Too many people think "informed view" means "believes the same thing I do".
Mod that up!
I used to encourage more people to vote, but back in '04 when I included the following in an e-mail: "I won't tell you how to vote but vote" (or something like that).
The reply I got was basically "Well, I wish you would tell me how to vote because I don't know".
How should I know? I don't even live in that state. I'm not sure I could even name both their Senators.
Most people are acutely aware of what they believe and need little to no "education" on the matte
Voting decisions are not always black and white. There were quite a few Amendments and proposals on my ballot and not all of them were easy decisions to make.
They may be easier if you just vote against everything but for example I want the state to be able to afford to build and maintain roads, but should we pay for it by issuing bonds or by raising sales tax slightly? Or do neither.
Another ballot measure sounded very appealing until I thought about the long-term consequences and how it will surely lead to endless legal battles and great expense for the state.
And then I had to consider changes to our income and property tax and before you say that you would vote against any new taxes, property taxes would actually go down for businesses and income tax would not change for most people.
And are the two Amendments that purport to make redistricting less partisan really going to help or could they make things worse?
It took quite a lot of reading and research. The state's "blue book" for this election is over 100 pages long.
There were a few easy ones though.
And then come the judges who I have to decide whether to retain or not. They're appointed here, but I can vote to not retain them after a while. Most people skip actually skip this part of the ballot because most people don't follow day-to-day court proceedings. In 2016 only one judge in the whole state lost his gavel.
Unless you've appeared in their court or there's a widely publicized trial, most people don't have a clue how to vote there.
I have not changed my beliefs since I was in high school
I certainly have. I've experienced and learned a lot since then. I'm more mature and I'm better informed. I understand more about unintended consequences.
And we aren't facing the same issues that we were when I was in high school. We were still worried about the Soviets and the internet as most people know it today didn't even exist back then. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook had not even been dreamed up yet.
Hell, Mark Zuckerberg hadn't even been born yet and Ajit Pai was just a kid.
tend to vote straight Republican rather than for the candidate,
IMO, too many people vote straight party tickets. Sometimes the candidate from the other party will be the better one.
Maybe not, but then you get a lot people who will vote based on misinformation, gut feelings and/or entirely upon party lines. They may feel strongly, but they're not necessarily more informed than those who aren't voting.
I'm not pointing the finger at any particular party either. There are uninformed voters of all political stripes.
I remember one guy I worked with who was intelligent and reasonably informed, but he would not vote despite several of us (who represented a mix of political leanings) trying to convince him one day over lunch. He just said he didn't think his vote wouldn't matter.
It's actually somewhat true if you are only talking about the Presidential election and you live in a solid red or solid blue state but we don't and those other elections matter too.
It's been two years since that election but I recall there were other races and issues on the ballot besides just the Presidential election.
And it wasn't the last election for a lot of us. We have local elections in off years and those have even worse turnout, but those are the elections that most directly affect most people.
And looking at my ballot, I really wish I had run for Coroner or Surveyor because in both of those races there is only one candidate running.
I don't know much about dead bodies or surveying but I figure I can just delegate all that.
It's good to have a job that continues to pay even if you're absent for jury duty, but I imagine for some people it can be a serious financial burden and that meager pay is not going to make up for it.
I've been fortunate enough to get paid while I've gone downtown to fulfill my jury duty although the last time my boss was clearly not happy about it. (What he didn't know is I was already looking for a new job and even did a phone interview on the drive to the courthouse one day).
The pay was meager enough that it didn't really make up for the hassle of dealing with going to court 3 days in a row. To my amazement they picked me last time.
It was a great experience IMO. The only thing that really sucked is that it ended in a mistrial. I was going to acquit the guy too and I think it was the defense that moved for a mistrial.
The prosecution had convinced me that the defendant wasn't exactly a good upstanding citizen, but they hadn't convinced me he was guilty of the crime with which he was charged and I know at least some other jurors were leaning towards acquittal as well.
It was amusing watching a few people trying to get out of jury duty though. One IT guy said he was in the middle of a huge project and couldn't possibly take time off work. He literally argued he was too important. He was NOT excused.
