Don't forget he and his Congress are actively doing things. To combat the inflation caused by his tax cut being too supply side focused (nice way to say it mostly went to the rich) the Fed is going to raise interest rates. Hope nobody was planning to buy a house or car or refinance in the next 8-10 years...
Trump is quietly dismantling Obamacare and with it protections for pre-existing coverage. He's cut the VA. 83% of his tax cut went to the 1% and it's causing run away inflation which the Fed will combat with rising interest rates making home, car and credit card debt more expensive for consumers. His Trade War has a net negative job effect and is itself a distraction from the effect of automation (we've doubled manufacturing output in 50 years while cutting 2/3rds of the jobs, we've lost more to robots than outsourcing).
I could go on. The beauty of Trump is that his outrageousness masks a lot of very real and very bad things that will hurt the American working class.
it becomes an act, because he's now acknowledged that the conspiracy theories are something you have to act about. It's a bit like opening Pandora's box. Baring a mental break down (which there's no sign he's had, he's still perfectly capable of running a large enterprise) he's well aware that the things he says have no basis in reality.
people forget that economies have verticality (for lack of a better word). Yeah, lots of those Amazon workers will be stuck in their shit jobs, but the shittiness makes them want to move up. A few will.
Now, it's all well and good to celebrate their bootstrappiness (again, lack of a better word) but remember now that folks who might have been perfectly happy working in a warehouse are now struggling to get out. The ones that do move up the ladder, but that means more people applying for non-warehouse jobs. Supply/Demand says their presence in whatever field they just entered will lower wages in that field. One or two doesn't matter, but when nobody can make a living earning minimum wage it turns into millions.
It ripples up. They lower wages on the next tier of jobs and so people happy at that tier are forced to look for better paying work. And so on. This is why everybody has to have a college degree these days. It also means if you're a/.er in a good job you've suddenly got a _lot_ more competition for your good job.
Folks never really consider the consequences of an interconnected economy. They focus on the pluses and pretend the minuses don't exist for them...
he's still got his website. He was removed from YouTube & Twitter for repeatedly inciting direct violence. It's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Go on YouTube and look up some videos from "Secular Talk" on Jones. He's been accusing Jewish journalists of blood libel (it's a belief that Jewish people drink the blood of Christians in religious ceremonies if you don't know what that is, I didn't until I saw the Secular Talk videos). That's against both YouTube & Twitter's guidelines.
The final straw came when he mimed shooting Robert Mueller to an audience he knows is mildly unhinged. It was a Jones supporter who showed up with a rifle at the "PizzaGate" restaurant (google it if you don't know what it is but be prepared to lose a little faith in humanity...).
Moreover Jones has admitted in sworn deposition during his divorce trial that everything he does is an act. So you can't say he isn't fully aware of the consequences of what he's doing. He's not a true believer or a kool aid drinker. He's manipulating a specific set of people and knows it and he knows the risks involved.
I hated him before he was president and cheerfully ignored him. He's the most powerful man on earth. His Supreme Court nominations are going to change American Politics for decades to come. We're probably not going to get Single Payer Health care because of that (the current court will shut it down). Heck, we might even lose Medicare & Medicaid when push comes to shove.
I hang on his words because they've got enormous power over me. It's not emotion, it's policy.
they lose the protection of common carrier. They know this. It's why if you share copyrighted material they have to take it down within a certain period of time (DMCA gives them some additional protections there).
Slashdot doesn't have common carrier either. If you post on/. that you want to assassinate somebody specific and the threat seems credible they will take it down. In exchange for that we have a moderation system and, well, we don't have people here inciting violence and hate non stop.
Common Carrier and safe harbor aren't all they're cracked up to be. Not everyone needs to be or even wants to be the phone company.
there's nothing stopping Alex Jones or any of the other folks banned from starting their own site. Yes, they might have to host it themselves on their own hardware (that right wing Facebook competitor has been warned by Microsoft to tone down some of their users) but they can do it thanks to common carrier.
bosses would make him AstroTurf. When your Boss asks you don't argue. They'll usually check that you did it. Heck, these days with cell phones they can watch you do it right then and there.
imagine the mess of property rights. That's another reason we have monopolies. The cable companies get special dispensations for forcing property owners to let them work on their property in exchange for providing service. It's similar to eminent domain.
