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Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249476: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:23:51 PM

[up][up]This.

At best Techbros are indifferent to social harm and just focused on making profit, at worst they're true believers who are merely stealth reactionaries/cryptofascists.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 18th 2018 at 6:25:32 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#249477: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:24:39 PM

@Dingo: Completely laize fairy speech policies are more or less par and parcel of the libertarian ethos dominant in tech.

[up] A fair number of them are just liberal ideologues stuck on enlightenment era ideals about people being good at their core, unable to accept a world where more or less the exact opposite holds true under the current paradigm.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jul 18th 2018 at 6:42:58 AM

MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#249478: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:42:59 PM

A lack of unions compared to other industries might also be a factor int he Tech industry's universal problems. Having someone to actually grant power to the workers would had done a lot to make them see that lazze faire does a lot more harm than good.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jul 18th 2018 at 3:46:14 AM

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#249479: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:47:33 PM

The irony? Mark himself is jewish. He of all people should know the fucking harm of this shit.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#249480: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:51:36 PM

[up][up] Labor unions are a relic of a by-gone era of weak capital and strong labor brought on by the massive societal disruptions (particularly of globalized trade) of the early 20th century which regrettably are slowly but surely being outcompeted because of their inefficiencies relative to globalized labor pools and automation. Without protectionist policies there’s no way to turn back that clock.

Government policies to increase worker mobility that also enhance or at least do not impede productivity are the best we can realistically hope for, though this is also somewhat difficult given the ease with which globalization allows corporations to shop around for preferential tax laws, making it more difficult for countries to raise tax revenue without offering corporations something in return.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jul 18th 2018 at 7:13:41 AM

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#249481: Jul 18th 2018 at 3:58:48 PM

I do wonder how and when this aptly named new gilded age will end.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#249482: Jul 18th 2018 at 4:01:13 PM

[up] I suspect it will end with a shift towards the all encompassing data driven authoritarianism speculated about in Yuval Noah Haradi’s Homo Deus, or the implosion of human civilization into barbarism as society finds itself unable to contain anti-social and self-destructive impulses empowered by our ever advancing technological capabilities.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jul 18th 2018 at 7:08:05 AM

pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#249483: Jul 18th 2018 at 4:57:07 PM

The irony? Mark himself is jewish. He of all people should know the fucking harm of this shit.

The thing is, though: is Mark Zuckerberg a practicing Jew? Does he actually consider himself to be Jewish? Or has he rejected the religious and ethnic creed of his parents and is thus wearing a set of metaphorical blinders?

Hitler himself was half-Jewish, y'know...

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
DeathorCake Since: Mar, 2016
#249484: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:00:37 PM

[up][up]

A bit bleak, perhaps. If the various nation-states had lost their power to regulate this stuff then the corporations and the super-rich wouldn't be sinking vast quantities of resources into attempts at regulatory capture. Corporation tax revenue is almost irrelevant in real terms at this point given the massive piles of money they are stacking up indicates that the taxes are not depriving them of real spending power or providing the government with any extra noninflationary spending space.

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#249485: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:05:43 PM

[up][up] That's total bullshit. He wasn't half-jewish. Also, just because Zuckerberg isn't practicing doesn't mean he doesn't understand the damage he's doing; he's just too weak-willed or focused on profit or thinks he'll avoid antisemitism.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#249486: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:21:31 PM

The Boomerang Bigot thing was true in the case of at least some anti-gay people but it's very often rare and oftentimes extremely offensive to the people being persecuted by them.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 18th 2018 at 5:21:15 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#249487: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:24:44 PM

Yeah, sometimes bigots are just bigots. The hitler thing is especially egregious given the scale of his crimes.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249488: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:32:06 PM

Ah, Zuckerberg. What else can you expect from a guy whose rise to fame started with a bout of drunken misogyny?

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#249489: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:35:26 PM

I think everything you need to know about Zucker can be summarized by the fact Facebook began as a college do-list.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#249490: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:38:10 PM

For the whole Hitler being Jewish thing, it has been kicking around for some time. The most common variant was that he was half Jewish. That example does not appear to be true, however there is some chance he had Jewish heritage. I forgot where it started but it has been kicking around history and non-history circles for a while.

The Jewish Virtual library has a short write up and a sample of Hitler's family tree.

Basically this started because Hitler may have had some Jewish ancestry and there was Jewish grave with the family name on it. However no one is exactly sure and Hitler himself had made sure that he was excluded from the definitions of Jews in Nazi Germany. Even DNA tests of his surviving family have yielded insufficient information and only vaguely suggestions he may have had Jewish ancestry of some sort.

