one would think trump got a supermajority in the senate and congress based on the amount of power he’s wielding. If I want to be optimistic, this might be the start of a new European alliance with Canada that does not rely on the US anymore.
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The Complaint Department
- Thread starter Thomas Veil
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Scepticalscribe
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Because tech is - has been - such a revolutionary and transformational force in our lives, we (well, I most certainly did) run the risk of assuming that it is solely a force for good, and that those who introduce new technologies (for, I did study and teach stuff about how the development of the printing press, moveable type, and the replacement of parchment by paper utterly transformed countries, polities, societies and worlds when teaching Renaissance & Reformation history) are "progressive" by inclination and temperament, when, of course, this is not proven, and is very often, not the case at all.
I have been wondering whether the world of companies dedicated to the production of shareholder profit - to the exclusion of all else - operate in an entirely ethics free environment, and am arriving at the conclusion that, in the absence of regulation, unfortunately, they do.
Agreed.
It would be nice to see the primacy of the rule of law.
lizkat
Coffee Maker
Apparently all that counts is that Trump thinks he got a supermajority-sized mandate out of a razor-thin majority in each house of Congress.
SCOTUS, check... Senate, check... House, check... All that's left is the petty annoyance of federal district courts, plus the fourth estate. The trick with the latter is apparently to settle the lawsuits Trump brings or else write headlines that read like Fox chyrons.
But.... but at the rate PrezMusk and his bemused sidekick Trump are failing to reduce the price of eggs
(and ticking off people whose Head Start schools are closing and heating assistance grants getting cancelled in mid-winter thanks to confusion about restrictions on block grants to the states and the states' ensuing confusion about getting stuck with the whole tab for "reducing the deficit"),
pretty soon Canada and Mexico can pool their own egg money along with the pennies of the pissed off American peasants and just flat out buy the United States of Felonious Grift for 3c on the dollar.
Meanwhile in case the full faith and credit of the dollar actually goes south, JP Morgan Chase et al are shipping gold here on passenger jets, so I guess they at least still trust the FAA to keep the air traffic controllers' noses to the grindstone of their radar screens.
Don't mind me, I'm just blowing off steam after RFKJr's confirmation.
Generally, I no longer think that people being angry matters. If Americans had the bare minimum political memory, Jan 6 would have ended trumpism.
Scepticalscribe
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Actually, (and thank you for drawing my attention to this, for, it had escaped my notice until then), there is an interesting thread discussing this action in the SFF section of MR.
Embarrassed cough: I blush to admit that - somewhat against my better judgment - I have since waded into this discussion.....if, indeed it can be described - or dignified - as such.
lizkat
Coffee Maker
Oh I think people's anger matters. There's too much of it over trivial things --the shiny objects-- and not enough channeling of it towards constructive work on defining and resolving our problems.
January 6th matters too. It's huge. It doesn't mean the same thing to the left and the right in the USA. That's not to say all on the left and all on the right have the SAME different interpretations. But generally they do remember it differently, compare it to other historical events differently, cast blame differently, even have different ideas of how much it really matters as time goes by.
This division is a huge problem for the very concept of "USA" down the road, same as the lingering other effects of a Civil War that never yet has faced truth and reconciliation, but in the meantime the split gets to wear all kinds of other clothes instead. A lot of the mini-divisions are really stupid, made up to keep the gap open because gotcha politics is everything in some circles whether on the left, right, independent or indifferent. We need a scorecard to know what the F "free speech" even means anymore -- to whom, and for what purpose.
The things we have in common are still very very basic though, like our need for water, food, protection from the elements, health, safety, literacy, numeracy, a sense of belonging and community.So fast forward to 2025 and any of Trump's 2024 supporters who now get nicked in the pocketbook by the Trump 2.0 capers are going to be very angry at someone... even if Trump did say "it could be painful" before America somehow becomes "great again".
It will eventually matter that Trump and his grifting cronies catered to the wealthy at the expense of his supporters among the working poor and remains of a middle class. That becomes something akin to the history of say the wealthy family-run former governments of El Salvador and the Domincan Republic. Free speech at that point is usually angry peasants with pitchforks. No wall high enough.
Trump hopes it goes like that. He gets off imagining a cause to declare martial law and throw his own version of Tienanmen Square in Lafayette Park. Not sure he realizes yet that the riotous dissent he faces at that point will be MAGA, not "woke lefties" from the universities.