Another person said he could not render a fair verdict because he had been a victim of vehicle theft and/or just a vehicle break-in. The judge questioned him briefly and did excuse him, but I don't think the judge really believed him.
One of the questions they had already asked us was for a show of hands of everyone who had been the victim of auto theft or vehicle break-in or if someone they knew had been. Nearly every hand in the courtroom went up (including mine).
I thought it was a fairly ridiculous question since that county has one of the highest rates of auto theft in the whole US. They stole my boss's truck that was parked right next to mine a couple months before that. My car has been broken into a few times, but they never thought it was worth stealing the whole thing. Or maybe they couldn't drive a stick.
I suspect it also gave Trump an advantage in 2016.
There were a lot of complaints and criticism of the media and pollsters predicting a Clinton win, but did it really benefit her? I'm sure a lot of people who wanted her to win were lazy and stayed home because they were convinced she was a shoo-in.
I doubt as many Trump supporters stayed home blissfully confident that he would be elected even without their vote.
I don't see how this app is going to work since I just got back from turning in my mail-in ballot in person. I suspect by the time it's opened and my name is checked off the polls will already be closed. In fact I'm almost certain that's the case because it's now in a sealed box with a bunch of other ballots.
At this point it would just be annoying for someone to make me look at my phone to remind me to vote.
Well, we are often bad at what we do...I was going to post about how I usually just relied on our database and environment variables to keep my time zones right but even that sometimes may not be enough.
Didn't Apple just have a DST bug with their watch? I didn't read details, but I think I saw headlines. How could they do that? I remember spending way too much time testing stuff just to make sure it handled time changes and it usually did but I do remember a timekeeping system failing miserably right after it was installed. (not my project).
And I also remember reviewing Y2K fixes which literally just "fixed" them by changing them to Y2.1K bugs. I confronted one contractor about it and of course his reply was that our code wouldn't be used 100 years from now (and he was probably thinking "Even if it is, I'll be dead and my grandson will have a job").
I explained to him that with how cheap our employer was it was very likely they'd still be running the same code 100 years from now.
I think that would violate the 8th Amendment regarding cruel and unusual punishment.
Can you imagine being forced to share a cell with either one of them?
And as much as I loathe FB and Zuckerberg, I'm not sure there's anything criminal about either.
I dislike Trump even more, but I only suspect him of crimes mostly concerning money and hopefully Mueller will figure it out. Maybe it will turn out that Trump is as pure as the driven snow?
I didn't type that last bit with a straight face, BTW.
At best, Trump just surrounds himself with criminals and fraudsters.
I don't suppose they allow you to pick your cellmate in prison.
J. Frank Parnell : Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was literally bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I showed them. I had a lobotomy in the end.
Otto : Lobotomy? Isn't that for loonies?
Parnell : Not at all. Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.
This is one reason why I sometimes don't read the articles.
Someone like you will always come around and summarize it in one or two sentences. Even if your summary is inaccurate, I'm unlikely to stop using my phones. I'm at so much risk from developing cancer from so many other factors that I would be lucky if I only got cancer from my phone.
And what about all the WiFi signals constantly entering my head and passing through my body?
What if someday we find out that low doses of radiation from phones actually provide a protective effect on our cells and WiFi signals actually stimulate the brain?
Saving a kid over the adult is not as cut and dry as it sounds. What about all the other kids that the adult may be financially supporting? Additionally, how far can that go? is it better to save an 11 year old vs a 12 year old? Can a vehicle/machine really make that evaluation correctly each time?
The car needs more information. We need to have an identifying beacon of sorts so the car can identify us and evaluate our lives or just look up our social value ranking or some such metric such as predicted tax contributions over their lifetimes.
And if there are multiple people at stake it may have to decide whether killing 2 lower ranked people is preferable to killing 1 of a higher rank. Taking an average doesn't seem fair, but neither does just adding up the 2 lower ranked people's scores.
I dunno, is it better to save two people with merely Fair Karma or 1 with Excellent?
