Dark_Arc

Dark_Arc, 21 days ago

The problem with something like that is Biden has no way to speak to the people without Israel also hearing.

Dark_Arc, 21 days ago

It’s not that simple though; Israel wants to eliminate Hamas (and they have plenty of reason for that – if Mexico attacked the US like Hamas attacked Israel, there would simply put no longer be a Mexico).

It would be tone deaf to Israel to say “leave Gaza” without that mission accomplished. They claim they don’t even want the area, they just want Hamas gone.

Furthermore, Hamas is fighting with guerilla tactics. They’re intentionally trying to provoke war crimes. Israel doesn’t have to be so dang willing to fall for the trap. However, Hamas is making it exceptionally hard to fight a clean war from what I’ve read. Citizens in the Gaza strip are not just being abused by the IDF but by Hamas.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden has his own Intel to back that all up. If it were as obvious as people want it to be, I’m pretty sure we would’ve stopped sending aid by now.

Dark_Arc, 21 days ago

Wait what? Like an outdoor reservoir/lake like thing or something else?

Dark_Arc, 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago)

I’m mildly annoyed the recent thread is on the left not the right, but this is super interesting so thanks for sharing! 🤖

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago (edited 23 days ago)

My problem with communist views is they’re unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.

Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails … but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.

These are the nations that identify as communist:

• China (PRC)
• Cuba
• Laos
• North Korea (DPRK)
• Vietnam

These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:

• Afghanistan
• Albania
• Angola
• Benin
• Bulgaria
• Congo
• Czechoslovakia
• Ethiopia
• Germany (GDR)
• Grenada
• Hungary
• Kampuchea
• Mongolia
• Mozambique
• Poland
• Romania
• Somalia
• Soviet Union
• Tuva
• Yemen (PDRY)
• Yugoslavia

That’s not to say that capitalism doesn’t have its problems, people here aren’t angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it’s had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy “things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?”.

We didn’t just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they’re cheap, etc.

The “common people” cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The “middle class” cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.

I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.

We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we’d be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don’t let anyone or anything get “too big to fail.” Capitalism doesn’t have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.

Right there with you.

We just gotta do the same thing today.

We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).

Dark_Arc, 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago)

The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism.

That’s a pretty hot take to blame all the conflict that’s happened in the last 500 years on capitalism. I think it’s likely a significant oversimplification at best. For instance, you can argue many things caused (just) WW2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians.

That’s provably wrong. The voter turn out as a percentage of population is abysmal historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:USA_Presidential_Elections_Turnout_by_Share_of_Population.png

I also find some of your examples, e.g., the Native Americans similarly a red herring. The plight of the Native American peoples is far more complicated than “blame capitalism.”

Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.

Voters control who is elected. Those that are elected control whether or not the CIA exists. The CIA would disappear tomorrow if only folks that believed the CIA shouldn’t exist were in congress.

You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense.

No you don’t, it makes plenty of sense without “class analysis.”

Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class?

Because of the people who vote a fraction of them bother with primaries and because it’s hard to find good people to run for office that want to do the job (for a myriad of reasons)?

Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly?

It’s not an objective thing that “there are oligarchs.”

Does voting actually do anything?

Yes, voting matters. See policies under Trump vs policies under Biden. See Net Neutrality. See Climate Change Policy. See EPA Policy.

It’s frankly anti-intellectual to claim that “voting doesn’t do anything” or even imply as much.

Why does the electoral college still exist?

Because people vote for representatives that don’t want to get rid of it?

Why did Americans support the Iraq War?

Because people vote for representatives that supported it? Because the general population was not adequately educated and engaged in politics to understand the facts of the situation and was mislead?

What role did the media serve?

What role didn’t the media serve? What role should it have served?

You’re asking leading questions to argue your point similar to a flat-earth or giant-ism conspiracy theorist. Like, these questions do have answers and those answers go far beyond people’s economic classes and dive into a number of cultural, period, regional, and global factors. There isn’t one answer, and the one answer certainly isn’t “because the rich people made us do it.”

I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

Literally, the criteria for authoritarian rule.

Capitalist countries are authoritarian too

No, they are not. Some may be, but the vast majority of western capitalistic societies are nowhere near authoritarian rule. The US is creeping towards it and (as elections do matter) may creep closer this year; time will tell.

it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom

That is provably false. Look at the governance models of the countries above. They were not “communism = dictatorship” they were “communism and authoritarianism.” For some reason people can’t explain away, those two things go hand and hand.

My personal take is that when you take away ownership, ownership doesn’t disappear, it just means the state is the owner. So you go from “the rich people and the government officials own the means of production” to “the government officials (that are the rich people) own the means of production” (which is exactly what happened in China).

The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.

That’s straight up bull shit. A mono-party rule is not under any circumstance democratic.

Dark_Arc, 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago)

Would it change any of your opinion if I did?

But yes, I can (for China), I can explain the important part … which is that the CCP required to rubber stamp any nomination to run for office. There is no democracy when your rule can not be meaningfully challenged.

This is furthered by the infringement of rights that is the great firewall.

EDIT: For anyone who actually is reading this and wants a source instead of “he (I) said, the other person said” here’s some information fairly well compiled: decodingchina.eu/democracy/

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

What’s the bet that the shooters were also police?

What does that mean…?

