uriel238

joined 2 years ago
[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We've been in an oligarchy for a while, according to an Oxford study of US history and the policy voting behaviors of elected representatives. It's only gotten spicy since Reagan, when the Republican party decided it had enough power to take all the cake (and is trying to do so).

The Federalists tried this before, which caused the party to die out and the Democratic Republicans to split. (Source: Helen Cox Richardson) It'll be exciting to see how this all plays out.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's allegedly a documentary, not fiction. It should make sense from beginning to end.

Sounds like you feel the need to defend Kurzgesagt for sentimental reasons, and since they're presenting themselves as a source for accurate information, that just won't do.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone -3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Feel free to explain it in better terms. TBH, I watched the first half and quit in disgust.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 1 month ago (5 children)

The problem is when the contributors influence what the videos say, in contradiction to data.

Kurzgesagt's video on +2° / +3° / +4° over the global mean isn't going to be so bad video was conspicuous to me, and is in fact, based on fossil-fuel industry rhetoric, rather than climatology estimations (which tell us over +1.5° is going to fuck us, and is).

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 90 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The phrase “I voted for this” has become a common thing for far-right supporters of Trump to say when something particularly brutal has happened to their political opponents.

I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it, If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you. -- Lyndon B. Johnson, attributed by Bill Moyers

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 month ago

Like pleading with Hector not to fight Achilles, Cassandra has been warning about ALPRs for over a decade now, possibly two, that they were too intimate a search to allow law enforcement to use them without narrowly-defined warrants.

As with the Greek wooden horse Cassandra shouted was going to burn Troy to the ground, only too late we are seeing how such power can be used.

No one listens to Cassandra.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 month ago

Curiously, while in character, it's about the stupidest thing companies can do, at least according to Mike Brock

But yes, corporations are notoriously short-sighted when it comes to autocrats, even with a long history of ultimately getting their assets seized by the autocratic regimes they assisted into power.

I'd like to think this all might be a time to teach common end-users the joys of FOSS and, if necessary, jailbreaking, but that's still a big ask for the general public even in the face of abduction and rendition.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 62 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The agents who implement state violence are not a group. They're agents of the state.

And now Google is directly collaborating with an oppressive autocratic regime.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

If ever you get a chance, check out the Soviet Union military medals (shiny gold plastic) from the last decades. This has precedent.

If they were smart they'd give them RFID chips, but that might cost more than the metal.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Isn't the dollar due to collapse due to foreign sanctions against the Trump regime tariffs?

Poetic.

New currency might be plastic.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hitler no longer exists. We do, and we have to confront the reality that people like Hitler still find their way into civic office where they can seize power and bring ruin to us all.

It's not a good thing for us to imagine a divine justice that balances out the evil wrought by persons past. It may be a brief comfort to suggest that Hitler burns in Hellfire, that Mengele, after living a long life as a fugitive, died a free man, that Heydrich's torment didn't end with his dying battle against sepsis, but in the end we have to come to terms that nature is unjust and if we want a world in which good folk thrive and wicked folk fail to survive, this is a society and an institution we'll have to create ourselves, from scratch.

And so far, we suck at it.

Better yet, ultimately we should recognize that people who make poor life choices are still surviving the best they could. In a working society, Hitlers and Trumps would not rise to power, and Heydrichs and Himmlers would not be able to exploit the biases of the system to elevate themselves to aristocracy-adjacent positions. In a working society, the only thing to gain with civic power would be the satisfaction of the fulfillment of one's duty to society... and that one gets to direct the movement of mountains and the construction of bridges for the betterment of all the community.

It's boring, but personally I'd rather constrain wars and torture and genocide to the confines of fiction. Make sports news, whether tragic or glorious, great again.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As in precocious puberty. Kids who are sexually activated (by premature hormone reactions which can be triggered -- not always -- by sexual abuse) so they get sexually interested before their peers, and ruin recess for everyone else.

When I was growing up (mind you, I was a late, late bloomer) precocious puberty in girls was punished brutally (say being grounded for life). Precocious puberty in boys was rewarded with early sports careers, unless you sucked, in which case you were punished for being a sex pest. This was a source of bullies that preyed on the rest of us.

This is to say, the US really doesn't know how to parent or teach or otherwise administrate children. This is also to say I am way, way bitter about it.

ETA This is one of the purposes of puberty blockers, when it's not used to let questioning trans kids decide to deliberate on what they want to be for a while, so I hope things are generally better. But then, considering how puberty blockers are now politicized, precocious puberty is also politicized, which ruins everyone's Sunday brunch.

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