With every act of political violence committed by left wingers (rarely highlighted in most press coverage),
Scalise getting shot got plenty of coverage just as the latest MAGA bomber is and rightfully so. Less attention is given to acts of vandalism and clashes between groups like Antifa and The Proud Boys or other alt-right groups.
Have you even heard of Marc and Elizabeth Hokoana? They're a couple accused of going to a Milo rally with the intent of provoking someone into giving them an excuse to shoot a leftist "snowflake". And they did shoot someone, he just didn't die so it didn't get as much attention but as far as I can tell the charges are still pending and haven't been dropped.
The victim is such a pacifist that he wants "restorative justice" for them rather than prison.
They do get coverage but most people recognize that neither extreme is representative of either Democrats or Republicans.
somebody says: You're going to hate the new rules.
(I'm a different Anon)
This is not a good response and will only lead to more violence which seems to be the one thing in common the more extreme "black bloc" and the alt-right share.
The Hatfields and the McCoys. Nothing good will come from justifying violence with violence.
It may be more a question of how they interpret things.
"“One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal”"
The liberal might think, well conservatives are often avid hunters so they guess conservatives would disagree. The conservative might think, well most vegans are liberals so liberals would agree. In reality, many liberals hunt, many conservatives don't, few liberals are even vegetarians let alone vegan and define "defenseless".
We kill defenseless animals all the time, usually for food but also for wildlife management and even sport. But if we're talking about animal cruelty I think most people regardless of political belief would agree that's horrible.
That animal question is far too open to interpretation.
It could be a question of people saying one thing while really thinking another. I see nothing wrong with slaughtering defenseless cattle for their meat. If they're honest most people would agree that it's not one of the worst things but they think others will see them badly if they admit that.
And can we even agree on what is liberal or conservative anymore? Aren't most of us rather moderate? Were the liberals answering what they thought the extreme right would say?
I almost think that social media disconnects people from one and other to the point where it's not possible to solve this issue even if you have a single service that everyone gets to use no matter what.
That's probably true. If Twitter didn't ban anyone and they were the only option, people would quickly for their own echo chambers and there might be more interaction but that would mostly be posting to people of the "other side" until most people block all those people.
People forming their own gated communities all in one huge walled garden.
Different people have different lines for what is too much "political correctness".
Most Americans would agree that the "n-word" shouldn't be used in everyday conversation. That's why we even created the euphemism "the n-word". I certainly wouldn't want it banned though (either by rewriting Mark Twain or attempting to expunge it from history).
But we'll argue about whether saying electing the black candidate would "monkey this up" is a racist dog-whistle or just an innocent expression. It seems incredibly tone-deaf of him if he didn't mean it as the dog-whistle. In fact, IMO, it stretches credibility.
Moving towards more questionable "PC" arguments, there's this FB post that a school district's police department deleted and apologized for.
(To save people the click, it's a picture of an overloaded bus (presumably in India) with people on top and hanging on to the back with the caption "Don't forget! It's National Bus Safety Week" and it seems obvious (to me anyway) the point was bus safety, not "look at all the Indians!")
And then we have cases of people not wanting children to play Cowboys and Indians or dressing up for Halloween as a Disney character from a different culture.
And should I really feel guilty that I enjoyed The Party starring Peter Sellers in "brownface"? Or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's?
That may be a problem, but I'm not sure what the solution is.
I expect Gab will find hosting somewhere and this may even attract more users.
I'm not in favor of (gov't) forcing Twitter to host content they don't want to as I believe that would violate their First Amendment. Shareholders and the public applying pressure is a different matter.
And the government can't block Gab unless they're somehow engaging in criminal activity and as far as I know, they're not. I've only looked at Bowers account, but I'm not sure any of his messages actually crossed legal lines in the US. I'm sure they would elsewhere in the world, but I'm not arguing for any changes to the First Amendment.
I'm just not sure anything violated US law (credible threats? inciting violence?), but I'm not a lawyer.
Of course the gov't could monitor the internet even more closely but it's often hard to tell the difference between trolls, crazy but harmless people and potential threats who may at some point do something. And before they do anything you can't do all that much.
