I recommend The Brick Testament if you're looking for a great Bible. I gave it as a gift to a friend of mine when she got ordained. Be careful though, some scenes are NSFW. Turns out the bible has a lot of sex and violence in it that they leave out of the children's bibles. I remember reading the book of Revelations as a kid and being terrified for like a month afterward.
Do I understand your argument correctly? "This great division began during the last administration," because BLM? You really think that's what the great division is? What about: Roe v. Wade, the War on Drugs, the Red Scare, intelligent design, bra burning, flag burning, AIDS, assault weapons, lynchings, Prohibition, internment camps, slavery, etc. ad nauseam? America always has strife and divisions. These divisions are stoked by those seeking power.
Of course, they don't hide it or even pretend anymore. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Not "govern well" or "fix the tax code" or "end the war in Iraqistanya" or even "do what's best for our constituents for the next couple of years." The only way people stay in power or gain power is by demonizing something else.
Coming up with solutions and doing good governance will not bring millions of grumpy old white men to the polls. But whipping up a frenzy because "Your trans neighbor is gay married to a free-range emu and wants to take away your guns while doing ecstasy until you sacrifice an American flag to Satan!" will turn them out in droves.
Um. No. America has no business murdering one of its own citizens without due process, even if (especially if?) it's the POTUS giving the order. It's dubya-esque crap like this that kept me from voting for Obama a second time. And Gitmo is still open!
Just like "but her emails!" was meant to give cover for otherwise god-fearing conservatives who went on to vote for a philandering thief and liar who brags about sexual assault and says "two Corinthians." People rarely realize when they have been psychologically primed to make a stupid decision. There are several studies that show how easy emotions are to manipulate and how easy memories are to change. Worse yet, economic research has shown that when people realize they made the wrong choice, the tendency is to double down rather than take corrective action.
I didn't find the book all that mysterious. The "twist" at the end was telegraphed from a long ways away. Now the sequels had some real mindfucks, but the original Ender's Game was just so-so. Also, ansibles just cannot be made to work without violating causality, so a fair amount of suspending disbelief is required (although he paid some lip service to this in the sequels). Same problem with Star Trek subspace communications, but they have FTL travel, too, so it's already a problem.
Having been raised Pentecostal allowed me to suspend disbelief for more of Snow Crash than the average reader. Frankly, there is something about glossolalia that is very similar to taking mind-altering substances. So for the two to be so intertwined in the plot made perfect sense to me.
I found the opening story about pizza delivery somehow... transcendent. To tee up an entire dystopia through the lens of such a lowly office was just clever beyond words. Also, you have to remember that this was written in 1992, well before much of the technology he envisioned was dreamed up. Hell, some of it still doesn't exist.
I hated the notion that the static only affected those familiar with computer programming. That was the only technical thing that really pegged my bogometer, and it really didn't help propel the plot. There were some inter-personal things that didn't sit right, but I have to give those a pass, because it's hard to know how humans would really interact with each other in such a world.
Other non-technological aspects turned out to be a little too true. Unchecked corporate sovereignty, powerful megachurches, government's idiotic reliance on polygraphs, pizza delivery still taking too long, etc. And never underestimate the power of a dog's undying love.
My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google.
I call bullshit. I have looked all up and down Google results regarding safety and total lifecycle cost of nuclear. Everything is spin as far as the eye could see. Scammy looking studies on both the pro and con sides. Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms, but I think it's a problem with signal to noise ratio being too low. Personally, I wish that people who say it's trivial to prove one way or the other on Google would actually site some reputable sources. The last time I asked a really smart, well-reasoned slashdotter for some good studies to read, he bit my head off and called me a troll just for asking.
I know that EDF is about 70% nuclear, so it seems the French have decided that it's worth it. But the case in America is not as clear.
Your insight into the role of corporations in the fascist state is interesting; it makes me wonder why the fascists and communists were on opposite sides of WWII. But I would argue that the GPs point about the US being a corporate state is pretty well justified, even if the comparison to fascism is misguided. I do think that our corporatocracy is similar to a police state (which is possibly what GP was referring to), in that there is ubiquitous surveillance, and self-censorship is common. In some industries if you a perceived as having the wrong political viewpoints or agendas, you can lose your livelihood. I think the challenges faced by SciHub are just a symptom of this overarching problem.
One last thing: just because they are not more powerful than ever doesn't mean that they're not becoming ever more powerful. Exxon would love to be Standard Oil again. Now that corporate regulatory capture is basically enshrined in law, I don't see any easy way to avoid a 21st century Dutch East India Company. I just don't know what form it will take.
"Given the privacy concerns..." Really? Given? No it's not a given. Especially in the age of parents posting a bajillion FB pics of their kids latest exploits and foibles. I think it would be up to the legislators to demonstrate said concerns are actually warranted before going about writing laws with potentially disastrous knock-on effects.
