The notion that immigration causes unemployment is one of those things that is "simple, obvious, and wrong".
Unfortunately, anyone who has taken Economics 101 is aware of what price floors do, anyone paying attention to the news knows that offshoring and automation is only accelerating, and anyone who has had to apply for and work entry level jobs for a significant period of time knows that the supply of labor far outweighs the demand and this manifests as workers being treated much shittier than they were a generation or two ago (as the older employees will usually confirm, if present.)
Is that too abstract for you? Have you not recently experienced or interacted with people who have to work entry level jobs? Well, consider this then: Fast food kitchens are significantly more automated than they were when I was a kid (they used to use spatulas, for one.) "The garbage men" is now "the garbage man", who operates a huge robotic arm that is, presumably, cheaper to maintain than the two guys that used to stand on the back of the truck. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers used and big box stores have resulted in fewer jobs compared to the department stores, grocery stores, and specialist stores that preceded them. And all of this is on top of the increased efficiency (read: fewer people employed) that automated internet services have wrought in virtually every industry. The idea that one additional lower-class worker in America today consumes enough to generate one additional American job is laughable.
Immigration on its own is not a negative--I quite agree. Mass immigration plus the current situation with minimum wage (and associated phenomena) is obviously not increasing demand for labor on net. It is simple, obvious and wrong to claim otherwise.
The solution, incidentally, is to replace minimum wage with some other form of assistance to the poor--a reverse income tax being the most straightforward way to emulate a minimum wage-ish effect. Health insurance and other mandated employer-burdens should be similarly replaced by programs that are subsidized through taxes. The idea here--and I know it's a radical one--is to stop penalizing companies from hiring more people (and particularly from hiring more full-time people. The number of companies I've seen that have moved to primarily using part time workers and contractors in the past 10 years is astounding and alarming.)
But first we have to get people to acknowledge that there actually is a problem. And that, unfortunately, is very very hard when leftists like yourself view the intellectual bar to clear as being a peg or two above Trump.
And the court... i guess the thief will not try to sue you, but he could.
Wait, sue? Are you saying tort or crime? In the case of suing, the thief has to claim damages, but given existing slander/libel caselaw it seems like the "telling the truth" defense[1] would apply.
And exactly this is something, you are not allowed to do. Even at the workplace, this is only allowed, if it is explicitely stated in your contract. Else you have an expectation of privacy.
Expectation of privacy is, I believe, a red letter concept. So, do you or don't you have any cases to cite where a thief was deemed to have an expectation of privacy whilst using stolen goods? If not, I suspect a lawyer arguing by analogy that a burglar has no expectation of privacy in someone else's living room might find a sympathetic ear.
I'm not saying he definitely would get off, but I don't think it's cut and dry.
1. A defense that, incredibly, doesn't exist in the UK. Or so I've heard.
That doesn't get you below freefall-from-the-edge-of-the-gravity-well speeds which, according to Randal Munroe, is 10 kilometers per second. (Remember, everything accelerates at the same rate in a gravity well regardless of mass.) Note the destructive effects he claims would happen, then notice how much smaller (and less dense) Denali is compared to the asteroid in question.
There might be a chance that it wouldn't be as bad if it penetrated the Earth's crust, thus allowing for a more gradual deceleration as it displaced lava (like a bullet decelerating under water), but that displaced lava would be dramatic and I'm not sure what the tectonic and volcanic implications would be.
(XKCD is such a bad influence. I'm sure the gravity equations are easy enough to find and use, but then I remembered this.)
Didn't Wheaton leave Star Trek because he didn't like the work and thought it was holding back his career?
He apologized for that at a convention with most of the TNG cast there; it's on Youtube somewhere. And it's not like his concerns were entirely ungrounded given the hatred his character generated (which came as a surprise to me when I found out, perhaps because I was much younger than he was when I first watched TNG.)
Didn't he fling a Federation ship into an asteroid, utterly destroying it? I mean, it's a bit rich naming an asteroid after such a vandal, no?
(No wait, god damn it, that was a stellar core fragment. The depressing part is I actually remembered that. And yes I know it was necessary to buy Data enough time, blah blah blah.)
In general, the various 'identity theft' type laws which make it illegal to access others accounts don't have exceptions because it's a stolen computer.
That doesn't necessarily mean the courts wouldn't create an exception based on some "no expectation of privacy" principle. Common law can be fun.
Even when the laptop is stolen, "hacking" the thiefs facebook account and monitoring the computer usage of other people (without some work contract allowing this) is a crime.
Citation needed.
Even if the text of a law supports that, I suspect that the courts would be eager to apply some red letter duct tape that would specify that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy whilst using a stolen laptop.
He didn't "hack the account" as far as I could tell, by the way. It sounded more like a remote desktop thing.
This is a dickish move. What if the thief sold the computer and someone else is new the new owner who actually paid for the computer? Vigilantism is bad.
This was the only 'dickish' move I saw:
He also posted her info to a number of Facebook groups, which spooked the thief enough to not only delete her Facebook account, but also her listed phone numbers.
He should not have done that bit. But the rest of it--sending texts to her phone numbers, calling the friend (âoeI called one of them and told her the thief was on a stolen laptop and told her Iâ(TM)d give her the opportunity to return it.â), and sending all of the information to the police--are all entirely reasonable.
We don't even know the timescales involved here. If this login happened mere hours after the theft, it's reasonable to assume the thief was doing it, with the possibility that the thief immediately gave it to a significant other or close relative being less likely, but still much more likely than an unconnected third party using it.
More likely is that the laptop got converted for cash at a pawn shop and later bought in good faith, which means he's humiliated a poor girl who had nothing to do with the theft.
Without knowing the time scales involved, that seems very unlikely. Unless he waited weeks to do this.
Also, pretty sure all the savvy thieves use Craigslist these days, not pawn shops. But either way, the chances of a buyer pouncing very quickly is pretty low unless he was selling at a very steep discount.
The "more likely" claim really makes me pause.... why would you say this? Does this have something to do with the alleged thief being female?
You seem to think that he is a complete moron, but it seems to me that he made the right decision.
Only if he was planning to have his laptop stolen. I'd rather risk losing the laptop than risk the thief stealing my logins, wagering that he's too lazy/ignorant to bother reinstalling the OS.
