freemcflurry
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User ID: 106
freemcflurry
1yr ago
The first generation remembers a time before DEI so they might be able to do it cynically, not make any big changes but just say the slogans and muddle along. The next generation has no memory of anything else. They don't realize that you're not actually supposed to believe that it's feasible to have an engineering department that's 50% women, 30% black and 10% trans. They believe, from the bottom of their hearts, that there are just as many qualified black and women engineers as white and asian men and that it's only sexism and racism that's keeping them out.
And when they try to implement this stuff for real then what can anyone say to stop them? After all, it's right there in mission statement that diversity is a core corporate value, that a diverse company is a more effective company and that it's everyone's responsibility to promote a more equitable society. Anyone who tries to stop them will be not just a racist but also insubordinate.
Your company has AIDS. It's immune system is dead and it's just waiting for pneumonia or strep throat to come in and finish the job.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
In 2016 ISIS attackers bombed the airport in Brussels killing over a dozen people. A seventeen year old girl was present but uninjured. This May she chose to be euthanized because of her psychological trauma. She was 23 and she had no physical injuries. The news of her death was just announced recently.
This seems absolutely insane to me. I don't doubt she was suffering but she was only 23. A lot could have changed over the next 70 years. She wasn't terminally ill, she didn't have cancer, she wasn't paralyzed from the neck down. She was very sad and very scared and had attempted suicide twice. But I know that at least some people who have survived suicide attempts have gone on to lead happy lives.
I used to disapprove of euthanasia but wasn't strongly in favor of making it illegal, even though it was never a choice I would make myself or approve of making for a relative. But cases like this have made me strongly opposed to it. It seems like the medical establishment can't be trusted to restrict it to only the most extreme cases. The people saying that allowing euthanasia is a slippery slope have been proven right in my opinion.
freemcflurry
3mo ago
You just have different standards for Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats tried to hand out debt relief to farmers but white farmers were excluded. It wouldn't even be conceivable for the Republicans to create a relief program that explicitly excludes blacks. But when Democrats do it it's just business as usual and not considered to be extreme.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
I think his problem isn't so much that he's bad at communicating his ideas, it's just that his ideas aren't that great in the first place. He's not a genius AI researcher, he's just a guy who wrote some meandering self-insert Harry Potter fan fiction and then some scifi doomsday scenarios about tiny robots turning us into goop. He can't make an argument without imagining a bunch of technologies that don't exist yet, may never exist and might not even be possible. And even if all of those things were true his solution is to nuke China if they build GPU factories which, even if it was a good plan (it isn't), he would never in a million years be able to convince anyone to do. I really can't understand the obsession with this guy.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold.
The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.
...
The proposed rule would not mandate that electric vehicles make up a certain number or percentage of sales. Instead, it would require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032, according to the people familiar with the matter.
To me this looks like they failed to make electric vehicles attractive to consumers compared to gas ones, so they're giving up on that and instead are going to effectively make gas vehicles illegal to manufacture. It's absolutely insane to me that the EPA can just destroy a major industry like this, and have a massive effect on the lives of every American, and they don't have ask anyone. Congress doesn't vote on it, the president doesn't sign it, it just happens because they said so.
I think that's a trend that's common with environmental regulations. Whether it's CFL bulbs, paper straws, gas stoves or low flow toilets, consumers get stuck with an inferior substitute and the alleged crisis never seems to actually get solved. It's always just a prelude for the next demand. And by doing it through the administrative state elected officials never have to take any flack for it. If congress had to pass a bill outlawing incandescent bulbs and the president had to sign it then voters would have someone to get mad at. But when it's a new DOE regulation that just appears, people don't know who to blame. Nobody ever has to argue for it or stake their career on it.