I see Zuckerberg behaves a lot like a lot of the mess from Silicon Valley, and others like Elon Musk. They act out in various ways that are ultimately harmful and are seemingly oblivious to it until it blows up in their face with bad PR.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 18th 2018 at 8:20:52 AM

Who watches the watchmen?
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#249491: Jul 18th 2018 at 5:58:54 PM

This fell into my radar.

Hse Dems trying to get GOP to allow them to consider amdt to approve money to help block cyber attacks from Russia in election. GOP blocking Dems at each attempt

and for the surprise of no one...

The Go P is pretty much happy with the assistance they received from the Russians.

     The Nation: Russiagate Is Far Wider Than Trump and His Inner Circle 

What did everyone think was going to happen?

There’s nothing we learned from Donald Trump’s meeting in Helsinki on Monday with Vladimir Putin that we didn’t already know. Seeing the president of the United States praise a foreign adversary to his face while insulting his own intelligence services carries some remaining power to shock, but nothing about Trump’s past statements, including his tweets in the days leading up to the summit, suggested anything very different was in store. We certainly should have been prepared for the likelihood that Trump would flatter Putin, denounce the media, and generally humiliate the United States for no discernible reason.

On the one hand, it’s healthy that the public is capable of expressing outrage. It’s reassuring that Trump’s appalling behavior and flagrant corruption haven’t been completely normalized. And yet there’s something empty about this reaction every time it occurs. The fact that Trump is unfit for office isn’t news.

Here’s what is news: Last Friday, just days before the Trump-Putin summit, Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, charging them with hacking, identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money. Allegedly, these officers were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the e-mails of Clinton campaign officials in 2016 and released stolen e-mails via Guccifer 2.0, the entity that furnished them to Wiki Leaks in order to spread chaos and distrust among Democrats.

As Putin made clear in the joint press conference on Monday, Russia has no intention of extraditing any of these officers to stand trial in the United States, but that’s not the point of the indictments. More likely, Mueller intended to send a message to several figures not named but whose identities are strongly implied. One individual, described as “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump,” is almost certainly longtime GOP operative and dirty trickster Roger Stone. The indictment describes this individual’s discussions with Russian agents regarding the release of stolen documents, citing language that precisely matches Stone’s previously reported August 2016 discussions with Guccifer. It’s easy to see how Stone himself could be charged with conspiring with foreign hackers, and how the mere threat of such charges could pressure him to flip on Trump.

But even more intriguing is the allegation that on August 15, 2016, the indicted officers “received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress” and that they “sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.” Without anything beyond that description to work with, it’s best not to speculate as to who this candidate might be, but it’s safe to assume they know who they are. This is a shocking allegation, and it hints at larger implications of Russiagate that the public is nowhere close to coming to terms with.

It’s rarely recalled now, but back in May 2017, The Washington Post published the transcript of a conversation from June 2016 among the House Republican leadership, in which House majority leader Kevin Mc Carthy made clear that he was aware “the Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp research that they had on Trump” and speculated “there’s two people, I think, that Putin pays: [Representative Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” Amid laughter, House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted that the conversation remain off the record, adding, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” Ryan would later claim he and Mc Carthy were joking.

The point here isn’t necessarily that Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman from California, solicited illegally obtained documents from Russian officials. There are other plausible candidates who might have done that. The point is that Russiagate, which is widely understood to be a scandal surrounding Donald Trump’s close associates like Paul Manafort, may go wider and deeper, and could implicate at least one member of Congress.

Moreover, it seems that the Republican leadership was at the very least aware of this possibility, amused by it, and did nothing whatsoever to alert the public or any relevant authorities. They were happy to enjoy the benefits of Russian interference and said so openly among themselves. Similarly, as the Post reported, when Senate majority leader Mitch Mc Connell was informed of Russian interference in September 2016 in a meeting with President Obama and other senior officials, he threatened to cast any public announcement of the threat as partisan politics. It’s not a stretch to say Mc Connell deliberately undermined national security for partisan advantage, a decision that has paid off with the signing of a massive tax cut for the wealthy and the looming establishment of a durable right-wing majority on the Supreme Court.

In other words, Russiagate isn’t just the narrow story of a few corrupt officials. It isn’t even the story of a corrupt president. It’s the story of a corrupt political party, the one currently holding all the levers of power in Washington. After Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki, many Republicans in Washington proclaimed their solemn concern, just as they did when the president expressed his sympathy for the white supremacists in Charlottesville last year. But all of them are fully aware that they are abetting a criminal conspiracy, and probably more than one.

Shortly after the Trump-Putin press conference, federal prosecutors announced the indictment of Maria Butina, a Russian national in Washington, DC, who, unlike the 25 Russians the special counsel has so far indicted, was arrested over the weekend. Butina, who in 2016 attempted to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, is accused of operating as a foreign agent to gain influence in Republican political circles and advance the interests of the Russian Federation. Working on behalf of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, she appears to have brokered ties with the National Rifle Association and conservative religious organizations, which she herself accurately identified as the financial backbones of the Republican Party in Congress.