I sort of like the idea of exiling extremists to their own corner of the internet (makes them easier to avoid, easier to monitor), but then that just amplifies their echo chamber.
**minus the small detour to the ocean bottom, presumably.**
If they built it to be submersible that would be pretty cool.
Imagine the advertising:
"View the original wreck on your voyage across the Atlantic"
Does climate change increase or decrease the number of icebergs? I was thinking it might be fewer, but maybe more are breaking off the ice sheets and drifting into shipping lanes..
Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe. Jim Hacker: I don't want to obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe. Sir Humphrey: It's a deterrent. Jim Hacker: It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it. Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't. Jim Hacker: They probably do. Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know. Jim Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't. Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would.
I hadn't seen that Snoop Dogg video until just now.
So, on the one hand you've got a rapper famous for smoking marijuana and saying stuff like "For shizzle" making a video where everyone appears in clown makeup and a toy gun that "fires" a tiny sign that says "Bang" is used to shoot a "Trump" clown and on the other hand we've got the actual President of the United States calling the press the "enemy of the people" and saying it's "unfortunate" that people expect him to have a coherent response to Khashoggi's murder.
Trump has called for police to rough up suspects and for his followers to attack those who don't support him at his rallies. He even tweeted that Snoop Dogg deserves "jail time" for exercising his First Amendment rights.
He literally said that anyone who can body-slam a reporter is "my kind of guy". That's a guy who plead guilty to a violent crime.
No wonder Snoop doesn't share his joint with the clown in his video.
"False equivalency" and "snowflake" are a couple of things that come to mind.
Anyone remember when the Doobies were on What's Happening and Rerun was caught taping their concert?
Patrick Simmons: I thought you guys were our friends
Michael McDonald: How could you guys do this to us? .......... Dwayne: Are we gonna go to jail?
John Hartman: Man, how do I know? What would you do if you were in our shoes?
Rerun: Well, I'd just send us home and laugh it off.
Bobby La Kind: It's not funny!
Yeah, it's serious business.
---
And since I've already wandered a bit off topic, this is my favorite concert-taping story:
back in 81, robert fripp was doing his first frippertronic tour and was playing at the u. of pennsylvania in philly...we knew we had to tape it, but knowing how quirky fripp is on this issue and the small size of the venue, we had to resort to unconventional means...so we went to a medical supply house, rented a wheelchair, taped the mics to the arm rests, and had my buddy sitting in the thing with a blanket covering the deck...fripp, who was tuning up and checking his decks, graciously requested that our suddenly wheelchair bound buddy be placed right in front of him...at the end of a nice 60 minute set, and after fripp takes his bows, my buddy, who was being fed margaritas via a straw the whole time, starts screaming: "fripp healed me...i feel my legs...hallelujah...fripp is god", jumps outta the chair and runs outta the place...pandemonium ensues of course, and fripp is flabergasted...the story does not end though...next day, fripp is doing promo signing at a record store, and i walk in with a j-card and ask him to sign it for the guy he had healed yesterday, becuz the tape of the gig would be incomplete without it... needless to say, fripp went ballistic, spewing obscenities left and right... i had a good laugh...
Slashdot Mirror
Too many people think "informed view" means "believes the same thing I do".
Mod that up!
I used to encourage more people to vote, but back in '04 when I included the following in an e-mail: "I won't tell you how to vote but vote" (or something like that).
The reply I got was basically "Well, I wish you would tell me how to vote because I don't know".
How should I know? I don't even live in that state. I'm not sure I could even name both their Senators.
Most people are acutely aware of what they believe and need little to no "education" on the matte
Voting decisions are not always black and white. There were quite a few Amendments and proposals on my ballot and not all of them were easy decisions to make.
They may be easier if you just vote against everything but for example I want the state to be able to afford to build and maintain roads, but should we pay for it by issuing bonds or by raising sales tax slightly? Or do neither.
Another ballot measure sounded very appealing until I thought about the long-term consequences and how it will surely lead to endless legal battles and great expense for the state.
And then I had to consider changes to our income and property tax and before you say that you would vote against any new taxes, property taxes would actually go down for businesses and income tax would not change for most people.
