Friday, March 8, 2019

it's very early.

but, i'm gong to make a clear prediction.

this group of way-too-young female democrats that cenk uygur is pimping is going to completely sink the democrats in 2020, and trump is going to be easily re-elected. and, because he has money and controls media, they're not going to go away, probably ever.

it's an interesting conflict of interest. a little corrupt, maybe, even.

the msm narrative will probably focus on how trump won by red baiting, but i expect that this isn't going to be a very deep analysis. this is going to be less about trump successfully smearing the opposition and more about the wide swaths of middle america looking at these factions rising in the democratic party and saying "these idiots are worse".

and, frankly, that might be the right call.

the party will primary them, in the end, and win. but, the damage in the short term is going to be pretty drastic.

i want to be clear: i think gender parity is a good idea, and i'm not opposed to racial diversity, in principle, although i think it's largely a triviality. but, this is a pack of rowdy kids looking to cause problems, and it's clear enough that they're going to.

in the end, it's money in the bank for the young turks.

the only thing to do is try to watch something else.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/ilhan-omar-said-aipac-pays-lawmakers-to-be-pro-israel-here-s-how-they-really-work-1.6932302
https://theconversation.com/why-not-nationalize-facebook-93816
i might actually argue that a lot of what happens on the internet nowadays ought to be nationalized. and, what does that mean?

well, what does facebook do? it's kind of a personal web space. what the ubiquity of facebook really demonstrates is that people want a little space on the internet that belongs to them, where they can post their ideas and interact with their friends - and that they don't want to pay for that space. while facebook makes a lot of money on advertising, most users that know how to install ad blocking software do so as soon as they know how to. if nationalizing facebook eliminated the advertising motive, it would solve a lot of the data concerns by means of decommercializing it. i mean, a government might have reasons to store your data, but making money wouldn't be one of them.

now, somebody might argue that they're afraid of censorship if the government were to take over facebook, but this is actually completely backwards. if facebook were actually a government owned service, you would actually have free speech rights, and any kind of censorship could be dealt with via lawsuits. right now, the fact that facebook is a private server means it's users don't actually have free speech rights at all. while i'm not really concerned about data collection, strengthening speech rights for facebook users is something i'd actively support.

facebook has, in fact, faced competition. it defeated myspace, and then defeated google+. in both cases, the primary reason that the competition lost was that users wanted to be involved in the biggest network. if the idea is that no competitor exists because facebook is stifling it, i question that logic. it's actually very hard to come up with any kind of benefit that would follow from introducing competition into the social network "market", and even trying to understand it in these terms is really demonstrating a lack of understanding of what it is. it would make far more sense to consolidate all of the networks into a single service - and any attempt to fight against this is ultimately a fight against overwhelming user preference.

likewise, imagine walking into a library and being given the option to choose between competing catalogue systems. you'd quickly go mad - you wouldn't know where anything was. and, while there is currently a competition underway between the dewey decimal system and the library of congress, anybody who's dealt with this knows how frustrating it is. i can imagine no benefit whatsoever in creating competing search engines...

what would be a step forward, though, would be to standardize it. how free is the google search algorithm, really? and, as it has a commercial motive, the results are often somewhat broken. for example, google has for years resisted attempts to remove sites from it's results, fully aware that it would mostly be used to remove commercial websites. the result is that searching for actual, useable knowledge takes a lot longer than it should, because you have to sort through hundreds of people trying to sell you something, first. if nationalization would change the purpose of google's search from trying to sell you something to helping you find information, that would be something i would actively support.

i really have less to say about amazon. unlike facebook & google, amazon doesn't provide for any useful service that people actually want, but is simply a store. on the one hand, i don't really know what the purpose of telling people that they have to buy their food from a different website than their books is. on the other hand, i don't have any real aversion to splitting them up, either. this strikes me as an expensive and frustrating triviality. amazon also has all kinds of competitors as it is, so the idea that they're a monopoly is off the mark. personally, i rarely use it because it doesn't take paypal.

i don't expect people to react well to her proposals, but perhaps a broader discourse around what kind of public policy we should implement here is welcome - and my vote would be to nationalize them, rather than to break them up.
there's a massive amount of spin being produced around this, and you have to assume that people are getting paid for it.

this article is complete nonsense - and tinged with anti-semitism, itself.

to begin with, ilhan omar made two very specific accusations:

1) american foreign policy is bought and paid for by aipac. yes, she said that. i'm not interpreting or implying anything. it's a direct quote.
2) those policy makers have an "allegiance" to a "foreign country". there's no reading between lines, here. those are direct statements.

you put those two things together, and you get a clear picture of somebody that thinks that america is run by jewish spies that are funded by jewish lobbyists. these are direct fucking quotes.

so, to suggest that people are putting words into her mouth is completely dishonest. she did say these things.

and, it should be pointed out that aipac does not actually fund anybody at all, so her statement is not just offensive but, more importantly, completely factually wrong.