A modern browser like IE 11 is practically on OS of it's own. Win 10 also has powershell, which debatable terrible is still a complete programming and automation environment. 95 also didn't have 20 years of drivers packed into it.
Although a lot of features baked into Win 10 are behind a paywall. A better comparison might be a Linux install. There are Tiny Linux installs that get pretty close to that 200mb. But if you're talking about a modern one like Ubuntu (it'll eat about 2gb) you get a mountain of software in there.
you're more or less correct. They've already signaled that they're not willing to do act against Trump so long as he supports their agenda of low taxes for corporations, reduced expenditures on social programs and reduced regulations on business. And Trump's all in on those items. His trade war doesn't really concern them. They'll get to pocket the money from the tariffs as tax cuts.
And So far it's looking like the Republicans will hold the House and Senate. Polling shows the election is close with a slight favor to the Dems, but every time that's happened its been a victory for the Repubs in seats while the Dems take the (completely useless) popular vote.
It'll come down to voter turn out, but, well, In Ohio they just closed a ton of polling places in black neighborhoods using the transparent excuse of "but the Americans with Civil Disabilities Act". And they've packed the courts with judges that're letting them do it...
Google manged to win the rights to the poles in several markets and didn't do anything with it. They couldn't make it profitable. The problem is the investment is too high. You can't compete. Comcast and cost pay somewhere between $9-$15/mo to get you internet and charge $70+ for it (based on SEC filings). That gives them a _lot_ of room to drop their pants and kill any competitor who enters the market, making competing way, way too risky.
If you want things to improve you're going to need more regulation, not less. The current market is too far gone. To be honest it was always going to be. The problem with telecom is it's really expensive to build all that wire. That's why they were granted monopolies in the first place. Though if you ask me we should have just built a national public network like we did the the roads. As it stands we paid for it in the form of tax breaks and subsidies and just let a private company profit from it. Not very smart.
a computer, much less know how to use them. If they have a smart phone it's because they needed a cell and that's what the guy at the shop gave them. Some folks are just at their limits. It doesn't help that they're continuously fed a stream of misinformation in order to exploit them for votes.
And, well, furriners did take a lot of jobs. Outsourcing is a thing and it's eroded the manufacturing base. If you're a blue collar guy you lost a lot of construction work to Mexicans here illegally. Same as white collar programmers lost jobs to Indians overseas and here on H1-Bs. If anything the blue collar guys have more reason to be frustrated. At least we're losing our jobs to legal immigrants...
Moreover there's almost no attempt to discuss the real job killer: automation. In 40 years America has doubled it's manufacturing output while decreasing the number of jobs by 2/3rds (go look up the John Oliver piece on trade wars). And nobody will talk about this because the only possible solution is socialism.
The ruling class doesn't want that. And to be honest the working class doesn't really either... except for themselves. I can't tell you how many ex-military guys I know who are deeply opposed to redistributing wealth but are also counting on a fat gov't pension and VA supplied single payer health care. And these aren't war heroes missing limbs. They're they guys who put shit on planes and took shit off planes. I'm not saying they don't deserve those things. I'm saying _everyone_ deserves those things. But I'll be damned if I know how to get people to believe that and act on that belief...
If it's not directly inciting violence then no. This is exactly the sort of oppression the far right is hoping and praying for. They'll use this crap to organize themselves. Nothing makes a group band together like an opponent. This is a terrible idea and Wyden should know that. He's better than this.
it's hard to talk about the sort of things the Republican party is doing without sounding like hyperbole. Nobody believes they would let a type 1 diabetic (e.g. born with it) die because they won't pay for his insulin. If you read off the stuff Dick Cheney was signing off on for Iraq when he was VP you just plain wouldn't believe it either. He funneled billions into companies he had investments in. It's almost cartoonishly evil.
