freddybobs

Used to like Dvoraks articles and Cranky Geeks back in the day.

Unfortunately he joined up with 'v-jay' Adam Curry to do a podcast. That show is basically Alex Jones lite. For example laughing about the white supremacist terrorist killing of Heather Heyer, edge lording it didn't happen, "Crisis actors" etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack

Ugh.

I would post the link to the episode, but don't want to give them any traffic.

I don't think this works on Windows 11 Home (or or perhaps in S mode). I have set up a desktop this year where it did work, then more recently I set up two Laptops in S mode where it didn't and I had to follow other instructions.

For that I had to create a microsoft account. I could then create a local account, and delete the microsoft account.

Which frankly is terrible. It has pushed me to now make Linux Mint my main personal OS. I've been using windows and been a fan of Visual Studio for decades.

There is an episode of the "you're wrong about" podcast, that discusses homelessness. In that episode there are several discussion about several projects in California around homelessness. Those projects provided housing. The studies based on those projects showed that overall the cost was less that not having some housing and services. The podcast goes into more details, but as I remember this was because

* It removes much of the medical and police cost

* If people who are struggling don't have a roof over their head, it makes it incredibly hard for them to get a job. Having some stability meant that many could pick them selves up and get a job and so forth.

The end of the episode points out even though the programs were a success by most metrics - including being cheaper overall to tax payers - they were shut down.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id13...

Here's the one on homelessness

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/homelessness/id1380008...

Theres a good one about the "wellfare queen" that is related and rather eye opening

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ronald-reagan-and-the-...

Good?

The largely unspoken kernel of this writer’s argument is that Curtis is wrong.

What I'd like to see is some concrete examples of things Adam Curtis gets wrong.

Unfortunately the article referenced doesn't appear to have the goods, and the crux of it appears to be a critique of the style. I like the style. It's accessible. It's interesting. It's engaging. Which was his intent as he has discussed in interviews.

So the majority of trade was/is/likely to remain with the EU?

Perhaps I should clarify on the EU law point. I made the point that most EU laws were copied, but the trade point was not about laws in the Uk. It's that UK companies will and do voluntarily comply with EU laws. They do that so they can continue to trade with the EU - the Uks largest trading partner. Moreover previously the Uk had a large seat at the table in deciding such EU laws. Now the Uk largely complies either by law or by necessity to trade with laws it doesn't even have a say in.

On bendy bananas, it also turns out...

EU ‘bendy bananas’ regulation to remain despite Brexit

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-bendy-bana...

Not that this is some huge deal. It's just another (somewhat amusing) data point in a project that doesn't appear to have any significant tangible benefit.

Moreover I'd claim it isn't going to get much better, because how can it? The UK made trade much harder with it's main trading partner.

I don't think that's funny. It's dumb and tragic.

This. The Uk copied large amounts of EU law verbatim.

That is not a blip due only having recently left. It's due to their main trading partner is the EU and it will remain the EU. To trade with the EU you have to follow EU laws.

I'm afraid the bendy bananas was all FUD. And the "benefit" was chlorinated chickens.

There is a documentary about this called "the spiders web"

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-spiders-web/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfnkLurLA8

I use an old ipad2 as a music controller. I have my music stored on a [subsonic server](http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp), and then use one of the subsonic player apps on my ipad, connecting to my old skool amp via a bluetooth adapter.

140 million to sign the deal with Rwanda. Will cost 100k GBP per applicant. Rwanda will 'process' 200 applicants a year.

Clearly that doesn't come close to solving anything and is expensive. It is a simple to explain non solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLZXJtpSLMc

Article starts with...

"The European Union jumped on the electric vehicle craze well ahead of other parts of the world, particularly after the Paris climate accord. But in typical socialist fashion, they weren’t content with simply encouraging people to switch to EVs."

