proportion of the world from "drowning", more than any other system in the past.
But what this "fact" ignores is that some people are clinging to a floating plank while others have 300' yachts and unlimited champagne. And whenever the people on the planks suggest that some of the champagne budget might help pay for, say, a rowboat, they're told "You should be thankful you're not drowning anymore!" Kinda rings hollow imo.
tduds
May 5, 21 5:36 pm
There's also an entirely different argument which points out, rightly, that before we invented capitalism (and even for a while after capitalism's initial ascension) Feudalism was the system that lifted the most people out of poverty in human history. There's nothing to suggest something else far more successful might supplant capitalism in the future, and pointing to it's past success does nothing to counter the claim that capitalism as a system is starting to show its age. Things evolve.
Everyday Architect
May 5, 21 5:57 pm
The Planet Money people at NPR did a podcast recently on socialism and it pointed out that evolution of economic systems thing. For a 20-min overview of the history and critique of capitalism, it wasn't a bad episode. Worth a listen at any rate. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981686254/socialism-101
tduds
May 5, 21 6:43 pm
Defend capitalism without talking about communism challenge go.
tduds
May 5, 21 6:43 pm
EA - That planet money episode was great! I caught it a couple of weeks back. Very even-handed I thought.
tduds
May 5, 21 6:44 pm
Outliers skew averages. Perhaps we could discuss medians.
Psaki is a master at shooting down bad faith questions. I'm just catching up to her brilliance.
square.
May 10, 21 11:40 am
"Who's saying this?"
"People are."
"Who specifically?"
"You hear it from people.."
"Ok, so it's just you that are saying this, aka it's your opinion."
Gold.
tduds
May 10, 21 12:20 pm
Who says it's legitmate?
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 1:07 pm
Way to pick a completely different playing field instead of just moving the goal posts there jla. I like that she didn't just take it at face value that "different people" "in the media" "say [this is the third term of Obama]," and challenged the reporter to cite some sources of that claim before she would respond to it. Context matters.
But don't let me get in the way of you taking the ball and running with it wherever you want to go to make a point that's completely unrelated to that.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 1:13 pm
I guess you liked it better when there were no press briefings and the world found out about things from random tweets at 2 am?
tduds
May 10, 21 1:21 pm
Not all questions are created equally. Responding to every question equally conveys the false impression that every question deserves to be asked.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 1:24 pm
FWIW, she was trying to answer the question which was, "What do you say to people who are saying that?"
"Who are saying that? Who's saying that?"
"You hear that a lot in the media."
"Who in the media?"
"Different people."
"Like ...?"
"Well there were lots of questions when [changes subject to the press conference when VP Kamala Harris was blah blah blah]"
Point is Jen Psaki was trying to figure out who said what exactly so she could respond appropriately and the reporter withdrew the question when she couldn't ask it with enough detail to get a response. It's not dodging anything other than an attempt at a bad faith question to get a sound bite or something.
---
"People are saying jla abuses puppies and kittens. What do you say to people who are saying that?"
"Who is saying that."
"People in the media."
You get the picture...
tduds
May 10, 21 2:27 pm
Depends on who's asking it. and who's answering.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 3:19 pm
While the questions for the "lab leak theory" were included in the video I posted, my point was about the first half of the video as I explained and as was understood by everyone but you. Feel free to take the ball to another field with a different set of goal posts if you must.
tduds
May 10, 21 3:31 pm
Interesting points EA but have you considered this unrelated point, in which my stance is more easily defendable?
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 3:38 pm
Yes, tduds. And while you may think it is easily defendable, here is another unrelated point as a counter point that in no way counters your first unrelated point.
tduds
May 10, 21 3:40 pm
Wow, no need to immediately turn to personal attacks.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 3:43 pm
That wasn't a personal attack, but why do you feel the need to defend this completely unrelated issue I'm just now bringing up, and that you in no way have tried to defend?
tduds
May 10, 21 3:48 pm
You're missing the point, which is something else I just thought of and also exhaustively whined about at you nine months ago. If you don't have this argument with me again I'll accuse you of running away because you can't admit you lost.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 4:03 pm
No, the point is I'll just keep repeating the same annoying stuff until you ignore me and then I'll claim victory because all you know how to do is silence other people's views that don't align with your own. BTW, I don't even really believe the views I'm defending (wink wink), I'm only doing it because all you liberals need to see the real issue which is something I'm not even really going to get into other than to say you should watch some youtube video which I won't even link to.
tduds
May 10, 21 4:35 pm
The people who are saying "people are saying" are the ones saying it. They're planting it by suggesting its already planted. They're *promoting* terrible ideas under the guise that they're just *reporting* them. How are you still taking that bait?
We are now, finally, back to the initial point of the original post.
tduds
May 10, 21 4:38 pm
Mostly I'm sad you didn't pounce on my very intentional use of the word 'master' in an earlier comment.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 4:39 pm
"I just want to get your reaction to people who question that."
"Well, it's hard to react when I don't know what people you're talking about. [But I will say that the president's actions don't really show what you're alluding to, and it shouldn't be shocking that the VP is involved in governing the country]."
"It's more so than other vice presidents have."
"How so? I'd love to see the data ..."
[paraphrasing the rest of this now]
"I'll provide you with the data sometime and I'd like to get your reaction to it."
"Great, looking forward to it."
"Excellent"
I don't know man, seems like they figured it out just fine and the reporter got enough of a response to go on and follow up with more substance later. Personally, I think this is exactly the job of the WH press secretary and Jen Psaki is doing it wonderfully.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 4:45 pm
I'm imagining jla dealing with RFIs in this same sort of way.
Contractor: "Hey some people have been saying that the weather has been unusual and we should get an extension in contract time. What do you say to people who are saying that?"
jla: "Who's been saying that?"
"You hear it a lot."
"Who is saying it a lot?"
"People are."
"Ok, well it's hard to say if I don't know who is saying it ... but sure I'll just take your word that the weather has caused some delays and that you're only asking because of that, and not because you've mismanaged the project thus far and are simply looking for anything that might give you a life line so you can make some profit on this job. I'd say to those people that I'll just sign and approve the blank change order proposal and they can fill in the rest when it's convenient. We probably don't need to worry about the details if lots of people are saying it."
tduds
May 10, 21 6:27 pm
The popular perception is based on the repeated amplification of the question. Again, it's surprising to me that you're still falling for this one.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:29 pm
"Many people are saying..." has been a twitter meme for like 5 years now.
Come on, dude.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:42 pm
When someone with a vested interest in planting a story plants it with "Many people are saying..." you believe them.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:49 pm
To bring this back from the Psaki topic to the CRT topic: Every single point you've made to criticize critical race theory is something you heard from a critic. Your entire knowledge of the topic is from people who are arguing against it. I know this because you define it incorrectly. No critical race theorist would agree with your framing of it, which is the joke in the screenshot I originally posted.
The point here is that who is saying something *does* matter, because in all discussion but especially in political discussions, why something is said matters more than what is said. You need to understand the motivations of the person making the claim to understand the context in which the claim is made and the goal it seeks to advance.
For example, I have not heard anyone claiming Harris is running the show. You saying that is surprising to me because we're exposed to different media environments. To say "I know that the idea of Harris running the show is a popular narrative that’s been echoed a lot" what you're you're saying that you know its been echoed a lot. You don't know if its true and you don't know who started the story or why. For every thing that "many people are saying", someone had to say it first. Who were they? Why did they say it? Did they witness something? Or are they trying to discredit someone? Was it a journalist with an inside source? Was it an opposition politician? Those are very different motivations. I think a healthy skepticism is warranted there, and I'm surprised by how un-skeptical you are of this given your infinite questioning of ulterior motives and corruption when the political axes flipped.
Everyday Architect
May 10, 21 6:50 pm
Oh, but you do care. Otherwise you wouldn't keep talking about it.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:55 pm
Harris leading from behind? I don’t believe, disbelieve, or care. She could have just said “no”.
That wasn't the question posed in the press conference. You brought that up. You don't seem very alert today. Maybe take a break until you can follow your own thread.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:57 pm
I joked years ago but I think this is more true than not: When Republicans do something, they go on TV to explain it. When Democrats do something, Republicans go on TV to explain it.
tduds
May 10, 21 8:37 pm
Again you say "Kendi says this" but you link to criticisms of him, not his own words. You say Kendi says x because other people told you. You didn't bother to listen to the man himself.
tduds
May 10, 21 8:40 pm
Ibrahim Kendi is a controversial and provocative figure (and I'd argue intentionally so), and one could easily debate the pros and cons of any one of his statements or his personal philosophies. But to dismiss an entire school of thought based on a third party's critical interpretation of one of its outliers is, well...
tduds
May 10, 21 8:41 pm
I clicked through a couple of links in that Coleman essay and found his summaries of their contents extremely slanted.
tduds
May 10, 21 9:43 pm
Well those are some words.
Everyday Architect
May 11, 21 11:32 am
"You're all fine to be thinking your thoughts, I don't give a crap about them. But don't you dare let me catch you acting on them. That's where you cross the line and we're gonna have a problem. Can't have you having ideas *and* implementing them."
Spoken like a true libertarian.
tduds
May 11, 21 12:51 pm
"The issue is when institutions begin to adopt these ideas and implement policies that affect people"
What ideas are being adopted by which institutions? In what ways are these policies affecting people and which people are being affected?
Everyday Architect
May 11, 21 1:34 pm
Some people are saying there are institutions that are doing this.
Everyday Architect
May 11, 21 1:37 pm
To my knowledge, no one considered jla's feelings when the racist policies were put into place by racist institutions so we should just get rid of them. It was fine for them to have racist ideas, but they went to far when they got institutions to implement them without getting jla's take on them first.
tduds
May 11, 21 1:55 pm
"the Asian quota at Harvard."
I assume you're referring to the lawsuit brought by SFFA that they lost, twice. The lawsuit in which the judge ruled that "while the system is "not perfect"...it nonetheless passes constitutional muster." and that "there were 'no quotas' in place at Harvard."
Not the best example imo. Everything else you wrote is your own conjecture. I might get more into that if I'm feeling feisty tonight but I've got work now.
Chad Miller
May 5, 21 6:39 pm
.
bowling_ball
May 5, 21 11:22 pm
Same
randomised
May 6, 21 5:30 pm
Joe the Giant
tduds
May 6, 21 6:54 pm
Wide angle lenses are trippy.
tduds
May 10, 21 1:33 pm
Pretty good opinion piece in the Post today. The Cheneys and the Romneys of the world would like you to forget the thread and focus on the moment, but it's important to remember the thread: "Trump’s GOP is the GOP as it’s ever been."
The Republican Party playbook is the same as it ever was: Disguise worshipfully pro-big business, pro-wealthy policies with appeals to the resentments of President Richard M. Nixon’s “silent majority” or Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” or whatever label the party prefers for a specific type of White American. Every liberal project — from Social Security in the 1930s to Medicare and integration in the 1960s to the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage in the 2010s — is cast as a mortal threat to freedom pushed by the eggheads, the ivory tower or the coastal elites. The threat of “outside agitators” becomes the peril of “political correctness” becomes the menace of “ridiculous wokeness” — the term Cheney used in her Post op-ed last week. They’re all the same look.
I know its difficult but try to stay on topic. This post is about the 50+ year characteristics of the Republican Party.
tduds
May 10, 21 3:36 pm
Trump's rhetoric rarely matched the policy that was implemented (or continued) during his administration. Aside from a few executive orders (lookin' at you, Tarrifs), the vast majority of government business that happened under the Trump admin was GOP-as-usual.
tduds
May 10, 21 6:52 pm
The essay says as much: "Yes, Trump has turned some of these traits up to 11. The dog whistles became bullhorns; the “executive time” administration plumbed new depths of incompetence. But for Republicans, as televangelist and later right-wing presidential candidate Pat Robertson said 40 years ago, “it’s better to have a stable government under a crook than turmoil under an honest man.” The threat of liberalism outweighs the risk of an inept, amoral or fascistic president. The Trump era — including its culmination in January’s attempted insurrection — was not out of step with that."
tduds
May 12, 21 3:52 pm
Lest I be accused of partisanship, let's acknowledge the impending Democratic fuckup hanging over our heads:
"It simply beggars belief to think these Democrats are earnestly concerned that modestly hiking taxes on corporations and ultra-wealthy heirs, or axing the filibuster, will doom their re-election campaigns. The only thing that could possibly explain why so many Democrats are dead-set on repealing Trump's cap on state and local tax deductions, 56 percent of the benefits of which will flow to the top one percent, is corruption. They are listening to rich donors and lobbyists, and/or keeping one eye on their future career prospects. Voting to raise taxes will infuriate the wealthy and well-connected, and cushy post-office buckraking careers doing consulting or speeches will not be forthcoming for lawmakers who do not toe the oligarch line.
So unless something changes, the swing vote Democrats who will decide whether the party can pass anything so long as it holds the majority in Congress — which could vanish at any time if one of the nine senators in states where they would be replaced by Republican governors dies — aren't going to allow voting rights protections to pass, or tax hikes on the rich, or popular programs to be paid for with borrowing. They're facing the biggest threat to America's democratic institutions since 1860, and they are still wringing their handkerchiefs and trying to save the pet loopholes of their paymasters."
I've been limited in my deductions twice now by the SALT cap, but I'm still ok with them not repealing it. I'd rather have them spend their political will elsewhere. Problem is there is no political will elsewhere because elsewhere wouldn't benefit their donor base.
tduds
Jun 4, 21 3:53 pm
Kind of a bummer we can't actually talk politics in here. "Cherry Picked Headlines and Palace Intrigue Central" isn't as catchy, I guess.
