JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
11d ago
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
It's not only the GOP as such. Any person who would be lauded as "representing" if he toed the party line, instantly loses the shine if they veer off the message. The Representation is only good when it serves the real goal - which is increasing the power of the Party. Be it political power, cultural power, financial power or any other power - but never diminishing any of it.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Is Representation a primary goal of the progressive project?
No, it's the means to an end. The goal is power, by means of eroding and destroying the current structure of society and replacing it with one that has them (who are "them" is debatable, though each individual participant naturally sees oneself as part of "them", nobody goes to a gulag voluntarily) on top. For the more cynical, this is the ultimate goal. For the more romantically minded, this is an intermediate goal, in the quest to establish a more just, more moral and more optimal (by whatever criteria) society - which is, obviously, impossible when the wrong people have the levers of power in the wrongly structured society.
By itself, more diverse workforce is not bad. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is neutral. But the progressive project has nothing to do with it - DEI, which they promote as a vehicle to achieve representation, is not aimed at that, it's aimed at capturing power and rerouting it to progressive goals. If you want evidence for that, count how much the progressives celebrate minority representatives that do not subscribe to progressive views. Does US left love Clarence Thomas? Did they support Vivek Ramaswamy? Is Tim Scott their darling? Do they see Rubio, Cruz, DeSantis, Raul Labrador and others like them as role models and trailblazers? Do we see any pattern here going all across backgrounds and jobs?
JarJarJedi
12d ago
That's probably for Europeans to decide. How much do they want the access to US technology? Lately, they are big on "digital sovereignty", just as the Russians are, so maybe eventually they'd decide to wall themselves off, like Russians (and Chinese before) are doing. I guess it may be concerning for those US companies who want to sell services to Europe. For others, I don't see a reason to care.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
If that were true, in countries with free or near-free higher education and/or with nationalized healthcare the youth would be significantly less leftist than in America. I don't think this is the case though? Are European students much more right-wing than US students?
Also, young people do not have a lot of exposure to the healthcare system, especially the most problematic parts - expensive, long-term, multi-faceted health problems that require dealing with the shitshow bureaucracy in all its glory. They may have heard from someone it's a problem, but they have not experienced the problem by themselves.
JarJarJedi
26d ago
Not all financial companies report to all agencies, though usually big companies do, but if it's a niche card I guess it's possible TU does not know about it. 57 point hit due to one card is a lot though... That sucks, but if the system indeed screwed up and they didn't get the report, I am not sure you can do much about it except keeping paying your bills and the score will go up in time. Usually actively used card is reported to the agencies each month at least, so if was an one-time mess up, it will show up. If it's something deeper, likely nobody allowed to speak to customers knows how to fix it anyway, or cares enough to find how to contact somebody who does, so I'm not sure you have a lot of options here. If it really hurts you, you may try to ask whoever is pulling your credit to use a different agency, depending on how much they want your business they may be more or less flexible on that.
JarJarJedi
29d ago
I have never heard about any serious application of this rule, at least recently. Maybe it did happen, but if so, it was of little consequence. I can't remember any RF broadcast outlet that would have been on any consequence in the last decades on the political scene, except for NPR, which as always been left-biased without any consequences as far as I remember. So practically this rule seems to be effectively non-existent.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I have some small Bitcoin account which I DCA for a while. It's not really a part of my investment strategy, just a FOMO hedge. Staying away from shitcoins since I don't have the time or patience to play it properly.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Yes, I agree with that, overdose of propaganda is certainly harmful. But, as many things go, the opposite is bad too - nihilistic rejection of everything only makes one open to believe anything, there's a lot written on this mode of failure. And I think we're finding ourselves right in the midst of it now.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Well, in some narrow understanding of "after" it is true, the riot activity, while remaining ongoing in the worst places (like Portland) generally subsided in 2021, owing to the loss for Trump in the presidential election, easing up of COVID restrictions, etc. However, since the trial and the verdict were in the spring of 2021, the major burning of the cities - the "summer of love", etc. - happening in 2020, could not have been influenced by it. One could argue that maybe an opposite verdict could re-ignite the riots, but I kind of doubt that, with Democrats back in the White House, they now needed the picture of "we are building back better", with localized pockets of racist insurrectionists stirring shit up and being justifiably suppressed. By that time, the narrative shifted from "rioting is good and righteous" to "public protest against the government is insurrection and justifies lethal response, including using the military". So I don't think there was even anything to pay for by that time with that sacrifice. But it was made anyway, because there was no other way it could happen.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
And the worst part is, the cities burned anyway.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Almost everything that has a religious exemption to it should just be gone!