"Edward Morrissey (born April 3, 1963) is an American conservative blogger, columnist, motivational speaker, and talk show host.[1] He goes by the nickname Captain Ed and he lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.[2] He wrote his original blog, "Captain's Quarters", from October 2003 to February 2008. He now works full-time as a blogger for Hot Air.[1][3] and writes a column for The Week. He also participates in Bloggingheads.tv[4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Morrissey

In an energy crisis, where for example people can't heat their homes, it doesn't seem to be surprising or inappropriate that there might be a need for restrictions.

It's ironic that there might be a restriction during an energy crisis against using an EV which is more energy efficient.

That doesn't change the big picture though.

The Telegraph that promoted Brexit, Boris & Liz. Brexit slashed trade with the Uk's biggest trading partner. That created worse trade deals such as with most obviously recently Japan. Boris and corruption - such as the billions given to his mates around PPE. Eroding democracy and norms - off the op of my head with Proroguing. All whilst defunding the NHS during a pandemic. Liz did an amazing job of destroying the economy even further. Now there is a tax load that was only higher directly after the 2nd world war when the Uk was spent. The Tories now plan to engage austerity. How did that work out last time? Oh and people can't heat there homes, and it seem likely they will have to deal with 3 hour black out.

It's unlikely to get much better anytime soon. Brexit alone has plenty more pain to give.

None of this really touches on the depth and breadth of what the Tories have done to the UK in the 12 years they have been in power. All with The Telegraph cheering them on.

High taxes, high inflation, real wage decreases, worse trade, less freedom, less importance. And for what?

Who can blame young people seeing this. For years. Getting worse and worse. And thinking, hmm, maybe I'd be better off somewhere else.

Facebook is much less than what the technofeudalists make it out to be: It’s an advertising platform that wrings pennies out of users’ scrap time — attention that would otherwise go to waste, at least from the capitalist perspective. Behind all the claims about changing the world with technology is a crew of digital ragpickers.

Hmm. "Scrap time that goes to waste?" Doesn't that depend on how that time is used and the opportunity cost. That time could be a hobby, social interaction or trying something that could be super valuable. To capitalism. To the human experience.

Another common error around surveillance capitalism, is to apply the average to deprecate the harm. Statics on average screen time are pretty large

https://explodingtopics.com/blog/screen-time-stats

7 hours - thats the average. Some of that time might have been productive.

What does the 10% worst percent look like? How much of that is "waste?".

I confess I don't know what technofeudalism precisely is. I do think the corrosiveness of tech such as social media, phone use and surveillance capitalism in general is underestimated.

The documentary "Spiders Web" talks about how the UK after the second world war, used offshore jurisdictions as places which desirable place for finance being safe (because UK connection) and opaque (so can avoid taxes), and yet not accessible through courts and the law as not strictly "the UK".

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-spiders-web/

This was by design as a way to keep UKs importance post empire.

The charity’s list of the “world’s worst” 15 tax havens includes the Cayman Islands, Jersey and the British Virgin Islands, which, like Bermuda, are under the sovereignty of the UK. It warned that allowing these territories to act as tax havens “undermines Britain’s efforts to be an outward-facing, responsible member of the international community”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/12/bermuda-is-wor...

"the market’s ability to self-regulate"

The market is artificial. For an example it it operates (largely) within constraints that are external - laws.

Modifying the money supply is a lever that can be used to achieve goals - such as a desired inflation rate.

Whether its a good idea or when and how is the appropriate way to use it is another question. Implying it is bad because it is "artificial" begs the question of what's "natural". The market is clearly not natural.

If someone says "black lives matter," what are people meant to make of that? I know the snarky response is to say that it means that "black lives matter," but what does that really mean?

That shouldn't really need explaining, but since you ask, in many scenarios black people are treated as if they matter less than other people. In the justice system. By the police. Education. Employment opportunities. It's a declaration that black people matter as much as anybody else.

There is more to it than that. I can't claim to be an expert. In principal the idea seems pretty simple though.

Decoupled from any course of actions being prescribed, for the majority of ....