There's a saying about telling a lie. If a lie's big enough folks can't believe it's a lie. It's like Gaslighting. You move the overton window so far so fast to the right that nobody sees it moving...
and trolling, but the sad thing is my buddy is a Republican. I can't get him to stop supporting a party that's quite literally leaving him to die. Before the ACA he was having trouble getting insulin. He had to go to the ER a few times where they were forced to treat him with insulin. I'd moved out of the city and lost touch so I didn't know, but there was a couple times he almost died...
you get civic jobs for selling out. And she didn't score any political points. Nobody who was ever going to vote Trump cared or ever will care about Russian meddling. Donald Trump's performance at Helsinki didn't budge his poll numbers. His tax cut, 83% of which went to 1% of Americans didn't budge his polls. Keeping us in Afghanistan when he promised to leave didn't budge his polls. Supporting DACA (of all things) didn't budge his polls). He praised Chinese President Xi for making himself El Presidente for life and still no drop in the polls. Heck, he said we should take people guns away at one point and nothing, no drop in polls. Can you imagine if Obama had done _any_ of that?
His supporters just plain don't care. There's been several interviews with them were they're presented with two quotes from him that contradict and they'll tell you both quotes are true. He has a cult of personality. If he was a bit more on the ball and a bit more violent we'd be on the way to fascism.
Sorry, I know it's not popular to call out one political party in such exacting terms. We're supposed to say "both sides are bad". But at a certain point it's time to acknowledge that one side is worse. At least the Dems have a wing of their party ("Justice Democrats") who refuse corporate & PAC money... Jeez.
That's my first thought. Keep in mind his party cut funding to weather satellites. These are not folks who believe in science.
Now I'm not exactly opposed to these kinds of things, but what worries me is that they'll be used as leverage to secure votes for other laws that I'm opposed to. If I had faith that Pence and his party had my interests at heart I'd worry less about that, but they don't have a great track record. Their cuts to the Affordable Care Act are already hurting a type-1 diabetic buddy of mine....
which is why it's called "Voter Suppression". Some states do charge a fee. Some don't. It's a question of how much they think they can get away with before the courts notice.
We could make it easy to get an Id, but that would defeat the purpose. Remember, in person voter fraud is astonishingly rare. The people pushing voter id laws know this. So do you now.
Are you doing this on purpose? If you're just a troll that's fine. Shine on you crazy diamond. But otherwise you're doing actual harm to this country's voting system by supporting what you know are suppression techniques. Stop it. I don't know what you think you're doing, but whatever it is it will bite you in the ass eventually.
more and more we're finding that people's failings aren't their own. That a variety of physical ailments have broad, cascading effects on every aspect of human life. We figured out that underfed women give birth to babies with reduced mental capacity. That poverty and stress impact rational behavior and decision making. That people sleep less as they age due to hormonal changes and now that lack of sleep leads to weight gain (gut bacteria play a big role too).
As long as I've been alive one of the central narratives in my life has been that people who fail at life did so because they lack good moral character. It's been pretty well pounded into my skull. Sometimes overtly ( "Welfare Queens" and folks convinced panhandlers are making a kililng ) and sometimes less so ("You can be do anything if you put your mind to it!" and "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!").
Science is challenging that. There really are "born losers". Folks for whom nothing ever seems to go right because it doesn't. Moreover life really does kick you when you're down.
What I'm wondering is if we're going to change anything in response. I don't expect the public at large to. But, well,/. is a science focused forum. And the science is pretty clear here. So are we going to start seeing a change of mind? And are we going to see folks acting on that?
I'm not so sure. Yeah, this is a science oriented forum, but it's also a forum with an aging population. And as people get older they get more conservative. Less emphatic. Funny that; I read somewhere science has found that the part of your brain associated with empathy atrophies in old age...
Far left are the actual communists and maybe the anarchists. We had a 50-90% tax rate in the 50s and 60s. All drugs legal comes with the stipulation that hard drug use is administered by the government and treated as an illness. Renewables isn't far left, it's common sense and the cap on wages comes from the Japanese who's economy stagnated shortly after they removed the caps.
Slashdot Mirror
they're complicit. There's a difference.
