Posts by Trigun 398 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jan 2013
I know that the piece is listed as Opinion, but good grief that was a bit much. Not the opinion itself (everyone has a right to an opinion) but the fact that it was shoved into this article like a square peg in a round hole using a sledgehammer. Not everything has to be about flippin' politics.
This whole thing was ridiculous, but the worst part is that instead of the police having a quick word, they arrested the gaseous lady and prosecuted her. To add to that, the judge then went mental with the sentencing. All that for sending fart videos.
I would be a little more understanding if she'd had some warnings and kept doing it.
This may change in the UK. Our current Labour government seems to have people in it who don't know what they are doing (like most of our governments since Blair in the late 1990s) - or they're simply malignant. They're currently in the process of taxing the ever living heck out of us via various means, one of them by hiking employers National Insurance which makes it way more expensive to employ people. This is going to cause price hikes all over the place and also prompt all of the companies to shed staff ASAP before the changes come in (including making it really difficult to get rid of the bad employees). It's to the point that all the banks, supermarket chains, hospitality industry, the unions (they usually like Labour a lot), etc are all telling them it's suicidal. Yet they're still doing it.
It depends on if cheapness of product is the goal. To me it looks like he's trying to use tariffs as part of his negotiations for the most part to get to that point, while (re-)asserting U.S. dominance in the face of an aggressive China and Russia. I'm just guessing, of course. The one thing which worries me a little is Greenland.
I believe much the same. Going crazy in either direction (closed off one way, globalised to the point of no power the other) is usually a very bad idea. We saw with Covid that some self sufficiency is a very good idea.
Our problem these days is extreme ideology when it comes to this. In my mind it needs to be done from an entirely practical perspective with things like Covid, natural disasters and wars in mind. I think Biden was too globalist and Trump is now maybe heading too closed off. We'll see, I guess.
Aren't all the rest of the social media platforms doing this as well, including Bluesky, Facebook, etc al? Seems odd to point out (repeatedly) everything wrong with one platform and not others as well - unless of course you take into account that El Reg has a considerable bias given all of the other skewed articles.
Don't get me wrong: Using people's data for AI is not something that I want to see for privacy reasons alone.
I don't particularly like Microsoft's attitude of "your device is actually our device" where they install things after an update without asking. As such, I've "downgraded" from 11 back to 10 (even that has a bit of it) and will be probably going to Cinnamon when windows 10 goes EOL. Also, one thing I don't want is AI as part of my OS and that seems to be the direction Microsoft is going. Nope. No thanks. Not having an OS who's vender thinks it owns peoples' computers having AI based stuff running in the background.
At times like this I always imagine someone, somewhere having that "ohhh crud" bum-puckering feeling just after releasing an update or change and realising with dawning horror that things are going wrong in a very real and insanely grand way. Call me a soiftie, but I have some sympthy - even if it's the person's actual fault.
Here's the equation that the guy should have run before hand:
1) Frought election year
2) Political polarisation like never before
3) Great fear (rightly) about AI and deep fakes
4) Insane penalties for election fraud of any type
5) Governments are not renown for levity
Adding all of that together, perhaps maybe NOT go and do something some profoundly unwise.
Got to admit though (despite the utter failure to think about the above) that I wince at the potential penalties. I suspect he''ll take a plea deal. Even then, it's going to hurt a lot for a long time.
I responded to one of your other posts so I'm repeating a little:
DEI (Didn't Earn It) simply discriminates immutable characteristics is the absolute killer of meritocracy and human ambition. We're seeing this across the west in many areas. Most noticeably is with Hollywood, Comics industry, Game industry. Worst is that we have it in government and our *armed services*. With regards the armed services: Both the US and UK had a hiring issue before DEI was implemented and since its implementation recruitment has dropped off of a cliff since. We've got to the point in the UK where retired senior officers (because serving ones cannot) in the army, navy and airforce have written a collective letter to our government to object. We've also had member of your own miliary make comments on our government doing this.
