I wonder, given the whole equal protection thing….
Could we sue the IRS for damages? I mean, this is the fed government’s revenue. Them running out of money…. And running up the debt affects us negatively….
It’s hard to summarize but basically they’re trying to decide if part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is constitutional or not. It’s the part requiring taxpayers to pick up income for their share of income earned internationally that hasn’t been repatriated yet, essentially unrealized gains. This has broad implications on whether a wealth tax on unrealized capital gains (looking at you, Musk and Bezos et al) would be constitutional under the 16th Amendment which only authorizes an income tax.
I haven’t done a deep dive on that case though so I could be wrong, comments welcome.
I think if you interfere with a military intervention of the currently most important proxy war party of the united states then you are already an enemy of the state. the question is if they will finally do something about him…
Liberal idealism, with all it’s positives and negatives, dominates the way America thinks and American government works. Personal freedom and private enterprise are much more highly valued than state loyalty.
His painting that led to the suspension of the Mesa art exhibit, titled “My Florist is a Dick,” is seen by some as anti-police. It depicts a police officer in riot gear holding a baton with a flower growing out of it. The phrase ‘when his day starts your days end’ appears at the top right of the painting.
Sounds pretty fucking awesome to me, and I don’t even like Shepard Fairey’s work much.
Fuck the police.
EDIT: I looked it up. One of Fairey’s better works, for sure, but I’m still not a fan. Fuck the exhibitors though.
See, I don’t like his style. Apart from (including this, I bet) appropriating other artists’ work- many of them black artists, not a good look for a white man- I just think the idea could be executed better. The cop doesn’t look menacing enough even though he’s dressed that way because the baton is at rest. The flower just looks bad. The idea itself is, shall we say, remarkably similar to a scene in the film Yellow Submarine, where the Blue Meanies try to fire their guns, but flowers grow out of them instead.
Regarding his work overall, the Andre the Giant Has a Posse thing was interesting as a meme, but I’ve just never thought of him much as an artist. Even the Obama portrait- which he also appropriated- didn’t do much for me.
But my personal feelings about Shepard Fairey has nothing to do with whether or not his work should be exhibited.
If you really wanna get down to it, the vast majority of art is derivative.
Would I buy it? No. Is it similar to others? Absolutely. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad.(Also, check out cop’s face. That’s a skull.) (also? This guy is Native American, not white. This is an exhibit of native art.)
You need to re-read the article. The guy I am talking about, Shepard Fairey, is white. And it was his art that was the issue. And by ‘appropriate,’ I mean he directly takes their pictures, slightly modifies them, then sells them. He got sued for doing it for the Obama photo because it’s just a copy of an AP photo he added some colors to and the word ‘Hope’ at the bottom.
I don’t think it’s very good but apparently it was impactful enough as a criticism of the police to get the exhibit delayed (and expose the Mesa city government’s bootlicking)
Ice melting isn’t the part that makes the sea levels rise. Since ice displaces the same amount of volume as the melted version.
The part that makes the water rise is the fact that warm water increases in volume.
I feel this needs to be said more since I have had instances of right wingers thinking that because they know of the first fact (and believe climate scientists don’t), that the rising seawater is a hoax.
Fun fact, the weight of ice on land does push the tectonic plates down. Some of them are still rising from the loss of the weight of the glaciers after the last ice age.
All this is going to do is waste money on lawsuits that could be used to benefit the people.
When in reality this won’t do anything to slow down crime in Albuquerque. The most murders done in Albuquerque is by the police. Targeting legal gun owners won’t stop criminals from carrying firearms. Weaponizing the health system to deny constitutional rights really worked out well in the past.
I’m so glad I moved in 2020 from a city/county that is fine with police burning kids alive in their homes because they think a criminal is inside.
Targeting legal gun owners won’t stop criminals from carrying firearms.
I hate this talking point. You could say that about practically any law. “Targeting legal car owners won’t stop criminals from drunk driving” or even “targeting factories won’t stop some of them from criminally polluting.” That’s not the point. The point is to add charges once they’re caught to maximize their sentence.
It’s already illegal to carry a firearm and commit a crime…you wanting to make it double illegal? No this talking point is exactly that, a spot on assessment that laws like this only attack the law abiding gun owners. That’s exactly what they’re designed for, to create more criminals.
This is great if you assume all gun carriers are going to commit a crime with their gun.
The problem is this order can be used to attack people who are otherwise doing nothing wrong, who might be caring explicitly because they want to protect themselves from the crime wave this order is trying to address.