Don't forget he and his Congress are actively doing things. To combat the inflation caused by his tax cut being too supply side focused (nice way to say it mostly went to the rich) the Fed is going to raise interest rates. Hope nobody was planning to buy a house or car or refinance in the next 8-10 years...
Trump is quietly dismantling Obamacare and with it protections for pre-existing coverage. He's cut the VA. 83% of his tax cut went to the 1% and it's causing run away inflation which the Fed will combat with rising interest rates making home, car and credit card debt more expensive for consumers. His Trade War has a net negative job effect and is itself a distraction from the effect of automation (we've doubled manufacturing output in 50 years while cutting 2/3rds of the jobs, we've lost more to robots than outsourcing).
I could go on. The beauty of Trump is that his outrageousness masks a lot of very real and very bad things that will hurt the American working class.
it becomes an act, because he's now acknowledged that the conspiracy theories are something you have to act about. It's a bit like opening Pandora's box. Baring a mental break down (which there's no sign he's had, he's still perfectly capable of running a large enterprise) he's well aware that the things he says have no basis in reality.
people forget that economies have verticality (for lack of a better word). Yeah, lots of those Amazon workers will be stuck in their shit jobs, but the shittiness makes them want to move up. A few will.
/.er in a good job you've suddenly got a _lot_ more competition for your good job.
Now, it's all well and good to celebrate their bootstrappiness (again, lack of a better word) but remember now that folks who might have been perfectly happy working in a warehouse are now struggling to get out. The ones that do move up the ladder, but that means more people applying for non-warehouse jobs. Supply/Demand says their presence in whatever field they just entered will lower wages in that field. One or two doesn't matter, but when nobody can make a living earning minimum wage it turns into millions.
It ripples up. They lower wages on the next tier of jobs and so people happy at that tier are forced to look for better paying work. And so on. This is why everybody has to have a college degree these days. It also means if you're a
Folks never really consider the consequences of an interconnected economy. They focus on the pluses and pretend the minuses don't exist for them...
he's still got his website. He was removed from YouTube & Twitter for repeatedly inciting direct violence. It's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Go on YouTube and look up some videos from "Secular Talk" on Jones. He's been accusing Jewish journalists of blood libel (it's a belief that Jewish people drink the blood of Christians in religious ceremonies if you don't know what that is, I didn't until I saw the Secular Talk videos). That's against both YouTube & Twitter's guidelines.
The final straw came when he mimed shooting Robert Mueller to an audience he knows is mildly unhinged. It was a Jones supporter who showed up with a rifle at the "PizzaGate" restaurant (google it if you don't know what it is but be prepared to lose a little faith in humanity...).
Moreover Jones has admitted in sworn deposition during his divorce trial that everything he does is an act. So you can't say he isn't fully aware of the consequences of what he's doing. He's not a true believer or a kool aid drinker. He's manipulating a specific set of people and knows it and he knows the risks involved.
I hated him before he was president and cheerfully ignored him. He's the most powerful man on earth. His Supreme Court nominations are going to change American Politics for decades to come. We're probably not going to get Single Payer Health care because of that (the current court will shut it down). Heck, we might even lose Medicare & Medicaid when push comes to shove.
I hang on his words because they've got enormous power over me. It's not emotion, it's policy.
he's completely in control of the big money donors who helped put him in office.
they lose the protection of common carrier. They know this. It's why if you share copyrighted material they have to take it down within a certain period of time (DMCA gives them some additional protections there).
/. that you want to assassinate somebody specific and the threat seems credible they will take it down. In exchange for that we have a moderation system and, well, we don't have people here inciting violence and hate non stop.
Slashdot doesn't have common carrier either. If you post on
Common Carrier and safe harbor aren't all they're cracked up to be. Not everyone needs to be or even wants to be the phone company.
there's nothing stopping Alex Jones or any of the other folks banned from starting their own site. Yes, they might have to host it themselves on their own hardware (that right wing Facebook competitor has been warned by Microsoft to tone down some of their users) but they can do it thanks to common carrier.
