I think the distributed nature of Mastodon keeps government control from being an issue. It would be kind of cool as a space for citizens to ask for assistance or air grievances while giving the politicians an officially owned space for things like announcements.
Can you imagine the hours of genAI boinga reviews? We lost so much comedy. One of the hardest celeb deaths for me and I’m not even sure why really. Watching the stream that night and waking up to the news was just… awful.
GFYDL and RIP Trevor. I still miss Newsboyz and would have loved to hear his takes on the queen dying, the AI craze… Ugh.
There is a lot of nuance to that. If Trump appeals on constitutional grounds, the Supreme Court can choose to hear it. State cases can be appealed to the SC if their interpretation of federal law or the constitution are in dispute. They normally just outright deny hearing most cases decided by state courts. A good chunk of the supreme court is likely to grant whatever the hell he wants though, so I’m not so certain anything that boils down to interpretation is safe.
Ah, good call, I forgot the context. Does this apply if he escalates to supreme court and they grant certiorari?
That wouldn’t be necessary. Presidents have the power to pardon and nothing says it cannot be used on the self.
All kinds of ideologies are viewed as fascism by all kinds of people, but that’s not a source. Just because you yourself are Jewish does not mean you have an understanding of Jewish people as a whole. If you want to assert something about Jewish views on Zionism, you need to provide a real source. It also doesn’t tie directly to your followup with “affluent Jews are why universities are invested in Israel”. Why would one follow the other at all?
I also know what Israel is and how it was founded. Your wording this time is much more palatable! “Puppet state” has connotations that I agree with, but would not say if I was trying to be neutral. On a different thread, I think that’s entirely fair. Again though, when people ask for raw info, I think it’s only fair to provide that from as neutral a standpoint as possible.
This is a fantastic answer with a lot of great context. Thank you for sharing!
I think we would need stats before making that first conclusion. I’ve seen a lot of favorability polls of Israel amongst Jewish people, but not sure I’ve ever seen an explicit ask for Zionism or its definition. I’m sure it’s out there, but I wouldn’t expect the OP to take that for granted without a source.
Your second sentence is arguably correct, but lacking a lot of context and really not presented from a neutral standpoint like the other commentor and I were trying to strike. I think when people are looking for raw information, it’s fair to provide that with as little bias as possible, especially on a heated current issue. And fwiw, I likely agree with you on that issue.
I think this covers everything except for one last question the OP might have had. Israel was, and still is, a US ally. Trading is generally pretty open with those allies, so citizens are fairly free to invest with any company headquartered in those countries. Investing in an Israeli company was no different than investing in an Australian or UK company. Offshore investment can be smart too, as they can potentially insulate you from the effects of economic shocks in America (in the short term). I’m sure someone much more versed in economics or finances could give you a better summary of that end though.
Just in case they’re wondering whether/why it’s possible/common to have foreign investments in the first place. Your comment is a great explanation for why Israel specifically.
I think it’s both for me, which I think is what you might be saying as well. I would absolutely push the button to create the copy, or whatever, because I think I would derive satisfaction from creating a life (identical to mine, no less) that was free of the circumstance I was in, which must have been dire. However, I definitely don’t consider that instance “me” even if I do consider the copy a legitimate, separate version of “me”, so I don’t feel that I have perpetuated my own instance, leaving me in whatever fight-or-flight terror I was in to cause the scenario in the first place.
If I recall correctly from the doc, I think Schneider also committed some pretty serious workplace conduct violations, including forcing one woman to mimic being anally penetrated while delivering her lines, to “make it funnier”. For what it’s worth, I completely agree that Schneider is being unfairly set up to take on the sins of an entire industry, but damn if he didn’t do a lot to put himself in that position.
I think Schneider is one of those people who never grew up, which is his ticket to fame and the reason he’s unfit for any leadership position. Even in the above example, I don’t think Schneider got off on it. I think he’s an idiot kid who thinks anal sex is funny. None of that removes any culpability for what he allowed to happen under his watch, because regardless of his inability to grow up, he took on responsibility that he failed to live up to. He failed these kids, these hurt employees, and especially the victims of sexual assault on his sets.