That was what I found so funny. You have a Democrat (Think of the children) and a Republican (No job-killing regulations) who want to make it harder for a company to develop a technology to sooth crying babies. I just don't get the logic.This is no stranger than if you connected a nannycam to a Clapper(TM).
Squick is a perfectly cromulent neologism describing a gross emotional disgust or discomfort. I have never seen that word verbed before, but English is great at extensifying linguistics unofficially in order to adapt to its userbase. See also obligatory XKCD. You do have to be careful googling words you don't know, though. I didn't know what a choad was, for instance. I mistakenly thought it was mechanical engineering jargon for a unit of measure. Not the sort of serach results you want on your work computer.
As somebody who as applied for a government grant before, I can tell you that there is plenty of excitement throughout the entire process. When your request is denied there is a feeling of loss, which can galvanize a redoubled effort, or just languish in resentment. Just because a goal seems more pedestrian doesn't mean that it can't be a romantic dream to work towards, at least in the eyes of the person doing the work.
I didn't RTFA, but do they address the possibility that people behave more selflessly if they are feeling depressed? I find when I am feeling down, that doing nice things for others makes me feel a sense of fulfillment. I suspect your analysis is more likely the case, but is there a way to test for that?
What I don't get about telemarketers is the really scammy ones about car insurance or credit cards. If you try to press 1 to talk to a human, they just hang up on you. Takes all the fun out of stringing the motherfuckers along. I used to be able to keep them going for two or three minutes before they figured it out. A friend of mine actually got yelled at by one of them. Bwahahaha. Such fun sport.
What part of the status quo do you think people are sick and tired of? Because I can tell you Trump has only made the parts of the status quo I was sick and tired of even more entrenched: ICE overreach. General disregard for the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Congress failing to reach consensus on major legislation. Propping up oil companies with massive tax incentives. Extreme income inequality. Dysfunctional international relations. Net neutrality. The Wars on Drugs and Terror. Gitmo, for Christ's sake! The supposed roaring liberal I voted for 9 years ago didn't make things any better either. 8 years of hand wringing and soul searching. I can't say HRC would have fared any better, but at least she wouldn't have looked like a complete buffoon in front of the entire world.
People expressing their opinions as foreign nationals, and specifically stating that they are from another country, is not even in the same ballpark as: the son of a presidential candidate having clandestine meetings with Russian spies, or a campaign manager taking millions of dollars in Russian mob money, or the National Security Advisor having to literally register as a foreign agent; or Russian agents making bot accounts to leave thousands of pro-Trump messages on various forums pretending to be Americans. Take your false equivalence elsewhere.
While I am no fan of HRC, to say that she ignored the wants of the states that she lost dismisses the fact that she had a lot of plans in place, and that she communicated those plans quite well time and time again. The problem was that she was perceived as having no empathy for the plight of these people. It's the same problem I have with my wife sometimes. If she tells me about a problem she is having, I always jump to, "here is how we can solve this." All she wants to hear is, "I understand what you are saying, and that this problem is important to you." Although I'm sure that if Hillary tried her husband's "I feel your pain" shtick, she would have been lampooned for that as well. She was just an atrocious candidate.
Now Trump on the other hand, did a great job of empathizing with people. It's just that the solutions he offered, and the solutions he's trying to deliver, won't actually help the people who got him into office. If you had told folks last year that "repeal and replace" means "drastic cuts to medicare," maybe they would have changed their mind. Then again maybe not. The Daily Show just ran a segment on a guy who owns a golf course that will be destroyed by The Wall (TM). Even with that knowledge, he believes he made the right choice by voting for Trump.
For the record, I think that marginalizing racist assholes is a way better solution than saying they are "very fine people." I have friends who supported and still support Trump. But even with them, I do not tolerate statements about how impressive it is that he has the balls to break apart Mexican families by arresting parents at a children's hospital, or how funny it would be if you had to eat a bacon sandwich to get through the TSA checkpoint. Unfortunately, Trump has normalized this sort of behavior and sentiment to an extent that was unthinkable even two years ago.
To claim that embracing equal rights for women and minorities is somehow marginalizing white men is just astonishingly ignorant. I simply cannot fathom what data you have that you think might support such a premise. I am a white man, and any time I hear somebody claiming reverse sexism or racism, I challenge it. So far, the only place that has proven to have an endemic problem is in the public elementary school system.
Slashdot Mirror
I generally use "SJW" as a marker indicating that the writer or speaker has turned off their brain, and the amygdala has taken over.
If the spirit of Star Trek is cringeworthy story writing that relies heavily on technobabble as plot devices... then yes.
So yes then.
I recommend The Brick Testament if you're looking for a great Bible. I gave it as a gift to a friend of mine when she got ordained. Be careful though, some scenes are NSFW. Turns out the bible has a lot of sex and violence in it that they leave out of the children's bibles. I remember reading the book of Revelations as a kid and being terrified for like a month afterward.