second, to suggest that sheldon adelson is running a jewish lobby is exactly what people are reacting against. he's just a guy. he's a rich guy, granted. but, he's just a guy. he doesn't represent israel, he doesn't work for israel, he's not registered to lobby for israel, and nothing else of the sort. so, to suggest that the fact that he's rich and jewish and politically involved means he is therefore a jewish spy is exactly the point that's being reacted against - it's a completely racist sentiment to tie these things together as causal, or important. by that logic, bill gates represents the american government. it's absurd.

and, bafflingly, this is going over the author's head.

thirdly, the attempt to gloss over the allegiance remark is equally dishonest. she was clearly stating - not insinuating, but directly stating - that america is controlled by jewish spies. the author then elaborates on the point, thinking this justifies it, completely oblivious to the blatant racism inherent within it.

what's missing here is a discussion of the geopolitical context in which the united states not merely supports but broadly directs israeli policy. by reducing the discussion to a demonstrably false accusation about financial influence, and a conspiracy theory about foreign allegiance (maybe they meet in masonic lodges, too), the entire discourse is jettisoned into the latrine. this should be a discussion about america's reliance on oil in the context of the continuing cold war. we need to talk about kissinger and nasser and the 1973 oil blockade, and a whole slew of complicated things that require a detailed knowledge of history, of geography and of policy, all of which she clearly lacks.

she is not correct, she is not making a cogent point; she is a fool with a poor grasp of policy and that is couching that poor grasp of policy in racist, conspiratorial language in order to compensate for it.

and, this kind of stupidity is going to crater the left, if it's not dealt with face on.

her fate should be up to the people in her district. but, the party should remove her from the foreign relations committee, if they can.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/03/08/ilhan-omar-controversy-is-a-case-of-hate-in-america-but-whose.html
no.

being a liberal is not about "tolerance for diversity". that's largely a tory idea.

what being a liberal is about is maximizing freedom - and brutally savaging anybody that would stand to restrict it.
the guy that lives above me - and owns this place - has a very friendly black lab that he takes with him everywhere he goes. i've now been here over five months, and this might be the first time the dog was left upstairs by itself.

and, it doesn't seem to like it.

it's been running around in circles for hours now, loudly whimpering, no doubt convinced it's been completely abandoned. they say a smart dog is mentally equivalent to a toddler, and this one is clearly having a fit.

the whimpering is rather different than anything i've heard, though; i guess it's a sound humans wouldn't hear often, because it's reserved for a specific type of anguish that sets in after so many minutes of abandonment - and, i say minutes, because a dog's memory is not very long. it actually sounds like scooby doo trying to talk, this arwarwawrawrawraraa.

the dog is clearly heartbroken.

but, we all know they get over it pretty fast.
so, the stack of asimov books from chapters came in - 12/14. the other two are coming in as imports from the uk, and could take a few weeks.

nothing from the cops, yet.

i slept a lot this week, and suspect the air quality is partially at fault, but i did make some progress on some loose ends and disparate concrete things. i went looking for archives to find a media list from the 90s; i didn't quite find what i wanted, but i successfully pulled down some old data that i now need to carefully cross-reference and properly file. if i can stay awake, i can hopefully plan to have a rough outline for the vlog written up by monday, and get to it shortly thereafter.

the weather remains uninspiring, but the cold snap should at least break by midweek, even if it doesn't actually warm up. that should finally help me better understand what's going on.
i don't know why she''s running as a democrat; this is the kind of language you expect from the libertarian right.

i think we need to move in the opposite direction, and stop wasting resources competing with each other. the tech industry, especially, is a series of natural monopolies; the biggest effect of the microsoft ruling was a massive investment by bill gates into apple (and, if you're going to break anybody up, apple should be the first target), and all that did was create a different type of monopoly. so, in response to a failed policy (with arguably valid intentions), she argues that you need to double down on it. it's the definition of insanity. and, it's a constant with her.

she honestly thinks that the solution to capitalism is more capitalism.

forget sanders/warren. how about an elizabeth warren & ron paul ticket? he's not too old, not judging by the field.

and, in terms of pure strategy, it doesn't make a lot of sense. this is surely going to be deeply unpopular with young people, it's going to be a suicide policy in california and it's going to be broadly rejected by the coffee shop liberals who one would think would be her base.

i shouldn't complain; it is probably better to let her drown herself early.

elizabeth warren: a woman, a plan....a collapse.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/elizabeth-warren-proposes-breaking-up-amazon-google-and-facebook/
see, this is what happens when you apply ideas from the 20th century to the 21st century.

i like having my google services integrated.

expect this to go over like a lead balloon.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/yw8kdm/elizabeth-warren-plans-to-break-up-amazon-facebook-and-google
seems like marco just got busted blowing a fuse charging up his fleshlight.

you want to imagine him looking up when the lights unexpectedly come on.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/xwbkq3/venezuela-nationwide-blackout-marco-rubio
he's so afraid of the media that they literally sent him to iqaluit for the night.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/trudeau-apology-tuberculosis-iqaluit-1.5047805
the debate is always around a v b.

it should be around 0 v 1.
we can do this using automata theory, too.