Everyday Architect
Jun 4, 21 4:30 pm
Maybe it's palace intrigue, but let's play a game of "What's going to happen first?"
Justice Breyer announcing his retirement
Democrats losing control of the Senate
Republican president being inaugurated
b3tadine[sutures]
Jun 4, 21 5:14 pm
1
Non Sequitur
Jun 4, 21 7:06 pm
I read point 1 as “Justin Bieber” and got unreasonably excited.
Not surprising, but maybe something will come out of this?
tduds
Jun 9, 21 11:13 am
It's not surprising because the last few times this sort of information has made public nothing has come of it.
Miles Jaffe
Jun 9, 21 12:05 pm
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said, “I share the concerns of every American for the sensitive and private nature and confidential nature of the information the IRS receives. Trust and confidence in the Internal Revenue Service is sort of the bedrock of asking people and requiring people to provide financial information.”
Trust and confidence? NOT in taxing the rich. Trust and confidence in the IRS facilitating and perpetuating vast wealth accumulation by the rich while penalizing people who actually work.
U$A Inc., the world's largest Banana Republic.
BabbleBeautiful
Jun 9, 21 12:41 pm
x, where's your source on those stats?
Also, this isn't about whether the gov't is "getting enough" or not.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 12:43 pm
Income != Wealth
tduds
Jun 9, 21 12:50 pm
It's a bad statistic, even if true. The data is based on reported income, which the ProPublica article indicates is the way to avoid paying taxes (minimize reported income). It ignores the vast amount of wealth not accounted for. Moreso, focusing on the "Top 1%" ignores the staggering inequality within even that top percentile. Take the bottom .9% of that 1% out and then re-run the numbers and see how it stacks up.
Finally, I simply disagree with the premise that "a fair share" is a tax burden somehow equal to a cohort's income share. Redistribution is - at least in part - a goal of progressive taxation. That's more of an opinion so I get that people can & do disagree, but you can disagree with the conclusions without employing a bullshit premise.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:02 pm
Wrong question.
BabbleBeautiful
Jun 9, 21 1:05 pm
My gawd, those are some infuriatingly deliberate, misleading stats.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:10 pm
No.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:11 pm
(this is a canned response I wrote months ago but it applies here)
I'm not going to do that for you. That's not the conversation I'm having. I'm not going to take the bait that allows you to poke easy holes in the inevitably undercooked ideas I had an hour ago. I'm not going to go on the defensive because you misunderstood my demand. It's not my job to solve the crisis of income inequality. It's not my job to create policy.
My job is to hold accountable the people who were elected to create policy. They put a ton of effort into getting a job whose primary responsibility is to solve problems, or at least try, through policy.
If they want their job so bad, they need to listen to problems and try to solve them.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:19 pm
I tossed it in there as an opinion that I admitted was an opinion. I don't really care to litigate it. That you chose to harp on this instead of the other 2/3rd of my post questioning the premise you opened with is curious.
I could spend a few hours and several thousand words elucidating my stance. It would be difficult to present a reasonable case in less. But I've got a job and my stance isn't the point of this thread.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:21 pm
As I said above, our role in the system is exactly to talk about why. How is for legislators. I have no power to enact things, so why waste energy thinking about how I might do it? For me it's about interrogating the what & why, to develop an internally consistent set of beliefs from which I can advocate, donate, and vote.
Whyshouldn't taxation be at least somewhat progressive? Whyshould a few dozen people hoard billions while paying less than 1% effective tax rate? You answer some questions first.
BabbleBeautiful
Jun 9, 21 1:28 pm
x, how is it an "inconvenient truth" when it's blatantly bending and massaging information to convey their (false) narrative?
You're the reason why every high school and college curriculum requires a basic stat class.
I mean, you're not even trying at this point.
Miles Jaffe
Jun 9, 21 1:28 pm
The US is a giant pyramid scheme. Benefits accrue at the very top at the expense of everyone else.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 1:54 pm
An Amazon warehouse worker's quality of life is very much effected by how much Jeff Bezos spends trying to go to space. In the long term the sum is variable, but in the short term resource availability is very much a zero sum game.
I also reject the framing (that seems like a billionaire invented) that progressive economic policy is somehow a "punishment." A system in which people were actually compensated relative to their value wouldn't produce people with the largesse of Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos. I don't begrudge either of them for taking advantage of a bad system. I begrudge the system for allowing such a disproportionate advantage in the first place.
I'm not even going to bother responding to your kneejerk "but communism!" response. We've been over this so many times: there are infinite options in between "unfettered exploitative capitalism" and "authoritarian Stalinism." Don't use one extreme to defend the other, they're both bad and a huge gulf of middle ground exists where I think you & I would both find satisfaction.
BabbleBeautiful
Jun 9, 21 1:55 pm
x, you're obviously very passionate about this, but completely missing the point of the article I posted. It's not about quality of life (albeit an affect of) , nor about how much the government receives, nor what the gov't does with the money it receives. It's about how the current system, whether it's deliberate or not, has allowed a certain few to not be accountable for the actual money they make while most have no choice. It's as if you reach a certain threshold and you're invincible. I personally believe this to be problematic and unjust.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 2:06 pm
We're not, but we are way off topic.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 3:28 pm
"but deal with the specific offenses that they do"
That's what the ProPublica article is about and, ostensibly, what the topic at hand should be.
tduds
Jun 9, 21 3:46 pm
I'm fine with blaming Miles for derailing the topic just pointing out that the topic immediately derailed. I guess the larger point is: Whatever your idea of a "fair" tax system, we have a current set of rules and the wealthiest Americans are using their means to skirt those rules. That's a
problem.
RJ87
Jun 9, 21 3:47 pm
The concept is that unrealized gains are not considered income, so they don't pay taxes on it. When they sell a stock, they pay capital gains taxes on the profit. If you had to pay taxes on unrealized gains than long term investment would be nearly impossible, it would blead a lot of people dry in the process.
Miles Jaffe
Jun 9, 21 5:35 pm
I derailed the topic? It's the Pro Publica article, and I posted the IRS commissioner's response to that. LOL
BabbleBeautiful
Jun 10, 21 2:39 pm
RJ87 - you're correct, but are you suggesting the only variable in calculating someone's wealth is stock holdings?
That article completely ignores tax breaks enshrined into law that only benefit the rich. Beefing up the IRS will not create a "fairer" system for all.
To accomplish that we need truly progressive tax rates (like those in place in the 50's, 60's and 70's when the top rate never fell below 70%) and an aggressive wealth tax to remove the political influence associated with financial wealth.
As Buddha said, 'the wealth of a few is founded on the poverty of many'.
In short, yes and also yes. I favor more progressive taxation, and closing loopholes that favor the wealthiest, and beefing up enforcement to raise compliance. It's important not to mistake a step in the right direction for the entire solution, or to let perfection be the enemy of the good.. I want all three, but I'd be happy if even one became reality.
tduds
Jun 11, 21 12:39 am
"If higher taxes were the answer to everything" They aren't. Next question.
randomised
Jun 11, 21 4:48 am
it's not necessarily about how high or low taxes should be (although it is) it is about what you choose to spend those taxes on...
At the federal level taxes have two purposes: regulating the economy and influencing behavior. The government does not require tax revenue to fund spending. The "national debt" is one side of a balance sheet, the other side ("surplus") is money in circulation. Pay off the "debt" and the economy would cease to exist.
The federal government, as the creator of currency, can never run out. Money is not borrowed, it is created with a few keystrokes.
But but but inflation! Inflation is too much money in circulation. The fix for that is not raising interest rates - which just benefits banksters and the investment class - but raising taxes, which drains money from the economy. One of the reasons that the "debt" has soared over the last decade or so without inflarion is that QE and bailouts went directly to Wall Street where they are socked away in private investment - money that is not circulating in the economy.
Tax policy influences behavior by reward and punishment. Raising the tax on cigarettes lowers the number of smokers. Lower taxes on investment income benefits those who shuffle money while higher taxes on labor penalize actual work and effectively serve to hold the working man down.
Note that states can not create currency and are dependent on tax revenue (which could easily be repaced with federal funding, and in many cases is heavily subsidized already).
The game here is to make you believe that the federal government has the same kind of houshold budget that individuals do. We have income and expenses, and when our expenses exceed our income we are in trouble. If we could print our own money that would never be a problem.
The government never has a problem paying for corporate subsidies, a grossly overbloated military and wars of misadventure, tax breaks for corporations and the rich (which if you subscribe to the household budget con are lost revenue) - but when it comes to infrastructure, education, health care, or socially beneficial programs like Medicare or Medicaid "we can't afford it!" because of "the debt".
square.
Jun 11, 21 10:56 am
The fix for that is not raising interest rates - which just benefits banksters and the investment class -
low interest rates act as a give away for the investment class, no? it's what allows firms like blackrock to borrow cheap money and buy middle class homes at an alarming rate, often 5 digits above asking price. also higher interest rates are better for my savings account, the rate of which is pathetic right now.
at the same time lower interest rates = lower mortgages... catch 22?
Miles Jaffe
Jun 11, 21 11:19 am
As noted, low interest rates have decimated working class savings and retirement accounts. Mortgages are bundled together and sold as investment vehicles where everything is leveraged, shorted, insured, traded, and speculated on. The underlying thing itself is irrelevant and can be anything (crytpo, SPACS, WeWork, etc.).
This episode had some interesting tidbits on the history of the government’s attitude toward the extremely wealthy.
b3tadine[sutures]
Jun 27, 21 4:29 pm
.
Non Sequitur
Jul 3, 21 6:50 pm
so… did a bunch of stuff get nuked? I have many notifications but no dumpster
BabbleBeautiful
Jul 3, 21 10:05 pm
Seems like it
proto
Jul 4, 21 12:40 am
Looking at this thread…xjla is gone, not just ignored
,,,,
Jul 4, 21 9:16 am
Better for everyone including xjla. All he did was doom scroll and shit post looking for a reaction.
Miles Jaffe
Jul 4, 21 10:12 am
Maybe the militia called him up.
randomised
Jul 4, 21 5:28 pm
Don’t know which remarks specifically sparked the politburo into action, just thought it was pretty harmless anti-vax stuff, last time I read it. Getting axed from your own thread...isn’t that ironic?
Miles Jaffe
Jul 4, 21 7:53 pm
Not just his own thread ...
randomised
Jul 5, 21 2:10 am
And was there a thread called b3tadine[sutures] or is that the name of the mod that axed all his comments? that’s what I could see in x-jla’s posting history...maybe the forum should be renamed into wokenect or something, just to make it clear to all involved ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 5, 21 10:49 am
I'm sorry, what did I miss?! I was busy this weekend [MACA] Making America Communist Again, and couldn't follow everything. There was a thread aboot moi?? Where is this monument to greatness?
SneakyPete
Jul 5, 21 10:49 am
The American right wing is so good at murdering buzzwords dead that they manage to kill them in every single country.
Non Sequitur
Jul 5, 21 11:04 am
Must have set off a firework too close to his ammo cache or something... I guess.
proto
Jul 5, 21 1:28 pm
apparently x-jla still has posting privileges?
is he self-editing his posting history? or mods did? ...it seems the Comment History button still has the old posts of his
not mention balkins is still posting despite swearing the forum off...
tduds
Jul 6, 21 1:52 pm
I'm seeing both their posts all around...
Everyday Architect
Jul 6, 21 2:49 pm
Must have been a temporary thing, or moderator's regret?
tduds
Jul 6, 21 3:43 pm
bummer
,,,,
Jul 6, 21 6:49 pm
Imo they are professional trolls. Any reaction including using the ignore button only enables them.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 9:07 pm
Petition to re-nuke whatever was nuked.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 10:28 pm
Almost literally every discussion in this thread ends with either jla quietly ignoring a challenge he doesn't want to / can't respond to, or jla posting ad infinitum until everyone gives up. That's trollish behavior. It has nothing to do with disagreement. There's no desire to have an actual discussion or learn anything,
and I really ought to have learned better by now. It's a dumb but effective outlet when I need it I suppose.
Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
Miles Jaffe
Jul 5, 21 11:35 am
America was founded by rich white slave owners who didn't want to pay taxes. Mission Accomplished!
randomised
Jul 6, 21 4:44 pm
Great idea...on stolen land
tduds
Jul 6, 21 6:46 pm
Window was already broken, I just snagged a TV for my family. ;)
tduds
Jul 6, 21 8:42 pm
"at some point" doing the heavy lifting there.
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 6, 21 8:55 pm
The whataboutism is strong in this one.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 9:03 pm
The rules of acceptability with respect to colonization and conquest have evolved over time. It seems useless to compare, say, the Sacking of Constantinople or intra-tribal war in pre-Columbian America or late 19th Century Indian boarding schools, because you're comparing different times with vastly different ethos. If we can agree that the Peace of Westphalia, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the Geneva Conventions are useful constructions of a global ethics, then it seems to follow that much of the American occupation of Native land which occurred *after* those three documents (among others) is, ya know, unethical.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 9:06 pm
"For people who care so deeply about injustice, why is it they they seemingly ignore the greatest most extreme injustices that are currently occurring"
Because we're having a conversation about a specific thing now. It doesn't mean I'm/we're not aware of or outraged by other things, just that conversations require topics, and the topic here is American imperialism. Either defend it or don't.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 9:12 pm
Should've been the end of the thread:
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 6, 21 9:29 pm
It's almost like people can't walk and chew gum simultaneously...