Yes, but are you willing to fight for it? I don't necessarily mean e.g. murdering people (though that happens too) but actively and consistently pursue the change as a major life goal that is so important you are willing to put yourself and others in danger to achieve that? Religious exceptions, at least in theory, are born when some people are, and it's more convenient to let them be as they like than fight with them. However, it turns out that virtually nobody in Britain is willing to fight for the right to bear arms. So, they don't get it. Except for Sikhs which apparently did fight for it, one way or another, and got it. But I haven't heard anybody in Britain saying "we also need this right!" - only "they are not good enough to have this right, take it from them!". With this attitude, no wonder they don't have it.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I wouldn't say "nothing" - he probably should have noticed the suspect is ODing and modify his behavior accordingly, and then maybe the whole debacle wouldn't happen. But he is certainly not guilty of murder. He was sacrificed because the politics demanded it.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
And if your government did enforce hatespeech law
If.
The hate speech topic is a massive American cope that lets Americans overlook how tyrannical their government is
Americans are well aware of it. They are also well aware that Europe is given to them as a warning it could get way, way worse if they're not careful.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
You can, but then they may put you in jail, or ban you from leaving the country and mandate to check in with local police regularly.
How many Anglo-Saxons Germany has? https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2059993196495511575
How about Belgium? https://notthebee.com/article/belgian-court-rules-factually-correct-stats-about-migrant-crime-are-hate-speech-during-sentencing-for-right-wing-activist
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Probably the simple fact that disrupting municipal elections in a town with population of 343 is not going to be worth the effort, and if some crazy person decides to spend millions of dollars on doing that, it's relatively simple to amend the charter to prevent it, e.g. by allowing to more than one vote per piece of property.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Oh this is a terrible article. Non-human entities already can vote - in certain circumstances, such as for example shareholder's vote - if an entity owns shares, it is entitled to voting rights in accordance to their shares. It doesn't mean they get to vote in presidential elections and such - not everything that is called a "vote" is the same, and the asshats at Bloomberg deliberate confuse the issue, because they are partisan assholes. In this particular case, certain tiny town has a provision that property owners can vote in municipal elections - which makes sense, I mean they pay all the taxes (most municipalities live on property taxes) why wouldn't they be able to vote? ACLU claimed only human property owners get to vote, which may be a sensible approach, but not what the charter of that particular town took. ACLU wanted to force them to change their charter, because apparently "liberty" nowadays means "do what I say, or else". The court told them to take a hike. That's what happened, not "corporations have a right to vote".
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Why are Americans so insane about alcohol?
Historical legacy. Alcoholism used to be what fentanyl addiction is now. It's still a problem, but people who are prone to this kind of thing moved on to much harder stuff, so alcohol is largely not a huge deal anymore. But some cultural trauma remained.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
I thought the United States was a „free country?”