I think there might be out of band options for thief tracking if this is really a huge priority, but I think it would be better and simpler to alter one's habits to reduce the risk of theft.
Or maybe it was his "Just surf the news sites and play a game to pass the time" laptop. You know, the one with no reason whatsoever to encrypt anything.
The only reason to even consider "not to encrypting anything" is if your processor doesn't support AES instruction sets.
I mean, are you actually proposing that he was likely to have a dedicated machine for gaming/browsing that had no Steam logins, no news site logins, no forum logins, in fact no logins or personal information of any kind and was never used as a backup machine to check email, etc. in a pinch?
Just encrypt. It requires less consideration, and it removes the need to shred a drive before selling it.
I mean, ten out of ten points for thinking outside the box, but to slow down the asteroid on the short timescales involved, I think the solar sail would need to be some ridiculous size. Many, many times bigger than the Earth. You could probably use smaller solar sails to move it towards the Earth (which would take years) but that's nowhere near the same thing as providing enough pull to counterbalance most of the weight of the asteroid under Earth's gravity.
Have a mandatory Constitutional review before they vote on a new law. If it fails then those who vote for it would be financially liable if the courts later overturn that law. The politicians can still vote as they want, if they are willing to take the financial risk.
That's a fun idea, if a bit less realistic.
A related idea was proposed ~30 years ago on an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister": Failure Standards. Programs and laws that aim to achieve some goal have to give hard numbers (deadlines, target crime statistics, whatever) and if the law fails to achieve the specified result, it will be deemed a failure.
Now maybe that failure could automatically cause the law to expire, but even if it didn't you still have the powerful political effects seen in the advertisements: "Senator so-and-so voted for 20 new suchandsuch programs over the past 10 years... [scary voice] and 17 of them were FAILURES."
The fact that it's an incredibly radical concept to talk about designing a system that is self-aware of failure, or makes it hard for politicians to insert pork or various dumb riders, or is at all resistant to capriciousness and incompetence, is very telling. The foxes have been guarding the henhouse for so long that any sane system will necessarily sound like an idle pipe dream at best, and the ravings of a fringe extremist at worst.
I'm sure that the NASA spacecraft that attaches some rockets to the asteroid to change its course, can also attach a parachute or two so it can land gently.
I'm not sure if any of that was tongue in cheek, but...
The rockets to get it to earth would doubtless work so long as we were patient (possibly "very patient") and had something with a good specific impulse. "Landing" it safely is another matter entirely.
I suspect there will be... issues trying to build a parachute that could slow down a 200 km wide hunk of iron. For one thing, (and this is just one tiny objection) the air at the top of the asteroid would be a bit thin even with the bottom touching the earth.
It's actually quite tricky trying to come up with a feasible solution, even assuming a budget of trillions. Slowing it down with rockets would be completely out of the question. Slowing it down with LOTS of carefully timed nukes (hundreds or thousands) might be feasible if not for the fact that you're just going to break it up and irradiate it. Atmospheric braking is impossible given the size of the thing.
The best I can come up with is steer it at the center of Antartica's largest landmass[1] and hope for the best. Hopefully landmass under Antartica's ice sheet could absorb enough of the energy to prevent mega tsunamis.
But given the incredible density of the thing, it might well punch
a rather large hole into the mantle of the earth. It's an order of magnitude bigger than the K-T impactor, but perhaps more importantly it's more dense. To counter that, we have the fact that's it's probably moving a lot slower than the K-T object, but freefall speed via Earth's gravity is still enough to be a bit worrisome.
And if it a actually fully penetrates the crust... it'll *sink*, right? Sink right down into the lava? And then keep sinking, all the way to the Earth's core, displacing an obscene amount of lava that flows out of Antartica's gaping wound as if from an overfilled glass of Coke that someone has just added an ice cube to?
This is a surprisingly complicated thought experiment.
You can't dictate that a company can't sell a legal product.
Yes you can. It turns out that legislators can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. They could ban peanut butter tomorrow if they felt like it. They could even pass laws that violate the constitution and police can happily enforce those laws until a judge explicitly tells them to cut it out, with no punishment whatsoever.
This is one of the many, many reasons why the world's democracies often seem dysfunctional. And it's part of the reason why the emergency $700 billion bailout in 2008 included a tax break for a company that makes wooden archery arrows for kids (of the sort commonly used in summer camps or scouting groups.)[1]
It would be very interesting to create a constitution for a country or state/municipality that says you may only pass laws for XYZ reasons, you have to give the justification for every law you pass, and if the justification given for that law is ever found to be invalid then the courts can strike it down. And you aren't allowed to invent a new justification after the law has been passed. That is what "draining the swamp" would truly look like. That, plus figuring out a way for politicians to run campaigns that doesn't involve legalized bribery.
1. This is just too precious to not include:
"Kids' arrows costing 30 cents to make had an additional 43 cents tacked on through the federal excise tax. The extra cost proved too much for low-budget archery programs offered by schools, clubs and Boyâ(TM)s and Girl Scouts around the country, who quickly canceled orders," Dishion said.
Yeah, I'm sure the extra ~$3 per archery station for something that doesn't wear out quickly was the straw that broke the camel's back. It's definitely not the cost of the bows or target backstops or liability insurance or anything.
"Check your solid privilege at the door! The changlings are waging a perfectly legitimate struggle against the power structures that have kept them oppressed for millennia."
See? This is you spouting off, as I mentioned already. Again, that's your narrative idea about something. Now if you want to look at the Changelings...
No, that was a joke. That's why I put that sentence in quotes. The sentence immediately before said that late season DS9 *didn't* have SJW themes. I was exploring, in an over the top fashion, what it might look like if one tried to inject SJW themes into it.
Good, because those exist as the plot demands.
Yes, but the plot demands broadly parallel the tone that the series creators and directors (including but not limited to Roddenberry) wanted to set. The fact that many plot points are illogical or inconsistent with previous episodes actually makes it *easier* to discern the underlying ideological tendencies, not harder, because it means whenever they exhibit a moral judgment, it's fairly safe to assume it was a conscious choice on the part of the creative team and not something forced on them for consistency's sake.