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 6, 21 9:33 pm
Classic capitalist agenda, avoid the problems that exist at home - Jim Crow, let's go bomb Vietnam, 9/11, let's go bomb Iraq - and go practice global interventionism...classically anti-libertarian thinking. Stop intervening in other peoples problems; we got 99 problems, and your "bitching" ain't one.
tduds
Jul 6, 21 10:25 pm
"the narrative is being sold as some all encompassing omnipresent reality." No it isn't.
SneakyPete
Jul 6, 21 11:35 pm
educate us. fully. we will wait. be exhaustive. leave nothing out. bring education to the ignorant. i am so excited to hear about the truth.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:32 am
I already answered that one next question.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:00 am
My answer was about when, not who. Thought that was obvious, sorry.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:01 am
Events that occur prior to the establishment of certain global ethical norms are not equivalent to events that occur after the establishment of those norms when the events in question violate those norms. Pretty straightforward, to me.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 12:23 pm
That's kinda my point... we (i.e. white folks) broke our own rules.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:24 pm
Because I still exist within, and continue to benefit from, white hegemony. It would seem disingenuous to place myself outside of it.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:26 pm
*eyeroll* This is going nowhere. Once again, I'm exhausted.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:41 pm
You seem suspiciously incapable of understanding the difference between individual behavior and structural inertia. Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:43 pm
I'm done trying to explain things to you. If you actually care to learn things, there's plenty of books about this.
Everyday Architect
Jul 7, 21 1:44 pm
"Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are."
I used to think it was the former. Now I'm believing more and more that it has always been the latter.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:49 pm
Out of steam, yes.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 1:50 pm
Look here we are, yet again. So fucking predictable.
Non Sequitur
Jul 7, 21 1:51 pm
Weaseling behind words and definitions instead of addressing the onslaught of criticism your "ideas" face is a sign your ideas were shit to begin with.
proto
Jul 7, 21 1:53 pm
There is such a huge amount of time spent trying to rationalize one view of the world within the constraints of facts to the contrary. It must be tiring to keep twisting around in syllogistic knots like that...
Bench
Jul 7, 21 1:56 pm
"x-jla is ignored by you"
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:06 pm
I said no such thing. Again either you're being disingenuous by deliberately misinterpreting me despite several attempts to clarify or stupid by accidentally misinterpreting me. Don't really care which at this point.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:15 pm
I'm sorry the three things I pulled out of my head in 5 seconds didn't include any African or Asian or Pre-Columbian American examples, which definitely exist, but with which I'm simply not as familiar. Pretty annoying that you latched onto my failure to include these examples as evidence that I'm suggesting they don't exist in order to accuse me of a conclusion I'm not making. Real, real annoying.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:17 pm
If you have to entirely re-phrase what someone says in order to make a point against it, you have a weak argument.
tduds
Jul 7, 21 2:17 pm
You're going back on ignore for a few weeks. I obviously can't be trusted to leave it alone.
SneakyPete
Jul 7, 21 2:20 pm
jesus fucking christ. You are the ur-example of arguing in bad faith, x-lax.
PEOPLE. STOP.
You're pissing into the wind and wondering why you're wet and stinky.
SneakyPete
Jul 7, 21 2:20 pm
THAT MEANS YOU TOO, SNEAKYPETE!
randomised
Jul 7, 21 3:51 pm
“ What it seems that you are really saying is that western culture ought to be held to higher standards.” Makes sense to me to hold the most superior culture to higher standards...e.g. we in “the west” can afford to live a meatless life, there are plenty of healthy and affordable alternatives with new ones being developed every day, so in my opinion it is totally unnecessary to kill animals in our society for human consumption. But in other parts of the world, this is not (yet) the case where people still need to rely on meat for their diet.
randomised
Jul 8, 21 4:58 am
Dead serious...we’re the only ones that can live up to the universal declaration of human rights, which means we are the best, numero uno...
tduds
Jul 8, 21 11:03 am
"We" frequently violate human rights. That's been my point throughout this whole thread.
randomised
Jul 8, 21 3:42 pm
Cultures where gay people are executed just for being gay are inferior no matter how you try to spin it...but that doesn’t excuse for gay people being mistreated or discriminated against in our society, as one could argue ‘at least we don’t hang them on cranes or throw them off tall buildings’. you should always be your own worst critic, try harder and hold yourself to higher (moral) standards then anyone else, that’s the only way...
tduds
Jul 8, 21 4:49 pm
Again I made no assertion of *who* constructed norms, merely *when* they were constructed. I've *explicitly* said it several times now, so there is no room to imply. That you can't seem to get past this is, at this point, entirely deliberate on your part. So I guess you're being disingenuous *and* dumb.
tduds
Jul 8, 21 4:49 pm
Enjoy your xenophobia. I'm done.
Burrrrrton
Jul 7, 21 8:46 am
On the one hand, ethical norms limit us, but on the other hand, they help us to remain human.
Miles Jaffe
Jul 7, 21 4:27 pm
This thread is a perfect metaphor for the US, where a tiny minority fucks up everything for everyone else.
BabbleBeautiful
Jul 8, 21 12:28 pm
It applies to everything
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 8, 21 6:03 pm
go ahead, respond with your setting, out yourself. Hell, even if it's you, ignoring me.
SneakyPete
Jul 15, 21 5:19 pm
*Tom Hardy Fury Road that's bait gif*
Everyday Architect
Jul 15, 21 6:05 pm
New page. Let's get it right this time.
Sorry, at this point it's obligatory to post this.
tduds
Jul 16, 21 12:56 am
barely made it two posts.
square.
Jul 16, 21 11:42 am
if you reply to the shit, it will stick around
Everyday Architect
Jul 16, 21 2:46 pm
Well, we made a valiant attempt, lol
Miles Jaffe
Jul 15, 21 6:46 pm
von Claueswitz: "War is a continuation of politics by other means."
von Jaffe: "Politics is a continuation of economics by other means."
tduds
Jul 16, 21 4:02 pm
Could we just do this for jla and save the server space?
tduds
Jul 16, 21 5:18 pm
I am very upfront about my lack of self-control.
square.
Jul 20, 21 2:35 pm
is xlax still posting news articles exclusively through google links? makes this even more appropriate..
tduds
Jul 20, 21 3:40 pm
Yep.
tduds
Jul 21, 21 6:11 pm
This essay resonated with me in a way I think people on both sides of recent arguments might appreciate.
Not only are today’s activists enraged, they bemoan a state of constant fatigue (and in some instances, post-traumatic stress disorder) caused merely by existing in the world as it is currently constructed. Even privileged white journalists write (whether earnestly or cynically) of their “exhaustion” at the stream of psychic and spiritual assaults caused by racism, as well as by sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, capitalism, and myriad other “systems of oppression.” They profess to be tired in part from performing “emotional labor.” The term was coined to describe jobs, many done mostly by women, that require projecting or suppressing a particular feeling, the way a waitress offers warmth. It has come to be a vague catchall for the exasperating burden of being enlightened in a biased society. Until we reach a state of perfect social harmony, they suggest, anyone who is not blind to or willfully complicit in injustice—whether they like it or not—will be unable to escape this ever-growing weight. Defeatism has become a badge of righteousness. If you’re not despondent, you’re not paying attention.
All too often, and especially in this thread, I sense people underplay the progress that's been made to highlight the work that still needs to be done. But also, people underplay the work that still needs to be done to highlight the progress that's been made. These aren't mutually exclusive realities. We *have* come a long way as a society, and we still have a long way to go.
Quoting Williams again: The United States is not a perfect nation, but it has been powerfully altered since the days of Emmett Till, Rodney King, and even Eric Garner. Have we reached the summit? Not even close, and yet we would be deluded not to glance back from time to time to marvel at the plunging landscape.
tduds
Jul 21, 21 6:43 pm
That's a fine analogy. 100% in nearly anything is impossible. The danger of that analogy, to me, is that it seems to imply we're approaching that 99.9% asymptote. In many respects, for the topic at hand (racial equity in the US) we are far from 99%. But we're also far from 0, and both are worth recognizing.
tduds
Jul 22, 21 11:29 am
If that was the only thing that was happening perhaps you'd have a point.
square.
Jul 22, 21 12:04 pm
interested to read this. i think i hear you on race, but when it comes to environmental issues it's hard to celebrate any "progress" that has been made- the ozone example pales in comparison to the new reality that is quickly developing. my only hope is one day we can feel the same way, but i'm not sure how possible it will be to cool the planet.
tduds
Jul 22, 21 12:12 pm
I hear you there. The lack of action on decarbonizing our civilization is seriously worrying. I think, in part, there's this inertia because we don't have that "Ozone Hole" moment to galvanize support around. It's a slow inexorable slide into doom that's really only perceptible in retrospect. That + billions of dollars in lobbying money to convince those in power to simply ignore the signs. It's hard to stay hopeful, but despondence doesn't fix anything either, so I trudge along.
randomised
Jul 23, 21 3:03 am
* Insert: This is Fine-meme of dog sitting in burning room *
square.
Jul 23, 21 9:55 am
not so much a meme anymore as much as it is reality..
randomised
Jul 24, 21 8:22 am
life imitates meme
Wood Guy
Jul 26, 21 9:12 am
While pollution in general is bad, carbon pollution is orders of magnitude more troubling than other types.
Wood Guy
Jul 26, 21 12:51 pm
It's not just humans in danger. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction, which is occurring at a faster rate than any of the previous mass extinction events. This is a good book on the subject: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/elizabeth-kolbert. (The author is the sister of my friend Dan, who I'm writing a book with, about the Pretty Good House approach, but don't hold that against her.)
It does require CO2 to manufacture things to offset climate change. Such as PV panels, which repay their carbon debt in 2-3 years. After they "break even" they continue producing for 30-40 years. How does that compare to carbon-spewing electrical generation plants? When do they break even on carbon emissions?
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 28, 21 8:08 pm
^^Anti-Facctser
,,,,
Jul 28, 21 8:59 pm
Imbecilic delusion. Imo this level of disinformation is worthy of being banned. It
,,,,
Jul 28, 21 10:08 pm
The reason we are still in this mess is because of the people who refuse to get a vaccination. Period. Imo you are intentionally spreading disinformation about a deadly disease.
Everyday Architect
Jul 28, 21 11:34 pm
Did jla get nuked or just another time-out and his posts will be back in a bit?
square.
Jul 30, 21 12:41 pm
seems the moderators have had enough of his paranoid delusions. that covid "thread" he posted was a worrisome string of unending logical fallacies. enough is enough.
b3tadine[sutures]
Jul 30, 21 12:48 pm
The absolute denial of reality, is not worth arguing about, shut it down I say.
Chad Miller
Jul 30, 21 1:59 pm
So jla is perma-gone? Or is this more of the same timeout BS that will only result in a new username?
Oh did I miss another regurgitated
conspiratorial rant from the resident "free thinker"?
Everyday Architect
Jul 30, 21 5:22 pm
tduds, you can see one of the last things he posted here in my post history (Politics Central, Jul 28, 21 10:32 pm). I copied it and inserted my own commentary. It's now nuked from the thread though. From his post history you can also see that he made some comment in one of the covid central threads and got that one shut down: https://archinect.com/forum/th...
tduds
Jul 30, 21 5:40 pm
whooo boy.
tduds
Jul 30, 21 5:59 pm
I truly have no idea how to counter the problem of this type of behavior. To be so loudly and incessantly wrong that they all but beg to be shown the door, and then immediately use that exasperated rejection as evidence of their righteous bravery. I'm glad I don't moderate any online forums anymore, I'll say that much.
proto
Jul 30, 21 6:05 pm
eh, disappoint...that character needs to be voted off the island
Stop feeding the troll. Responding is the recognition it seeks.
Miles Jaffe
Aug 1, 21 10:30 am
In the US economy as a whole, financial engineering replaced industrial engineering. Wealth was decreasingly made by building new means of production and hiring labour to produce new goods and services to sell at a profit. Instead, money was made purely by buying and selling financial securities and real estate. This is fundamentally contradictory because financial activities constrict and strangulate production even as they prey upon the very incomes it generates. This is the fundamental logic behind the regular financial and asset market bubbles and crashes and shrinking productive base of our time.
A warm place to keep all the political rants and debates...
Ok everyone. We've reached the point where protecting your family (including sudden rape threats in the middle of the night), gun ownership, and Bible thumping / religion have been brought up in the thread that it becomes obligatory for someone to post a link to this twitter thread. I really should have waited for more misogyny to come up, but I have other things to do ... and really, who wants to wait around for misogyny?
So here you go; https://twitter.com/designmom/...
If you need me, I'll be multi-tasking on some specification stuff while waiting for the laundry to finish.
But the bible is fiction (bad fiction, at best). We wants "facts" so that we can scream without thinking.... and there goes my cap for inteligent comments in this thread. I made it to 2. (2 and half if you count this one). Good thing I just picked up some poutine from the street vendor.
The beauty of the thread is that it doesn't matter if you believe it to be the word of God or bad fiction at best. In fact, it probably works better if you do believe it to be direct from God's printer.
Way to miss the point.
like did you even read it?
I know you would, jla, cause I've seen your photos in the cookin' thread, but the question that many men would not be able to answer correctly is: Would you clean the house to protect your kids? Would you cook dinner to protect your kids? Would you do laundry to protect your kids? Would you *lock your guns in a safe* to protect your kids?
Anyone who doesn't do those things is not a good parent. Period.
Would you parent to protect your kids?
Or maybe more on point, would you sacrifice your gun fetish to protect your kids?
