Random political thought thread.

[The Cat]

God I hate Slors. They're the worst. (And how great is Moranis in that scene?)

I feel drawn towards Boo Berry, though I've never had it (most sugary cereals were reserved for camping although Frosted Flakes snuck in there). I've long assumed it was mythical. I didn't catch the word play and mused that it was so awful if you ate it it would turn you into a ghost. This would be why I never saw it. But, lo and behold, I just saw it in Jewel the other day.

Here's what you do regarding those cereals. You get some softserve iced cream, and you mix that cereal into it. It's fucking amazing. Not remotely real food, but you could pick nastier poisons...but not many more delicious. For added dopamine consume whilst watching your favorite saturday morning cartoon from back in the day.

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[ygolo]

I found it funny that a mathematician was not afraid to get political in a programming conference (from 5 years ago)

She leans into this more in a talk at google:

 

[The Cat]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I hope labor wins this battle against ai.

The true danger of AI is not Terminator but economic disruption and displacement. It has the potential to affect many different industries.

AI might be a better thing and might actually do what's promised if we didn't live under an economic system that incentivizes doing things quickly and cheaply.

I think anyone introducing AI to a workplace and saying that "this is not for putting people out of work" is probably fill of shit. That's exactly the outcome demanded as a consequence of this by the logic of capitalism - putting people out of work because they cost too much and do things too slowly.

 

[Red Herring]

I came across a video of two young American teachers talking about the abysmal reading skills of their middle school students. I am married to a teacher and have a kid in grade school, so I watched it. The video was interesting though not surprising given that we have similar problems in Germany.
It was only after watching it that I realized it was published by a group called Educating America. Many of the comments were from (homeschooling?) parents saying how modern parents are lazy, public schools suck, private schools are better and the problems are all the fault of the government (that wants to keep children stupid) and evil teachers unions.

The other posts of this group are all clearly conservative leaning material, though nothing extremist.

I'm still afraid though of what this will do to my algorithm.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I'm too negative for political work, unless there's somebody else or a broader movement to excite me.

Nobody needs somebody going around saying "we're all doomed". How does that help? My major virtue in the political sphere is that I usually know when to shut up. Perhaps that time has come once again.

 

[Virtual ghost]

EU says Elon Musk's X is biggest source of disinformation

 

[Virtual ghost]

North Korea says it will expel U.S. soldier Travis King

 

[The Cat]

Now Im gonna bet, he'd rather they wouldn't. He was already gonna do time in military prison; but now he's been on the other side. Maybe he has intel, maybe he got flipped. I'll bet he'll spend some time at a black site while they figure all that out. One place he aint going for certain is free.

 

[ceecee]

I came across a video of two young American teachers talking about the abysmal reading skills of their middle school students. I am married to a teacher and have a kid in grade school, so I watched it. The video was interesting though not surprising given that we have similar problems in Germany.
It was only after watching it that I realized it was published by a group called Educating America. Many of the comments were from (homeschooling?) parents saying how modern parents are lazy, public schools suck, private schools are better and the problems are all the fault of the government (that wants to keep children stupid) and evil teachers unions.

The other posts of this group are all clearly conservative leaning material, though nothing extremist.

I'm still afraid though of what this will do to my algorithm.

The goal of groups like this is to obliterate public education. Obviously overturning Brown vs Board of Edu would be ideal but it's not likely so they pull this shit at the state levels. Gotta defund first. Oh like this...

Tennessee Republican leadership lays groundwork to potentially reject federal education dollars

Tennessee currently accepts just south of $2 billion in federal education funding – close to $1.8 billion.

www.wkrn.com

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[Virtual ghost]

Feinstein, trail-blazing California senator, dies at 90

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

Feinstein, trail-blazing California senator, dies at 90

I had a feeling she would be this year.

 

[SensEye]

A rare piece of good political news. I don't like to wish death on anybody, but if senile old folks refuse to get out of the way, the grim reaper is perhaps the best solution. Biden should retire and spend time with his grandchildren before he completely loses it, but he won't. Hard to feel any sympathy for him if he fails to wake up one morning.

 

[Stigmata]

A rare piece of good political news. I don't like to wish death on anybody, but if senile old folks refuse to get out of the way, the grim reaper is perhaps the best solution. Biden should retire and spend time with his grandchildren before he completely loses it, but he won't. Hard to feel any sympathy for him if he fails to wake up one morning.

Romney seems to be the only one so far that has had enough sense to run the series finale before the show inevitably gets cancelled. McConnell probably isn't too far behind considering his latest bouts of his brain's OS randomly blue screening during public speeches.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Something I've been in mind of as an observation is that: a demographic that takes the highest place in the social hierarchy, tends to create the harshest internal hierarchies. At least that's what it looks like to me.

I've been watching "Orange Is the New Black" and musing that women's prison would probably be easier for me to negotiate socially than Hollywood. Whatever is the dominant, most elite group, is also the most internally brutal. I think this is part of the confusion about the question of "white male superiority". While it's true that gatherings of politicians and CEOs tends to over-represent white men, I also think that internally, the bullying among that demographic is some of the harshest. Same is true of the financially elite, beautiful, social powerful women. The "mean girl" syndrome is how the dominant women behave and it is all about hierarchy, both internally to the group and externally. The financial elite are some of the most brutal in their insistent internal hierarchies.

I'm not certain that everyone realizes that, but the members inside the elite group that are at the bottom, can be treated with significant amounts of oppression. It is a different sort of oppression from the external, demographically based hierarchies, but it is there.

The point of this random thought is to show a higher resolution of social power hierarchy. When a group's entire identity is based on it, then it become the sole way of defining the self, resulting in these rigid, even brutal internal hierarchies. The more powerful or brutal a group is outwardly, the more brutal it is inwardly.

Edit: I do of course realize that the show isn't a representation of reality, but I grew up as trailor park trash, and have known a lot of people with a range of issues and actually am accurate in this assessment. I seriously would not want to have to face a prison population, but the people there would be more familiar and make more sense to me even in the way they create power than the people in Hollywood. I've only recently learned about the elite groups from the inside.