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

I don’t believe there’s any issue actually building the app. However, the app store policies forbid them from shipping it or offering it as a side-loadable option.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

They do remember common words that you use

Sometimes your own peril… I keep getting my ex’s name randomly when I’m swiping for another word 🤦‍♂️

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

a bucket full of any small species of saltwater fish you can find.

LOL

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

Always buy the best stuff you can get for your money, don’t give a fuck about the companies.

I’d add to this but just performance per dollar … but also things like:

• performance per watt
• how it works as part of the overall system you’re building (e.g. if you’re going to run Linux does it run well there)
• will this decision hurt my ability to reuse other hardware in a timeframe I care about (a compelling point for AMD to me is you can reuse the motherboard much much longer than Intel)
• what does warranty/repair look like for this? Is that something I need to worry about?

You can (if you’re in a comfortable position to ask this) also ask:

• Where is it made?
• Does that country have strong labor laws?
• Does that country have strong environmental laws?
• How does the company treat its employees?
• How does this compare to the competitors?

If we collectively decide to punish bad companies by not buying their product just because they made their product a slightly better deal … I think we’re all a bit better off.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

No, it’s literally a different app in China.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago (edited 23 days ago)

Yup, vine ripoff with some tweaks and the same monetization issue

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

Douyin begs to differ.

Dark_Arc, 24 days ago

I wonder if you had a time machine and went to McConnell day 1 as a senator and showed him that video of his future, what his reaction would be.

Dark_Arc, 24 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

I think one of the most surprisingly venomous reactions I ever got personally was on “the other site” for destiny 2. I made some suggestions that basically were “allow people to hide t-bagging, here’s how it could work, and also allow people to disable emotes on their client.”

I’m an anti-fun Nazi cry baby evidently that just isn’t on their level and can’t take the heat. I just don’t get their amazing side game of getting up in my head. I have no business playing a “competitive” game, taunts and being rude are “just part of the game.” Their fun depends on other people being angry and any suggestion that their taunts might be disabled/the other person doesn’t see their taunting is going to ruin the game.

I was mostly posting that because a friend kept getting ticked every time I tried to get him into destiny PVP. So of course they attacked me as if “my friend” is imaginary.

The best part was when the mods removed the post for “not having enough to do with Destiny 2” because I bothered to make reference to I think it was what other games were doing or something like that.

Madness to me. Absolute madness.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

It might be worth you or your friend to introspect on why that behaviour makes you feel the way it does.

I don’t really think the onus is on us.

A lot of multiplayer games have become very toxic, tons of cheaters (okay I don’t actually believe this but it’s a very common perception; I mostly blame smurfing and bad MMR systems), rude people, etc. It can transform a fun evening into dealing with “TotallyNotANazi” and his buddy “TotallyNotARapist” calling you names, t-bagging your bodies, screaming obscenities, and in some cases, likely using cheats, to make nearly impossible shots.

The other fun one (that’s not quite as bad) is when you’ve been having a clean match with someone, you’re clearly winning, you haven’t been rude to them at all, then they get one kill on you and it’s time to run up a t-bag and get on the microphones or text chat about how you’re shit at the game.

The better strategy would be to improve moderation and kick these people out of the games. However, multiplayer gaming has moved from server owners that can ban bad actors to “someone at the studio has to do it” (and frankly, the studios are not holding trolls, jerks, and cheaters accountable).

Games like CSGO have added options like hiding usernames, hiding profile pictures, etc. I just see this as part of cleaning up the rest of it. If you’re not going to moderate the multiplayer game to get rid of the most unruly jerks in your community, there should be options for “I don’t want to see their nonsense.”

Personally, I play shooters to relax, not to be some jerk-wad’s punching bag. I don’t really mind it if the enemy team is joking around and just being playful about it, but some people are clearly out to just put people down and I don’t think they should be the priority; I think they actively keep some spaces of gaming as this cringe elitist thing a lot of people just don’t want to interact with.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the “dog temperament” being closely related to the dog breed.

The only real trend I’ve noticed is that bigger dogs tend to be way more chill and happy to engage in petting and cuddling

Dark_Arc, 24 days ago

The ONLY time I think this is even remotely appropriate is if the parents are grossly negligent … like those ones that were convinced because they bought their kid with all kinds of issues a gun and didn’t take like any measures to ensure he only had supervised access … and then he went and shot a school up with the gun they bought him.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

I wouldn’t be so sure … contributors are hard to come by. You need people with time AND the experience or strong desire to learn.

There are a lot more people that have ideas about making contributions than actually make contributions.

Dark_Arc, 24 days ago

As a colorblind person … this is a teachable moment for what we go through with all kinds of charts and video games lol

(and yes, it’s this bad, and yes it happens A LOT)

Dark_Arc, 24 days ago

I might be the only one that’s kind of optimistic this will improve some of the cheapest call centers.

Some of them … the people have such thick accents, don’t get any local references, the connection is bad, don’t know the first thing about the subject matter, etc.

I called my health insurance company one time because CVS said my vaccine wasn’t covered there; the lady on the other end of the phone I could barely understand and I had to explain to her that CVS is a pharmacy. She still didn’t give me any helpful information. Eventually via poking around the website or something like that, I found out my insurance company doesn’t cover pharmacist administered vaccines … which is just insane to me.

Dark_Arc, 23 days ago

Helping people via the government is political.

Political isn’t some word for “government action that’s controversial” or “government action that you don’t like.” It’s just the discussion of government actions.

It’s inherently political to discuss universal basic income and acting as if it isn’t, is intellectually dishonest.