Of course the easy way to win this specific ARGUMENT is to declare loudly that OF COURSE I WOULD. But you're not the end-all be-all. You're not the point. You're not even a proper representation of the intended audience, so you're over here on the edge of the war setting up a boxing ring and pretending your personal views somehow have an effect on the larger discourse.
Disclosure: I still have you on mute, so what I wrote above is based on my understanding of x-lax based on past behavior, not specific to his recent comments. How'd I do?
dunk.
No true gunsman.
If guns aren't the problem and people are the problem why would you ever give the problem guns?
Oh, x-jla - I'm sure you've been posting a lot of injudicious nonsense but I've blocked you so . . .
jla, you really need to stop taking everything I post as directly targeted at you. The fetish comment was more generally targeted at people with a gun fetish in the terms of the twitter thread ... but be as narcissistic as you want to be I guess.
As for the dangers posed by guns in gun safes to children ... I'll just point out that there have been cases where safes have found to be faulty and even resulted in the death of children who were able to gain access to them. Also, my father (a responsible gun owner) had a gun safe and stored his guns, unloaded, locked inside, with the ammo locked in a different part of the home in a different safe with a different code/key to access it. I think I first figured out where everything was and how to unlock the safes when I was about 10 years old. So overall, I'd disagree that having a gun in a safe does not pose any danger to kids.
I own firearms. I conceal and carry nearly every day. I been trained by experts in defensive handgun combat. I train a lot with my firearms. I've had to use a firearm to defend myself form an attacker who broke into my home.
I have no children.
I still lock up my firearms when not in active use.
When nieces and nephews come to visit the firearms are disabled so they cannot fire. The parts are stored high up out of reach, then the ammo is stored separately.
If you have children in your house you NEVER leave a firearm (even locked up) where a child to get to it. EVER.
My dad is a retired cop and I spent the majority of my childhood in the boy scouts, so I know my way around guns & gun safety. I'm with Chad on this. As a kid, our guns were locked in a keyed-safe that only my dad had a key to. More than that, I was taught from a very early age that you don't touch the safe. Frankly, I don't trust any gun owner who isn't somewhat terrified of their guns. In the way that I don't trust a carpenter who isn't somewhat terrified of their tablesaw. If you can't acknowledge the increased risk to your own safety & the safety of your loved ones because of the tool you have, I don't trust you to be responsible with the tool.
Chad's comment's begs the question if there even is a "responsible" gun storage solution for a household with an inquisitive 10-year-old who can literally access every part of his home and had done it because he has an interest in architecture and how houses and things get put together and the mechanical inner workings of things like locks and safes and figuring out what secrets might be hiding in plain sight.
FWIW, there are no hidden secret passageways or doors behind bookshelves in my childhood home. Though there were decent hiding places in the basement where the floor joists sit on top of the foundation wall once you open up the return air register to gain access to the cavity above the ceiling (not where my father kept his gun safe by the way).
I can also say that my friend's basement had a purpose build hiding place in the foundation wall that was accessed via a magnetic catch on some plywood paneling that was all hidden behind some artwork (it was empty when we found it, but we soon filled it up with our treasures).
I agree with tduds' comments about tools, except I wouldn't say terrified, but certainly a healthy respect. Partly because I've seen the results of tablesaw, jointer and shaper accidents. I'm not terrified of my guns--they are just tools, after all--but I definitely have a healthy respect for them and wish they would be regulated at least as strictly as automobiles. I learned gun safety at a young age. In 6th grade a classmate shot and killed another classmate (and friend) in the neck and killed him.
I don't have mine locked up but they are well-hidden and their ammunition is not in the same location. Part of learning gun safety is to obsessively check the chamber. I can't pick up a gun without doing so. We don't have kids or really any visitors so it's not as much of a problem as it could be. But thanks for the reminder to get or make a locking safe for them.
I'd say there isn't. The best you can do is keep firearms unloaded, locked up, and if possible disabled with either a trigger lock or a cable lock. Then the ammo is stored someplace else, and again locked.
I like the secrete hidie-hole in the basement you found! That would be cool for a kid to find. That brings up a good point - kids WILL find any and all firearms in the house.
Completely agree Chad. I tend to think of it like when I lock up my bicycle in public. Anyone intent on gaining access will be able to, the locks are just keeping the people without that much intent from trying.
As a 10-year-old, I had all the intent to gain access. Luckily, I never had any intent to do anything with the guns once I gained access. It was a puzzle for me, not a means for anything else.
Puzzles were really my thing if I'm being honest. Relating to another story about guns, I was the fastest in my JROTC class in 9th grade for disassembly and reassembly of the M1 rifle. I don't remember the time exactly, but it was just a puzzle to me. It was about the only part of the class that appealed to me in any way. Well that, and tracking the shadow line on my desk at the exact same time each day (really another type of puzzle).
EA - speaking from my own childhood, the solution is less about "hiding" and more about awareness. I knew exactly where the guns were, and if I really wanted to I probably could have figure out a way in. But it was *drilled* into my head practically from birth that you don't touch the gun safe. Zero exceptions. Don't even look at it. If you want to go shooting, ask dad. If you mess with the safe, there's hell to pay.
Wood Guy - That's a good point, maybe "terrified" is an overstatement. Healthy respect, for sure, which imo is rooted in the gruesome knowledge of consequences that come from a lack of respect (the consequences, I guess, are what's terrifying).
tduds, essentially the same for me. My father never tried to "hide" them, I'm just pointing out that if he had, I would have found them. He did tell us to not touch it, but if I'm honest, that just made me want to get into it all the more. He also taught the awareness, well before I ever actually gained access, and would take me shooting as much as I wanted to. I just never really wanted to all that much. I saw no need for it. There was one time in my entire life where I used a gun for anything other than shooting at an inanimate target and it was enough for me that I immediately regretted it because I didn't "need" to do it. There were plenty of other solutions to the problem that would have been better.
It's funny I don't really think of target shooting as "training" for anything. I just like marksmanship. Now that I think of it, I have a similar relationship to running.
Growing up we always had several guns hanging on the wall and ammo was in the adjacent closet. When friends would come over we'd often do some target practicing. But I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and most of my friends grew up hunting, so we followed good safety protocols and nobody got hurt.
Well, there was that one time we convinced a friend who was NOT experienced with guns to hold the 12-ga a few inches from his shoulder, "to absorb the kickback." We didn't realize that he didn't know he shouldn't pull both triggers for the double barrel at once. A few years ago I saw him and he was still pissed about it, 25 years later. Fortunately he didn't break his shoulder.
With power tools, I learned how to use a table saw and radial arm saw with little instruction; my brother and I were just expected to figure it out, and we did. Though I've had many close calls and I'm surprised I have all of my body parts today. The reason I take issue with the word "terrified" is that I have seen how people act when operating power tools while terrified, or driving, or climbing ladders or walking on roofs. Terror does not lead to good decisions. Confidence and respect, with a dash of fear, earned through experience and education are better qualities to have when in potentially deadly situations, IMO.
Knew a guy once who was missing his ring finger. Found out he actually lost all of his fingers and thumb to a table saw and the reconstruction was why his thumb looked like a ring could fit on it.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-only-way-to-prevent-car-crashes-is-more-cars
I used to work at a saw mill as a teen. A good percentage of the sawyers were missing fingers and/or had reconstructive surgery. Thankfully I never witnessed any bad accidents, though one guy got run over by an extension-boom forklift one day. We all had to get forklift licenses after that. Ha!
I am obliged to post this.
Just my friendly quarterly reminder that, yes, you can block jlax, and yes, it does make the forum much more desirable to read.
i was off the wagon for a bit.. but i'm back on.
Dude we're playing soccer.
you sunk my scrabble-ship.
I have this image of x-jla sitting at his computer and wondering why no one is responding to him . . .
"x-jla is ignored by you"
"x-jla is ignored by you"
'x-jla is ignored by you'
At this point he's just talking to himself . . .
Because it looks gooood:
doing pretty well myself here. in no way did i ever think an article about jp+libertarianism would trigger xlax. never.
He's triggered by almost anything.
Can the BGH update the text so that when you have him blocked the text reads "x-jla is triggered by you" ... yes?
Oh gowd, that would be funny. BGH - do it!
You'd think a guy so obsessed with convincing us he should be trusted with guns would be less easily triggered.
Actually, that's a valid point. When you carry a firearm you need to ignore and 'brush off' a lot of stuff. Legally there is a very narrow set of circumstances that allow someone to use deadly force in self defense or the defense of others. Hell, even drawing a firearm is limited to a super narrow set of circumstances.
Maybe it's some sort of amnesia.
talking about getting triggered in a debate about firearms...
I just assume every post jla makes is a obtuse reaction to being triggered.
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03...
"Jordan Peterson claims to slay sacred cows and challenge prevailing
orthodoxies. But what he’s really offering is a minor twist on
tried-and-true conservatism — defending existing hierarchies and
opposing the democratization of political and economic life."
essentially my opinion of most libertarians.
Ah yes... JP... typical pseudo-intellectual jive now it bite-size pop culture snippets!
jla, JP's popularity si due to clueless wankers quoting snippets and treating them like mic-drops. He uses language and typical word definition arguments to appear to make a point all while layering it in a thick coat of social science evolutionary vibe. It's philosophy with training wheels masquerading as critical thinking.
^Douglas Adams
jla, I don't care much for conclusions. I do care about the process and the way in which they frame their observations that lead to said conclusions. Hitchens and Adams are those I'd consider intellectuals.
Solzhenitsyn, now there's an intellectual.
by the way, this link included in the article, is worth visiting. love seeing jp get dunked on by zizek (a real intellectual) - what a hack.
Biden is the most senile president we’ve ever had. You can’t possibly think he’s capable after watching that sad display
You are 100% right in every way.
Reagan would like a word.
What, specifically, did you find sad? What, specifically, do you consider evidence of his senility? And how, specifically, do you believe these things are negatively affecting administrative policy?
If it's as obvious as you seem to think it shouldn't be very difficult to explain.
Xjla, I am positive you are going to dispute this and I am not going to respond, but I'll say it once. Biden stutters. I stutter. I know what stuttering looks like, and it's not what most people think of as stuttering. I have watched many videos of him supposedly being senile and so far in all but a couple of cases it has looked almost exactly like I do when I stutter. If you don't believe me, watch a few episodes of the BS + Beer Show and you'll see me stutter, pause, maybe substitute a word or two, or look like I'm searching for a word when really I'm searching for the muscles to get the word out.
The couple of cases where he just says a word that does not make sense for the situation, if you read about the context it does make sense. The truth is that I really don't care if he is senile; I like Harris and think she would make a great president. Bring on the 25th amendment for all I care. But I have yet to see him acting senile--just doing what us stutterers do.
Que the arguing that "that's not stuttering..."
Oh no he made a bird pun that didn't land, send in the men in white coats.
can someone explain why showing id when voting is racist? I seriously don’t understand. It’s not hard or expensive to get an id.
You are 100% right in every way.
If you're going to need an ID to vote then that ID should be provided, free of charge, when you register to vote. Anything more is a poll tax.
*cough* opportunity cost *cough* *cough*
You went from "It's zero effort to get an ID" to "If you can't put in the effort, you don't deserve to vote" real quick there.
Oh, I didn't realize laziness or ignorance was disqualifying for someone's right to vote. Sounds pretty discriminatory to me.
Before one can dunk one must position the hoop to where it best suits their limited reach. I think that's an old Buddhist koan.
We, as a democracy, should do whatever it takes to make voting as easy as possible. Any step in the other direction, especially if it appears to disproportionately affect a single cohort, is counter to democracy. Everything else you said is lazy troll bait & I will not acknowledge it.
I'm so tired of you. *back on ignore*
Nevermind. Totally pointless to post anything here.
the racial element to voter ID laws is that historically legislation intended to create a barrier to voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, were enacted in southern states after reconstruction to intimidate and prevent black people from voting. unfortunately we aren't completely out of the jim crow era and we still have people who want to continue those discriminatory practices. the question is, who do you want to be? do you want people to see you as the person who continues the discriminatory practices of the jim crow era, or do you want to be seen as the person who wants to make voting more accessible to all americans?
"A lazy uninformed voter is a voter who is more susceptible to, and promotes, sound bites and pandering from low quality politicians." -- this is you jla. you're regurgitating the soundbites from low quality politicians. voter id laws are not designed to prevent people like you from voting, they target a different demographic.
“Low quality politician” - that accurately describes the vast majority of them. At least from the public perspective.
then require a fingerprint along with automatic voter registration for all valid voters. Republicans would love it if the government recorded every citizens fingerprint from infancy to verify ID. Just because it's easy for you to get an id doesn't mean it's as easy for everyone. There is no widespread voter fraud. This is entirely Republican-lead Jim Crow era legislation intended to restrict access to the ballot box. There is no other angle here. Democrats don't like voter ID laws because they want the voters rights act to come back and they don't want Jim Crow limits to voting.
At the risk of accidentally agreeing with jla on something political... what's the deal/problem with the ID? Do folks need a specific id card to vote hence the arbitrary barrier? Is this a common problem for folks not to have regular id cards?
Signed, a confused Canadian spending his Saturday working 2 building permits.
NS, this pretty much sums it up: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html
Thanks EA. We have something similar here (https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id&document=index&lang=e#ftn1) but at least we admit that having the proper ID is problematic for some. The thing is we all have gov-issued health cards because of communism, probably, so maybe that's why I don't see anyone up here making a fuss.
jla, it's not easy to solve because it's jim crow legislation intended to marginalize minority voters. if the problem they were trying to solve was to reduce widespread voter fraud that isn't happening, then yes, it would probably be easy to solve. unfortunately, none of this legislation has anything to do with reducing widespread voter fraud, which isn't happ ening. if they came up with a solution that made it easy to verify a minority voter's identity at the polling locations, it wouldn't be jim crow era discrimination designed to marginalize minority voters would it?