There's still a danger of reading too much into things that were intended more as throwaway plot points, but once again I am talking about what Star Trek was not. I don't talk about what its actual slant *is* other than to acknowledge that it's very broadly liberal (as in egalitarian and charitable and merciful and freedom-promoting.)
In the vein of Popper, it's much easier to prove an absence of slant than an existence of one. I don't think Star Trek is anti-SJW, but it clearly did not have any significant pro-SJW slant.
And my point (which has nothing to do with AmiMoJo) was that your remark about not having jurisdiction was an error, as clear logic exists to make it a plot point.
See above. Picard could have registered mild personal discomfort, made some comment about how it was done on Klingon territory by an off-the-clock officer, said "it's their culture" and went on his merry way. The fact that the writers and directors didn't do that is significant and relevant. Neither the plot of that episode nor the internal logic of the show demanded that Picard react the way he did.
Picard is the moral center of TNG, and though he exhibits reasonable multicultural understanding in other contexts, he clearly feels very strongly, very protective about his own culture and the people who belong to it. He's not crusading against SJWness, obviously. He's just failing to exhibit any signs of it.
Early Ferengi? Were they even trying?
Well, attempting to stay on-topic here, late Ferregi are a bit more relevant to the SJW argument since there was an abrupt, humorous attempt to rebuke their conservative excesses and handwavingly transform them into a good little Federation clone. The Ferregi were conservative punching bags, sure. They were "consistent with" an SJW slant but also consistent with a regular egalitarian liberal slant.
It got even worse with Kurn.
Along with most of the stuff did with Klingons in DS9, that was extremely cringy. And has nothing to do with SJWness as far as I know. I don't even really understand why they did it for plot reasons. It seemed like a huge, pointless waste after everything that Worf went through in TNG. And for what? So we could have an episode about Dax not getting along with Martok's wife?
Alexander was cringy as fuck, too. And then, as you note, they turned the best Klingon that Star Trek ever produced into a villain (again) and then killed him off unceremoniously and illogically, since by that point there was no doubt whatsoever that Worf was much better in hand to hand combat.
We're talking about ~350 episodes here, in an episo
I think that was a rather rambling way of agreeing with my conclusion (if not the path there) ?
My argument had nothing to do with the legalistic structure and rules of Starfleet. The point wasn't whether or not Picard had the legal right to threaten Worf about his extracurricular actives; it was the fact that (contrary to what AmiMoJo was saying) it wasn't a very good example of SJW-ish toleration of other culture's customs.
The Ferengi are a better example. Of the writers, once again, failing to not fall into a trap of stereotypes. That's not liberalism, or any politics at all, that's bad writing.
As you say, that has nothing to do with politics (and thus nothing to do with my argument) at all. Well, I guess one could make a ST-isn't-SJW-because-Space-Jews argument, I guess. Except the Jews aren't really considered to be an oppressed class by most SJWs that I've seen. To the extent that was a straightforward criticism, yes yes Trek series have always had tons of rough edges if you go looking for them. They also have tons of content and the episodic structure (which you appeared to casually malign) that allows you to easily dip into only the good parts, hence all of the comments that contain phrases like "TNG in its prime".
Even Worf got to murder his own brother and ANOTHER Klingon Chancellor just for political convenience.
Late season DS9 isn't very relevant here. Few people would argue that the show had, at that point, a particularly liberal slant (except perhaps with the Section 31 stuff), let alone a SJW slant.
"Check your solid privilege at the door! The changlings are waging a perfectly legitimate struggle against the power structures that have kept them oppressed for millennia."
That's because that is your narrative that you're spouting off about, not his.
Again, I don't really think you're following me. I've been talking about what the narrative is not. I'm not saying there was an agenda (or "narrative") in the opposite direction.
sorry for the errant C&P mangling that third paragraph. It should be:
These two things weren't idle talking points of random people on random internet forums. They were the backbone of their political advertising campaign, and this backfired dramatically. I live in a swing state. Pussy grabbing, calling Rosie O'Donell a pig and mocking a disabled reporter were at least 80% of the campaign spending that I saw.
We were in the middle of a severe economic crisis, we had millions of people without healthcare, we were dealing with several massively expensive overseas wars that were the equivalent of Syria today. Would you really have wanted him to neglect these to yell things like "I grabbed yo wife's pussy McCain #Obamabinyolo08!"?
That's not neglect. These things have nothing to do with one another. There's a non-trivial chance that Bill Clinton is a rapist. An actual rapist, using physical force against Juanita Broderick... and yet this had zero impact on his presidency[1]. The Monica thing might have had an impact, but only because the Republicans made such a huge deal out of it.
The second most cringy thing from the anti-Trump campaigners was what you were saying... all this talk about how Trump is going to make things like misogyny ok again overnight, because apparently the president's main function is as a role model for grown-ass adults everywhere who are incapable of independent thought. The *most* cringy thing was pretending that Trump's real and supposed character flaws (including but not limited to 'pussy grabbing') were going to somehow directly translate into evil legislation.
These two things weren't idle talking points of random people on random internet forums. They were the backbone of their political advertising campaign, and this backfired dramatically. I live in a swing state. Pussy grabbing, calling Ros And neither should you. The one really revolutionary and really positive thing Trump might conceivably accomplish is to usher in the post-politician era of politics. Reinvent negotiation, but trash all of the tawdry politeness and self-censorship and lies-without-lying[2]. Don't lament that prospect. Celebrate it. ie O'Donell a pig and mocking a disabled reporter was at least 80% of the campaign spending that I saw.
while I wished later on he'd been a little more outspoken later on, what exactly was he supposed to do?
Well, that's just it. I was referring mainly to his public relations in light of the Republicans' tactics. He might have been able to do more through executive orders but I'm a bit fuzzy on what is and isn't possible there. But I watched as a lot of intelligent people who were not really conservatives, including my father, slowly slid towards the hyperbolic and fabricated Republican narratives that included (but certainly weren't limited to) *Obama* being the one unwilling to compromise with issues like the 2011 debt ceiling fiasco. This happened because Obama mostly didn't fight back. He just talked softly and with nuance and basically had the overriding philosophy that if he just remained as professional (dare I say presidential) as possible that the American people would magically wake up to the fact that the Republicans were full of shit.
