Sounds a lot like my experience with Americans re: their government.
I guess propaganda can be pretty insidious.
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat.
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023
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1·7 days ago1 person being held with no due process is as bad as 30000.
Please explain this one to me, because I’m not understanding your math.
"To understand revolutionary suicide it is first necessary to have an idea of reactionary suicide, for the two are very different. Reactionary suicide: the reaction of a man who takes his own life in response to social conditions that overwhelm him and condemn him to helplessness.”
“I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.”
“But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.”
– Dr. Huey P. Newton
2·7 days agoThere’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that power and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
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Have reduced empathy and compassion.
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Have a diminished ability to see from someone else’s perspective.
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Are more impulsive.
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Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.
When you don’t need other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.
Some sources:
Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
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2·8 days agoI tend to think that information should be free, generally, so I would probably be fine with “OpenAI the non-profit” taking copyrighted data under fair-use, but I don’t extend that thinking to “OpenAI the for-profit company”.
I hope that in publicly questioning the narratives I’ve been fed all my life I am not assumed to be advocating for China.
I just like to try to think critically, compare disparate sources, and not pretend that I’m somehow immune to propaganda.
It seems like people are quick to try to label me a tankie these days for engaging with the world in that way, but I don’t consider myself a tankie. It feels like a thought-terminating cliche.
Is there anything you could share that would shed more light on the Zenz thing? I’m not very keen on just “tuning out” my ideological opponents or dismissing them just because they don’t affirm my biases. I’d rather read up on it myself and decide.
Part of admitting that I’m not immune to propaganda, for me, is working to root it out wherever I can by reading and cross-referencing a wide range of sources. If my deepest beliefs and biases can’t stand up to that sort of scrutiny then I don’t want them anymore.
Any word on Beepy V2? Migicovsky’s been pretty quiet on that lately.
2·10 days agoHas Migicovsky said anything Beepy 2.0 lately, or is it basically a dead project at this point?
I wish we’d gotten to see the rest of Lovecraft’s redemption arc.
He died so soon after beginning to realize and acknowledge that his views about the world had been abhorrent.
Edit to add:
If anyone’s curious to read an example of the beginnings of his realization, check out this letter, written about a month before his death:
https://github.com/punchmonster/Lovecraft-Letters/blob/master/19370207-Catherine-L-Moore.md
It’s a fairly long letter, but the whole thing is interesting. He seems to have been radicalized and was becoming quite critical of capitalism, if not a full blown Marxist. You’ll find the following quote in the last paragraph:
I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centered, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better!
There’s more evidence in there than just that passage, but this is already becoming a wall of text!
Pardon my skepticism, but… are the kids these days really unaware of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”?
Even if they are, remember the ol’ aphorism… “You’re only as old as you feel!”
…Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in the Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”
Such a great movie. And a wonderful criticism of isms.
You can do better! I believe in you!
What if the country in question decides to let them in, but without the proper documents, with the implicit goal of getting their labor for cheap? (…) In other words, the system is/was working as intended, and illegal immigration was desired.
This is such an important concept for people to understand. The system was functioning as intended, for better or worse. There are myriad benefits to keeping people in fear, from financial to behavioral. It’s part of the reason why the US is so resistant to the idea of decoupling healthcare from employment, at least until after you reach retirement age. Productivity, baby!!
Also, thank you for introducing me to the idea of POSIWID. I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of that.
Well, you’re half correct. He was charged in Maryland for attempted witness murder, but the charges were dropped once he’d been sentenced so harshly in New York. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, and there’s plenty of conspiratorial debate about them.
I strongly doubt that the prosecution would have brought the charges if they didn’t have traceable evidence (through blockchain transaction records, undercover police chat logs, and data seizure) that coins, sent to an undercover agent for the purposes of murder, originated from wallets that were owned by Ulbricht. You can read more about one of the employees Ulbricht allegedly tried to have murdered (Curtis Green, who was sentenced for his own crimes) here and here.
You’re right, though, he’s technically innocent as the charges were dismissed. Perhaps it was all a huge setup/honeypot but the truth of whether or not he sent the coins should be discoverable with enough due diligence scouring the blockchain records. Intent matters, even though it didn’t end up getting tried in this instance.
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If he didn’t wanna look bad he shouldn’t have sent a person he believed to be a hitman $300,000 to murder someone.
It sounds to me like your parents are engaging with nuance in a complicated world, rather than boiling everything down to either “this is good” or “this is bad”.
ETA: You’re welcome to downvote me, I don’t mind, the points don’t matter. But I prefer discussion. Tell me why I’m wrong so we can have a conversation!