It's hard to convince people to solve a problem they benefit from.
I need an ID on me when I leave the house and I need to show my ID when I vote, don't know how you're allowed to cast a ballot without them verifying if the person with the voting pass is the person on the voting pass...
But I personally think it’s wrong that my government charges me money to get that document, ID, that they force me to have on me at all times and that they fine me when not having it on me. If I were poor(er) the ID would be for free though, so in a way I’m glad I am "allowed" to pay for it.
I vote by mail, as it should be in any advanced democracy. No need to show any ID, and honestly (despite much uninformed yelling to the contrary) easier to secure than in-person ballot
ah yes, big supporter of voting by mail, but since I anyhow need to have an ID, I don't mind voting in-person. I also kind of love the nostalgia of voting on paper (no voting machines here any more) even got to keep my red pencil this time thanks to covid.
Rando, you have to pay for your ID card?
Yes, it costs around 50 Euros and is valid for 5 or 10 years or so.
Big tech companies are private companies, so censorship of speech is not technically a violation of the first amendment, albeit it’s creating a culture that is incompatible with that spirit. BUT recently some Nazi from CA proposed a bill to punish big tech for not monitoring “hate speech”. This is an outsourcing of tyranny. The government has been soft handedly doing this by threatening big tech with possible regulation...it’s a slippery slope
Link to the bill.
I have enough Jewish friends that I have learned to be very careful about using the word Nazi casually, and to be suspicious of anyone using it to describe others. I'm sure you didn't choose it indiscriminately but calling someone a Nazi and noting that they're from CA does not have your intended effect on me; quite the opposite in fact. A couple minutes of Googling doesn't turn up whatever you're talking about, in any case.
"Assembly Bill 587, authored by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), would require social media companies to post their terms of service in a specified manner and with additional specified information. This would mean that social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit would need to update their terms of service and publicly disclose their policies regarding user behavior and activities that can result in a temporary or permanent ban of a user. According to Assemblyman Gabriel’s office, this can mean disclosing their corporate policies regarding “online hate, disinformation, extremism, harassment, and foreign interference, as well as key metrics and data regarding the enforcement of those policies.” AB 587 received bipartisan support after being introduced on Monday, with no Assembly members opposing the bill."
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/social-media-companies-would-be-forced-to-disclose-ban-flagging-policies-in-new-assembly-bill/
Can you explain again how this is a Nazi-level slippery slope? Is it better that social media can ban people without anyone knowing exactly why?
Here's the bill text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB587
BTW, "[giving] them a taste of their own medicine" doesn't sound like the actions of someone who hasn't taken sides, especially when that someone likes to remind all of us that they haven't taken sides.
Is accountability bad now?
Side note, as I have heard the term "intellectual dishonesty" for years now, always from right-wingers, and always wondered how it differed from "dishonesty."
Wikipedia says intellectual honesty means:
"One's personal beliefs or politics do not interfere with the pursuit of truth;
Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may contradict one's hypothesis;
Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another;
References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism is avoided.
Xjla, I have to say that based on this description, the most intellectually dishonest person arguing here is you.
I believe you try to be honest, but fall into the trap of twisting things for your own purposes. Using the term Nazi to own the libs? Your politics getting in the way of objective truth. Not linking to the story you're talking about? Relevant facts conveniently omitted. I could go on. I'm just saying it's a bit rich for you to call out intellectual dishonesty when you do nothing but spin facts for your own purposes here.
I do care about government over-reach; I have a friend in Australia who has talked, carefully, about what they are and aren't allowed to say regarding the pandemic and it's a bit scary. But so is the American free-for-all-you-can-eat buffet. As conservatives used to tell me, words matter, and you can't just yell fire in a crowded theater without consequence. Perhaps if we didn't have a liar-in-chief incite a riot and bring the country to the verge of political collapse, we wouldn't need to have this conversation.
jla, with the text of the bill linked above, you're free to pull in the text that supports what you're saying. Instead, you've actually shied away from engaging with what the bill actually says and you've avoided even providing a link to it, relying on others to do so. If you're committed to following that intellectual honesty side of yours, you should be able to show us the text and make an argument that supports your conclusion. To not do so, and then claim that we are being intellectually dishonest because we don't draw your same conclusion is fairly ridiculous.
In other words ... you made a claim with no supporting documentation. When asked for it you said, "because I say so." When told it doesn't work that way, you said, "I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."
This would be an interesting topic to actually debate--as in, make points, support your points, show examples, etc.. "Nuh uh, you are" is not debate, as you note.
The problem with jla's arguments is not that he's dishonest, it's that he's not very smart. I fully believe he thinks he's being honest and objective, but holding that thought while arguing what he frequently argues displays a somewhat facile grasp on the world and political machinations. That's why he's not fun to debate.
I refuse to simplify my philosophies for your understanding. The patterns are there whether or not you're able to see them. The rest of the crew doesn't seem to struggle so much.
It's almost like arguing with strangers on the internet is not the most productive use of anyones' time...
I'm learning.
Sure, intent and enforcement quite often differ from - in many cases contradict - the written word of the law. I think the argument here is that the intent you're perceiving is not as obvious as you seem to believe.
Well this is exciting conversation...
You're not missing anything
same here... waiting for someone to post something who is worth while listening to.
While tainting any discussion of it with his bad faith efforts to own the libs, and "give them a taste their own medicine," jla actually brought up an interesting bill. It was introduced in CA regarding social media companies, their terms of service when it comes to hate speech, extremism, foreign interference, etc., and it would be interesting to talk about .. but not here with jla.
I'm not sure if Paul would want to wade into it, but given that he owns a social media company based in CA I'd be interested in hearing his take on it, even if it isn't on the merits of the bill itself but whether or not this would affect Archinect (there are some qualifiers for what constitutes a social media company in the text of the bill).
is there a cliffs notes version?
Companies have to clearly define and make available the terms of use for their websites and state what can get you banned and for how long.
I imagine a steep downside to this which can be seen in the lengthy EULA hiding stuff that is only "legal" as long as nobody takes the EULA writing company to court. Vague language makes bad law and all that.
And what's the deal with foreign interference, asking for a friend...
The democrats are criminally stupid.
Should have said, "Look at our nice new infrastructure plan! Exciting! Oh, how will we fund it? With TAX CUTS of course."
Cut taxes (even marginally) for 90% of people and raise them for the groups they were going to raise them on anyways.
Too bad the tax increases on those remaining 10% not pay for all the infrastructure improvements but also more than make up for the reduction in taxes in the remaining 90%.
Democrats would fumble a wet dream if given the opportunity. Marketing is not their strong suit.
I was about to respond but I can't deal with the number of notifications I'm going to get if I do, and I'm not going to change anyone's opinion, so what's the point in posting here.
The top 10% hold about 70% of the total wealth, so it seems extremely fair that they'd be responsible for *at least* 70% of the total tax revenue.
The Democratic Party platform is objectively popular and the party is absurdly bad at selling their proposals. The Republican Party platform (well, back when it existed) is objectively unpopular and the party is frighteningly good at marketing to racial and class grievance to garner identitarian support since they lack ideological support.
It's funny when you get mad at facts.
"taxing the top half into economic pain."
lol
New page for the rest of us.
We might have a shot at not screwing this one up.
I finally got tired of getting sucked in enough to put xjla on ignore. So what do you want to talk about?
In my neighborhood it's become difficult to address problems because things have gotten to a point where institutional and very old failures have created a situation in which one can't say "Man, this place is a mess" or "I do not feel safe" without someone else accusing that individual of intent that was not there, and at most they were simply ignorant of the underlying issues while being a bit selfish with their feelings.
Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone, often not in a good way.
“Social” media...
i'm thankful everyday i didn't grow up with social media. this was plenty of social media for me.. was always quite sad to lose stewart to a snake bite:
Fancy.
I had this:
“ Social media has changed how we think about and interact with everyone”
I still remember phone numbers from friends and family from the pre-internet/text times...some of whom dead for decades.
I won Oregon Trail IRL.
rando: Smart phones mean I haven't had to actually memorize a phone number in years. I can remember my high school fling's phone number, but sometimes forget my wife's.
tduds - how many of your party got dysentery though?
I got shingles once.
My dog poops on John McLoughlin's front lawn.
Interesting: https://apnews.com/article/jan...
“Competitiveness is about more than how U.S.-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,” Yellen said in a virtual speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods.”
While this certainly has its drawbacks & flaws, and it's definitely going to be a huge political lift, I think something along these lines has real potential to quell the rampant off-shoring of profits and the "race to the bottom" mentality that (imo) is largely responsible for the hollowing out of the US' public coffers.
same issue happens locally between states- would love to see something there as well.
...with President Delaware in the big seat I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Yellen finally got something right. States need to do the same thing to keep corporations honest. Many corps get decades-long tax abatements to set up business in a state then move 6 months before the abatement is up.
BUT MILES THEYRE CALLED OPPORTUNITY ZONES. WHY DO YOU HATE OPPORTUNITIES?!
Opportunities for who? The usual suspects.
I get caught up in it sometimes, but to be honest I typically don't give much attention to the "current events" of Politics. 95% of it is soap opera, palace-intrigue, and dumb sports analogue. What *does* interest me is the history of politics, & how policy echoes through the generations, & how it evolves, & how precedent is established and so on. Everything is history. If I can't place an action in a context of decades, it's functionally meaningless.
All this to say I'm going to make more effort to post things like that in here, to hopefully open up some more interesting discussions and drown out the "gotcha!" bullshit that seems to consume this & so many other political online discussions.
First up, this great history on the "New Left" of the '60s. Read it over a couple of drams of cheap scotch the other night and not only is it a fantastic history in itself, I noticed a lot of relevant similarities to today's Leftist (and Leftist-in-name-only) movements. Useful precedent, and plenty of lessons to be learned.
https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
This song explains how I view "liberals" vs. "leftists" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nFvhhCulaw
Tduds, did you read today's HCR post: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-6-2021? I've heard most of it before but I love how she puts things in context. Seems to relate to your post.
Trend? yes. Point? no.
Thanks Wood Guy. I only catch her posts occasionally, but I always enjoy them. I agree she is great at finding the context of the moment (Others I think are good at this: Daniel Dale, Jared Yates Sexton, & Ezra Klein)
Ukraine redux: war, Russophobia and Pipelineistan
https://thesaker.is/ukraine-redux-war-russophobia-and-pipelineistan/
The Biden-Ukraine Conspiracy!
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/04/02/stephanopoulos-blinken-score-win-for-micimatt/
Because Chuckles The Racist 'scraper likes stats, tldr?
You won't like it.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/
https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
https://www.theroot.com/maybe-america-is-racist-1846667213?fbclid=IwAR00UUVejslZwYvfX1SCtEPS68cSnkOQjOFr8b4QHi0mVce4sUc3Q7i7P74
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550620916071
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3431132
Everything has gotten worse. This place is just a refection of that. And that trend is accelerating rapidly.
lol
this place has somehow gotten worse.
Pagination changed recently. There used to be a comment about a new page and a chance to get it right at the top. Now it's at the bottom of page 9.
Somebody got their comments nuked from the thread.
archi_dude?
Seems like it...
no double standard here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNswTDWF9EL/?igshid=4frnnwem29vb
Maybe the kkkiller kkkops need more training?
So a black guy in a black neighbourhood is killed by cops because of the higher crime in that neighbourhood, the black guy in the white neighbourhood is killed by cops because he looks like coming from a neighbourhood with higher crime? What can black people do to finally not get killed by cops, because it seems to me they're in a Catch-22 situation here...
Nothing. The culture is to kill Blacks. Whites don't get executed at random traffic stops. Police, economic persecution, racism, it's all part of the program to maintain an underclass that is used to instill fear in the general population, which makes them easier to manipulate. Hitler did it with Jews, the US is doing it with Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians ...
More white people swim because of vestigial generational effects from segregated pools.
No one is saying (okay, no one worth taking seriously is saying..) that cops deliberately go out looking to murder some black folk because they're hood-wearing violent white supremacists. What people are saying is that the legacy of racism in this country has left us with a slew of different factors - from poverty to health to crime to education to stereotype to implicit & explicit bias - which American minorities, especially black Americans, being disproportionately impacted by. That's what we keep trying to explain by saying these things are systemic & structural. You just accidentally explained it to yourself above, but you're too arrogant or ignorant to figure that out.
I do agree with your solution though. It's not *the whole* solution, but its definitely part of a solution.
A system, that has its own historical legacy, tied to capturing runaway slaves, cannot be given the benefit of doubt when it comes to race, and racism. Chairman Hampton was sleeping in his bed, executed by kkkops. Police, real estate, medical, education, governance, all have tentacles in 18th and 19th century racist policies, that they, we, refuse to grapple with, all because, why? Because, that was in the past, yet, it wasn't thousands of years ago, it was only in a handful of generations ago.
kudos to jla for making a clear point in one comment using paragraphs and everything.
I can't remember where I heard it first but someone said it seems like America is trying to run out the clock on racism. & sorry but that's not how it works. Inertia won't fix itself, it takes action.
Inertia:
“If you make up 13% of the population and commit 2x the amount of crime you can expect 2x the amount of police interactions and therefore 2x the amount of misfortunes at the hands of bad cops, overly vigilant cops, or negligent cops.”
If you are being singled out more by the police, it only makes sense they are likely going to find something that sticks...it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a downward spiral in one...as black people also simply show up more in the statistics because they have more police interactions but they have more police interactions because they show up more in the statistics(!)
you can’t find what you’re not looking for...