I've also noticed DEI brings out the worst in some people: anti-white, ant-male racist/sexists because it gives a societal green light to such people - and no, I'm not accusing you of this as I don't know you - just saying others exhibit this. Think how it was normalised to talk about black people back in the 1970's and before. Disgusting.
I thoroughly object to treating a bunch of people as sub-citizens based off of their immutable characteristics - whatever those happen to be - and anyone trying it with me with find out the hard way that it's a mistake to do so.
"You can dress your racist ideology up in pseudo-intellectual babble, but it doesn't change the core racism of your message."
I'm trying to argue a point which the I believe that the supreme court argued in your country from what I understand (if I'm wrong then I'll stand corrected): But it makes sense to me. Want to have a decent discussion? Don't shove you assumptions that anyone who does not agree with you is an 'ist or 'phobe.
You are also making an egregious mistake: You are assuming that everyone who shares your skin colour has the same benefits that you do. Utter foolishness to assume that. There are people in my country who look like me who range from ultra rich to absolute dirt poor. It would be utter idocy to treat them the same based upon skin colour. From what I've read and seen, your country is much the same? You can acknowlege your benefits but to promote discrimination against people who may not have had those benefits because they look like you is not right to say the least.
I'll also point out that there are plenty of people who are not white who are ultra rich. If anything you have a CLASS problem I believe. You know what sorts that out? Doing what I suggested.
By the way: I'm not saying that you don't have some racism, but just keep in mind that fighting racism with more racism (even if you try to redefine the term to not make you look & sound horrible) doesn't work and makes things worse and usually leads to a complete over correction - as with Disney.
Your problem is looking at this as a majority racial issue while failing to acknowledge that there are many white men who have never benefited from such historic status - at least not in any significant way. Really, it's too broad a generalisation much in the same way that current day feminism attacks all men as if every single man is responsible for the ghastly actions of a minority.
By the way: Affirmative Action not only is by itself racist against those not being affirmed, but also against the very people it was supposed to help. That's why, in part, it got dropped because the stats showed black people in the U.S. who benefited from the policy dropping out in much larger numbers. Why? Because imbalance wasn't addressed when they were growing up and so when such people got to college/uni age they were not ready for it. I've always said that this issue needs to be 1) addressed at a young age, 2) not based off of race but need instead, 3) the cultutal element must also be addressed in neighbourhoods which require help. it reiuires time, effort and money but governments always go for the easy option so it never truly gets fixed.
How you deal with something is as important as you chosing to deal with it in the first place. The way it's being dealt with now leaves white men increasingly resentful, bitter and angry while many women and non-white people are shouting "Not in my name!" but are ignored or treated badly because they don't conform to genuine bigotry.
Putting the messanger aside for a moment, what is said about DEI (which is morphing into Bridge) and it being anti white male is correct. Disney is also being done for this as well.
We've also had similar attempts at discriminationin the UK re Royal Air Force fast promotion for anyone but white guys (yes, they tried this and yes I have confirmation from the Ministry of Defence via my MP), Covid relief by the Welsh government (we're prioritising women, people of colour and lgbt - so who does that leave out?). More broadly we've had a dance company drop ballet as "it's too white", plus issues in our universities.
I was brought up not to discriminate based off of race, sex etc - it's a societal contract - but that concept has been ditched in recent years by an alarming number of companies and, more worringly, institutions - particularly in entertainment, marketing and hiring. You can be left wing, right wing, in the middle wing - whatever you like - but this vile nastiness needs to go because it's earning a colosally stupid prize in the future for everyone.
In my opinion TikTok enhances the bad parts of social media - addiction, narcissism, hatred, etc. Some of the things I've seen with regards hatred towardrs men and "white people" would turn your stomach and there's a derranged element to some of it as well.
As such, I think getting rid of it is not a bad thing. However, HOW you do that is important and sneaking this through in a dishonest way by piggybacking it on to the whole money for Ukraine/Israel/etc is definitely a bad way to do it. But maybe that's the only way that they can get it through.