I'm not sure what any of that means. The zeitgeist you say? The latest thing (TM)? You seem to think "Black Live Matters" is some kind of unknowable thing, but now your using terms that super nebulous and hardly likely to be broadly agreed upon.

There are a few things wrong with this statement. If a guy goes to a "pussy hat" march with the intention of getting girls, are you confident in calling that "virtuous regardless?" The virtue of a thing is often inextricably linked to the motive, and you're dismissing motive out of hand.

It is arguably less virtuous. But the guy still did a virtuous thing in helping the people on the march at least in the eyes of the people on the march presumably.

Secondly, you're saying that no better paths are suggested.

Yes. Generally speaking.

Let's go back to BLM and try to map that onto a suggested course of action.

No lets not.

The article is about electric vehicles. So now is an opportunity for you to suggest a better path. You have not.

Moreover the example you use BLM? I mean you claim to not to really know what it means. If you don't know what it means it's hard to take the rest of it very seriously.

1. Virtue is linked to motive in many (most) peoples' analyses.

Therein lies part of the rub with "virtual signaling" concept. To invoke it assumes you know what the motivation is.

2. Actions are rarely, if ever, universally regarded as virtuous, or the proper course of action

That is not a requirement of the critique.

Right. The claim of "virtue signalling" makes a pejorative from an activity that is virtuous of all things.

If the point is to question the reasoning behind the act, the act is still virtuous regardless. If the problem is it won't work well or well enough, how strange that typically no plausible better path is never suggested. Well other the implied - do nothing.

No 'they' don't. And prefixing with 'to be fair' is sadistically hilarious in context.

To clarify. There are people who want fascism. Who want authoritarianism. Who are purposefully breaking political discourse. Who think women should be forced to have babies even if there is incest and rape. That if they get an abortion they could potentially get the death penalty. That white people are superior. That overthrowing the democracy is good (if they are doing the overthrowing). And on and on...

So no and 'to be fair', 'the other side of the proverbial fence' absolutely do not 'also see the same problem.'

I can't speak for original poster. But in 2018 - fascism, authoritarianism and break down of political discourse were very alarming. Now in 2022, we see it is likely Roe vs Wade gets overturned. The basis of that argument works for throwing out civil rights, contraception and voting rights. There are already moves in some states to make abortion murder and so punishable by death.

And that's not even getting into the attempted coup.

I'd say that's all pretty terrifying.

I think I'd agree that in 2018, if you were paying attention, that the 'smell' was that's where we were heading.

Now we are here.

"The outspoken investor likened environmental, social and governance policies to the Chinese Communist Party"

Interesting choice "Chinese communist party". I mean really?

How does [ESG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corp...), what on earth has that to do with the communist party. Well known for their social and corporate governance?

Also from Thiel

* His vindictive taking down of [Gawker](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-t...)

* Billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel is bankrolling election conspiracists and primary challengers against Republicans [more](https://www.salon.com/2021/10/15/peter-thiel-bets-on-the-far...)

* [Funding Trump](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/republican-tru...)

* Leaving Facebook to concentrate on [Trump support/funding](https://newrepublic.com/article/165404/peter-thiel-china-mid...).

* Some more about leaving [meta](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/peter-thi...)

* An article about his ['philosophy'](https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/)

I mean it doesn't even make any sense for a gay man. Hasn't he noticed Trumps, and more recent GOP LGBTQ take? Is it the ends justify the means? Is it, it only applies to the small people? Who knows.

Thiel is a 'libertarian' on steroids. Again - that doesn't make much sense with the Trump or current GOP (it may have made more sense in the past).

He must be okay with some serious cognitive dissonance.

This is an article from newspaper The Times in the UK. The origin isn't a rumor on reddit.

I don't know if it's true or not - but if it's false, the real issue would be a credible news source, The Times, got it wrong, not reddit.

