ffs....
http://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-mining-malware-reportedly-discovered-at-google-play/
now, every cpu is a possible drone to generate currency from. not only do we have people wasting resources on nothing of any value, we have computers doing the same thing.
i'm not really surprised, although i'll say that i looked at this as a harmless ponzi scheme up to this point, rather than anything legitimately threatening to the real economy. this is providing for a different perspective...
could we just get the point that the problem is exchange value itself and abolish currency already?
a: i think there's this huge problem in the world.
b: really? what's that?
a: well, money is just made out of thin air, like it's some kind of meaningless abstraction, or something.
b: isn't it a meaningless abstraction, though?
a: never mind that.
b: well, what's your solution?
a: i think we should make money out of processor cycles.
b: isn't that out of thin air?
a: never mind that.
a: when it's just made out of thin air like this, it lets banks create these imaginary bubbles that they can get rich off of.
b: but aren't they going to do the equivalent thing, regardless?
a: what do you mean? what is equivalent to making pretend money, stealing it and then charging for it?
b: well, isn't that just a function of their unlimited power? if you were to modify the system and leave them with comparative levels of power, wouldn't they figure something else out? isn't the problem the lack of accountability, rather than the (more or less entirely arbitrary) way the money is created?
a: you surely don't suggest that we should regulate bankers, do you? what are you, some kind of commie nazi globalist fascist?
b: do you even realize that you're completely contradicting yourself?
a: never mind that.
b: have you considered just abolishing money?
a: pft. how do you suppose i exploit people without currency? dumb communists...
Monday, April 28, 2014
there's a couple of interesting points here. it's an intriguing watch, for al jazeera's troll if nothing else. free speech doesn't mean giving equal time to idiots. that's cnn logic.
the hybrid citizen thing is something i've been pushing for a long time with almost nothing but grief from the left, which i've found downright depressing. the identity politics (using vacuous buzz words like "intersectionality" to try and gloss over it's reactionary character) on the left has gotten to the point that it's as bad as the prejudice on the right, with the difference that it seems to represent right-leaning elements from minorities. i think this is an interesting point that has not received enough attention.
one of the prime examples of this is the current president, who speaks more glowingly of reagan than of roosevelt. my memory is failing me - i can't remember if it was obama or somebody else that came right out and stated "i would have rather joined the republican party, but the primaries were full of racists, so the only way i could make a difference was by joining the democratic party". if it wasn't obama, a prominent black leader has stated this. that's not to conflate the left with the democrats; the few people that are reading this semi-regularly know enough not to put that blurred vision in my eyes. nor is to suggest that all black leaders are secretly conservatives, which is equally outlandish. yet, something similar to this seems to be common place. the right simply doesn't accommodate, listen to or take anybody seriously unless they're rich first and white second. that pushes the entire spectrum into would-be leftist movements and has the effect of co-opting them. the result is that you end up with people that would be on the right of the politics of their previous culture speaking their voice within leftist currents in western culture. worse, modern leftist ideology denies any kind of debate on the perspective presented as a type of colonialism. islam, specifically, consequently becomes defined *within the left* by it's rightist and religious tendencies, because they are more numerous and more vocal; marx and bakunin and the rest (who, it must be stated clearly, were all openly racist against everybody) are put aside to provide for first-person perspectives, which itself implicitly enforces the narrative of an "alien viewpoint".
that's as much of a problem as white supremacism is, especially in the context of so many white people not having any kind of real ethnic identity. i'm italian, but the only italian traditions i have are enjoying pizza and spaghetti, neither of which are prepared in ways that are particularly italian, or are ghettoized to italian characteristics at this point. i'm irish, but don't have any irish traditions at all. i'm french, and grew up a few kilometres away from a french speaking area, but don't speak french very well. my culture is described more by weird americanisms like sesame street, the smurfs, michael stipe, jello biafra and cereal for lunch (and eggs for supper). michael jackson told me it didn't matter if i was black or white, and i believed him, because i didn't really understand what the difference was in the first place. growing up, listening to backwards sitars was no stranger than church organs (and perhaps a little less strange, 'cause i understood george harrison better than i understood church hymns). materialism was ubiquitous and normal; christianity was the other. you get the point. i'm white, but i don't understand or connect with white culture, and i'm very much the norm. but, that's a good thing. yet, i get accused by cultural conservatives masquerading on the left (when they ought to be on the right, and would be if the right wasn't blatantly racist) as being some kind of fascist when i point this out, when it's really very much the desired end point of pretty much all leftist thought. there's no room on the left for cultural nationalism. it really can't be synthesized with the abolition of the nation state; it's just antithetical, with no possible compromise hidden away.
so, this idea of hybridizing is the future we really need to be embracing, and we're going to run into opposition from nationalists on both sides, whether these are miscategorizations or not. that doesn't reject the idea of local governance, mind you. it just rejects attaching it to an ethnic character. we've learned that there's no such thing as race, but i don't think people are aware of just how much gene flow exists. this idea of looking at each other as hybrids isn't some empty conceptualization that we need to get abstractly, it's an empirical fact. "i am an arab" or "i am russian", or "i am dutch", are statements that are void of any meaning. but that's not so easy to get across to people that have had their identity programmed into them by the nation-state since their birth.