This clever finessing approach, combined with a few fairly minor misstatements and missteps on hot button 'regressive left' issues (particularly his reactions to Islamism), was enough to make him a completely untrustworthy snake in the eyes of a lot of center and center-right folks. It's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit. But it was still a bad strategy, and Obama had warning sign after warning sign after warning sign that it wasn't working.
I think the explanation, perhaps, is that he cared too much about that "long arc towards justice". He knows the youth statistics and so he's conceivably playing a much more conservative (a word I used advisedly) game in the hopes that history would judge him favorably. If one has to be selfish, I suppose that's one of the least selfish ways to be selfish... blindly, quietly, gently planting your flag without regard to the immediate tactical situation, being content with merely being on (what you consider to be) the proverbial right side of history.
But look, here's the goddamn deal: George Clooney, as I recall, has in the past brushed off calls for him to run f
Here's what I'm mainly worried about -- now that Trump's President, the gloves come off of every single loud-mouthed, opinionated angry citizen who loves to moan and complain.
That's what you're "mainly" worried about? Christ almighty, but that is depressing. That was the second most cringy anti-Trump argument we kept hearing. Judging politicians as role models for the entire nation is getting really, really old. Didn't we, as a culture, mostly outgrow this shit in the late 90s with Monica? Can't we analyze presidential candidates in terms of policy and ability instead of their fucking manners (or their manner of fucking)?
The world's complex enough already and life's short, so why waste processor cycles arguing pointlessly?... One thing I did like about the Obama years was that he was a very approachable President.
Approachable... and Ineffective. He was an ineffective president. Yes, that is due in no small part to the Republicans' unprecedented scorched earth strategies, but he didn't respond to it appropriately. The two things he could have done were help reform his own party to minimize the influence of self-absorbed nutters and extremist elements, thus (hopefully) cementing the Democrats as The Sane Choice among swing voters... or he could have forcefully and repeatedly confronted the Republicans with the full reality of their rabid and moronic attacks, accomplishing the same thing whilst also possibly demoralizing some of the Republican base.
Instead, he stayed classy and low-key, fighting back largely through finesse, including utilizing that horrendous, repeatedly failed strategy of trying to give the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves.
I don't want a serene Buddha that children everywhere can look up to and emulate. I want someone who can get things done. The right things done. Trump, obviously, is not that person. But it's not too difficult to see how someone with a radically different values (and a less skeptical attitude) might think that he was.
Exactly like any modern "SJW". Find me one SJW who wouldn't be pissed as hell at say a Pakistani neighbor committing an "honor killing" of his sister. We support muslim rights and cultural differences, but never the right to murder in the name of culture.
Duras rather deserved it; he had just murdered Worf's lover / mother of his son. The sister (presumably) does not deserve it. To further clarify, the "murder" took place on a Klingon ship, without Worf representing himself as a Starfleet officer[1], and wasn't considered a crime under Klingon law.
I'm not altogether sure this specific incident is a great example of an anti-SJW slant (I wasn't the one who brought it up), but it doesn't appear very pro-SJW, either. Prime Directive be damned; the values of the Federation/Starfleet (including lack of capital punishment and a presumed aversion to duels to the death) are apparently held so highly as to trump a Starfleet officer's legal, off-duty adherence to his own culture's customs.
There isn't a great direct parallel for this in the real world, but I think there are plenty of indirect parallels. Many SJW defenses of Islam, for example, are all too eager to excuse or embrace corrosive ideas (particularly the justifications for females' dress codes[2]) because they're deemed to be merely 'different'. The ideal of multicultural tolerance--and in some cases an eagerness to self-flagellate over the West's sins and taboos--trumping normal, healthy criticism of an idea or custom or belief is a defining symptom of the SJW mindset.
Star Trek has tons of example of multicultural tolerance, of course, but with a handful of exceptions[3] I think they are fairly sane attitudes.
1. I believe he removed his comm badge, a recurring trope in the TNG / DS9 / Voyager era indicating that someone is either resigning from Starfleet or is about to do something in an unofficial capacity (and/or doesn't want to be tracked.)
2. This is not to say I think the hijab should be banned, but its religious underpinnings are odious and its more secular usage as an identification badge aren't much better.
3. The Prime Directive has always had some bizarre interpretations and inconsistent applicability. It doesn't *generally* seem rooted in SJWish-ness, but I'm sure if someone went over the hundreds and hundreds of episodes out there they could come up with something.
It depends on what you mean by "accept." If they start demanding separate bathrooms then no, that's bullshit. If they demand that they never be criticized, that too is bullshit.
But if they more or less just demand to be not discriminated against for no reason other than what they do in private? That's pretty much fine. That's egalitarian.
I want them to see a therapist not embrace their choice of identity.
That's not your call to make. I want observant Christians, Jews and Muslims to see therapists. I want people who think soccer is interesting to... well, maybe not see therapists (unless it'll really help), but to at least shut up about it.
But the existence of these personal beliefs do not mean that I therefore also believe that we should be engaged in ostracization-based social engineering. I can think of no attitude more defining of conservativism than the attitudes that conventional, popular things are inherently good, and strange things are inherently bad.
(Actual issues of delusions of being an owl, or an epidemic of owl-rape, could and should probably be considered orthogonal issues here.)
I'm not merely referring to egalitarianism is a distant and lofty goal (which in practice will never arrive to their satisfaction); I mean egalitarian in judgments in the here and now. It means that someone's membership in a minority class (or as females) does not generally give them any special consideration or rights.
Your average outspoken, self-identified SJW does not believe in this.
Egalitarians are SJWs according to the conservatives on Slashdot.
I think you'll find that many of those people decrying SJWs are centrists, classical liberals, libertarians and even people who formerly strongly identified with progressivism before progressivism became bogged down in the current self-negating mire.
You can even lose your job for saying things.
Despite what XKCD would have you believe, freedom of speech exists as a concept distinct from the first amendment. If you believe that any and all non-government-sponsored sanctions should be levied against speech you dislike, you are not in favor of free speech any more than someone who believes that private golf clubs should exclude black people (not "can", but "should") is against racism (but is against the post office discriminating against black people because that's the government.)
One could be an egalitarian without actually being in favor of free speech, I suppose, but that's a pretty tough line to walk.