As always there's an XKCD comic for this.
bosses would make him AstroTurf. When your Boss asks you don't argue. They'll usually check that you did it. Heck, these days with cell phones they can watch you do it right then and there.
imagine the mess of property rights. That's another reason we have monopolies. The cable companies get special dispensations for forcing property owners to let them work on their property in exchange for providing service. It's similar to eminent domain.
A modern browser like IE 11 is practically on OS of it's own. Win 10 also has powershell, which debatable terrible is still a complete programming and automation environment. 95 also didn't have 20 years of drivers packed into it.
Although a lot of features baked into Win 10 are behind a paywall. A better comparison might be a Linux install. There are Tiny Linux installs that get pretty close to that 200mb. But if you're talking about a modern one like Ubuntu (it'll eat about 2gb) you get a mountain of software in there.
you're more or less correct. They've already signaled that they're not willing to do act against Trump so long as he supports their agenda of low taxes for corporations, reduced expenditures on social programs and reduced regulations on business. And Trump's all in on those items. His trade war doesn't really concern them. They'll get to pocket the money from the tariffs as tax cuts.
And So far it's looking like the Republicans will hold the House and Senate. Polling shows the election is close with a slight favor to the Dems, but every time that's happened its been a victory for the Repubs in seats while the Dems take the (completely useless) popular vote.
It'll come down to voter turn out, but, well, In Ohio they just closed a ton of polling places in black neighborhoods using the transparent excuse of "but the Americans with Civil Disabilities Act". And they've packed the courts with judges that're letting them do it...
Google manged to win the rights to the poles in several markets and didn't do anything with it. They couldn't make it profitable. The problem is the investment is too high. You can't compete. Comcast and cost pay somewhere between $9-$15/mo to get you internet and charge $70+ for it (based on SEC filings). That gives them a _lot_ of room to drop their pants and kill any competitor who enters the market, making competing way, way too risky.
If you want things to improve you're going to need more regulation, not less. The current market is too far gone. To be honest it was always going to be. The problem with telecom is it's really expensive to build all that wire. That's why they were granted monopolies in the first place. Though if you ask me we should have just built a national public network like we did the the roads. As it stands we paid for it in the form of tax breaks and subsidies and just let a private company profit from it. Not very smart.
a computer, much less know how to use them. If they have a smart phone it's because they needed a cell and that's what the guy at the shop gave them. Some folks are just at their limits. It doesn't help that they're continuously fed a stream of misinformation in order to exploit them for votes.
And, well, furriners did take a lot of jobs. Outsourcing is a thing and it's eroded the manufacturing base. If you're a blue collar guy you lost a lot of construction work to Mexicans here illegally. Same as white collar programmers lost jobs to Indians overseas and here on H1-Bs. If anything the blue collar guys have more reason to be frustrated. At least we're losing our jobs to legal immigrants...
Moreover there's almost no attempt to discuss the real job killer: automation. In 40 years America has doubled it's manufacturing output while decreasing the number of jobs by 2/3rds (go look up the John Oliver piece on trade wars). And nobody will talk about this because the only possible solution is socialism.
The ruling class doesn't want that. And to be honest the working class doesn't really either... except for themselves. I can't tell you how many ex-military guys I know who are deeply opposed to redistributing wealth but are also counting on a fat gov't pension and VA supplied single payer health care. And these aren't war heroes missing limbs. They're they guys who put shit on planes and took shit off planes. I'm not saying they don't deserve those things. I'm saying _everyone_ deserves those things. But I'll be damned if I know how to get people to believe that and act on that belief...
If it's not directly inciting violence then no. This is exactly the sort of oppression the far right is hoping and praying for. They'll use this crap to organize themselves. Nothing makes a group band together like an opponent. This is a terrible idea and Wyden should know that. He's better than this.
it's hard to talk about the sort of things the Republican party is doing without sounding like hyperbole. Nobody believes they would let a type 1 diabetic (e.g. born with it) die because they won't pay for his insulin. If you read off the stuff Dick Cheney was signing off on for Iraq when he was VP you just plain wouldn't believe it either. He funneled billions into companies he had investments in. It's almost cartoonishly evil.
