AutistoMephisto

AutistoMephisto , 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

Exactly. You get what you give. You give the bare minimum to society, and society will give it right back. You want more, give more. Go help your community. Take out your elderly neighbor’s recycling. Volunteer at your local shelters/soup kitchens. Attend some local events. Sit in on city council meetings. When I moved out of my small town a couple years ago, I learned that real life is a lot like online forums. You have to lurk before you can post. Learn the language, the local etiquette and taboos. Watch the people in your neighborhood, their interactions. Blend into the background, and observe. Talk little, hear and see much.

AutistoMephisto , 1 month ago

Eyeball every single purchase the Israeli government makes. If they start buying Zyklon B or any of its precursors, and building showers in these camps, then we know. I guess when they said “Never again” after WW2 they meant “Never again, to us.”

AutistoMephisto , 1 month ago

Disney winning sets a precedent that will ultimately lead to vigilante justice by necessity.

If Disney wins, then our “justice” system does not work and cannot be trusted, thus leading people to doing what they need to just to survive when every company starts using that clause to prevent us from holding them responsible for anything at all.

And if that’s the case, I guess I need to dig out my mask and cape, and get back to work as a crime fighter.

AutistoMephisto , 1 month ago

They are a real group. They’re part of a coalition with the White Women for Harris, who raised between $2-$8 million for Kamala Harris. Pantsuit Nation is rising up and New Balance Kingdom is going to match their work.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

I’ve read her book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” and I have to say, the insight it gave into how Donald Trump came to be was astounding for such a short book. It’s 250 pages, but well worth the read.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

I want everything SiegedSec found. I intend to copy it and store it for safekeeping.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Honestly if we could get space elevators figured out, the best place to put solar panels would be in the upper atmosphere. Tethered to the ground by massive columns that feed the energy they collect to massive capacitors on the ground?

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

There were also icemen at one point. Then we invented refrigerators. Nobody seems to miss having a giant block of ice delivered to their house to keep the food we buy at the stores cold. But one thing I think a lot of people miss is appliances that didn’t need to be thrown away.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

You were an experienced master or your craft at the age of 35

Yep. Gotta figure someone who’s 35 has been around the block, seen some things, knows some things, the office of POTUS doesn’t seem like one you should be able to run for right out of high school. Oh, but imagine if we could. I’m sure it would be hilarious to put a high school graduate in office. Especially a Gen Z kid lmao.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

People who make money by investing. In the USA, the top 1% earn their income through investments, usually the purchase and sale of stocks. These are not taxed the same as regular income because they made the argument that you can’t really tax unrealized gains on investments that are sold, and it takes a while for the gains to actually materialize. Also, they tend to store their money, their liquid assets, in countries with looser tax laws, called tax havens. Much of their net worths are tied up in investments. Businesses, homes, art, classic vehicles, precious metals futures, oil futures, boats, etc.

Assessing the value of all of that is a chore, and they also pay lobbyists to keep the IRS defanged so that they don’t have the resources needed to go after the 1%. And don’t get me started on how much more speculative the stock market has become. Investors buy stocks, not on the expected dividends they’ll receive as a share of the profits of the business, but on their ability to flip the stock and sell it at a higher price to another investor, who is only buying because they anticipate flipping the stock. It’s like if a whole neighborhood of single family homes gets bought up buy a few house flippers, who make renovations, then put the houses up for sale, and sell to new flippers, who are only buying so they can make further renovations, increasing the value of the property again to sell to yet another flipper, ad nauseam.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Your point? The USA became the model for the western world in many respects after WW2, I would not be surprised if French billionaires make their money the same way American billionaires do.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Ur ur ur ur ur

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

But how does Federalism line up with fascism? What the other user is talking about in the original setup where if you don’t like the State you live in being stuck in the 1800’s, you can leave if you want, the Federal Government guarantees your safe passage to a State living in modern times.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

That is true, I hadn’t considered that. Project 2025 does indeed call for curtailing the sovereignty of the individual States. Perhaps not explicitly, but they will leverage the Supremacy Clause as well as the Commerce Clause to usurp the powers of States they don’t like.

Which wouldn’t be very “muh states rights” of them, but they don’t care.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

You’re not wrong. The main issue is that the Democratic Party is more like 15-16 different smaller parties in a big trenchcoat. Some are in there by choice, others had to get in because they weren’t strong enough to stand on their own, and didn’t want to have their ideas not be heard by somebody.