Additionally, I don't think that the real is China. or at least it's not the only reason. This comes from U.S. social media companies losing market share.
I think this is going to get challenged in any event.
"The court declines to order restitution due to the complexity of the case and the number of victims. It instead grants the government's motion to authorize the United States to compensate victims with finally forfeited assets through a remission process, as restitution would be impractical in this case."
An understandable move, but as erver with these massive financial crimes:
1) The public (U.S. in this case) has to make it good when some may well have pensions etc which were invested and so lost money in the first place
2) I suspect people outside of the U.S. will not be compensated. I get why, but very much sucks for them.
I'm often not a fan of people getting over-long prison sentences, but I think Sam Bankman-Freid deserves what he got if he serves all of it (it's federal prison so possibly he will?). Why? Because of the magnitiude of the crime, the attempted (and possibly actual) corruption of politicians, the loss to individuals and (this is postulation admittedly) reponsibility for some self-deletions of people who lost everything.
China may well have done what is claimed (be surprised if they didn't), but that would simply put them on the same level as the elite establishment (which includes most Conservative and Labour politicians) with regards undermining faith in democracy in the UK. Both parties act in concert, ignoring the promises that they make and that has been the case in a very obvious way for at least 20 years. How can you have a democracy when both main parties look and sound the same? What a joke (and yes, I am remarkably black pilled with regards our politicians).
If you weren't so heavily biased you'd notice that I didn't defend him: I simply pointed out that he adds a different perspective and that's a refreshing change from the same chorus of voices preaching the same messages from the mouths of various governments and from the media (both online and offline). The latter part is my real beef with what's been going on in the last deacde: That the MSM is in lock-step with the establishment and that, not Musk, should worry the dickens out of you. Or at least it should worry at least as much.
People like to dunk on Elon Musk (which is their right) but one thing I will say is that he does give some balance against people who also want to shut down speech apart from their own. It's always good to have comptetition rather than a one sided narrative - whoever's narrative that happens to be.
Microsoft have struggled with this since they changed their way they test and (if I remember correctly) now test on VMs instead of actual hardware. More efficient but far more prone to allowing hardware config base issues through. They also fired much of the QA testing team at the same time, I think - probably didn't help matters either
After it became obvious that MS weren't going to fix it soon, I would have created a temp mail box elsewhere, logged into my DNS portal and redircted the MX, SPF etc to that - just so that I could function.
I'd then use the onmicrosoft email to test the old account.
That said, this gentleman might not have the knowledge to do this.
If the average age is 50-55 instead of 35, then I can see why a company would be worried about that: You need younger people to be coming up through the system and no to have all upper positions clogged up. However.
If you're going to ask people to step aside, then be up front, honest and make it both voluntary and lucrative for older people to exit and perhaps retire.
Don't simply dump people on the heap of obselence once you've used up thier younger years.
Those are certainly positives, but you've completely skipped the (very) bad bits: echo chambers, political and social extremism of all sorts, intolerance (by all sides), "othering" particular groups (and I don't just mean minorities). The list goes on.
Also, girls are suspected to be more susceptable to the negatives of social media, making them feel more anxiety and feeling attacked (this a generalisation, of course).
A large part of why people are as crazy as sometimes they are online is down to the above and it's wide spread and seemingly getting worse. It's also affecting institutions and certainly the media, who have behaved like activists rather than (at much as they can be) neutral parties trying to bring us the news.
That last part made you sound pretty bad. We're trying to push past judging people on the colour of their skin, but clearly we have a way to go. Just dump the race stiring and racism please.
The rest of what you said: Some truth there, although if you put Labour in charge you will get something quite similar with regards outcome, just via a different route.
Here's the truth as I see it:
No matter the skin colour, no matter the party: With a some exceptions, our politicians don't have the populace's best interest at heart because they pursue their fecking ideologies FIRST and what's good for the populace a distant second.
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