Slashdot Mirror
The notion that immigration causes unemployment is one of those things that is "simple, obvious, and wrong".
Unfortunately, anyone who has taken Economics 101 is aware of what price floors do, anyone paying attention to the news knows that offshoring and automation is only accelerating, and anyone who has had to apply for and work entry level jobs for a significant period of time knows that the supply of labor far outweighs the demand and this manifests as workers being treated much shittier than they were a generation or two ago (as the older employees will usually confirm, if present.)
Is that too abstract for you? Have you not recently experienced or interacted with people who have to work entry level jobs? Well, consider this then: Fast food kitchens are significantly more automated than they were when I was a kid (they used to use spatulas, for one.) "The garbage men" is now "the garbage man", who operates a huge robotic arm that is, presumably, cheaper to maintain than the two guys that used to stand on the back of the truck. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers used and big box stores have resulted in fewer jobs compared to the department stores, grocery stores, and specialist stores that preceded them. And all of this is on top of the increased efficiency (read: fewer people employed) that automated internet services have wrought in virtually every industry. The idea that one additional lower-class worker in America today consumes enough to generate one additional American job is laughable.
Immigration on its own is not a negative--I quite agree. Mass immigration plus the current situation with minimum wage (and associated phenomena) is obviously not increasing demand for labor on net. It is simple, obvious and wrong to claim otherwise.
The solution, incidentally, is to replace minimum wage with some other form of assistance to the poor--a reverse income tax being the most straightforward way to emulate a minimum wage-ish effect. Health insurance and other mandated employer-burdens should be similarly replaced by programs that are subsidized through taxes. The idea here--and I know it's a radical one--is to stop penalizing companies from hiring more people (and particularly from hiring more full-time people. The number of companies I've seen that have moved to primarily using part time workers and contractors in the past 10 years is astounding and alarming.)
But first we have to get people to acknowledge that there actually is a problem. And that, unfortunately, is very very hard when leftists like yourself view the intellectual bar to clear as being a peg or two above Trump.
Seeing as it's been around and alive for nearly 10 years, I'd say your prediction is not going to be true.
Programming language death is an asymptotic affair.
And the court ... i guess the thief will not try to sue you, but he could.
Wait, sue? Are you saying tort or crime? In the case of suing, the thief has to claim damages, but given existing slander/libel caselaw it seems like the "telling the truth" defense[1] would apply.
And exactly this is something, you are not allowed to do. Even at the workplace, this is only allowed, if it is explicitely stated in your contract. Else you have an expectation of privacy.
Expectation of privacy is, I believe, a red letter concept. So, do you or don't you have any cases to cite where a thief was deemed to have an expectation of privacy whilst using stolen goods? If not, I suspect a lawyer arguing by analogy that a burglar has no expectation of privacy in someone else's living room might find a sympathetic ear.
I'm not saying he definitely would get off, but I don't think it's cut and dry.
1. A defense that, incredibly, doesn't exist in the UK. Or so I've heard.
That doesn't get you below freefall-from-the-edge-of-the-gravity-well speeds which, according to Randal Munroe, is 10 kilometers per second. (Remember, everything accelerates at the same rate in a gravity well regardless of mass.) Note the destructive effects he claims would happen, then notice how much smaller (and less dense) Denali is compared to the asteroid in question.
There might be a chance that it wouldn't be as bad if it penetrated the Earth's crust, thus allowing for a more gradual deceleration as it displaced lava (like a bullet decelerating under water), but that displaced lava would be dramatic and I'm not sure what the tectonic and volcanic implications would be.
(XKCD is such a bad influence. I'm sure the gravity equations are easy enough to find and use, but then I remembered this.)
Didn't Wheaton leave Star Trek because he didn't like the work and thought it was holding back his career?
He apologized for that at a convention with most of the TNG cast there; it's on Youtube somewhere. And it's not like his concerns were entirely ungrounded given the hatred his character generated (which came as a surprise to me when I found out, perhaps because I was much younger than he was when I first watched TNG.)
Didn't he fling a Federation ship into an asteroid, utterly destroying it? I mean, it's a bit rich naming an asteroid after such a vandal, no?
(No wait, god damn it, that was a stellar core fragment. The depressing part is I actually remembered that. And yes I know it was necessary to buy Data enough time, blah blah blah.)
In general, the various 'identity theft' type laws which make it illegal to access others accounts don't have exceptions because it's a stolen computer.
That doesn't necessarily mean the courts wouldn't create an exception based on some "no expectation of privacy" principle. Common law can be fun.
Even when the laptop is stolen, "hacking" the thiefs facebook account and monitoring the computer usage of other people (without some work contract allowing this) is a crime.
Citation needed.
Even if the text of a law supports that, I suspect that the courts would be eager to apply some red letter duct tape that would specify that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy whilst using a stolen laptop.
He didn't "hack the account" as far as I could tell, by the way. It sounded more like a remote desktop thing.
This is a dickish move. What if the thief sold the computer and someone else is new the new owner who actually paid for the computer? Vigilantism is bad.
This was the only 'dickish' move I saw:
He also posted her info to a number of Facebook groups, which spooked the thief enough to not only delete her Facebook account, but also her listed phone numbers.
He should not have done that bit. But the rest of it--sending texts to her phone numbers, calling the friend (âoeI called one of them and told her the thief was on a stolen laptop and told her Iâ(TM)d give her the opportunity to return it.â), and sending all of the information to the police--are all entirely reasonable.
We don't even know the timescales involved here. If this login happened mere hours after the theft, it's reasonable to assume the thief was doing it, with the possibility that the thief immediately gave it to a significant other or close relative being less likely, but still much more likely than an unconnected third party using it.
More likely is that the laptop got converted for cash at a pawn shop and later bought in good faith, which means he's humiliated a poor girl who had nothing to do with the theft.
Without knowing the time scales involved, that seems very unlikely. Unless he waited weeks to do this.
Also, pretty sure all the savvy thieves use Craigslist these days, not pawn shops. But either way, the chances of a buyer pouncing very quickly is pretty low unless he was selling at a very steep discount.
The "more likely" claim really makes me pause.... why would you say this? Does this have something to do with the alleged thief being female?