Do I understand your argument correctly? "This great division began during the last administration," because BLM? You really think that's what the great division is? What about: Roe v. Wade, the War on Drugs, the Red Scare, intelligent design, bra burning, flag burning, AIDS, assault weapons, lynchings, Prohibition, internment camps, slavery, etc. ad nauseam? America always has strife and divisions. These divisions are stoked by those seeking power.
Of course, they don't hide it or even pretend anymore. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Not "govern well" or "fix the tax code" or "end the war in Iraqistanya" or even "do what's best for our constituents for the next couple of years." The only way people stay in power or gain power is by demonizing something else.
Coming up with solutions and doing good governance will not bring millions of grumpy old white men to the polls. But whipping up a frenzy because "Your trans neighbor is gay married to a free-range emu and wants to take away your guns while doing ecstasy until you sacrifice an American flag to Satan!" will turn them out in droves.
Um. No. America has no business murdering one of its own citizens without due process, even if (especially if?) it's the POTUS giving the order. It's dubya-esque crap like this that kept me from voting for Obama a second time. And Gitmo is still open!
Funny, I read that and thought, "Pizza Hut still has 60,000 customers?" I don't even know where the nearest Pizza Hut is.
Just like "but her emails!" was meant to give cover for otherwise god-fearing conservatives who went on to vote for a philandering thief and liar who brags about sexual assault and says "two Corinthians." People rarely realize when they have been psychologically primed to make a stupid decision. There are several studies that show how easy emotions are to manipulate and how easy memories are to change. Worse yet, economic research has shown that when people realize they made the wrong choice, the tendency is to double down rather than take corrective action.
What do you think about Shesh?
I didn't find the book all that mysterious. The "twist" at the end was telegraphed from a long ways away. Now the sequels had some real mindfucks, but the original Ender's Game was just so-so. Also, ansibles just cannot be made to work without violating causality, so a fair amount of suspending disbelief is required (although he paid some lip service to this in the sequels). Same problem with Star Trek subspace communications, but they have FTL travel, too, so it's already a problem.
Having been raised Pentecostal allowed me to suspend disbelief for more of Snow Crash than the average reader. Frankly, there is something about glossolalia that is very similar to taking mind-altering substances. So for the two to be so intertwined in the plot made perfect sense to me.
I found the opening story about pizza delivery somehow... transcendent. To tee up an entire dystopia through the lens of such a lowly office was just clever beyond words. Also, you have to remember that this was written in 1992, well before much of the technology he envisioned was dreamed up. Hell, some of it still doesn't exist.
I hated the notion that the static only affected those familiar with computer programming. That was the only technical thing that really pegged my bogometer, and it really didn't help propel the plot. There were some inter-personal things that didn't sit right, but I have to give those a pass, because it's hard to know how humans would really interact with each other in such a world.
Other non-technological aspects turned out to be a little too true. Unchecked corporate sovereignty, powerful megachurches, government's idiotic reliance on polygraphs, pizza delivery still taking too long, etc. And never underestimate the power of a dog's undying love.
Wait... Are we still talking about Trump?
My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google.
I call bullshit. I have looked all up and down Google results regarding safety and total lifecycle cost of nuclear. Everything is spin as far as the eye could see. Scammy looking studies on both the pro and con sides. Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms, but I think it's a problem with signal to noise ratio being too low. Personally, I wish that people who say it's trivial to prove one way or the other on Google would actually site some reputable sources. The last time I asked a really smart, well-reasoned slashdotter for some good studies to read, he bit my head off and called me a troll just for asking.
I know that EDF is about 70% nuclear, so it seems the French have decided that it's worth it. But the case in America is not as clear.
Your insight into the role of corporations in the fascist state is interesting; it makes me wonder why the fascists and communists were on opposite sides of WWII. But I would argue that the GPs point about the US being a corporate state is pretty well justified, even if the comparison to fascism is misguided. I do think that our corporatocracy is similar to a police state (which is possibly what GP was referring to), in that there is ubiquitous surveillance, and self-censorship is common. In some industries if you a perceived as having the wrong political viewpoints or agendas, you can lose your livelihood. I think the challenges faced by SciHub are just a symptom of this overarching problem.
One last thing: just because they are not more powerful than ever doesn't mean that they're not becoming ever more powerful. Exxon would love to be Standard Oil again. Now that corporate regulatory capture is basically enshrined in law, I don't see any easy way to avoid a 21st century Dutch East India Company. I just don't know what form it will take.
A friend of mine is a Boriqua. He says the reason so few people vote in the referendum is that they know it doesn't matter.