That IS how it works x-jla, it's called racial profiling and it targets non-whites specifically and intentionally, richer or poorer...why'd you think Chris Rock had to make his "PSA"?
*Describes the system exactly*
"See, it's not about the system."
"Telling young kids growing up in the inner city that nothing is their fault is putting them in harms way."
Good thing nobody's telling them that.
xlax, you know what you've accomplished here, you and you alone? you've single-handedly have wore the fuck out of the term "woke", in fact 2020 is asking you to stop already...
Post some examples then.
Over half of police-involved killings in 2020 began after non-violent incidents
I can only imagine what jla is saying in response to this .
There's a verdict.
I expect that we'll be hearing helicopters all evening again...
seeing on the twitter that it's guilty
"Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/derek-chauvin-trial-verdict-n1264670
Yup. Guilty. The governor of MN still declared a state of emergency this morning at 7am CST.
HRRRRG!
Minnesota AIA continues to get it correct.
something like this? https://www.aia.org/pages/6303978-racial-equity-initiative-
People using the term "woke" are either incapable of seeing the systemic problems that exist, or racists. Or both. You decide.
"Woke" is similar to "snowflake"--meant as an insult, but I wear the terms with pride--I'd rather be sensitive to others' plights than to be an insensitive asshole.
I wonder what jla's clients would think of his views
Sorry Chad, strong thumbs down on that one. That's the sort of talk that keeps me anonymous around here. Whether they would love, hate, or be indifferent about his views, that's something you don't mess with.
As a purely hypothetical comment I think it's fine to wonder, but it does read a bit like a threat. I may not agree with most of XJLA's opinions but he has the right to hold them.
i'm missing the problem here, seems like a bit of an overreaction. unless chad knows xlax's identity, i think the speculation is proving a point. not that i've read a post from xlax anytime recently..
I actually do know jla's identity and business. I find many of his comments racist and stupid. However he's allowed to have those opinions as long as he's not causing harm. Square is correct in my intent though - would jla say these things to his clients?
For me posting anonymous is a pet peeve of mine. What you say online is no different than saying it in person. If you're not comfortable with someone knowing who you are online because of what you say then you shouldn't be saying it.
That being said I do see a difference between posting anonymously to protect yourself from retribution for exposing harmful or illegal actions of others and posting anonymously just so you can get away with saying shit that would get you in trouble.
"I agree with everything in this statement except “anti-black bias in architecture”. What’s an example of this?"
To begin, that isn't the quote.
"Looks like a lot of typical identity politics bullshit. Any mention of...idk...removing expensive barriers to entry like licensing? Surly if a 15$ id is a barrier to vote then a 2-10 year low paid internship following a 100k degree program must be too, no?"
I'm not aware of AIA National publicly supporting this position but there are AIA chapters working on removing the education requirement as we speak. My state has an alternative path to licensure and as a member of my chapter's board I have been involved in discussions of how we can support other states adopt similar alternative paths.
yeah, i mean you sort of have to be aware that anything you say online could eventually come back to you, even if anonymous. there's no guaranteed protection.
exhibit a
i can't believe i have to respond to this.. but what's the common thread here, mentioned 7 times?
poverty.
Wood, I agree, I don't care if people think I'm woke. Dumbasses who do, don't know shit about me. I didn't wake up in 2008 and think that racism was over, just the opposite. It's these racist smear merchants like xlax spreading a blatant disregard for the reality that exists, who often resort to that bullshit.
I wonder how all this garbage reconciles with the idea of a "color blind" society? Color blind, but a limited understanding of one aspect of a culture, means the entirety of that culture is "x". We're one step away from calling Jews good with money, and Chinese are great at math and science, hell everyone knows that all Russians are forced to drink vodka from the bottle at birth.
Just because a colorblind society was your goalpost does not mean it was the goalpost.
Listen I didn't look very hard I'm sure there are better examples.
Anyway my Irish great grandfather famously (within the family, at least) slowly drank himself to death after immigrating because of the lack of social cohesion, constant money worry, and frequent exclusion he faced in America. So, you know, if you see an overlap between a "whiskey culture" and "alcoholism" there's a causal instigator there and its - if not explicit than implicit - racism.
And just for the record, jla, I do not think you're racist. I do think your views are much less examined than you think they are, but not racist. Ok back to lazily trolling...
Of course you'd misunderstand MLK's words. You read them as passive, divinely provided, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Go read a book, or a fucking article.
Which culture does your beating of a dead horse arise from?
*Looking into 'not shutting the fuck up' culture in White America*
Sure I could focus on rhetoric, citations, examples, history, etc. but that's only part of the story. Turns out that not shutting the fuck up is considered honorable in some subcultures of White America.
I've even heard that, in some remote villages, shutting the fuck up is considered a violation of ones fundamental rights.
Look I gave you plenty of heads up...
Why do we have any lower courts again? Oh, right. To make sure the pea brains in the supreme court's conservative club don't have to work as hard to dismantle protections for everyone who isn't white, male, a gun, or a corporation.
I think I missed the context that this is referring to?
Not sure tduds. Only thing I've seen lately that might fit is the "public charge" rule that SCOTUS essentially sent back to the lower courts. I'm not fully up to speed on it though so I'm not sure if it really fits SP's complaint.
Recent decision to make sure we can keep kids of color in prison for life with no pesky reading or thinking required for the judge or jury, upcoming loosening of gun "rights'," making sure there's no oversight abilities for charitable donations, etc etc.
Point being that the lower court decisions (as well as previous SCOTUS rulings) do nothing except make sure the only cases that percolate up through the system are the ones these shitgibbons can use to the greatest political effect.
x-jla is ignored by you
*looks to see if there is anything lively, thoughtful conversation going on*
.
OK now this is getting too meta, most of the thread is me seeing the message "x-jla is ignored by you" and the rest of it is people posting the same thing as images or quotes.
Petition to rename this thread "x-jla tries to dunk on libs in an empty room"
Granted. Also acceptable is 'x-jla talks to himself'
You need game to dunk.
Empty room indeed
go ahead dummy.
A masterclass in how to lie with statistics.
I don't understand this tweet. Even if it were sarcasm I don't get it.
Naw it's a half- joke that clearly has merit seeing by the nerves it hit.
It feels hyperbolic.
Therein lies the joke.
Babble, for me, the example as described in the tweet, best represents what fraudsters like xla, and others in the conservative echo chamber, like to do to challenge the movements for Black Lives. Especially when white people like me challenge the white supremacy, and capitalist narrative that has been destroying the country.
They want to use "woke" as an insult, instead of dealing with reality. I'm not offended, but Bree is correct.
"Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any system ever."
I'm going to elaborate on this one and nothing else, simply for the sake of time. This is, to me, the "How to Lie With Statistics" archetype. The framing is not incorrect, just simplified. As an analogy, imagine poverty as drowning. You're not wrong to say that "Capitalism" (as you define it) has saved a huge proportion of the world from "drowning", more than any other system in the past.
But what this "fact" ignores is that some people are clinging to a floating plank while others have 300' yachts and unlimited champagne. And whenever the people on the planks suggest that some of the champagne budget might help pay for, say, a rowboat, they're told "You should be thankful you're not drowning anymore!" Kinda rings hollow imo.
There's also an entirely different argument which points out, rightly, that before we invented capitalism (and even for a while after capitalism's initial ascension) Feudalism was the system that lifted the most people out of poverty in human history. There's nothing to suggest something else far more successful might supplant capitalism in the future, and pointing to it's past success does nothing to counter the claim that capitalism as a system is starting to show its age. Things evolve.
The Planet Money people at NPR did a podcast recently on socialism and it pointed out that evolution of economic systems thing. For a 20-min overview of the history and critique of capitalism, it wasn't a bad episode. Worth a listen at any rate. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981686254/socialism-101
Defend capitalism without talking about communism challenge go.
EA - That planet money episode was great! I caught it a couple of weeks back. Very even-handed I thought.
Outliers skew averages. Perhaps we could discuss medians.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/Is-San-Francisco-more-conservative-than-Moscow-16151793.php
Facts without context are simply trivia.
You've missed the point & I've lost interest. Ciao.
everybody’s ignoring x-jla but can’t stop talking about him...he must hit a nerve here or there. Maybe this thread should be called:
“X-jla is ignored by you-Central”
For all that want to discuss the fact they’re ignoring x-jla but can’t shut up about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ok buddy {-_) am i doing this right?
Not to throw more gasolene on the fire but I just saw this tweet and reminded me of this entire thread.
This is good.
*cracks knuckles*
What's reductionist about it?
Who is saying this?
Many of them.
tduds, does your twitter feed see into the future? No, it's not about critical race theory, but the back and forth of "who said that?" is uncanny.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/st...
Found a version I can embed here (skip to 0:21)
Psaki is a master at shooting down bad faith questions. I'm just catching up to her brilliance.
"Who's saying this?"
"People are."
"Who specifically?"
"You hear it from people.."
"Ok, so it's just you that are saying this, aka it's your opinion."
Gold.
Who says it's legitmate?
Way to pick a completely different playing field instead of just moving the goal posts there jla. I like that she didn't just take it at face value that "different people" "in the media" "say [this is the third term of Obama]," and challenged the reporter to cite some sources of that claim before she would respond to it. Context matters.
But don't let me get in the way of you taking the ball and running with it wherever you want to go to make a point that's completely unrelated to that.
I guess you liked it better when there were no press briefings and the world found out about things from random tweets at 2 am?
Not all questions are created equally. Responding to every question equally conveys the false impression that every question deserves to be asked.
FWIW, she was trying to answer the question which was, "What do you say to people who are saying that?"
"Who are saying that? Who's saying that?"
"You hear that a lot in the media."
"Who in the media?"
"Different people."
"Like ...?"
"Well there were lots of questions when [changes subject to the press conference when VP Kamala Harris was blah blah blah]"
Point is Jen Psaki was trying to figure out who said what exactly so she could respond appropriately and the reporter withdrew the question when she couldn't ask it with enough detail to get a response. It's not dodging anything other than an attempt at a bad faith question to get a sound bite or something.
---
"People are saying jla abuses puppies and kittens. What do you say to people who are saying that?"
"Who is saying that."
"People in the media."
You get the picture...
Depends on who's asking it. and who's answering.
While the questions for the "lab leak theory" were included in the video I posted, my point was about the first half of the video as I explained and as was understood by everyone but you. Feel free to take the ball to another field with a different set of goal posts if you must.
Interesting points EA but have you considered this unrelated point, in which my stance is more easily defendable?
Yes, tduds. And while you may think it is easily defendable, here is another unrelated point as a counter point that in no way counters your first unrelated point.
Wow, no need to immediately turn to personal attacks.
That wasn't a personal attack, but why do you feel the need to defend this completely unrelated issue I'm just now bringing up, and that you in no way have tried to defend?
You're missing the point, which is something else I just thought of and also exhaustively whined about at you nine months ago. If you don't have this argument with me again I'll accuse you of running away because you can't admit you lost.
No, the point is I'll just keep repeating the same annoying stuff until you ignore me and then I'll claim victory because all you know how to do is silence other people's views that don't align with your own. BTW, I don't even really believe the views I'm defending (wink wink), I'm only doing it because all you liberals need to see the real issue which is something I'm not even really going to get into other than to say you should watch some youtube video which I won't even link to.
The people who are saying "people are saying" are the ones saying it. They're planting it by suggesting its already planted. They're *promoting* terrible ideas under the guise that they're just *reporting* them. How are you still taking that bait?
We are now, finally, back to the initial point of the original post.
Mostly I'm sad you didn't pounce on my very intentional use of the word 'master' in an earlier comment.
"I just want to get your reaction to people who question that."
"Well, it's hard to react when I don't know what people you're talking about. [But I will say that the president's actions don't really show what you're alluding to, and it shouldn't be shocking that the VP is involved in governing the country]."
"It's more so than other vice presidents have."
"How so? I'd love to see the data ..."
[paraphrasing the rest of this now]
"I'll provide you with the data sometime and I'd like to get your reaction to it."
"Great, looking forward to it."
"Excellent"
I don't know man, seems like they figured it out just fine and the reporter got enough of a response to go on and follow up with more substance later. Personally, I think this is exactly the job of the WH press secretary and Jen Psaki is doing it wonderfully.
I'm imagining jla dealing with RFIs in this same sort of way.
Contractor: "Hey some people have been saying that the weather has been unusual and we should get an extension in contract time. What do you say to people who are saying that?"
jla: "Who's been saying that?"
"You hear it a lot."
"Who is saying it a lot?"
"People are."
"Ok, well it's hard to say if I don't know who is saying it ... but sure I'll just take your word that the weather has caused some delays and that you're only asking because of that, and not because you've mismanaged the project thus far and are simply looking for anything that might give you a life line so you can make some profit on this job. I'd say to those people that I'll just sign and approve the blank change order proposal and they can fill in the rest when it's convenient. We probably don't need to worry about the details if lots of people are saying it."
The popular perception is based on the repeated amplification of the question. Again, it's surprising to me that you're still falling for this one.
"Many people are saying..." has been a twitter meme for like 5 years now. Come on, dude.
When someone with a vested interest in planting a story plants it with "Many people are saying..." you believe them.
To bring this back from the Psaki topic to the CRT topic: Every single point you've made to criticize critical race theory is something you heard from a critic. Your entire knowledge of the topic is from people who are arguing against it. I know this because you define it incorrectly. No critical race theorist would agree with your framing of it, which is the joke in the screenshot I originally posted.