0 - homosexuality is immoral
1 - homosexuality is not immoral

a - homosexuality is a choice
b - homosexuality is not a choice

we have four combinations.

0a - catholicism and most other semitic religions
0b - calvinism. calvinists are fucked in the head, but it is a system with a large influence on capitalism. and, this is the error that the pseudo-left activists make; they don't realize that the wide swath of evangelical puritans will send the fags to hell, anyways.
1a - liberalism.
1b - foucauldianism, however ironically. foucault's history of sexuality is a better read than his theories of power, whether you think the foucauldians are misapplying them or not. foucault would have been rather viciously opposed to a "born this way" argument. but, in the upside down reality he created, he can take the blame for this, too.

what are you?
this is a little out of date, now, but my understanding is that it is still the consensus view amongst actual scientists, even if it is not well received by religious conservatives on the right, or by foucauldian conservatives that mistakenly identify on the left.

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=66
i know what allah says.

i don't fucking care what allah says.
so, do i think being gay is a choice?

i think that's what the science says, yes.

but, i don't care about religion, so it's not a bad thing that's a choice. further, it's completely immoral and tyrannical for a group to impose it's religion on non-believers.

it follows that my position is that homosexuality is a choice, and that this choice should be respected in a free society.

and, that's an actual liberal position on the matter.
and, just to address the old "human nature" canard, if i haven't; and, i'm sure i have.

i was not raised in a judaic or christian household, and i do not frame my worldview within a messianic context. so, i have little interest in what the various semitic religions state about the topic of human nature. but, this is perhaps the oldest political debate in our culture, that is the culture of the west that re-established itself during the renaissance. in a very real sense, it defines what the terms liberal and conservative mean, in the first place.

the conservative conception of human nature may be judaic in ultimate origin, but largely comes from hobbes in the modern usage. what conservatism means in this context is that our nature is fixed, unchanging, and rather brutal - that we are a horrible, depraved species because we are created this way, and can't do anything to change this. the modern interpretation of this manifests itself in a poor understanding of genetics that argues our assholery is in our genes, and is transcendable only by evolutionary processes, which the conservative may or may not accept.

the liberal concept of human nature, on the other hand hand, while greek in ultimate origin, mostly comes from rousseau, which argued in favour of a blank slate, a tabula rasa. to rousseau, we are born blind and helpless, natureless, and are able to be shaped entirely be social convention as we age. the modern interpretation is largely gramscian: our nature is pushed down to us from above, determined by an elite or a vanguard, and mostly outside of our control. this is, in truth, not much of an argument for free will at all.

today, this should be an empirical question, although this is only recently true. the science at this point remains speculative, but mostly leans towards rousseau. stated tersely: we understand today that genes don't code for behaviour, although conservatives have yet to concede the point.

my perspective is fundamentally that of rousseau's - i do not think our nature is fixed, i think we are able to change. free will is complicated, and needs to be understood relativistically. so, why are we such assholes then? because we're taught to be assholes.

so, i do think there is a solution in unlearning our assholery and then stopping the perpetuation of it to future generations. but, i recognize the difficulty underlying this, as there is no real obvious starting point.

and, chances are, i don't or wouldn't like you very much.
again: this attempt to turn these war criminals into victims is a good example of the insidious effect of muslim blood money on the western media.

https://news.sky.com/story/death-and-desperation-as-islamic-state-makes-final-stand-in-last-stronghold-baghouz-11658082
give me communism, or give me death.
if we can get out of this mess somehow, it has to be through radical egalitarianism, which means starting with a concept of equal condemnation and trying to better ourselves together from the ground up. we have to hit rock bottom together.

and, i'm not and really never have been interested in anything else.
no, really.

there was a time when i thought that women were the better sex, but i had those ideas rudely thrown in my face when i entered my early 20s, and i really had to step back from it with a fair amount of force. women are just as evil as men are in every conceivable way. in hindsight, i guess i was upholding nineteenth century sexist conceptions of women as more emotional, more even-handed, and then putting them on a pedestal to emulate; i wanted a society where masculinity would be abolished, where these ideals of femininity would become the social norm. but, reality rudely informed be that that the premise was bullshit - that women are just as horrible as men, and need to be treated with the same levels of contempt and derision and suspicion and scorn.

now, i hate women the same way that i've always hated men; it's an equal-opportunity concept of misanthropy, a just total disinterest in the depravity of humanity, in general.

to an extent, that is what this place is for: to act as a daily reminder that this species is probably not worth saving from itself.
i hate everybody the same, though.