"Given the privacy concerns..." Really? Given? No it's not a given. Especially in the age of parents posting a bajillion FB pics of their kids latest exploits and foibles. I think it would be up to the legislators to demonstrate said concerns are actually warranted before going about writing laws with potentially disastrous knock-on effects.
That was what I found so funny. You have a Democrat (Think of the children) and a Republican (No job-killing regulations) who want to make it harder for a company to develop a technology to sooth crying babies. I just don't get the logic.This is no stranger than if you connected a nannycam to a Clapper(TM).
I don't know. If a parent is the type of person who thinks they should abdicate their role to a machine, they are probably right.
Squick is a perfectly cromulent neologism describing a gross emotional disgust or discomfort. I have never seen that word verbed before, but English is great at extensifying linguistics unofficially in order to adapt to its userbase. See also obligatory XKCD. You do have to be careful googling words you don't know, though. I didn't know what a choad was, for instance. I mistakenly thought it was mechanical engineering jargon for a unit of measure. Not the sort of serach results you want on your work computer.
As somebody who as applied for a government grant before, I can tell you that there is plenty of excitement throughout the entire process. When your request is denied there is a feeling of loss, which can galvanize a redoubled effort, or just languish in resentment. Just because a goal seems more pedestrian doesn't mean that it can't be a romantic dream to work towards, at least in the eyes of the person doing the work.
I didn't RTFA, but do they address the possibility that people behave more selflessly if they are feeling depressed? I find when I am feeling down, that doing nice things for others makes me feel a sense of fulfillment. I suspect your analysis is more likely the case, but is there a way to test for that?
As long as suckers still pay a quarter mil to get that piece of paper at the end of it all, most universities wouldn't care.
What I don't get about telemarketers is the really scammy ones about car insurance or credit cards. If you try to press 1 to talk to a human, they just hang up on you. Takes all the fun out of stringing the motherfuckers along. I used to be able to keep them going for two or three minutes before they figured it out. A friend of mine actually got yelled at by one of them. Bwahahaha. Such fun sport.
What part of the status quo do you think people are sick and tired of? Because I can tell you Trump has only made the parts of the status quo I was sick and tired of even more entrenched: ICE overreach. General disregard for the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Congress failing to reach consensus on major legislation. Propping up oil companies with massive tax incentives. Extreme income inequality. Dysfunctional international relations. Net neutrality. The Wars on Drugs and Terror. Gitmo, for Christ's sake! The supposed roaring liberal I voted for 9 years ago didn't make things any better either. 8 years of hand wringing and soul searching. I can't say HRC would have fared any better, but at least she wouldn't have looked like a complete buffoon in front of the entire world.
People expressing their opinions as foreign nationals, and specifically stating that they are from another country, is not even in the same ballpark as: the son of a presidential candidate having clandestine meetings with Russian spies, or a campaign manager taking millions of dollars in Russian mob money, or the National Security Advisor having to literally register as a foreign agent; or Russian agents making bot accounts to leave thousands of pro-Trump messages on various forums pretending to be Americans. Take your false equivalence elsewhere.
While I am no fan of HRC, to say that she ignored the wants of the states that she lost dismisses the fact that she had a lot of plans in place, and that she communicated those plans quite well time and time again. The problem was that she was perceived as having no empathy for the plight of these people. It's the same problem I have with my wife sometimes. If she tells me about a problem she is having, I always jump to, "here is how we can solve this." All she wants to hear is, "I understand what you are saying, and that this problem is important to you." Although I'm sure that if Hillary tried her husband's "I feel your pain" shtick, she would have been lampooned for that as well. She was just an atrocious candidate.
Now Trump on the other hand, did a great job of empathizing with people. It's just that the solutions he offered, and the solutions he's trying to deliver, won't actually help the people who got him into office. If you had told folks last year that "repeal and replace" means "drastic cuts to medicare," maybe they would have changed their mind. Then again maybe not. The Daily Show just ran a segment on a guy who owns a golf course that will be destroyed by The Wall (TM). Even with that knowledge, he believes he made the right choice by voting for Trump.
For the record, I think that marginalizing racist assholes is a way better solution than saying they are "very fine people." I have friends who supported and still support Trump. But even with them, I do not tolerate statements about how impressive it is that he has the balls to break apart Mexican families by arresting parents at a children's hospital, or how funny it would be if you had to eat a bacon sandwich to get through the TSA checkpoint. Unfortunately, Trump has normalized this sort of behavior and sentiment to an extent that was unthinkable even two years ago.
To claim that embracing equal rights for women and minorities is somehow marginalizing white men is just astonishingly ignorant. I simply cannot fathom what data you have that you think might support such a premise. I am a white man, and any time I hear somebody claiming reverse sexism or racism, I challenge it. So far, the only place that has proven to have an endemic problem is in the public elementary school system.
So what ? Who would be satisfied with being surrounded by people that are totally incompetent ?
The current president of these United States, for one.