"Woke" doesn't really seem to mean much anymore. It has become a code word used by the right, which could be summarized as "the enemy". There are other code words like "cancel culture" which similarly applied, but not apparently applicable to right wing cancelling.

I wouldn't take anything too seriously from [Project Veritas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas) who have an ongoing issues of distorting, misrepresenting and the like - the ACORN case being most obvious.

"Elon doing this is now massive peer pressure in the opposite direction."

What is the opposite direction? Why is that better/good? I honestly don't know what the opposite of "woke" is, because "woke" is used as a reactive response. It's whatever it needs to be to attack.

This all seems part of a wider "culture war". Like many wars it's actually hard to know what underlies it.

"Libertarian" style free speech is widely available. Unfortunately it seems to just degenerate into trolling and the worst of human behavior. (say like 4chan/8chan etc).

If you want "Authoritarian Conservative" you can go to Truth Social or "r/conservative" on reddit.

"this is likely great news for proponents of free speech"

Free speech protects citizens from the government. If twitter doesn't want Nazis (or whatever) on it's service then it can do that. It is not a free speech issue.

I've watched RT on a few occasions and I never thought their reporting outright propaganda.

This is the problem. For effective propaganda you don't want it to be easily detectable as such. Therefore the majority of your material isn't directly propaganda. I read somewhere it's 5-10% is the payload. You don't make that obviously propaganda of course too.

On a channel like RT or Sputnik this is how you are going to operate - not least because those channels are for an external audience, who does have other sources.

Inside of Russia your propaganda probably works roughly similarly, but you can have more of it, and you can be more confident the audience doesn't regular access other sources. In a time of war you can go full propaganda.

I've watched RT in the past and been surprised by some of the reporting, and covering things that seemed not really covered by regular sources.

The problem is because of what it is it's very hard to know what's real reporting and what is propaganda payload.

So I avoid it.

I don't think there is a problem limiting it's availability. Right now it's super freely available.

What's the bar you might ask? That's hard. Partly it's intent, and that's hard to prove. You could also work out how much and how bad the propaganda is on a channel. Again not necessarily easily.

Really though the problem here is a trust problem with Putins Russia. It's well documented their activities in disinformation and with election interference.

They are not currently a good actor. This is covered in part of Hypernormalization documentary (and others).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0bzehQgO8

If you believe this is the case (as I do) then the bar for their restriction is actually pretty low. I think it's in the interest of the world that access to propaganda vehicles, such as RT and Sputnik, should be limited.

No not in general.

There are facts. There are ways to make rational arguments based on those facts.

Those arguments don't have to be the same, or even produce the same results to be useful - because they state their basis and how, based on that they produce their conclusions.

That is a really useful and powerful thing.

If the Telegraph controlled the "fact checker" the Guardian wouldn't exist. If the Guardian controlled the "fact checker", the Telegraph wouldn't exist.

Why? Having a fact checker that explains (even arguably incorrectly) why something is wrong isn't censorship.

A newspaper could be a factchecker (and sometime are) - if they explain their reasoning, or have some transparent way to see their reasoning.

This feels like a 'let perfect be the enemy of the good' type situation. Fact checking doesn't mean everything will be correct. It doesn't need to. Much like science doesn't claim to have the correct answer for everything - it's to the best of our knowledge based on the scientific method.

In many ways the current democratic party could be cast as 'conservative' in the classic sense of 'to conserve'. They are trying to conserve the status quo - institutions, democratic processes, norms, how government works/what it is, globalism etc. This also means they are tightly enmeshed with corporations and corporate interests. It means that the progressive part of the democratic party are generally disappointed, because the party at large isn't trying to make things change.

If the democrats are 'conservative' what are the republicans and the people that are voting for them? They are reactionary. They do want change - but as a reaction. That the things desired are not compatible or even necessarily well defined: `religious values based government`, `returning culturally to a previous era`, `small government/government is the problem`, `reversing globalization`, `blowing it all up to rebuild`.