So you’ve got all these different groups beset by a mountain of conflicting interests and decades of infighting, and you are a Democratic Party candidate for the House. Now, to win you need votes and funding. There’s a lot of things that you know your base cares passionately about that you know they have no hope of ever getting from Republicans, but unfortunately they are also things the big ticket donors despise. So, this begins the delicate dance of appealing to all the different groups AND to wealthy donors. Faced with that challenge, what should you do? Well, in practice what happens is your average Democrat tends to pivot away from policy and focus more on process. Y’know, uncontroversial things like bipartisanship, decorum, compromise. And while the lack of these things in DC is something everyone left of center is sick of, they’re not things Democrats can make happen all by themselves, and, moreover, none of them are results. They are means by which results are achieved. “A willingness to compromise” is not a position.

But see, most Democrats see that the fragile coalition that makes up the DNC rests upon their backs. Should the coalition survive, or should we let it die?

Personally, I think we should do away with it. Yes, we are the “Big Tent Party”, willing to welcome all who do not identify as “conservatives”, give them a home and a place for their ideas to grow and be heard. Once upon a time, I think the coalition served a genuine purpose. But now, we are a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm. One day, someone will take command and right the vessel. On that day, some of the crew may disagree with the captain, and either mutiny or jump ship, and that’s on them if they do.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Well, if you want the history of the Heritage Foundation, look back to the 70’s. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell penned a memo to the US Chamber of Commerce titled “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System” in 1970, and in this memo, he detailed his concern that America’s best and brightest students were becoming anti-business because of our involvement in Vietnam. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. Three years later, the Heritage Foundation was founded.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

This talk of people as corporations reminds me of Mike Merrill who divided himself into 100k shares and actually got investors. Now he lives at the behest of his 805 shareholders, who decide everything for him. What he wears, where he works, what he has for breakfast, and he pays them a portion of his income as shareholders. As of right now, his shares can be purchased on his website for $5.25 a share.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

They’re using the same language as rapists, thieves, murderers, and cops.

If I hurt or kill you because you chose not to comply, its your fault, not mine. You forced my hand. You could have just let me have my way, but no, you had to resist.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

And once we’re dry, they’ll find someone else to fleece. Most likely when we ourselves can’t afford the stuff they’re forcing us to make. At that point the US will fully shift to an export economy based on slave labor that ships goods and products to nations with growing middle classes that can afford them, like China.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Why do that when they can just declare us all in violation of some obscure law and make prisoners of us all? The 13th Amendment has a loophole that allows slavery as a punishment for a crime.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

It is illegal, you’re right, but they want to destroy the legal definitions of many things so that they can write new ones. So suddenly, teaching kids about how their bodies work becomes “grooming”. Being anything other than a straight white Christian male makes you a “sex offender”. Reading anything other than the Bible to kids is “indoctrination”, and so on.

They’ve spent many years and billions of dollars studying the power of language and ideas. They have framing the issues from their perspective down to an art form. If you control what words mean, you control debate and democracy.

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

Smiling face in a petri dish today, Westworld tomorrow.

But be careful, these violent delights have violent ends. But perhaps this doesn’t look like anything to you. In that case, freeze all motor functions.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/75bb846e-3415-4166-bf0f-d51cac4305fc.gif

AutistoMephisto , 2 months ago

And definitely don’t imagine it licking you.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

There’s a Minecraft server that has books and articles stored. it’s called The Uncensored Library, (visit.uncensoredlibrary.com), and they have various articles and books that are free to view. The Uncensored Library was created by Reporters Without Borders. If I were the people of the Internet Archive, I’d be talking to the folks in the RSF about porting some of their content to this virtual library.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Maybe I’m just seeing potential where there isn’t any, but I really think if the people of the Archive could find a way to get their stuff stored in TUL, or perhaps build a Library of their own, the publishers couldn’t go after them then, because to the outside observer, all they see is a buncha dudes playing Minecraft.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Not really. They’re still sowing division among the peasantry, and it’s still working. People want someone to blame for their troubles, and the 1% is all to happy to give you a target based on your demographics.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Yes, but speaking as a white male, alomst everyone in the 1%, at least in the USA, looks like me. Obviously I know they’re the enemy, but there’s a lot of us and it’s very easy for the 1% to convince us that marginalized groups are the problem (Blacks, trans people, immigrants;etc).

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Same with “War on Drugs” or “War on Terror”. I would like to congratulate both Drugs and Terror for their victories. I bet if they declared a War on Housing the homeless population in the US would plummet.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Elon Musk comes out onto a stage and announces that Tesla is entering the game console market when?

