@admitsWrongIfProven probably there are more compelling justifications than “natural”. ardent capitalists claim that their creed creates prosperity and innovation uplifting us all, for example. a critic of capitalism’s exploitative nature ought to be able to express that case well, in order also to be able to critique it well.
people shouting about the imminent worthlessness of the US dollar are surprisingly interested in taking yours. just to buy more bitcoin, i suppose.
yet another trail of tears.
the poppies should all grow just as tall as each of them can.
that doesn’t mean they can grow as rich as they might like.
the mark of a good critic is a capacity to give a compelling sympathetic account of what they are ultimately critiquing.
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @mikethemadbiologist well, i usually am, so we have that in common!
@failedLyndonLaRouchite i think it's a city referendum, so if they're valid for the purpose of getting it on the ballot, they'd have to be city residents. the campaign has to expect the signatures will be scrutinized. i'd guess, for example, signers are asked to provide their within-city-address along with their signatures.
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @mikethemadbiologist i don't think he's arguing one way or another about the instrumental success of the outrage machine, although he does suggest that for the moment it is working to Fetterman's advantage.
"Georgia’s domestic terrorism law originally applied to actions intended to, or likely to, kill 10 or more people. In 2017, following a massacre of black churchgoers by a white supremacist gunman in Charleston, S.C., it was expanded to include property crimes intended to intimidate government into changing policies, although this has no obvious connection with the killings." #PhilEbersole https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2023/09/25/whats-at-stake-in-the-cop-city-protests/
"It was nothing but bullshit, disguised as rage." @mikethemadbiologist https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2023/09/26/fetterman-and-the-ancient-flute/
// a good epitaph for our age
a degree was about a day, 360 of them, give or take, in the circle of the seasons. 100F was just about body temperature. i love the sloppy little ghosts that live in our units.
@admin i’m pretty new to AP, am still feeling my way around. i’m beginning to get some intuition for how it works, but i largely reverse engineered fossilphant from inspecting mastodon archives. i don’t know how similar eg friendica archives might be, to what degree exported archives adhere to a standard.
i mean to look into static-site indexing engines to see if i can integrate search. for now, you can load a one-giant-page version of your archive and <ctrl>-f… 🥴
@admin the infrastructure fossilphant is built on is pretty general, so i’m hoping even if there are differences it won’t be hard to build sister tools of non-Mastodon things.
@aRubes Thanks a ton! I'm honored, and I very much appreciate it!
@etherdiver @jpkoning it's just a foundationally bad model. "upstanding" people — people who by reputation can get into a "good" pool — evade scrutiny, while grubbier people whose tarnish is obvious are virtuously set apart. no one deserves immunity from scrutiny by reputation. no one had a better reputation than Bernie Madoff. indeed, the whole nature of confidence scams, often more lucrative than muckier dealings, is to capitalize on license from a cultivated reputation.
makes you wonder, what does he have on whom? cf @michelle https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/opinion/columnists/menendez-democrats-schumer.html
@jpkoning on privacy pools (an idea about which i am on its merits quite skeptical), and likely legal risks faced by those who would enable them. https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2023/09/thoughts-on-privacy-pools-and-law.html
@enmodo @Atrios from #RutgerBregman https://thecorrespondent.com/4503/the-bizarre-tale-of-president-nixon-and-his-basic-income-bill/173117835-c34d6145
Text: It was like Townsend and Malthus all over again. Even former Nixon advisor Daniel Moynihan stopped believing in basic income, following a fatal discovery upon publication of the final results of the Seattle experiment. One finding in particular grabbed everybody’s attention: The number of divorces had jumped more than 50%. Interest in this statistic quickly overshadowed all the other outcomes, such as better school performance and improvements in health. A basic income, evidently, gave women too much independence. Ten years later, a reanalysis of the data revealed that a statistical error had been made; in reality, there had been no change in the divorce rate at all.
@LouisIngenthron if it's the queen there's still hope of a resurgence.
"We shouldn't encourage people to get married, we should make life fucking easier so they can choose long term partners if they wish." @Atrios https://www.eschatonblog.com/2023/09/they-dont-mean-any-of-it.html
// i wrote several long essays years ago trying to say exactly this. @Atrios is so pithy.