So I don't think things will change. Just like the CDC can declare themselves dictators of all apartment rentals because of the Covid crisis, the EPA can declare itself king of all energy because of the climate crisis. Year after year, more things will be banned, prices will go up and life will get worse. But most people will either not realize the reason or will have entirely forgotten that things used to be different.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
It would be one thing if the auto industry was dying a natural death and Trump wanted to prolong it with tariffs. But that's not all that's going on, the Biden administration is actively trying to kill the industry by effectively outlawing gas cars. The EPA issued regulations that would force 60% of new car sales to be electric by 2030*. That's billions of dollars in capital investment not just for the Big 3 but also for their suppliers and for foreign brands with facilities in the US that will all go up in smoke based on a whim of the EPA. One advantage they have over China is experience in working with gas cars and with their existing capital. They aren't losing in a fair competition where consumers decided they want electric cars, they're losing because of regulations that target US manufacturers but not their Chinese competitors.
So it's not just about Trump passing tariffs to protect Detroit. Biden is shutting down one of America's largest industries by fiat and Trump can stop that from happening, at least temporarily.
*There are rumors that the EPA is going to push that target back a little bit but while it's easy to rewrite the regulations every few months it's not easy to reverse decisions to invest in factories that take years to build.
freemcflurry
3mo ago
This part jumped out:
That same month, The Globe published details of the video referred to in E.M.’s statement of claim. Two videos taken on the night of the incident were shown to reporters by lawyers representing some of the players. In the first, which was recorded within the hotel room at 3:25 a.m. on June 19, 2018, E.M. can be seen from the neck up. A male voice can be heard saying “You’re ok with this?” “I’m ok with this,” she replied. In the second, which is 12 seconds long, and which was taken at 4:26 a.m., E.M. appears to be covering herself with a towel. “Are you recording me?” she asks. “Ok, good. It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”
She says that off camera they forced her to say that but eh.
She was exchanging texts with them the next day:
The Globe story also revealed a text message conversation between E.M. and one of the players in the hours after she left the hotel room. The player begins by asking E.M. whether she had gone to the police. The woman said she had spoken to her mother and her mother had called police against her wishes. “You said you were having fun,” the player wrote. “I was really drunk, didn’t feel good about it at all after. But I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” she replied. “I was ok with going home with you, it was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”
To me this tilts more towards the "I regretted it afterwards" side of the scale than the "was held down and forcibly raped" side. Maybe her mom pressured her into escalating things legally.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
Why has the white working class been voting GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests?
I don't think voting against the people who want to systematically discriminate you in education and hiring is voting against your economic interests. Even putting that aside, California has a higher poverty rate than Texas so it's not a given that big government is an economic boon for the working class.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
I know it's not entirely unbiased
The article linked in the Twitter thread is entirely based on an interview they did with the kid and his mother, so I think that's putting it lightly. Unless I'm bad at Twitter and missing where they got her side of the story.
I think the narrative that they ganged up on her and tried to take her bike is accurate. If you get the last rental car but I really honestly had intended to make a reservation soon I don't get to car jack you and take it.
The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
They knew exactly what they were doing:
Michael added: “She did something wrong, and she basically got rewarded for it. She’s made over $100,000 on a GoFundMe. She got all the white conservatives on her side. Everyone who was on my side has just kind of stayed silent.”
That wasn't some legitimate fear of being demonized like this is Alabama in 1912. They immediately publicized the video and spouted all of the right code words to start an internet mob to get her fired and a nice big GoFundMe for himself.
their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx
It says that the e-bikes specifically were rare. They could have made it back on another bike but would have had to pedal.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Another examples is when the supreme court overturned Roe vs Wade. People were saying it was undemocratic even though all it did was return the power to regulate abortion from the unelected court to elected officials.
freemcflurry
4mo ago
Pope Francis has announced that priests are now allowed to bless same sex couples as long as it is not done in a way that implies that it's a ceremony or equivalent to a marriage. I haven't read the full document and the Vatican press release is confusing (like a lot of what this Pope does) but it seems to be trying to thread the needle of blessing gay couples but not their "union".