You seem to think that he is a complete moron, but it seems to me that he made the right decision.
Only if he was planning to have his laptop stolen. I'd rather risk losing the laptop than risk the thief stealing my logins, wagering that he's too lazy/ignorant to bother reinstalling the OS.
I think there might be out of band options for thief tracking if this is really a huge priority, but I think it would be better and simpler to alter one's habits to reduce the risk of theft.
Or maybe it was his "Just surf the news sites and play a game to pass the time" laptop. You know, the one with no reason whatsoever to encrypt anything.
The only reason to even consider "not to encrypting anything" is if your processor doesn't support AES instruction sets.
I mean, are you actually proposing that he was likely to have a dedicated machine for gaming/browsing that had no Steam logins, no news site logins, no forum logins, in fact no logins or personal information of any kind and was never used as a backup machine to check email, etc. in a pinch?
Just encrypt. It requires less consideration, and it removes the need to shred a drive before selling it.
Err, you're still joking, right?
I mean, ten out of ten points for thinking outside the box, but to slow down the asteroid on the short timescales involved, I think the solar sail would need to be some ridiculous size. Many, many times bigger than the Earth. You could probably use smaller solar sails to move it towards the Earth (which would take years) but that's nowhere near the same thing as providing enough pull to counterbalance most of the weight of the asteroid under Earth's gravity.
Have a mandatory Constitutional review before they vote on a new law. If it fails then those who vote for it would be financially liable if the courts later overturn that law. The politicians can still vote as they want, if they are willing to take the financial risk.
That's a fun idea, if a bit less realistic.
A related idea was proposed ~30 years ago on an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister": Failure Standards. Programs and laws that aim to achieve some goal have to give hard numbers (deadlines, target crime statistics, whatever) and if the law fails to achieve the specified result, it will be deemed a failure.
Now maybe that failure could automatically cause the law to expire, but even if it didn't you still have the powerful political effects seen in the advertisements: "Senator so-and-so voted for 20 new suchandsuch programs over the past 10 years... [scary voice] and 17 of them were FAILURES."
The fact that it's an incredibly radical concept to talk about designing a system that is self-aware of failure, or makes it hard for politicians to insert pork or various dumb riders, or is at all resistant to capriciousness and incompetence, is very telling. The foxes have been guarding the henhouse for so long that any sane system will necessarily sound like an idle pipe dream at best, and the ravings of a fringe extremist at worst.
I'm sure that the NASA spacecraft that attaches some rockets to the asteroid to change its course, can also attach a parachute or two so it can land gently.
I'm not sure if any of that was tongue in cheek, but...
The rockets to get it to earth would doubtless work so long as we were patient (possibly "very patient") and had something with a good specific impulse. "Landing" it safely is another matter entirely.
I suspect there will be... issues trying to build a parachute that could slow down a 200 km wide hunk of iron. For one thing, (and this is just one tiny objection) the air at the top of the asteroid would be a bit thin even with the bottom touching the earth.
It's actually quite tricky trying to come up with a feasible solution, even assuming a budget of trillions. Slowing it down with rockets would be completely out of the question. Slowing it down with LOTS of carefully timed nukes (hundreds or thousands) might be feasible if not for the fact that you're just going to break it up and irradiate it. Atmospheric braking is impossible given the size of the thing.
The best I can come up with is steer it at the center of Antartica's largest landmass[1] and hope for the best. Hopefully landmass under Antartica's ice sheet could absorb enough of the energy to prevent mega tsunamis.
But given the incredible density of the thing, it might well punch a rather large hole into the mantle of the earth. It's an order of magnitude bigger than the K-T impactor, but perhaps more importantly it's more dense. To counter that, we have the fact that's it's probably moving a lot slower than the K-T object, but freefall speed via Earth's gravity is still enough to be a bit worrisome.
And if it a actually fully penetrates the crust... it'll *sink*, right? Sink right down into the lava? And then keep sinking, all the way to the Earth's core, displacing an obscene amount of lava that flows out of Antartica's gaping wound as if from an overfilled glass of Coke that someone has just added an ice cube to?
This is a surprisingly complicated thought experiment.
1. Or Australia, in a pinch.
You can't dictate that a company can't sell a legal product.
Yes you can. It turns out that legislators can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. They could ban peanut butter tomorrow if they felt like it. They could even pass laws that violate the constitution and police can happily enforce those laws until a judge explicitly tells them to cut it out, with no punishment whatsoever.
This is one of the many, many reasons why the world's democracies often seem dysfunctional. And it's part of the reason why the emergency $700 billion bailout in 2008 included a tax break for a company that makes wooden archery arrows for kids (of the sort commonly used in summer camps or scouting groups.)[1]
It would be very interesting to create a constitution for a country or state/municipality that says you may only pass laws for XYZ reasons, you have to give the justification for every law you pass, and if the justification given for that law is ever found to be invalid then the courts can strike it down. And you aren't allowed to invent a new justification after the law has been passed. That is what "draining the swamp" would truly look like. That, plus figuring out a way for politicians to run campaigns that doesn't involve legalized bribery.
1. This is just too precious to not include:
"Kids' arrows costing 30 cents to make had an additional 43 cents tacked on through the federal excise tax. The extra cost proved too much for low-budget archery programs offered by schools, clubs and Boyâ(TM)s and Girl Scouts around the country, who quickly canceled orders," Dishion said.
Yeah, I'm sure the extra ~$3 per archery station for something that doesn't wear out quickly was the straw that broke the camel's back. It's definitely not the cost of the bows or target backstops or liability insurance or anything.
"Check your solid privilege at the door! The changlings are waging a perfectly legitimate struggle against the power structures that have kept them oppressed for millennia."
See? This is you spouting off, as I mentioned already. Again, that's your narrative idea about something. Now if you want to look at the Changelings...
No, that was a joke. That's why I put that sentence in quotes. The sentence immediately before said that late season DS9 *didn't* have SJW themes. I was exploring, in an over the top fashion, what it might look like if one tried to inject SJW themes into it.
Good, because those exist as the plot demands.