Can you please point out where I said anything against almost anything you said here? Are you here to have a discussion about your shower thought or just grandstand your political opinion to a group that by large already shares it? Thank you for starting the thread, but not sure I’m going to reply to any additional messages because I’m not sure that you’re actually reading any of mine.
Not sure anybody is really arguing in this entire thread. Just discussion of edge cases and the gray areas on an interesting shower thought.
My argument would be that by eliminating the means of wealth being an avenue to power, it will merely shift to the government that is enforcing those rules. Those same shitty people will infiltrate that government and use it to inflate themselves while oppressing others. There was no utopian society prior to capitalism and fiat currency, and there won’t be one after.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that this is an impossible problem to solve. I just do not think eliminating the notion of a billionaire is the cure for all of your listed ills. I agree with you that it would absolutely have impacts on all of them, but we would still wake up to world hunger, climate change, etc.
Each of your listed issues is a complex, multi-faceted problem. We cannot boil down that nuance just so we can point to our favorite enemy, deserving as they might be. Fight them too, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.
We’re looking at two extreme ends of the pole here. Zuck, Bezos, Musk are the shittiest public billionaires. There are also more secretive ones who are arguably even more destructive. These people have absolutely justified their own downfall, if it ever comes to pass. On the other side, Dolly doesn’t even technically count on this list because she has given enough away to not be a billionaire. Those are the easy cases where almost every reasonable person agrees on the “right” thing to do.
Now, we have to remember that there are people who exist at every little increment along that scale of giving back to general shittiness for the global population. Focusing on the billionaires themselves and their lifestyles or whatever is not the answer. We need to focus on making effective tax brackets, effective regulations on the avenues billionaires generally target for power (political institutions, media companies, etc), and effective spending of the increased income from those new taxes to help raise the lower class to a more equitable position. That’s a socdem perspective though, because I do not foresee capitalism collapsing in my lifetime and I like to be pragmatic.
Hate both, where it’s appropriate. Some of these players perpetuate the game that we all hate. Elon Musk is a player who has become part of the structure of the game, fighting regulations and damaging democracy for the sake of his own capitalistic endeavors. Someone mentioned below that Dolly Parton could be a billionaire. Not gonna hate on Dolly Parton who I assume did not come by her wealth through being an asshole, but more just being successful and our current “game” rewarding her with more than she would have in a better society. I would tax the absolute fuck out of her though.
I’m not sure that I agree. While I would support something like outlawing billionaires or at the very least, a tax bracket that claws back significant chunks of what they are draining from society, there are vast nuances to these issues beyond “the billionaires want it that way.” When you say “everything from … can all be rendered down”, I think it’s pretty important to recognize how much detail and nuance is lost in that rendering down.
Billionaires and the accumulation of wealth are just stand ins for the accumulation of power in a capitalistic society. When power is removed, it creates a vacuum. Who fills it? In the ideal, I know most of us would say “the people” but this is an insanely complex balancing beam to maintain without some group of assholes finding a new, non-capital way to extract and centralize that power.
None of this is to say that eliminating the notion of a billionaire is a bad idea. I’m with you all that the very idea of a billionaire is heinous and impossible without vast exploitation. I just do not think that issue being solved would be even close to some panacea for all of the world’s problems. There would just be twists in the existing problems and fun new ones.
Define “BLM”, “protests”, and “success” because any combination of different variables produces a different result. Additionally, even then, there is a lot of nuance to being successful when it comes to political movements.
The protests undoubtedly brought more attention to policing and racial issues in general. They obviously didn’t solve either problem. Some states passed progressive policing laws, some regressed out of spite or in reacting to the other states.
Then you also have the category of “well, it might have made an impact on this but we’ll never know”. For instance, does Biden win in 2020 without the Black Lives Matter protests? No idea, and nobody truly does or even can. That would be an enormous impact on many things, some of which may not even have been goals of the protests.
I’m going to take a different approach than most of the other comments here: you can’t. Microplastics are in the air and a large chunk of it comes from car tire residue. You’re breathing it, likely right now. Research is still in the early phases and we just don’t know how bad it is yet, both from the proliferation and the impact side of things.
Source is Breaking the Plastic Wave and Overview on the occurrence of microplastics in air.