Things like: Universal health care, stronger worker protections, better welfare support, better maternal/paternal assistance.
People making enough money to support themselves, aren’t in constant danger of layoffs just to boost profits, can access physical and mental healthcare cheaply, aren’t financially ruined because they have a baby and new a few months off work, and aren’t in danger of losing everything over an emergency room visit aren’t out committing violent crimes.
Focusing on “gun” violence ignores the root cause of violent crimes regardless of the weapon of choice.
I didn’t say those were problems to distract from gun violence. I said those things are a solution to violence more broadly. And as a bonus, those social nets help everyone while not violating this country’s fundamental rights.
And I’ve pointed to strong solutions to help being us in line with other nations. Adding more violations to our constitutional rights is not something I support.
Why do you think there are laws prohibiting the possession of certain items or substances at all? I mean, why should a law abiding citizen owning a bomb, a sample of smallpox virus or a few pounds of heroin be a problem? Crimnals will get them anyhow and if they use them, it`s already illegal. Why is driving while intoxicated illegal? Wouldn’t it be sufficient if only causing an accident while drunk driving would be illegal? That would certainly be way easier and cheaper to police. Why do we have building codes? Unless the house collapses or blows up, nothing bad has happemed yet.
But the additional laws take away rights from the law abiding only. The simple solution is to enforce the laws already on the books to the full extent.
These laws only harm the lawful exercising their constitutional rights! Prosecutors will add these on but not to maximize a sentence rather to make it easier to get the bad guy to plead at the cost of not filing on some of the additional charges. Just fully enforce the laws on the books already.
I don’t know about every states gun laws or which laws you might be referring to but I feel it’s a safe bet to say that laws that pertain to crimes committed while using a firearm have not been weakened in very many places.
What may have been weakened are laws that restrict law abiding citizens from using firearms lawfully.
The laws are not “weakened” so much as pleaded down to less time or lesser charges. Prosecutors do this to get an easy “win” and clear cases from their dockets. There are a lot of gun laws that I agree with but more that I disagree that they solve any of the current problems. Again, enforce what is already law and leave the good people alone.
Don’t get me wrong, violence is horrible and should be stopped but as a realist I promise that it never will.
Targeting legal gun owners won’t stop criminals from carrying firearms.
Please compare the percentage of crimes commited with a firearm versus all crimes commited for the US and countries that have functioning laws limiting private gun ownership. In Germany (population about 80.000.000) in 2022 there were about 200,000 “crimes against personal freedoms” (this number is probably too low because I only added the numbers for the two main types of these crimes). In about 4500 cases (of all crimes) a gun was used to threaten somebody and in about 4000 cases (of all crimes) a shot was fired. So in the overwhelming majority of violent crimes (about 96%) no guns were used.
I agree with you, but for different reasons. I also think it’s an overreach to target everyone carrying guns, whether they are legal or not.
It’s the legal equivalent of calling “Time Out”. But it has to be enforceable, and I don’t see how this can possibly be enforceable, even if the local authorities wanted to enforce it. People who want to do dumb things with their firearms aren’t going to be deterred by this temporary measure. So it can only be enforced after someone does something irresponsible, and won’t do anything at all to prevent things and solve the problem the Governor is trying to solve. But you can be sure that the “Demoncrats want to take away your guns!!!” crowd will be citing this for the next 20 years. I bet they can use the Governor’s statements on this directly in campaign ads, just like the Biden campaign did with that MTG speech.
The only saving grace here is that this emergency measure is temporary, but we’ve seen this movie before…
London is a lot worse in that respect. The first time I saw the Westminster Bridge in London in person, I was surprised to not see any Cybermen walking across it.
My first day visiting Albuquerque, I was in pizza parlor picking up an order, and the news was on a TV nearby. They were covering the arrest of this cracked out looking couple. The lady behind the counter then explained to me that it was a big local story because those two had tortured and murdered their daughter. Its also the cartheftt capital.
It’s the great drug corridor and it’s got lots and lots of surrounding desert to disappear people, but I live in New Mexico and I go to ABQ a lot and never felt in danger. There are areas I definitely wouldn’t go but that’s just like any city
Fallon is one of the least funny people on the planet. I am not joking. His shit keeps getting brought up on my YouTube feed and it is just utter crap.
The only time I had to laugh at something he was involved in, was when he made a crossover with John Oliver. Fallon obviously tried to advertise for Amazons Alexa, when Oliver suddenly asked Alexa about the working conditions in Amazon Warehouses. Fallon immediately shit himself.