The problem there is that American MAGA members of 2025 are not Chinese students of 1989. The former have guns by the truckload. If Trump wants their guns he'll have to take them, and he has no clue how his own army will act when facing a choice of following his order to fire on other Americans or.... join them in a coup.
As for the alleged woke lefties and any other Trump 2.0 resisters, it behooves them meanwhile to try really hard starting yesterday for a rearrangement of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
A militia-led coup down the road by the right against Trump and cronies would be a nightmare for everyone, even worse then the coup by other names -- DOGE, the broligarchy-- that we're all experiencing today, only because it's possible some on the far right in the exec branch and in congress right now, and some in the military, would also openly support it.
Trump is a token of their intentions. The far right don't need him once things get bad enough. They're ready to run a real dictatorship, not this reality TV pilot starring Elon and Felon. They actually count on the anger from the populist right (not the left) to fuel their coup. Trump feeds it by talking constantly about "American carnage" and how dark it is... when the country's economy is in pretty good shape. He is at once a feared head of state because of his petty vindictiveness, and a trapped pawn of the anger he has stirred up among his own supporters for a decade.
So I think anger matters. I think checking it matters! It matters to call out the political manipulation of our emotions, and to hold Congress accountable to their oaths and their duties of representing us responsibly.
Forget the tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals -- gimme a break, the taxes on those guys were far higher in the 1960s and the dudes still had time to play golf midweek and money to buy their daughters a house as a wedding gift. Forget the stupid tariff wars and wholesale ditching of regulations.
None of that over-the-top "change" is what ordinary Americans actually voted for, not even MAGA voters. They want change but not this grifter-run vandalizing of a constitutional government with agencies that have served us pretty well for hundreds of years.. else we would not still BE the superpower we are. We run a terrible risk letting an irrationally angry man like Trump abuse that power. There's truth in the idea of fighting fire not with fire but water. Time to chill him out in court, not on the street and definitely not on social media.
Scepticalscribe
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And thereby earned myself a four day ban, or suspension, as a consequence.
The orange turd’s purging of data from websites broke the example I was looking at for Python data processing and visualization.
Apple has kissed the ring, the Gulf on Apple Maps now has both its real name and the fascist vanity name over here too.
Apple has kissed the ring, the Gulf on Apple Maps now has both its real name and the fascist vanity name over here too.
Thomas Veil
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I’ve been saying something like this needs to happen for a while now. We are no longer worthy of being the world’s economic, military or moral leader.
We need to be taken down several notches.
It’s the Democrats who now need to be screaming about law and order. This is a completely lawless government we’re experiencing right now.
We still appreciate you.
Economic, yes, military, definitely, but "moral leader" of the world? The US was never a moral leader. The US was a lesser evil for long, but with this bullying and political whiplashing, that status is gone and not coming back. From this perspective, China is a much more stable superpower (until Xi Jinping dies, but even then, I'd expect the turmoil to be less drastic than what we are seeing this past month in the US).
Companies with very restrictive passwords, especially coupled with predictable usernames...
- Six characters max for the password ... wow, that's pretty bad.
- Only 0-9 allowed, no characters from the alphabet or special characters ... eh, 1,000,000 combinations? Thats baaaaad!
- Must not be in sequence (eg. 123456 or 765432) ... oops, slightly fewer combinations then for no good reason.
- Must use at least three different characters ... you got to be kidding me?!? What's next? The password must be 800813?
SouprMatt
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I just saw a commercial where kids asked parents to stop to get food multiple times on their way home, only to be told no.
Then, when they got home… the parents ordered DoorDash!
WTF? Like, they could literally have stopped at any of the places they passed, and taken food home. But they paid extra to have food delivered instead?
DoorDash - We allow you to waste your money for no reason whatsoever!
Then, when they got home… the parents ordered DoorDash!
WTF? Like, they could literally have stopped at any of the places they passed, and taken food home. But they paid extra to have food delivered instead?
DoorDash - We allow you to waste your money for no reason whatsoever!
Very noble! Sacrificing for the sake of the greater economy! 😎
And allowing one more person to spit in your food because sharing is caring
Like the clown said: Whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stranger.
Scepticalscribe
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Well, while I loathe, detest, abominate, the night (and the following days) when the clocks go back in autumn, I cheer and thrill to the night that they go forward in spring.
Sounds like a potential vote for permanent DST.