the other thing i wanted to point out is that i was surprised that the explanation by the young female prof snuck in. the hosts were trying to ignore her. she was spouting bland academic jargon, or some other populist nonsense. but, then it came up, and i smiled. i just want to clarify this further.
racism = unemployment = capitalism.
those equalities are each a little tentative. there's some conditions required. i'm oversimplifying. but it's very accurate.
what that means is that taking this idea of nationalism away from the state is also taking away their time-tested approach of reflecting criticism during economic downperiods, which means unemployment crises in the modern period. bluntly, this is going to get much worse before it gets better, whether any of it makes any sense or not.
the hybrid citizen thing is something i've been pushing for a long time with almost nothing but grief from the left, which i've found downright depressing. the identity politics (using vacuous buzz words like "intersectionality" to try and gloss over it's reactionary character) on the left has gotten to the point that it's as bad as the prejudice on the right, with the difference that it seems to represent right-leaning elements from minorities. i think this is an interesting point that has not received enough attention.
one of the prime examples of this is the current president, who speaks more glowingly of reagan than of roosevelt. my memory is failing me - i can't remember if it was obama or somebody else that came right out and stated "i would have rather joined the republican party, but the primaries were full of racists, so the only way i could make a difference was by joining the democratic party". if it wasn't obama, a prominent black leader has stated this. that's not to conflate the left with the democrats; the few people that are reading this semi-regularly know enough not to put that blurred vision in my eyes. nor is to suggest that all black leaders are secretly conservatives, which is equally outlandish. yet, something similar to this seems to be common place. the right simply doesn't accommodate, listen to or take anybody seriously unless they're rich first and white second. that pushes the entire spectrum into would-be leftist movements and has the effect of co-opting them. the result is that you end up with people that would be on the right of the politics of their previous culture speaking their voice within leftist currents in western culture. worse, modern leftist ideology denies any kind of debate on the perspective presented as a type of colonialism. islam, specifically, consequently becomes defined *within the left* by it's rightist and religious tendencies, because they are more numerous and more vocal; marx and bakunin and the rest (who, it must be stated clearly, were all openly racist against everybody) are put aside to provide for first-person perspectives, which itself implicitly enforces the narrative of an "alien viewpoint".
that's as much of a problem as white supremacism is, especially in the context of so many white people not having any kind of real ethnic identity. i'm italian, but the only italian traditions i have are enjoying pizza and spaghetti, neither of which are prepared in ways that are particularly italian, or are ghettoized to italian characteristics at this point. i'm irish, but don't have any irish traditions at all. i'm french, and grew up a few kilometres away from a french speaking area, but don't speak french very well. my culture is described more by weird americanisms like sesame street, the smurfs, michael stipe, jello biafra and cereal for lunch (and eggs for supper). michael jackson told me it didn't matter if i was black or white, and i believed him, because i didn't really understand what the difference was in the first place. growing up, listening to backwards sitars was no stranger than church organs (and perhaps a little less strange, 'cause i understood george harrison better than i understood church hymns). materialism was ubiquitous and normal; christianity was the other. you get the point. i'm white, but i don't understand or connect with white culture, and i'm very much the norm. but, that's a good thing. yet, i get accused by cultural conservatives masquerading on the left (when they ought to be on the right, and would be if the right wasn't blatantly racist) as being some kind of fascist when i point this out, when it's really very much the desired end point of pretty much all leftist thought. there's no room on the left for cultural nationalism. it really can't be synthesized with the abolition of the nation state; it's just antithetical, with no possible compromise hidden away.
so, this idea of hybridizing is the future we really need to be embracing, and we're going to run into opposition from nationalists on both sides, whether these are miscategorizations or not. that doesn't reject the idea of local governance, mind you. it just rejects attaching it to an ethnic character. we've learned that there's no such thing as race, but i don't think people are aware of just how much gene flow exists. this idea of looking at each other as hybrids isn't some empty conceptualization that we need to get abstractly, it's an empirical fact. "i am an arab" or "i am russian", or "i am dutch", are statements that are void of any meaning. but that's not so easy to get across to people that have had their identity programmed into them by the nation-state since their birth.
the other thing i wanted to point out is that i was surprised that the explanation by the young female prof snuck in. the hosts were trying to ignore her. she was spouting bland academic jargon, or some other populist nonsense. but, then it came up, and i smiled. i just want to clarify this further.
racism = unemployment = capitalism.
those equalities are each a little tentative. there's some conditions required. i'm oversimplifying. but it's very accurate.
what that means is that taking this idea of nationalism away from the state is also taking away their time-tested approach of reflecting criticism during economic downperiods, which means unemployment crises in the modern period. bluntly, this is going to get much worse before it gets better, whether any of it makes any sense or not.
at
01:33
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Windsor, ON, Canada
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