And are the two Amendments that purport to make redistricting less partisan really going to help or could they make things worse?
It took quite a lot of reading and research. The state's "blue book" for this election is over 100 pages long.
There were a few easy ones though.
And then come the judges who I have to decide whether to retain or not. They're appointed here, but I can vote to not retain them after a while. Most people skip actually skip this part of the ballot because most people don't follow day-to-day court proceedings. In 2016 only one judge in the whole state lost his gavel.
Unless you've appeared in their court or there's a widely publicized trial, most people don't have a clue how to vote there.
I have not changed my beliefs since I was in high school
I certainly have. I've experienced and learned a lot since then. I'm more mature and I'm better informed. I understand more about unintended consequences.
And we aren't facing the same issues that we were when I was in high school. We were still worried about the Soviets and the internet as most people know it today didn't even exist back then. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook had not even been dreamed up yet.
Hell, Mark Zuckerberg hadn't even been born yet and Ajit Pai was just a kid.
tend to vote straight Republican rather than for the candidate,
IMO, too many people vote straight party tickets. Sometimes the candidate from the other party will be the better one.
Maybe not, but then you get a lot people who will vote based on misinformation, gut feelings and/or entirely upon party lines. They may feel strongly, but they're not necessarily more informed than those who aren't voting.
I'm not pointing the finger at any particular party either. There are uninformed voters of all political stripes.
I remember one guy I worked with who was intelligent and reasonably informed, but he would not vote despite several of us (who represented a mix of political leanings) trying to convince him one day over lunch. He just said he didn't think his vote wouldn't matter.
It's actually somewhat true if you are only talking about the Presidential election and you live in a solid red or solid blue state but we don't and those other elections matter too.
It's been two years since that election but I recall there were other races and issues on the ballot besides just the Presidential election.
And it wasn't the last election for a lot of us. We have local elections in off years and those have even worse turnout, but those are the elections that most directly affect most people.
And looking at my ballot, I really wish I had run for Coroner or Surveyor because in both of those races there is only one candidate running.
I don't know much about dead bodies or surveying but I figure I can just delegate all that.
It's good to have a job that continues to pay even if you're absent for jury duty, but I imagine for some people it can be a serious financial burden and that meager pay is not going to make up for it.
I've been fortunate enough to get paid while I've gone downtown to fulfill my jury duty although the last time my boss was clearly not happy about it. (What he didn't know is I was already looking for a new job and even did a phone interview on the drive to the courthouse one day).
The pay was meager enough that it didn't really make up for the hassle of dealing with going to court 3 days in a row. To my amazement they picked me last time.
It was a great experience IMO. The only thing that really sucked is that it ended in a mistrial. I was going to acquit the guy too and I think it was the defense that moved for a mistrial.
The prosecution had convinced me that the defendant wasn't exactly a good upstanding citizen, but they hadn't convinced me he was guilty of the crime with which he was charged and I know at least some other jurors were leaning towards acquittal as well.
It was amusing watching a few people trying to get out of jury duty though. One IT guy said he was in the middle of a huge project and couldn't possibly take time off work. He literally argued he was too important. He was NOT excused.
Another person said he could not render a fair verdict because he had been a victim of vehicle theft and/or just a vehicle break-in. The judge questioned him briefly and did excuse him, but I don't think the judge really believed him.
One of the questions they had already asked us was for a show of hands of everyone who had been the victim of auto theft or vehicle break-in or if someone they knew had been. Nearly every hand in the courtroom went up (including mine).
I thought it was a fairly ridiculous question since that county has one of the highest rates of auto theft in the whole US. They stole my boss's truck that was parked right next to mine a couple months before that. My car has been broken into a few times, but they never thought it was worth stealing the whole thing. Or maybe they couldn't drive a stick.
I suspect it also gave Trump an advantage in 2016.
There were a lot of complaints and criticism of the media and pollsters predicting a Clinton win, but did it really benefit her? I'm sure a lot of people who wanted her to win were lazy and stayed home because they were convinced she was a shoo-in.