Ideally, yes. Practically, as always, it's more complicated. In Europe, you can drink and smoke weed, but if you want to criticize the government policies, you go to jail. In America, you can criticize the government (unless Democrats are in power, of course) but in some places you can't smoke weed or buy hard alcohol outside specialized stores. Everybody has their own imperfections.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Well, there could be an infinite number of potential genders, though not all of them yet instantiated. If genders can be generated on-demand (which as I understand is a basic premise of gender theory) then a simple diagonal procedure makes it not only infinite, but potentially uncountable number of genders. The question whether the cardinality of gender set is larger than the cardinality of continuum is unclear - I think there's a combined math-gender-theory PhD lurking in there somewhere.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Defensive measure against the crazies. It's easier to put a couple more lines in the form than to fend off a never-ending stream of offended individuals with a lot of free time (they always have a lot of free time) and zero common sense (they always have zero common sense). What a time to live in.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
Well, yes, I dislike coercion. But also, it's not just a personal preference. You can not build a society where there's maximum coercion in one thing, but everybody is chill otherwise. It comes as a package. If you have 99% conviction rates, you bound to have a bunch of false convictions, because nobody's perfect - and Japan, if you mentioned it, has its share of horror stories, and while I share the common educated Westerner's fascination with Japan, I also know its culture has some very dark sides too (as any culture does). So it's not just my arbitrary personal preference, it's the kind of society US founders envisioned, and that's why I want to be part of it, and many other people too.
Also, for weed specifically, it's physical addiction potential is very low. Unlike, for example, alcohol, opiates or other scary things, very small number of users are physically compelled to use it, regardless of the costs and consequences. That makes it easier to suppress it, sure (if you are hard drugs addict, the threat of the jail won't scare you, because you have much bigger and scarier demon to handle) - but it also makes it easier to dissuade potential and casual users by societal means. And it's usually more effective, because the costs of full-field suppression - especially in a society like US - are very high. Both monetary and society-wise - a machine that can be used for repression will be used for repression, and it may start by repressing something terrible, but eventually somebody would have a bright idea of using it against their political opponents (who are, as everybody knows, absolutely horrible people) and there we go. Using milder mechanisms is much less risky and harmful.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
That's true to some extent - last time I visited (earlier this year) UN Plaza didn't look like a refugee camp anymore. And I sometimes could walk almost a full block before I met a drug zombie. But the shit is still on the streets to welcome me. It is moving in the right direction, but it's still very deep in the hole.
JarJarJedi
1mo ago
In America, there seems to be a feeling of general hopelessness that isn’t present in China. People are still generally content, even in their decline. Why this difference in attitude exists, I’m not sure, but I can definitely feel the difference. Coming back to America, I literally feel myself getting more depressed over time. This can also be chalked up to Chinese propaganda. Most of the Chinese are incredibly assured of their country’s and their people’s greatness.
I think you have a big point here. Look at current politics. One of the major forces is "Make American Great Again" - what does it say about what America is now? Certainly not great, and nobody is pushing back on that with claims "No, we're actually doing awesomely already, there's no need for all this again business!". While the other side throws all its power of education, entertainment and academic industry to prove that America doesn't deserve to be great at all, in fact, it is so burdened with past sins that it's better for it to cease to exist, or at least cease to be America.
This is very sad to me because I think America and what it represents culturally and societally had been great, is still great and deserves and needs to be great in the future. But that certainly doesn't seem to be the current mood. Everybody uses propaganda as a pejorative, and there's a lot in it that is deserved, but I also think there's a non-zero does of propaganda that is healthy and necessary for the society. Intellectual types may fashionably frown at it, but dismantling it have not proven beneficial to anybody but a bunch of pompous academic assholes that made careers out of it, and I'd rather have a healthy, even if unfashionably crass, society, than a bunch of assholes smugly looking at the desolation and muttering "told you so, it's all lies!".
Nobody really thinks like that. It's just how it works - if you want to say there's nothing in Spanish, you say "no hay nada", because that's how you say it in Spanish. Nobody analyses it and builds philosophical foundations under it - neither native Spanish speaker nor newly learned one - people just learn how it's done in a particular language and do it. Language is not ruled by mathematical logic, it is ruled by pattern recognition. That's why people say "I could care less" - the pattern looks similar enough to the original "I couldn't care less" and they know this pattern means "I do not care", so they use it.
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