The point here is that who is saying something *does* matter, because in all discussion but especially in political discussions, why something is said matters more than what is said. You need to understand the motivations of the person making the claim to understand the context in which the claim is made and the goal it seeks to advance.
For example, I have not heard anyone claiming Harris is running the show. You saying that is surprising to me because we're exposed to different media environments. To say "I know that the idea of Harris running the show is a popular narrative that’s been echoed a lot" what you're you're saying that you know its been echoed a lot. You don't know if its true and you don't know who started the story or why. For every thing that "many people are saying", someone had to say it first. Who were they? Why did they say it? Did they witness something? Or are they trying to discredit someone? Was it a journalist with an inside source? Was it an opposition politician? Those are very different motivations. I think a healthy skepticism is warranted there, and I'm surprised by how un-skeptical you are of this given your infinite questioning of ulterior motives and corruption when the political axes flipped.
Oh, but you do care. Otherwise you wouldn't keep talking about it.
Harris leading from behind? I don’t believe, disbelieve, or care. She could have just said “no”.
That wasn't the question posed in the press conference. You brought that up. You don't seem very alert today. Maybe take a break until you can follow your own thread.
I joked years ago but I think this is more true than not: When Republicans do something, they go on TV to explain it. When Democrats do something, Republicans go on TV to explain it.
Again you say "Kendi says this" but you link to criticisms of him, not his own words. You say Kendi says x because other people told you. You didn't bother to listen to the man himself.
Ibrahim Kendi is a controversial and provocative figure (and I'd argue intentionally so), and one could easily debate the pros and cons of any one of his statements or his personal philosophies. But to dismiss an entire school of thought based on a third party's critical interpretation of one of its outliers is, well...
I clicked through a couple of links in that Coleman essay and found his summaries of their contents extremely slanted.
Well those are some words.
"You're all fine to be thinking your thoughts, I don't give a crap about them. But don't you dare let me catch you acting on them. That's where you cross the line and we're gonna have a problem. Can't have you having ideas *and* implementing them."
Spoken like a true libertarian.
"The issue is when institutions begin to adopt these ideas and implement policies that affect people"
What ideas are being adopted by which institutions? In what ways are these policies affecting people and which people are being affected?
Some people are saying there are institutions that are doing this.
To my knowledge, no one considered jla's feelings when the racist policies were put into place by racist institutions so we should just get rid of them. It was fine for them to have racist ideas, but they went to far when they got institutions to implement them without getting jla's take on them first.
"the Asian quota at Harvard."
I assume you're referring to the lawsuit brought by SFFA that they lost, twice. The lawsuit in which the judge ruled that "while the system is "not perfect"...it nonetheless passes constitutional muster." and that "there were 'no quotas' in place at Harvard."
Not the best example imo. Everything else you wrote is your own conjecture. I might get more into that if I'm feeling feisty tonight but I've got work now.
.
Same
Joe the Giant
Wide angle lenses are trippy.
Pretty good opinion piece in the Post today. The Cheneys and the Romneys of the world would like you to forget the thread and focus on the moment, but it's important to remember the thread: "Trump’s GOP is the GOP as it’s ever been."
The Republican Party playbook is the same as it ever was: Disguise worshipfully pro-big business, pro-wealthy policies with appeals to the resentments of President Richard M. Nixon’s “silent majority” or Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” or whatever label the party prefers for a specific type of White American. Every liberal project — from Social Security in the 1930s to Medicare and integration in the 1960s to the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage in the 2010s — is cast as a mortal threat to freedom pushed by the eggheads, the ivory tower or the coastal elites. The threat of “outside agitators” becomes the peril of “political correctness” becomes the menace of “ridiculous wokeness” — the term Cheney used in her Post op-ed last week. They’re all the same look.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
I know its difficult but try to stay on topic. This post is about the 50+ year characteristics of the Republican Party.
Trump's rhetoric rarely matched the policy that was implemented (or continued) during his administration. Aside from a few executive orders (lookin' at you, Tarrifs), the vast majority of government business that happened under the Trump admin was GOP-as-usual.
The essay says as much: "Yes, Trump has turned some of these traits up to 11. The dog whistles became bullhorns; the “executive time” administration plumbed new depths of incompetence. But for Republicans, as televangelist and later right-wing presidential candidate Pat Robertson said 40 years ago, “it’s better to have a stable government under a crook than turmoil under an honest man.” The threat of liberalism outweighs the risk of an inept, amoral or fascistic president. The Trump era — including its culmination in January’s attempted insurrection — was not out of step with that."
Lest I be accused of partisanship, let's acknowledge the impending Democratic fuckup hanging over our heads:
"It simply beggars belief to think these Democrats are earnestly concerned that modestly hiking taxes on corporations and ultra-wealthy heirs, or axing the filibuster, will doom their re-election campaigns. The only thing that could possibly explain why so many Democrats are dead-set on repealing Trump's cap on state and local tax deductions, 56 percent of the benefits of which will flow to the top one percent, is corruption. They are listening to rich donors and lobbyists, and/or keeping one eye on their future career prospects. Voting to raise taxes will infuriate the wealthy and well-connected, and cushy post-office buckraking careers doing consulting or speeches will not be forthcoming for lawmakers who do not toe the oligarch line.
So unless something changes, the swing vote Democrats who will decide whether the party can pass anything so long as it holds the majority in Congress — which could vanish at any time if one of the nine senators in states where they would be replaced by Republican governors dies — aren't going to allow voting rights protections to pass, or tax hikes on the rich, or popular programs to be paid for with borrowing. They're facing the biggest threat to America's democratic institutions since 1860, and they are still wringing their handkerchiefs and trying to save the pet loopholes of their paymasters."
https://theweek.com/articles/9...
I've been limited in my deductions twice now by the SALT cap, but I'm still ok with them not repealing it. I'd rather have them spend their political will elsewhere. Problem is there is no political will elsewhere because elsewhere wouldn't benefit their donor base.
Kind of a bummer we can't actually talk politics in here. "Cherry Picked Headlines and Palace Intrigue Central" isn't as catchy, I guess.
Maybe it's palace intrigue, but let's play a game of "What's going to happen first?"
1
I read point 1 as “Justin Bieber” and got unreasonably excited.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax#1071196
Not surprising, but maybe something will come out of this?
It's not surprising because the last few times this sort of information has made public nothing has come of it.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said, “I share the concerns of every American for the sensitive and private nature and confidential nature of the information the IRS receives. Trust and confidence in the Internal Revenue Service is sort of the bedrock of asking people and requiring people to provide financial information.”
Trust and confidence? NOT in taxing the rich. Trust and confidence in the IRS facilitating and perpetuating vast wealth accumulation by the rich while penalizing people who actually work.
U$A Inc., the world's largest Banana Republic.
x, where's your source on those stats?
Also, this isn't about whether the gov't is "getting enough" or not.
Income != Wealth
It's a bad statistic, even if true. The data is based on reported income, which the ProPublica article indicates is the way to avoid paying taxes (minimize reported income). It ignores the vast amount of wealth not accounted for. Moreso, focusing on the "Top 1%" ignores the staggering inequality within even that top percentile. Take the bottom .9% of that 1% out and then re-run the numbers and see how it stacks up.
Finally, I simply disagree with the premise that "a fair share" is a tax burden somehow equal to a cohort's income share. Redistribution is - at least in part - a goal of progressive taxation. That's more of an opinion so I get that people can & do disagree, but you can disagree with the conclusions without employing a bullshit premise.
Wrong question.
My gawd, those are some infuriatingly deliberate, misleading stats.
No.
(this is a canned response I wrote months ago but it applies here)
I'm not going to do that for you. That's not the conversation I'm having. I'm not going to take the bait that allows you to poke easy holes in the inevitably undercooked ideas I had an hour ago. I'm not going to go on the defensive because you misunderstood my demand. It's not my job to solve the crisis of income inequality. It's not my job to create policy.
My job is to hold accountable the people who were elected to create policy. They put a ton of effort into getting a job whose primary responsibility is to solve problems, or at least try, through policy. If they want their job so bad, they need to listen to problems and try to solve them.
I tossed it in there as an opinion that I admitted was an opinion. I don't really care to litigate it. That you chose to harp on this instead of the other 2/3rd of my post questioning the premise you opened with is curious.
I could spend a few hours and several thousand words elucidating my stance. It would be difficult to present a reasonable case in less. But I've got a job and my stance isn't the point of this thread.
As I said above, our role in the system is exactly to talk about why. How is for legislators. I have no power to enact things, so why waste energy thinking about how I might do it? For me it's about interrogating the what & why, to develop an internally consistent set of beliefs from which I can advocate, donate, and vote.
Why shouldn't taxation be at least somewhat progressive? Why should a few dozen people hoard billions while paying less than 1% effective tax rate? You answer some questions first.
x, how is it an "inconvenient truth" when it's blatantly bending and massaging information to convey their (false) narrative?
You're the reason why every high school and college curriculum requires a basic stat class.
I mean, you're not even trying at this point.
The US is a giant pyramid scheme. Benefits accrue at the very top at the expense of everyone else.
An Amazon warehouse worker's quality of life is very much effected by how much Jeff Bezos spends trying to go to space. In the long term the sum is variable, but in the short term resource availability is very much a zero sum game.
I also reject the framing (that seems like a billionaire invented) that progressive economic policy is somehow a "punishment." A system in which people were actually compensated relative to their value wouldn't produce people with the largesse of Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos. I don't begrudge either of them for taking advantage of a bad system. I begrudge the system for allowing such a disproportionate advantage in the first place.
I'm not even going to bother responding to your kneejerk "but communism!" response. We've been over this so many times: there are infinite options in between "unfettered exploitative capitalism" and "authoritarian Stalinism." Don't use one extreme to defend the other, they're both bad and a huge gulf of middle ground exists where I think you & I would both find satisfaction.
x, you're obviously very passionate about this, but completely missing the point of the article I posted. It's not about quality of life (albeit an affect of) , nor about how much the government receives, nor what the gov't does with the money it receives. It's about how the current system, whether it's deliberate or not, has allowed a certain few to not be accountable for the actual money they make while most have no choice. It's as if you reach a certain threshold and you're invincible. I personally believe this to be problematic and unjust.
We're not, but we are way off topic.
"but deal with the specific offenses that they do"
That's what the ProPublica article is about and, ostensibly, what the topic at hand should be.
I'm fine with blaming Miles for derailing the topic just pointing out that the topic immediately derailed. I guess the larger point is: Whatever your idea of a "fair" tax system, we have a current set of rules and the wealthiest Americans are using their means to skirt those rules. That's a problem.
The concept is that unrealized gains are not considered income, so they don't pay taxes on it. When they sell a stock, they pay capital gains taxes on the profit. If you had to pay taxes on unrealized gains than long term investment would be nearly impossible, it would blead a lot of people dry in the process.
I derailed the topic? It's the Pro Publica article, and I posted the IRS commissioner's response to that. LOL
RJ87 - you're correct, but are you suggesting the only variable in calculating someone's wealth is stock holdings?
Pretty good opinion piece in the Times today related to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/opinion/politics/irs-tax-evasion-geithner-lew-paulson-summers-rubin.html
That article completely ignores tax breaks enshrined into law that only benefit the rich. Beefing up the IRS will not create a "fairer" system for all.
To accomplish that we need truly progressive tax rates (like those in place in the 50's, 60's and 70's when the top rate never fell below 70%) and an aggressive wealth tax to remove the political influence associated with financial wealth.
As Buddha said, 'the wealth of a few is founded on the poverty of many'.
Incidentally there's another opinion piece in the same newspaper about that: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/opinion/income-tax-billionaires.html
In short, yes and also yes. I favor more progressive taxation, and closing loopholes that favor the wealthiest, and beefing up enforcement to raise compliance. It's important not to mistake a step in the right direction for the entire solution, or to let perfection be the enemy of the good.. I want all three, but I'd be happy if even one became reality.
"If higher taxes were the answer to everything" They aren't. Next question.
it's not necessarily about how high or low taxes should be (although it is) it is about what you choose to spend those taxes on...
Even Steve Bannon is upset!
https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-demands-higher-taxes-rich-youre-being-scammed-1599779
To continue the above:
At the federal level taxes have two purposes: regulating the economy and influencing behavior. The government does not require tax revenue to fund spending. The "national debt" is one side of a balance sheet, the other side ("surplus") is money in circulation. Pay off the "debt" and the economy would cease to exist.
The federal government, as the creator of currency, can never run out. Money is not borrowed, it is created with a few keystrokes.
But but but inflation! Inflation is too much money in circulation. The fix for that is not raising interest rates - which just benefits banksters and the investment class - but raising taxes, which drains money from the economy. One of the reasons that the "debt" has soared over the last decade or so without inflarion is that QE and bailouts went directly to Wall Street where they are socked away in private investment - money that is not circulating in the economy.
Tax policy influences behavior by reward and punishment. Raising the tax on cigarettes lowers the number of smokers. Lower taxes on investment income benefits those who shuffle money while higher taxes on labor penalize actual work and effectively serve to hold the working man down.
Note that states can not create currency and are dependent on tax revenue (which could easily be repaced with federal funding, and in many cases is heavily subsidized already).
The game here is to make you believe that the federal government has the same kind of houshold budget that individuals do. We have income and expenses, and when our expenses exceed our income we are in trouble. If we could print our own money that would never be a problem.
The government never has a problem paying for corporate subsidies, a grossly overbloated military and wars of misadventure, tax breaks for corporations and the rich (which if you subscribe to the household budget con are lost revenue) - but when it comes to infrastructure, education, health care, or socially beneficial programs like Medicare or Medicaid "we can't afford it!" because of "the debt".