I doubt as many Trump supporters stayed home blissfully confident that he would be elected even without their vote.
I don't see how this app is going to work since I just got back from turning in my mail-in ballot in person. I suspect by the time it's opened and my name is checked off the polls will already be closed. In fact I'm almost certain that's the case because it's now in a sealed box with a bunch of other ballots.
At this point it would just be annoying for someone to make me look at my phone to remind me to vote.
Well, we are often bad at what we do...I was going to post about how I usually just relied on our database and environment variables to keep my time zones right but even that sometimes may not be enough.
Didn't Apple just have a DST bug with their watch? I didn't read details, but I think I saw headlines. How could they do that? I remember spending way too much time testing stuff just to make sure it handled time changes and it usually did but I do remember a timekeeping system failing miserably right after it was installed. (not my project).
And I also remember reviewing Y2K fixes which literally just "fixed" them by changing them to Y2.1K bugs. I confronted one contractor about it and of course his reply was that our code wouldn't be used 100 years from now (and he was probably thinking "Even if it is, I'll be dead and my grandson will have a job").
I explained to him that with how cheap our employer was it was very likely they'd still be running the same code 100 years from now.
I think that would violate the 8th Amendment regarding cruel and unusual punishment.
Can you imagine being forced to share a cell with either one of them?
And as much as I loathe FB and Zuckerberg, I'm not sure there's anything criminal about either.
I dislike Trump even more, but I only suspect him of crimes mostly concerning money and hopefully Mueller will figure it out. Maybe it will turn out that Trump is as pure as the driven snow?
I didn't type that last bit with a straight face, BTW.
At best, Trump just surrounds himself with criminals and fraudsters.
I don't suppose they allow you to pick your cellmate in prison.
J. Frank Parnell : Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was literally bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I showed them. I had a lobotomy in the end.
Otto : Lobotomy? Isn't that for loonies?
Parnell : Not at all. Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.
J. Frank Parnell
This is one reason why I sometimes don't read the articles.
Someone like you will always come around and summarize it in one or two sentences. Even if your summary is inaccurate, I'm unlikely to stop using my phones. I'm at so much risk from developing cancer from so many other factors that I would be lucky if I only got cancer from my phone.
And what about all the WiFi signals constantly entering my head and passing through my body?
What if someday we find out that low doses of radiation from phones actually provide a protective effect on our cells and WiFi signals actually stimulate the brain?
it's a horrible substitute. All of the tar and carcinogens with none of the drug which kept me addicted for so many years.
Saving a kid over the adult is not as cut and dry as it sounds. What about all the other kids that the adult may be financially supporting? Additionally, how far can that go? is it better to save an 11 year old vs a 12 year old? Can a vehicle/machine really make that evaluation correctly each time?
The car needs more information. We need to have an identifying beacon of sorts so the car can identify us and evaluate our lives or just look up our social value ranking or some such metric such as predicted tax contributions over their lifetimes.
And if there are multiple people at stake it may have to decide whether killing 2 lower ranked people is preferable to killing 1 of a higher rank. Taking an average doesn't seem fair, but neither does just adding up the 2 lower ranked people's scores.
I dunno, is it better to save two people with merely Fair Karma or 1 with Excellent?
With every act of political violence committed by left wingers (rarely highlighted in most press coverage),
Scalise getting shot got plenty of coverage just as the latest MAGA bomber is and rightfully so. Less attention is given to acts of vandalism and clashes between groups like Antifa and The Proud Boys or other alt-right groups.
Have you even heard of Marc and Elizabeth Hokoana? They're a couple accused of going to a Milo rally with the intent of provoking someone into giving them an excuse to shoot a leftist "snowflake". And they did shoot someone, he just didn't die so it didn't get as much attention but as far as I can tell the charges are still pending and haven't been dropped.
The victim is such a pacifist that he wants "restorative justice" for them rather than prison.
'I refuse to be like them': why the man shot while protesting Milo Yiannopoulos doesn't want revenge
They do get coverage but most people recognize that neither extreme is representative of either Democrats or Republicans.
somebody says: You're going to hate the new rules.