Yes, but the plot demands broadly parallel the tone that the series creators and directors (including but not limited to Roddenberry) wanted to set. The fact that many plot points are illogical or inconsistent with previous episodes actually makes it *easier* to discern the underlying ideological tendencies, not harder, because it means whenever they exhibit a moral judgment, it's fairly safe to assume it was a conscious choice on the part of the creative team and not something forced on them for consistency's sake.
There's still a danger of reading too much into things that were intended more as throwaway plot points, but once again I am talking about what Star Trek was not. I don't talk about what its actual slant *is* other than to acknowledge that it's very broadly liberal (as in egalitarian and charitable and merciful and freedom-promoting.)
In the vein of Popper, it's much easier to prove an absence of slant than an existence of one. I don't think Star Trek is anti-SJW, but it clearly did not have any significant pro-SJW slant.
And my point (which has nothing to do with AmiMoJo) was that your remark about not having jurisdiction was an error, as clear logic exists to make it a plot point.
See above. Picard could have registered mild personal discomfort, made some comment about how it was done on Klingon territory by an off-the-clock officer, said "it's their culture" and went on his merry way. The fact that the writers and directors didn't do that is significant and relevant. Neither the plot of that episode nor the internal logic of the show demanded that Picard react the way he did.
Picard is the moral center of TNG, and though he exhibits reasonable multicultural understanding in other contexts, he clearly feels very strongly, very protective about his own culture and the people who belong to it. He's not crusading against SJWness, obviously. He's just failing to exhibit any signs of it.
Early Ferengi? Were they even trying?
Well, attempting to stay on-topic here, late Ferregi are a bit more relevant to the SJW argument since there was an abrupt, humorous attempt to rebuke their conservative excesses and handwavingly transform them into a good little Federation clone. The Ferregi were conservative punching bags, sure. They were "consistent with" an SJW slant but also consistent with a regular egalitarian liberal slant.
It got even worse with Kurn.
Along with most of the stuff did with Klingons in DS9, that was extremely cringy. And has nothing to do with SJWness as far as I know. I don't even really understand why they did it for plot reasons. It seemed like a huge, pointless waste after everything that Worf went through in TNG. And for what? So we could have an episode about Dax not getting along with Martok's wife?
Alexander was cringy as fuck, too. And then, as you note, they turned the best Klingon that Star Trek ever produced into a villain (again) and then killed him off unceremoniously and illogically, since by that point there was no doubt whatsoever that Worf was much better in hand to hand combat.
We're talking about ~350 episodes here, in an episo
My argument had nothing to do with the legalistic structure and rules of Starfleet. The point wasn't whether or not Picard had the legal right to threaten Worf about his extracurricular actives; it was the fact that (contrary to what AmiMoJo was saying) it wasn't a very good example of SJW-ish toleration of other culture's customs.
The Ferengi are a better example. Of the writers, once again, failing to not fall into a trap of stereotypes. That's not liberalism, or any politics at all, that's bad writing.
As you say, that has nothing to do with politics (and thus nothing to do with my argument) at all. Well, I guess one could make a ST-isn't-SJW-because-Space-Jews argument, I guess. Except the Jews aren't really considered to be an oppressed class by most SJWs that I've seen. To the extent that was a straightforward criticism, yes yes Trek series have always had tons of rough edges if you go looking for them. They also have tons of content and the episodic structure (which you appeared to casually malign) that allows you to easily dip into only the good parts, hence all of the comments that contain phrases like "TNG in its prime".
Even Worf got to murder his own brother and ANOTHER Klingon Chancellor just for political convenience.
Late season DS9 isn't very relevant here. Few people would argue that the show had, at that point, a particularly liberal slant (except perhaps with the Section 31 stuff), let alone a SJW slant.
"Check your solid privilege at the door! The changlings are waging a perfectly legitimate struggle against the power structures that have kept them oppressed for millennia."
That's because that is your narrative that you're spouting off about, not his.
Again, I don't really think you're following me. I've been talking about what the narrative is not. I'm not saying there was an agenda (or "narrative") in the opposite direction.
sorry for the errant C&P mangling that third paragraph. It should be:
These two things weren't idle talking points of random people on random internet forums. They were the backbone of their political advertising campaign, and this backfired dramatically. I live in a swing state. Pussy grabbing, calling Rosie O'Donell a pig and mocking a disabled reporter were at least 80% of the campaign spending that I saw.
We were in the middle of a severe economic crisis, we had millions of people without healthcare, we were dealing with several massively expensive overseas wars that were the equivalent of Syria today. Would you really have wanted him to neglect these to yell things like "I grabbed yo wife's pussy McCain #Obamabinyolo08!"?
That's not neglect. These things have nothing to do with one another. There's a non-trivial chance that Bill Clinton is a rapist. An actual rapist, using physical force against Juanita Broderick... and yet this had zero impact on his presidency[1]. The Monica thing might have had an impact, but only because the Republicans made such a huge deal out of it.
The second most cringy thing from the anti-Trump campaigners was what you were saying... all this talk about how Trump is going to make things like misogyny ok again overnight, because apparently the president's main function is as a role model for grown-ass adults everywhere who are incapable of independent thought. The *most* cringy thing was pretending that Trump's real and supposed character flaws (including but not limited to 'pussy grabbing') were going to somehow directly translate into evil legislation.
These two things weren't idle talking points of random people on random internet forums. They were the backbone of their political advertising campaign, and this backfired dramatically. I live in a swing state. Pussy grabbing, calling Ros And neither should you. The one really revolutionary and really positive thing Trump might conceivably accomplish is to usher in the post-politician era of politics. Reinvent negotiation, but trash all of the tawdry politeness and self-censorship and lies-without-lying[2]. Don't lament that prospect. Celebrate it. ie O'Donell a pig and mocking a disabled reporter was at least 80% of the campaign spending that I saw.
while I wished later on he'd been a little more outspoken later on, what exactly was he supposed to do?
Well, that's just it. I was referring mainly to his public relations in light of the Republicans' tactics. He might have been able to do more through executive orders but I'm a bit fuzzy on what is and isn't possible there. But I watched as a lot of intelligent people who were not really conservatives, including my father, slowly slid towards the hyperbolic and fabricated Republican narratives that included (but certainly weren't limited to) *Obama* being the one unwilling to compromise with issues like the 2011 debt ceiling fiasco. This happened because Obama mostly didn't fight back. He just talked softly and with nuance and basically had the overriding philosophy that if he just remained as professional (dare I say presidential) as possible that the American people would magically wake up to the fact that the Republicans were full of shit.