I used to be so optimistic about the change the internet would bring: with unlimited communication around the world, differences would fade, and geopolitical borders would start to blur. I think I was probably just projecting my own oversensitive and hyper-empathetic existence onto the world, because it is pretty clear that we are fundamentally stuck, terminally unable to overcome our tribal instincts.
I would say that you were right. The internet is bringing us all those things. And it is doing that pretty fast if you look at the entire timeline of humanity thus far. Unfortunately it is just not fast enough to truly help us with climate change.
Eh. I think the internet is making us intellectually docile more than anything else - outliers may be profound and inspirational, but the inertia of the status quo renders them inconsequential.
I debated whether to put ‘making us’ in quotes, but then wondered if it’s actually ‘the internet’ that merits that distinction. Both, I suppose…
I’m old enough to remember the pre-internet age in detail and I thoroughly disagree. I am sure there have been studies on this topic, but I’ll defer to my own experience for now.
Before the internet everybody got their information via the same set of channels, TV, radio, news papers. If you really wanted to know something you had to go to the library to usuaully get disappointed. People were much less likely to disagree with you back then, because most people got their information from the same set of sources. Nowadays you’ve got such an explosion of opinions on basically everything. You might meet a pro-life, climate change denying flat earther one day and meet an non binary vegan activist the next. People are much harder to control now and governments are taking longer and longer to try and please anyone, which anyway fails pretty much every time too.
Sure there are still plenty of places on the internet that brainwash whole populations with information bubbles, but the fact that there are so many more sources of information makes it so much harder to catch large crowds.
I am guessing you might be American, because that is one place where the brainwash of republics vs democrats is still working pretty well. From my European vantage point its mostly the republicans that are still very much in control of the minds of their voters.
We are biologically predisposed to selfishness. You can frame this with political colors that ostensibly represent “thoughtful and empathetic” versus “thoughtless and ‘fuck you, I’ve got mine’”, but it’s not entirely clear that either side isn’t inherently motivated by selfishness. And that’s our ultimate failing, predictor of our demise.
Regarding diversity trends, I agree. Thank you for reminding me how it was. I do worry though: is counter-culture as popular culture counterproductive? Could that be by design?
but it’s not entirely clear that either side isn’t inherently motivated by selfishness
That could also be explained by us just not being entirely pre-disposed to be selfish. At least some part of us has evolved to be a social and empathetic, which forever pushes us to be altruistic and moralistic. History is full of stories of the brave, unselfish and compassionate. Plenty of people have died for causes they truly believe in. It also seems we’re never done evolving our ethics and that makes sense, since we’re brainy herd animals.
It also seems to me that evolution likes game theory and that therefore the angelic side and the dark side of our human souls are forever locked in battle. The good news is that when there are enough resources to go around, societies can become quite nice to live in. The bad news is on the other hand is that when those sea levels indeed will rise we’ll be back to killing each other quite quickly.
is counter-culture as popular culture counterproductive?
Counter culture becomes popular and then it is not counter culture anymore. This cycle repeats itself endlessly. I remember the gabber scene of the 90s that very much started as a counter culture, but then became mainstream through commercial success. The oldskool gabbers hated that, but after a few years the commercial success died off and it slowly evolved and re-emerged as a new counter culture. I don’t think it is by design, but it is just that social dynamics are just most predictable than we tend to think.
It seems to me though that through the diversification of culture, which I would ascribe in large part to the internet, counter culture movements have a lot less steam to them. Before the internet people (but mostly youngsters) could pick from a handful of sub-cultures to be part of: rocker, skater, punker, alto, hippie, goth, gabber, raver. Those movements were large and powerful. Now there are uncountably many sub-cultures, so counter culture isn’t such a force to be reckoned with either. No more parents on radio talk shows who are concerned that their children may be possessed by the devil.
Just found this:
Throughout the mid to late 2010s, subcultures splintered and merged due to the widespread accessibility of the internet and social media platforms. Many 2010s subcultures drew from previously existing groups - the popular ‘e-girl’ subculture is seen as a modern spin on mid-2000s scene fashion.[7] As part of their retrospective series on the 2010s, Dazed magazine described the impact of technology on subcultures; “But [the internet] also gave us more; it gave us dozens upon dozens of scenes and movements, only recognisable to the highly trained eye. And the rules became less rigid: you could dress one way, and listen to totally different music.”
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