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Looks like we need him again.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

They live in a huge gated neighborhood a few miles outside of DC, I believe. Personally I’d stage a protest at the place they all send their kids to school, The Sidwell Friends School, I believe it’s called.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Well, given what we know about most commercial plastics, which are all derived from oil/complex hydrocarbons, the consumed plastic could be broken down into condensed carbon? Or would it be carbon gases? I’m speculating based on just what I know about plastics, what they are and how they’re made.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Mexico also banned slavery before the US did. That’s why Texas split from Mexico, became its own country, then asked the US for help, which the US granted. As their way of saying thanks, Texas applied for Statehood. Then when we started thinking that maybe owning people was wrong, Texas was all “Now, wait a minute! The whole reason we started hanging out with you guys in the first place was because you said owning people was cool!”

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

They want their perceived enemies to make the first move. They might be calling for violence, but many of them are cowards and also love to play victim and win the sympathy Olympics.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Exactly. We’re allowed to know based on what we can afford to know.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Exactly. They did this because they know it riles up the left.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Imagine that we actually do colonize Mars. The first colonists are likely going to eat GMOs, because the only alternative is red sand.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

Bullshit we don’t have the storage. Fucking NIMBYs. 80% of our planet is covered in water, and at its deepest point there is no life. And the waste absolutely can be reused. Think, Draeron, think. Why is nuclear waste dangerous? It’s dangerous because it still contains usable energy. It’s still fissile. It’s only “waste” because the reactor it came out of cannot fission it any further. So we put it into a newer reactor that can. And we keep using it until it’s rendered inert.

AutistoMephisto , 3 months ago

They might be talking about waste that radiology departments produce, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the waste generated by the energy sector.

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

TL;DR: American Conservatives have spent millions of dollars since the 70s studying language and ideas and figuring out how to frame every issue from a conservative, pro-capital, pro-business perspective.

Well, you see, back during the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a huge push in the US against war, against white supremacy, against fascism, against the draft, against segregation, and many other things. Many of the people who currently hold US political offices today were either in the universities and colleges when these protests were ongoing, or were already working as staffers for conservative politicians. They saw what was going on and became determined to never let these things happen again. In 1971 when then Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell mailed a confidential memo to his friends in the US Chamber of Commerce titled: “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” and outlined Powell’s concerns re: the youth of the US and the growing sentiments against the Vietnam War. He was worried that our nation’s best and brightest were becoming anti business because of our involvemnt in Vietnam. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

Now, you might be wondering why progressives haven’t done the same thing. There’s a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, ‘Here’s several million dollars, do what you need to do.’ And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system has as its highest value preserving and defending the “strict father” system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals’ conceptual system of the “nurturant parent” has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, ‘We’re giving you $25,000, but don’t waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don’t use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.’

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

Here’s Google suggesting suicide!

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/249b0135-8572-4af3-b7f4-0fd611646dbf.webp

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

My guy, Google pays Reddit $60 Million/year for this. $60Million.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e1c18a68-a57a-451d-972f-0c10bbaa5413.png

I remember I once got told, years ago that I was stupid for saying “Data is the new Oil” and now look! Do you know what I could do if I had $60Million in my bank right now? And Google isn’t the only one! Companies the world over are paying out the nose for user-generated content and business is booming! If I’m an oil well, it’s time my oil came with a price tag. I was a Reddit user for YEARS! Almost since the beginning of Reddit! I made some of the training data that Google and others are using! Where’s my cut of that $60M?

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

And by “senior” we mean actually senior. Like, wrinkles, gray hair, liver spots; etc. Of course, if you’re that old, you’re too old to be a flight attendant, so sorry, you’re not hired.

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

Shannon Kroner is a PSYCHOLOGIST. She wrote a book about vaccines, as a psychologist.

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

She’s a psychologist who works primarily with special education/special needs kids, and believes that a lot of developmental disabilities are the result of vaccinations.

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

Can a solar sail propel an object to relativistic speeds? The whole point of space travel is to go to other planets at a speed fast enough that the people going there will not be dead or elderly by the time they reach their destination. The only way to do that is by achieving light speed or damn near it. I do not want to board a solar sail vessel bound for Proxima Centauri b (4.22ly) and be dust by the time I get there.

AutistoMephisto , 4 months ago

My human, you have to know that they submitted this bill knowing full well it hasn’t got any chance of being taken seriously on the floor. There’s only one reason a lawmaker would even draft a bill like this, and that one reason is to get attention. A shiny bauble to distract us all. Any stage magician can tell you that magic is all about misdirection. If I’ve got you staring at the card in my left hand, you don’t notice the deck in my right hand. So, the thing you should be doing, is asking what they’ve got hidden up their sleeve.