There's a saying about telling a lie. If a lie's big enough folks can't believe it's a lie. It's like Gaslighting. You move the overton window so far so fast to the right that nobody sees it moving...
and trolling, but the sad thing is my buddy is a Republican. I can't get him to stop supporting a party that's quite literally leaving him to die. Before the ACA he was having trouble getting insulin. He had to go to the ER a few times where they were forced to treat him with insulin. I'd moved out of the city and lost touch so I didn't know, but there was a couple times he almost died...
you get civic jobs for selling out. And she didn't score any political points. Nobody who was ever going to vote Trump cared or ever will care about Russian meddling. Donald Trump's performance at Helsinki didn't budge his poll numbers. His tax cut, 83% of which went to 1% of Americans didn't budge his polls. Keeping us in Afghanistan when he promised to leave didn't budge his polls. Supporting DACA (of all things) didn't budge his polls). He praised Chinese President Xi for making himself El Presidente for life and still no drop in the polls. Heck, he said we should take people guns away at one point and nothing, no drop in polls. Can you imagine if Obama had done _any_ of that?
His supporters just plain don't care. There's been several interviews with them were they're presented with two quotes from him that contradict and they'll tell you both quotes are true. He has a cult of personality. If he was a bit more on the ball and a bit more violent we'd be on the way to fascism.
Sorry, I know it's not popular to call out one political party in such exacting terms. We're supposed to say "both sides are bad". But at a certain point it's time to acknowledge that one side is worse. At least the Dems have a wing of their party ("Justice Democrats") who refuse corporate & PAC money... Jeez.
That's my first thought. Keep in mind his party cut funding to weather satellites. These are not folks who believe in science.
Now I'm not exactly opposed to these kinds of things, but what worries me is that they'll be used as leverage to secure votes for other laws that I'm opposed to. If I had faith that Pence and his party had my interests at heart I'd worry less about that, but they don't have a great track record. Their cuts to the Affordable Care Act are already hurting a type-1 diabetic buddy of mine....
which is why it's called "Voter Suppression". Some states do charge a fee. Some don't. It's a question of how much they think they can get away with before the courts notice.
We could make it easy to get an Id, but that would defeat the purpose. Remember, in person voter fraud is astonishingly rare. The people pushing voter id laws know this. So do you now.
Are you doing this on purpose? If you're just a troll that's fine. Shine on you crazy diamond. But otherwise you're doing actual harm to this country's voting system by supporting what you know are suppression techniques. Stop it. I don't know what you think you're doing, but whatever it is it will bite you in the ass eventually.
more and more we're finding that people's failings aren't their own. That a variety of physical ailments have broad, cascading effects on every aspect of human life. We figured out that underfed women give birth to babies with reduced mental capacity. That poverty and stress impact rational behavior and decision making. That people sleep less as they age due to hormonal changes and now that lack of sleep leads to weight gain (gut bacteria play a big role too).
/. is a science focused forum. And the science is pretty clear here. So are we going to start seeing a change of mind? And are we going to see folks acting on that?
As long as I've been alive one of the central narratives in my life has been that people who fail at life did so because they lack good moral character. It's been pretty well pounded into my skull. Sometimes overtly ( "Welfare Queens" and folks convinced panhandlers are making a kililng ) and sometimes less so ("You can be do anything if you put your mind to it!" and "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!").
Science is challenging that. There really are "born losers". Folks for whom nothing ever seems to go right because it doesn't. Moreover life really does kick you when you're down.
What I'm wondering is if we're going to change anything in response. I don't expect the public at large to. But, well,
I'm not so sure. Yeah, this is a science oriented forum, but it's also a forum with an aging population. And as people get older they get more conservative. Less emphatic. Funny that; I read somewhere science has found that the part of your brain associated with empathy atrophies in old age...
where prisoners have to Unionize...
Far left are the actual communists and maybe the anarchists. We had a 50-90% tax rate in the 50s and 60s. All drugs legal comes with the stipulation that hard drug use is administered by the government and treated as an illness. Renewables isn't far left, it's common sense and the cap on wages comes from the Japanese who's economy stagnated shortly after they removed the caps.