(I'm a different Anon)
This is not a good response and will only lead to more violence which seems to be the one thing in common the more extreme "black bloc" and the alt-right share.
The Hatfields and the McCoys. Nothing good will come from justifying violence with violence.
It may be more a question of how they interpret things.
"“One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal”"
The liberal might think, well conservatives are often avid hunters so they guess conservatives would disagree. The conservative might think, well most vegans are liberals so liberals would agree. In reality, many liberals hunt, many conservatives don't, few liberals are even vegetarians let alone vegan and define "defenseless".
We kill defenseless animals all the time, usually for food but also for wildlife management and even sport. But if we're talking about animal cruelty I think most people regardless of political belief would agree that's horrible.
That animal question is far too open to interpretation.
It could be a question of people saying one thing while really thinking another. I see nothing wrong with slaughtering defenseless cattle for their meat. If they're honest most people would agree that it's not one of the worst things but they think others will see them badly if they admit that.
And can we even agree on what is liberal or conservative anymore? Aren't most of us rather moderate? Were the liberals answering what they thought the extreme right would say?
I almost think that social media disconnects people from one and other to the point where it's not possible to solve this issue even if you have a single service that everyone gets to use no matter what.
That's probably true. If Twitter didn't ban anyone and they were the only option, people would quickly for their own echo chambers and there might be more interaction but that would mostly be posting to people of the "other side" until most people block all those people.
People forming their own gated communities all in one huge walled garden.
Different people have different lines for what is too much "political correctness".
Most Americans would agree that the "n-word" shouldn't be used in everyday conversation. That's why we even created the euphemism "the n-word". I certainly wouldn't want it banned though (either by rewriting Mark Twain or attempting to expunge it from history).
But we'll argue about whether saying electing the black candidate would "monkey this up" is a racist dog-whistle or just an innocent expression. It seems incredibly tone-deaf of him if he didn't mean it as the dog-whistle. In fact, IMO, it stretches credibility.
DeSantis says Florida shouldn’t ‘monkey this up’ by electing Andrew Gillum
Moving towards more questionable "PC" arguments, there's this FB post that a school district's police department deleted and apologized for.
(To save people the click, it's a picture of an overloaded bus (presumably in India) with people on top and hanging on to the back with the caption "Don't forget! It's National Bus Safety Week" and it seems obvious (to me anyway) the point was bus safety, not "look at all the Indians!")
Katy ISD apologizes after parents express outrage over what they call a racist Facebook post
And then we have cases of people not wanting children to play Cowboys and Indians or dressing up for Halloween as a Disney character from a different culture.
And should I really feel guilty that I enjoyed The Party starring Peter Sellers in "brownface"? Or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's?
That may be a problem, but I'm not sure what the solution is.
I expect Gab will find hosting somewhere and this may even attract more users.
I'm not in favor of (gov't) forcing Twitter to host content they don't want to as I believe that would violate their First Amendment. Shareholders and the public applying pressure is a different matter.
And the government can't block Gab unless they're somehow engaging in criminal activity and as far as I know, they're not. I've only looked at Bowers account, but I'm not sure any of his messages actually crossed legal lines in the US. I'm sure they would elsewhere in the world, but I'm not arguing for any changes to the First Amendment.
I'm just not sure anything violated US law (credible threats? inciting violence?), but I'm not a lawyer.
Of course the gov't could monitor the internet even more closely but it's often hard to tell the difference between trolls, crazy but harmless people and potential threats who may at some point do something. And before they do anything you can't do all that much.
I sort of like the idea of exiling extremists to their own corner of the internet (makes them easier to avoid, easier to monitor), but then that just amplifies their echo chamber.
**minus the small detour to the ocean bottom, presumably.**
If they built it to be submersible that would be pretty cool.
Imagine the advertising:
"View the original wreck on your voyage across the Atlantic"
Does climate change increase or decrease the number of icebergs? I was thinking it might be fewer, but maybe more are breaking off the ice sheets and drifting into shipping lanes..