The fix for that is not raising interest rates - which just benefits banksters and the investment class -
low interest rates act as a give away for the investment class, no? it's what allows firms like blackrock to borrow cheap money and buy middle class homes at an alarming rate, often 5 digits above asking price. also higher interest rates are better for my savings account, the rate of which is pathetic right now.
at the same time lower interest rates = lower mortgages... catch 22?
As noted, low interest rates have decimated working class savings and retirement accounts. Mortgages are bundled together and sold as investment vehicles where everything is leveraged, shorted, insured, traded, and speculated on. The underlying thing itself is irrelevant and can be anything (crytpo, SPACS, WeWork, etc.).
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CWDcCmRzTLODrulr0JcD9?si=-y1JMZmOTdC7ZGpqxs_4lQ&dl_branch=1
This episode had some interesting tidbits on the history of the government’s attitude toward the extremely wealthy.
so… did a bunch of stuff get nuked? I have many notifications but no dumpster
Seems like it
Looking at this thread…xjla is gone, not just ignored
Better for everyone including xjla. All he did was doom scroll and shit post looking for a reaction.
Maybe the militia called him up.
Don’t know which remarks specifically sparked the politburo into action, just thought it was pretty harmless anti-vax stuff, last time I read it. Getting axed from your own thread...isn’t that ironic?
Not just his own thread ...
And was there a thread called b3tadine[sutures] or is that the name of the mod that axed all his comments? that’s what I could see in x-jla’s posting history...maybe the forum should be renamed into wokenect or something, just to make it clear to all involved ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm sorry, what did I miss?! I was busy this weekend [MACA] Making America Communist Again, and couldn't follow everything. There was a thread aboot moi?? Where is this monument to greatness?
The American right wing is so good at murdering buzzwords dead that they manage to kill them in every single country.
Must have set off a firework too close to his ammo cache or something... I guess.
apparently x-jla still has posting privileges?
is he self-editing his posting history? or mods did? ...it seems the Comment History button still has the old posts of his
not mention balkins is still posting despite swearing the forum off...
I'm seeing both their posts all around...
Must have been a temporary thing, or moderator's regret?
bummer
Imo they are professional trolls. Any reaction including using the ignore button only enables them.
Petition to re-nuke whatever was nuked.
Almost literally every discussion in this thread ends with either jla quietly ignoring a challenge he doesn't want to / can't respond to, or jla posting ad infinitum until everyone gives up. That's trollish behavior. It has nothing to do with disagreement. There's no desire to have an actual discussion or learn anything, and I really ought to have learned better by now. It's a dumb but effective outlet when I need it I suppose.
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes - 1902-1967
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
America was founded by rich white slave owners who didn't want to pay taxes. Mission Accomplished!
Great idea...on stolen land
Window was already broken, I just snagged a TV for my family. ;)
"at some point" doing the heavy lifting there.
The whataboutism is strong in this one.
The rules of acceptability with respect to colonization and conquest have evolved over time. It seems useless to compare, say, the Sacking of Constantinople or intra-tribal war in pre-Columbian America or late 19th Century Indian boarding schools, because you're comparing different times with vastly different ethos. If we can agree that the Peace of Westphalia, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the Geneva Conventions are useful constructions of a global ethics, then it seems to follow that much of the American occupation of Native land which occurred *after* those three documents (among others) is, ya know, unethical.
"For people who care so deeply about injustice, why is it they they seemingly ignore the greatest most extreme injustices that are currently occurring"
Because we're having a conversation about a specific thing now. It doesn't mean I'm/we're not aware of or outraged by other things, just that conversations require topics, and the topic here is American imperialism. Either defend it or don't.
Should've been the end of the thread:
It's almost like people can't walk and chew gum simultaneously...
Classic capitalist agenda, avoid the problems that exist at home - Jim Crow, let's go bomb Vietnam, 9/11, let's go bomb Iraq - and go practice global interventionism...classically anti-libertarian thinking. Stop intervening in other peoples problems; we got 99 problems, and your "bitching" ain't one.
"the narrative is being sold as some all encompassing omnipresent reality." No it isn't.
educate us. fully. we will wait. be exhaustive. leave nothing out. bring education to the ignorant. i am so excited to hear about the truth.
I already answered that one next question.
My answer was about when, not who. Thought that was obvious, sorry.
Events that occur prior to the establishment of certain global ethical norms are not equivalent to events that occur after the establishment of those norms when the events in question violate those norms. Pretty straightforward, to me.
That's kinda my point... we (i.e. white folks) broke our own rules.
Because I still exist within, and continue to benefit from, white hegemony. It would seem disingenuous to place myself outside of it.
*eyeroll* This is going nowhere. Once again, I'm exhausted.
You seem suspiciously incapable of understanding the difference between individual behavior and structural inertia. Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are.
I'm done trying to explain things to you. If you actually care to learn things, there's plenty of books about this.
"Not sure if you're doing it on purpose to score points or if you're just not as smart as you think you are."
I used to think it was the former. Now I'm believing more and more that it has always been the latter.
Out of steam, yes.
Look here we are, yet again. So fucking predictable.
Weaseling behind words and definitions instead of addressing the onslaught of criticism your "ideas" face is a sign your ideas were shit to begin with.
There is such a huge amount of time spent trying to rationalize one view of the world within the constraints of facts to the contrary. It must be tiring to keep twisting around in syllogistic knots like that...
"x-jla is ignored by you"
I said no such thing. Again either you're being disingenuous by deliberately misinterpreting me despite several attempts to clarify or stupid by accidentally misinterpreting me. Don't really care which at this point.
I'm sorry the three things I pulled out of my head in 5 seconds didn't include any African or Asian or Pre-Columbian American examples, which definitely exist, but with which I'm simply not as familiar. Pretty annoying that you latched onto my failure to include these examples as evidence that I'm suggesting they don't exist in order to accuse me of a conclusion I'm not making. Real, real annoying.
If you have to entirely re-phrase what someone says in order to make a point against it, you have a weak argument.
You're going back on ignore for a few weeks. I obviously can't be trusted to leave it alone.
jesus fucking christ. You are the ur-example of arguing in bad faith, x-lax.
PEOPLE. STOP.
You're pissing into the wind and wondering why you're wet and stinky.
THAT MEANS YOU TOO, SNEAKYPETE!
“ What it seems that you are really saying is that western culture ought to be held to higher standards.” Makes sense to me to hold the most superior culture to higher standards...e.g. we in “the west” can afford to live a meatless life, there are plenty of healthy and affordable alternatives with new ones being developed every day, so in my opinion it is totally unnecessary to kill animals in our society for human consumption. But in other parts of the world, this is not (yet) the case where people still need to rely on meat for their diet.
Dead serious...we’re the only ones that can live up to the universal declaration of human rights, which means we are the best, numero uno...
"We" frequently violate human rights. That's been my point throughout this whole thread.
Cultures where gay people are executed just for being gay are inferior no matter how you try to spin it...but that doesn’t excuse for gay people being mistreated or discriminated against in our society, as one could argue ‘at least we don’t hang them on cranes or throw them off tall buildings’.
you should always be your own worst critic, try harder and hold yourself to higher (moral) standards then anyone else, that’s the only way...
Again I made no assertion of *who* constructed norms, merely *when* they were constructed. I've *explicitly* said it several times now, so there is no room to imply. That you can't seem to get past this is, at this point, entirely deliberate on your part. So I guess you're being disingenuous *and* dumb.
Enjoy your xenophobia. I'm done.
On the one hand, ethical norms limit us, but on the other hand, they help us to remain human.
This thread is a perfect metaphor for the US, where a tiny minority fucks up everything for everyone else.
It applies to everything
go ahead, respond with your setting, out yourself. Hell, even if it's you, ignoring me.
*Tom Hardy Fury Road that's bait gif*
New page. Let's get it right this time.
Sorry, at this point it's obligatory to post this.
barely made it two posts.
if you reply to the shit, it will stick around
Well, we made a valiant attempt, lol
von Claueswitz: "War is a continuation of politics by other means."
von Jaffe: "Politics is a continuation of economics by other means."
Could we just do this for jla and save the server space?
I am very upfront about my lack of self-control.
is xlax still posting news articles exclusively through google links? makes this even more appropriate..
Yep.
This essay resonated with me in a way I think people on both sides of recent arguments might appreciate.
Not only are today’s activists enraged, they bemoan a state of constant fatigue (and in some instances, post-traumatic stress disorder) caused merely by existing in the world as it is currently constructed. Even privileged white journalists write (whether earnestly or cynically) of their “exhaustion” at the stream of psychic and spiritual assaults caused by racism, as well as by sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, capitalism, and myriad other “systems of oppression.” They profess to be tired in part from performing “emotional labor.” The term was coined to describe jobs, many done mostly by women, that require projecting or suppressing a particular feeling, the way a waitress offers warmth. It has come to be a vague catchall for the exasperating burden of being enlightened in a biased society. Until we reach a state of perfect social harmony, they suggest, anyone who is not blind to or willfully complicit in injustice—whether they like it or not—will be unable to escape this ever-growing weight. Defeatism has become a badge of righteousness. If you’re not despondent, you’re not paying attention.
https://harpers.org/archive/20...
All too often, and especially in this thread, I sense people underplay the progress that's been made to highlight the work that still needs to be done. But also, people underplay the work that still needs to be done to highlight the progress that's been made. These aren't mutually exclusive realities. We *have* come a long way as a society, and we still have a long way to go.
Quoting Williams again: The United States is not a perfect nation, but it has been powerfully altered since the days of Emmett Till, Rodney King, and even Eric Garner. Have we reached the summit? Not even close, and yet we would be deluded not to glance back from time to time to marvel at the plunging landscape.
That's a fine analogy. 100% in nearly anything is impossible. The danger of that analogy, to me, is that it seems to imply we're approaching that 99.9% asymptote. In many respects, for the topic at hand (racial equity in the US) we are far from 99%. But we're also far from 0, and both are worth recognizing.
If that was the only thing that was happening perhaps you'd have a point.
interested to read this. i think i hear you on race, but when it comes to environmental issues it's hard to celebrate any "progress" that has been made- the ozone example pales in comparison to the new reality that is quickly developing. my only hope is one day we can feel the same way, but i'm not sure how possible it will be to cool the planet.
I hear you there. The lack of action on decarbonizing our civilization is seriously worrying. I think, in part, there's this inertia because we don't have that "Ozone Hole" moment to galvanize support around. It's a slow inexorable slide into doom that's really only perceptible in retrospect. That + billions of dollars in lobbying money to convince those in power to simply ignore the signs. It's hard to stay hopeful, but despondence doesn't fix anything either, so I trudge along.
* Insert: This is Fine-meme of dog sitting in burning room *
not so much a meme anymore as much as it is reality..
life imitates meme
While pollution in general is bad, carbon pollution is orders of magnitude more troubling than other types.
It's not just humans in danger. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction, which is occurring at a faster rate than any of the previous mass extinction events. This is a good book on the subject: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/elizabeth-kolbert. (The author is the sister of my friend Dan, who I'm writing a book with, about the Pretty Good House approach, but don't hold that against her.)
It does require CO2 to manufacture things to offset climate change. Such as PV panels, which repay their carbon debt in 2-3 years. After they "break even" they continue producing for 30-40 years. How does that compare to carbon-spewing electrical generation plants? When do they break even on carbon emissions?
^^Anti-Facctser
Imbecilic delusion. Imo this level of disinformation is worthy of being banned. It
The reason we are still in this mess is because of the people who refuse to get a vaccination. Period. Imo you are intentionally spreading disinformation about a deadly disease.
Did jla get nuked or just another time-out and his posts will be back in a bit?
seems the moderators have had enough of his paranoid delusions. that covid "thread" he posted was a worrisome string of unending logical fallacies. enough is enough.
The absolute denial of reality, is not worth arguing about, shut it down I say.
So jla is perma-gone? Or is this more of the same timeout BS that will only result in a new username?
if that's what's happened... THANK YOU, MODS!!!
Looks like he was banned from this thread only. He posted a comment on the Turkey-UNESCO-Hagia Sophia news thread earlier today.
Oh did I miss another regurgitated conspiratorial rant from the resident "free thinker"?
tduds, you can see one of the last things he posted here in my post history (Politics Central, Jul 28, 21 10:32 pm). I copied it and inserted my own commentary. It's now nuked from the thread though. From his post history you can also see that he made some comment in one of the covid central threads and got that one shut down: https://archinect.com/forum/th...
whooo boy.
I truly have no idea how to counter the problem of this type of behavior. To be so loudly and incessantly wrong that they all but beg to be shown the door, and then immediately use that exasperated rejection as evidence of their righteous bravery. I'm glad I don't moderate any online forums anymore, I'll say that much.
eh, disappoint...that character needs to be voted off the island
Pretty sure I've posted this before but this thread really reminds me of jla (and some other less profilic contrarians on archinect) https://mastodon.social/@ifixcoinops/105778289798706182
Stop feeding the troll. Responding is the recognition it seeks.
In the US economy as a whole, financial engineering replaced industrial engineering. Wealth was decreasingly made by building new means of production and hiring labour to produce new goods and services to sell at a profit. Instead, money was made purely by buying and selling financial securities and real estate. This is fundamentally contradictory because financial activities constrict and strangulate production even as they prey upon the very incomes it generates. This is the fundamental logic behind the regular financial and asset market bubbles and crashes and shrinking productive base of our time.
https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Hudson_Valdai116.pdf
Excellent historic overview.