When two people request a blessing, even if their situation as a couple is “irregular,” it will be possible for the ordained minister to consent. However, this gesture of pastoral closeness must avoid any elements that remotely resemble a marriage rite.
Of course that distinction is subtle and the mainstream media mostly appears to be either misunderstanding it or intentionally misrepresenting it as allowing the blessing of the union itself. ABC went with the headline:
Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions
While he inserted a lot of caveats so that people will not interpret this as accepting gay couples and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, my prediction is that lay people will just walk away with the headline that the Church has got with the times and is finally ok with gay marriage. A lot of the more liberal clergy will probably spread that view as well, even if they use language that could kind of technically be considered orthodox if you squint.
It reminds me of what CS Lewis wrote about how in each age we warn people the most about the errors they are least likely to commit. So in a time when most Catholics are already essentially apostates the Pope is doing his best to guard against zealotry and intolerance. It's hard for me to believe that this will lead to anything good for the Church. The future is clearly in the more conservative faction with large, churchgoing families. A move like this will discourage them but do nothing to bring in more liberals who will applaud from a distance but aren't going to start attending Mass.
freemcflurry
6mo ago
There was a tweet that was something like
Actors in the 40s: He was discovered by a talent agent in Cuba where he was in jail for assault while serving in the merchant marine.
Actors today: His dad was a hedge fund manager and his mom was a model. He went to Yale.
freemcflurry
3mo ago
If it is found that their child knows what "bussy lmao" means or the lyrics to WAP, the book can't be banned. Physician, heal thyself!
I have a counter-proposal: If it is found that the students at a school are not testing at grade level for math, reading and science then the school is not allowed to spend any time or money on LGBT or DEI subjects.
freemcflurry
10mo ago
A black man who was caught on video beating and trying to shoot a female sheriff's deputy in California was just found not guilty of attempted murder and assaulting a peace officer. He was found guilty of "negligent discharge of a firearm". She survived because the gun jammed when he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger.
It reminds me of the thread a few days ago about black defendants being acquitted of murdering white victims. The most common sentiment in the comments was that a list of examples isn't enough to prove a trend. I think that's fair but also I don't see how you could ever collect enough data on this to ever prove bias conclusively (are black defendants acquitted because juries are racist against whites or are innocent black people charged by racist DAs?). It's also possible that he was acquitted because of anti-police sentiment instead of anti-white. I think there's no chance he was factually innocent because it was caught on video, this is jury nullification of some sort.
It's a dangerous trend if this becomes more common. I don't see how we can have both law and order and strong constitutional protections for defendants if juries side with violent criminals over law enforcement.
freemcflurry
10mo ago
Harrison Ford is 80 years old, who on earth thought he should star in an action movie? He was already too old in Crystal Skull in 2008. Couldn't believe it when I saw the trailer yesterday.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
This is slightly off topic but the picture at the top of that article caught my eye. I count 7 people holding signs in two rows. The photo looks like it was taken from a couple of feet in front of the first row, so these 7 people fill pretty much the entire frame. There's one other man in the background but he's some distance away from the protestors and not holding a sign so I assume he's a bystander and not taking part. If you scroll past it quickly it's easy to assume it's of a sizeable protest and not just a handful of people. The author doesn't state a figure for the size of the protest anywhere in the article.
Later, the article says:
That decision has prompted protests at subway stations and on New York City streets against officers, prosecutors and the mayor, Eric Adams, with demonstrators calling Neely’s death vigilantism by a white man against a Black subway passenger and talented dancer who was experiencing homelessness as well as mental health struggles after his mother’s murder when he was a teenager.
Which again, makes it sound like a serious movement. I think if there were actually widespread protests by more than a handful of people then it would have been simple to take a picture of them, from a distance and angle that shows their approximate size.