Sounds like an old Yes, Prime Minister dialogue:
Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
Jim Hacker: I don't want to obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
Sir Humphrey: It's a deterrent.
Jim Hacker: It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't.
Jim Hacker: They probably do.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know.
Jim Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Joey Gibson invites groups like Identity Evropa to his rallies. White supremacists flock to him.
He surrounds himself with The Proud Boys.
I don't think it's all that extreme to think he's lying when he says he's not a White Supremacist.
I hadn't seen that Snoop Dogg video until just now.
So, on the one hand you've got a rapper famous for smoking marijuana and saying stuff like "For shizzle" making a video where everyone appears in clown makeup and a toy gun that "fires" a tiny sign that says "Bang" is used to shoot a "Trump" clown and on the other hand we've got the actual President of the United States calling the press the "enemy of the people" and saying it's "unfortunate" that people expect him to have a coherent response to Khashoggi's murder.
Trump has called for police to rough up suspects and for his followers to attack those who don't support him at his rallies. He even tweeted that Snoop Dogg deserves "jail time" for exercising his First Amendment rights.
He literally said that anyone who can body-slam a reporter is "my kind of guy". That's a guy who plead guilty to a violent crime.
No wonder Snoop doesn't share his joint with the clown in his video.
"False equivalency" and "snowflake" are a couple of things that come to mind.
The difference is he still goes to parties while other people are too busy updating their Facebook status to "Life of the Party".
Those guys really take copyrights seriously.
Anyone remember when the Doobies were on What's Happening and Rerun was caught taping their concert?
Patrick Simmons: I thought you guys were our friends
Michael McDonald: How could you guys do this to us?
.... ... ...
Dwayne: Are we gonna go to jail?
John Hartman: Man, how do I know? What would you do if you were in our shoes?
Rerun: Well, I'd just send us home and laugh it off.
Bobby La Kind: It's not funny!
Yeah, it's serious business.
---
And since I've already wandered a bit off topic, this is my favorite concert-taping story:
back in 81, robert fripp was doing his first frippertronic
tour and was playing at the u. of pennsylvania in philly...we knew we had to
tape it, but knowing how quirky fripp is on this issue and the small size of
the venue, we had to resort to unconventional means...so we went to a medical
supply house, rented a wheelchair, taped the mics to the arm rests, and had my
buddy sitting in the thing with a blanket covering the deck...fripp, who was
tuning up and checking his decks, graciously requested that our suddenly
wheelchair bound buddy be placed right in front of him...at the end of a nice
60 minute set, and after fripp takes his bows, my buddy, who was being fed
margaritas via a straw the whole time, starts screaming: "fripp healed me...i
feel my legs...hallelujah...fripp is god", jumps outta the chair and runs
outta the place...pandemonium ensues of course, and fripp is flabergasted...the
story does not end though...next day, fripp is doing promo signing at a record
store, and i walk in with a j-card and ask him to sign it for the guy he had
healed yesterday, becuz the tape of the gig would be incomplete without it...
needless to say, fripp went ballistic, spewing obscenities left and right...
i had a good laugh...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
Meanwhile back in the real world, Hillary lost the election 2 years ago, but people are still going on and on about her whenever Trump does anything.
"But, Hillary...."
I'm reasonably certain she would have signed it too, but she didn't because she's not President.
You know who did sign it?
Donald Trump.
A lot of people say they voted for Trump because they believed he would be different.
Well, he is different.
Trump loves the spotlight so much he would have signed ANYTHING just to be seen with...
Kid Rock, The Doobie Brothers and The Beach Boys? Oh, and Kanye West too, of course.
I'm hoping Led Zep will finally have to pay Randy California for Stairway to Heaven.
Then surely Spirit will get back together.
I guess the worst part about that was they waited until he was dead to file a lawsuit. (But it's not about the money, is it?)
Maybe there is hope after all:
Led Zeppelin ordered to go back on trial in 'Stairway to Heaven' copyright lawsuit
And maybe a record company can finally successfully sue John Fogerty for sounding too much like John Fogerty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's like the opposite of that time Neil Young got sued for not sounding enough like Neil Young.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...