This clever finessing approach, combined with a few fairly minor misstatements and missteps on hot button 'regressive left' issues (particularly his reactions to Islamism), was enough to make him a completely untrustworthy snake in the eyes of a lot of center and center-right folks. It's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit. But it was still a bad strategy, and Obama had warning sign after warning sign after warning sign that it wasn't working.
I think the explanation, perhaps, is that he cared too much about that "long arc towards justice". He knows the youth statistics and so he's conceivably playing a much more conservative (a word I used advisedly) game in the hopes that history would judge him favorably. If one has to be selfish, I suppose that's one of the least selfish ways to be selfish... blindly, quietly, gently planting your flag without regard to the immediate tactical situation, being content with merely being on (what you consider to be) the proverbial right side of history.
But look, here's the goddamn deal: George Clooney, as I recall, has in the past brushed off calls for him to run f
Here's what I'm mainly worried about -- now that Trump's President, the gloves come off of every single loud-mouthed, opinionated angry citizen who loves to moan and complain.
That's what you're "mainly" worried about? Christ almighty, but that is depressing. That was the second most cringy anti-Trump argument we kept hearing. Judging politicians as role models for the entire nation is getting really, really old. Didn't we, as a culture, mostly outgrow this shit in the late 90s with Monica? Can't we analyze presidential candidates in terms of policy and ability instead of their fucking manners (or their manner of fucking)?
The world's complex enough already and life's short, so why waste processor cycles arguing pointlessly? ... One thing I did like about the Obama years was that he was a very approachable President.
Approachable... and Ineffective. He was an ineffective president. Yes, that is due in no small part to the Republicans' unprecedented scorched earth strategies, but he didn't respond to it appropriately. The two things he could have done were help reform his own party to minimize the influence of self-absorbed nutters and extremist elements, thus (hopefully) cementing the Democrats as The Sane Choice among swing voters... or he could have forcefully and repeatedly confronted the Republicans with the full reality of their rabid and moronic attacks, accomplishing the same thing whilst also possibly demoralizing some of the Republican base.
Instead, he stayed classy and low-key, fighting back largely through finesse, including utilizing that horrendous, repeatedly failed strategy of trying to give the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves.
I don't want a serene Buddha that children everywhere can look up to and emulate. I want someone who can get things done. The right things done. Trump, obviously, is not that person. But it's not too difficult to see how someone with a radically different values (and a less skeptical attitude) might think that he was.
Exactly like any modern "SJW". Find me one SJW who wouldn't be pissed as hell at say a Pakistani neighbor committing an "honor killing" of his sister. We support muslim rights and cultural differences, but never the right to murder in the name of culture.
Duras rather deserved it; he had just murdered Worf's lover / mother of his son. The sister (presumably) does not deserve it. To further clarify, the "murder" took place on a Klingon ship, without Worf representing himself as a Starfleet officer[1], and wasn't considered a crime under Klingon law.
I'm not altogether sure this specific incident is a great example of an anti-SJW slant (I wasn't the one who brought it up), but it doesn't appear very pro-SJW, either. Prime Directive be damned; the values of the Federation/Starfleet (including lack of capital punishment and a presumed aversion to duels to the death) are apparently held so highly as to trump a Starfleet officer's legal, off-duty adherence to his own culture's customs.
There isn't a great direct parallel for this in the real world, but I think there are plenty of indirect parallels. Many SJW defenses of Islam, for example, are all too eager to excuse or embrace corrosive ideas (particularly the justifications for females' dress codes[2]) because they're deemed to be merely 'different'. The ideal of multicultural tolerance--and in some cases an eagerness to self-flagellate over the West's sins and taboos--trumping normal, healthy criticism of an idea or custom or belief is a defining symptom of the SJW mindset.
Star Trek has tons of example of multicultural tolerance, of course, but with a handful of exceptions[3] I think they are fairly sane attitudes.
1. I believe he removed his comm badge, a recurring trope in the TNG / DS9 / Voyager era indicating that someone is either resigning from Starfleet or is about to do something in an unofficial capacity (and/or doesn't want to be tracked.)
2. This is not to say I think the hijab should be banned, but its religious underpinnings are odious and its more secular usage as an identification badge aren't much better.
3. The Prime Directive has always had some bizarre interpretations and inconsistent applicability. It doesn't *generally* seem rooted in SJWish-ness, but I'm sure if someone went over the hundreds and hundreds of episodes out there they could come up with something.
That would be India. Over a billion people with democratic elections.
Only slightly more corrupt than the US.
This is obviously some strange usage of the word "slightly" that I wasn't previously aware of.
But if they more or less just demand to be not discriminated against for no reason other than what they do in private? That's pretty much fine. That's egalitarian.
I want them to see a therapist not embrace their choice of identity.
That's not your call to make. I want observant Christians, Jews and Muslims to see therapists. I want people who think soccer is interesting to... well, maybe not see therapists (unless it'll really help), but to at least shut up about it.
But the existence of these personal beliefs do not mean that I therefore also believe that we should be engaged in ostracization-based social engineering. I can think of no attitude more defining of conservativism than the attitudes that conventional, popular things are inherently good, and strange things are inherently bad.
(Actual issues of delusions of being an owl, or an epidemic of owl-rape, could and should probably be considered orthogonal issues here.)
Your average outspoken, self-identified SJW does not believe in this.
Egalitarians are SJWs according to the conservatives on Slashdot.
I think you'll find that many of those people decrying SJWs are centrists, classical liberals, libertarians and even people who formerly strongly identified with progressivism before progressivism became bogged down in the current self-negating mire.
You can even lose your job for saying things.
Despite what XKCD would have you believe, freedom of speech exists as a concept distinct from the first amendment. If you believe that any and all non-government-sponsored sanctions should be levied against speech you dislike, you are not in favor of free speech any more than someone who believes that private golf clubs should exclude black people (not "can", but "should") is against racism (but is against the post office discriminating against black people because that's the government.)
One could be an egalitarian without actually being in favor of free speech, I suppose, but that's a pretty tough line to walk.