Butina is a colorful example of an increasingly common phenomenon in Washington: foreign nationals, not only from Russia but from dozens of other countries, who blur the line between lobbying and spying until it’s imperceptible. This is what the evisceration of campaign-finance laws has yielded: a capital where American corporations and foreign governments see every official as being for sale.

Mueller, who knows more than anyone in the media about the extent of the Russiagate scandal and never leaks, isn’t telling us that Trump colluded and obstructed justice—we already know that, because we literally saw Trump request on camera, in the summer of 2016, that Russia hack the Clinton campaign, just as we later saw him bluntly admit to the world that he fired James Comey to end the Russia investigation.

Instead, we are being told something much more frightening: that Russiagate doesn’t end with Trump and his inner circle, that some members of Congress may be implicated, and that the Republican leadership therefore has a personal stake in preventing anyone beyond Manafort and a few other flunkies from being held accountable. Mueller and the FBI are giving everyone a glimpse at the scale of official corruption in Washington, and they’re warning us that they aren’t going to be able to rein it in all by themselves.

Inter arma enim silent leges
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249492: Jul 18th 2018 at 6:00:04 PM

Labor unions are a relic of a by-gone era of weak capital and strong labor brought on by the massive societal disruptions (particularly of globalized trade) of the early 20th century which regrettably are slowly but surely being outcompeted because of their inefficiencies relative to globalized labor pools and automation. Without protectionist policies there’s no way to turn back that clock.

Government policies to increase worker mobility that also enhance or at least do not impede productivity are the best we can realistically hope for, though this is also somewhat difficult given the ease with which globalization allows corporations to shop around for preferential tax laws, making it more difficult for countries to raise tax revenue without offering corporations something in return.

What? Of course not, there is absolutely still a place for collective bargaining in the work place. The reasons they have disappeared in the US private sector is not due to some inevitable societal change which led to their obsolescence but rather from a concerted effort on the part of corporate interests to harm worker rights.

With all due respect I see no reason to assume that if we fight legislatively and socially against the forces that have impeded unions and other forms of workers rights they cannot be restored, anything else is frankly irrationally deterministic.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:02:11 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#249493: Jul 18th 2018 at 6:48:19 PM

The proposal to break up California will not appear on the ballot in November, due to a court ruling.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/07/18/us/california-three-states-initiative-court/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249494: Jul 18th 2018 at 6:51:43 PM

Well that's one less thing to worry about in November.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#249495: Jul 18th 2018 at 6:53:34 PM

[up][up][up] Going forwards, I suspect labor unions will be increasingly something for the white collar, upper-middle professional class, people whose jobs can’t easily be automated and who are willing and able to go overseas with their jobs and network with foreign counterparts.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:55:40 AM

MenInGreyToBlak V Since: Oct, 2017 Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
V
#249496: Jul 18th 2018 at 7:14:39 PM

As we're talking about Zuckerberg, one thing I never understood is why everyone is suddenly so shocked hearing that Facebook collects personal information. Hell, I've seen people erase their accounts due to this. Face Book has had this problem since the beginning, and yet everyone is freaking out now.

Besides, if you're a completely normal person living a completely normal life I don't get why you'd be worried, the only people who should be worried are ones who are involved in criminal activity or are celebrities as then you might just have some enemies who might just have a reason to get personal data, but normal everyday people erasing their accounts because of possibly leaked information? That's insane.

Edited by MenInGreyToBlak on Jul 18th 2018 at 4:15:49 PM

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#249497: Jul 18th 2018 at 7:18:06 PM

You think only celebrities and criminals have things they want to hide?

I’m embarrassed about so much shit in my life, I’ve got secrets about so much other shit, I’ve got confidential information about other people, all of that is stuff I want to hide.

Now I’m young enough to know that regardless of privacy settings Facebook is public and everything I put on there is public info, but some people honestly though that some info on there was private.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
MenInGreyToBlak V Since: Oct, 2017 Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
V
#249498: Jul 18th 2018 at 7:21:58 PM

That's not what I find strange... it's the fact that this problem has existed for years and now people are starting to worry.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249499: Jul 18th 2018 at 7:27:45 PM

[up]People are by their very nature myopic, it should come as no surprise that people didn't see it coming (which of course isn't exactly right, there are certainly people who have probably predicted and warned about it) and are now worried about it.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 18th 2018 at 10:27:25 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#249500: Jul 18th 2018 at 7:30:07 PM

It’s not been big public knowledge and news for years, people don’t pay attention to shit until it’s right in their face.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

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