It is also reactionary in terms of being against whatever the democrats are for. So much so that they will reverse their previous position, if the democrats agree with it. An obvious example of this would be Merrick Garland. Or the ACA.

There are other more mundane 'conservative' values that remain - like low taxes, corporate interests, maintaining the social/financial hierarchy, traditional family values perhaps. They remain, but arguably aren't as significant as they were in the past.

Assuming this is correct it means: republicans want big changes. That it's largely undefined what these big changes would actually be in practice. Moreover it is logically impossible for them to deliver in practice. They can appear to temporarily deliver on being 'not democrats'.

"gulf stream environmentalists flying to conferences in private jets is hypocritical"

Perhaps it is. Or perhaps it's necessary to get things done. Who knows?

It's a kind of an odd argument though. That "discerning Americans" will jump on board when they see some other people doing "some things" such that it indicates to them that it must be real.

Why work through that indirection? It's so arbitrary and can be arbitrarily moved. It's a blame shifting mechanism - I won't worry about this until "gulf stream environmentalists", "china", somewhere/someone else does something that I think is enough. I won't say what that is or what I'll actually do and by when. Or if I do and I make it to that point I can always find some other "issue".

Perhaps that's the point. I mean delay and distract was the big tobacco plan - and many of the same people apparently moved to fossil fuel companies.

A more serious and beneficial approach would be to look at what climate science predicted and what happened. Then look at what their future predictions are like.

If you take the IPCC reports they have generally underpredicted the rate of climate change.

You might find the podcast about "cancel culture" interesting.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1270-youre-wrong-about-497649...

They observe the term means different things to different people, and as other people have pointed out here, that the loosely defined behavior ascribed to 'cancel culture' has been around for a very long time. They have a whole episode around the "Dixie Chicks" or as an example from further back perhaps arguably the McCarthyist Red Scare.

"Continuous democracy" was something attempted by Tony Blair in the UK (apparently originating in the US) - the terms meaning there is somewhat different to your description. In this scenario continuous democracy was achieved using focus groups of members of the public. This is different from what you describe - as it is using a 'proxy' for actually asking the public.

That an underlying idea here was that all the government needs to do is act upon the feedback of these groups. The government didn't have to lead.

That didn't work out very well in practice though. I don't believe the issue was around the statistical methods, or some kind of bias, although they could add extra issues.

More that the problem is just asking a random collection of members of the public what to do is not in general what the public wants, or not when it comes to be enacted. As the general public does not have the time or the inclination to dig deep on issues and possible results. It's in effect government by 'hot take'.

I bring this up - because whilst not the same, the continuous democracy you describe may also have some of these issues.

This is touched on in an Adam Curtis documentary - probly All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-lov...

We had something that largely worked, the fairness doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

Was removed in 1985.

That wasn't perfect but was considerably better than what we have now.

It seems to be a 'new' idea that there isn't really objective truth - it's all just opinions. Clearly that isn't the case many things are knowable and provable.

Also there are countries, organizations and individuals who are operating in bad faith. That they are knowingly spreading often fairly easily disprovable lies.

If they do so they should be sue-able. There should be the options to constrain them legally by the government through due process.

Also we have this odd situation where 'news' often doesn't mean 'news' it's opinion pieces presented in the style of 'news'. That's not confusing by accident.

Oh and we have a traditional media that has it's business model disrupted where most of the (costly) analysis originated, to tech media company's who claim to just be a 'conduit' even though they manipulate what you see via black box algorithms. And they take no responsibility for spreading lies and misinformation. Their economics are around clicks/attention. They don't pay for investigative reporting. They attention economy gets really fired up with outrage clicks.

Bottom line is there should be significant repercussions for knowingly spreading lies and disinformation.

Micro "Communism"?! You are aware what communism means...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

So no - not communism.

Fascism? Authoritarianism? Perhaps?

Agree we need right to repair for ordinary users and also agree we need data protection/privacy legislation.