I think the Guardian is intentionally trying to mislead people into thinking these protests are larger than they are by photographing them in a misleading way.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
It's ironic that, after so many years of dismissing conspiracy theories, the government is telling us that the Russians are shooting energy beams at their brains. Maybe they could wear tinfoil hats to protect themselves.
If you work for the CIA or State Department and ever experience fatigue or headaches there is now a huge financial incentive to blame the Russians for it:
the Biden Administration signed into law the Havana Act, which provides six-figure compensation for confirmed victims of AHIs.
Lenzi, his wife, son, and daughter, were all medevaced from Guangzhou, China in early June 2018 after they each failed brain injury tests. According to Lenzi, he and his family have been compensated by the U.S. government with “more than a million dollars because of our diagnosed traumatic brain injuries” in a combination of civil litigation settlements and Havana Act payments.
freemcflurry
3mo ago
freemcflurry
9mo ago
And in addition to that deconstruction is so common that the target audience often isn't even familiar with the trope that's being deconstructed any more. Every movie with a princess is careful to subvert the expectation that she'll be a damsel in distress who needs rescuing. All of the princesses are sassy feminists who know karate or have super powers and are conspicuously more competent than the male lead. But when was the last time a major animated feature film did the damsel in distress thing? Looking on Wikipedia I think it was Sleeping Beauty in 1959. So a kid watching Disney today is watching a deconstruction of a trope that hasn't really existed since their great grandparents were going to the movies.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
Why? Neely has been attacking people for years and never got any significant punishment. He served 4 months for assaulting and kidnapping a 7 year old. He served no time at all for punching an old lady. Why is it suddenly so important to charge and punish Penny in particular? We should at most give him some nominal penalty like what Neely got. It's an absurd double standard to allow Neely to rampage around attacking people for his entire life and the the first time someone fights back we make them rot in prison.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
The Wikipedia article says that they originally used footage of real criminals but they thought that was too black so they reshot it with white actors. So it actually is pushing a false racial crime narrative just in the opposite way that people think.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
So yes, the idea that someone accused of a sex offense is more likely to identify as trans once in prison solely for the purposes of better accommodations makes a lot of sense to me.
If gender is based on self identity and we're supposed to take people at their word then this doesn't make any difference. The guy who decides he's trans 5 minutes before sentencing and the one who had a sex change 20 years ago both have an equally valid identity. As far as I can tell that's how society wants us to operate in every situation except for looking at crime statistics, for example when assigning people to sports teams or when they decide what bathroom to use. So I don't think it makes sense to change that method only in this scenario. If we're not supposed to interrogate their sincerity or commitment in any other scenario then I don't see why would when looking at crime stats.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
The victories of the pro migrant parties are permanent and all the right wing parties can do is stem the tide. 25% of the country now has a migrant background so the homogeneous, peaceful society that your grandparents knew is gone. The Sweden Democrats might slow the demographic change while they're in power but they're not going to reverse it. Elections matter and the Swedes have permanently changed their country for the worse. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to wreck a country than it is to fix it.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Yeah I would actually rather have all of my history erased and forgotten than have the credit stolen by the woke. I would rather nobody know who George Washington is than have the minstrel show musical version be the only one that survives. It's more dignified be Ozymandias, king of kings even if all of your works are forgotten, compared to watching another miniseries about the Apollo program where Neil Armstrong is a strong, independent black woman.
I was reading this article about Amazon Prime's streaming service:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/
Mostly it's not particularly culture war related, talking about how the executives are blowing huge amounts of money on niche shows that don't bring in enough viewers to justify their costs, or paying big salaries to writers and directors that don't end up producing much.
But this part made me chuckle:
I've seen people argue that big companies aren't ideologically woke, they're just doing it for good publicity with the ultimate goal of making money. I think if that was true then Amazon would tell their producers and directors to make the type of content that people want to see: white men with guns (apparently). And if they didn't want to get on board they should take a hike. That's what a company that wants to make money would do. Instead they're trying to change their audience's preferences which is a much harder and less profitable job.
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