Notices by Gilbert Pilz (gpilz@mastodon.social)

@LeftistLawyer Same playbook too:

1. Start with "peace treaty"
2. "Settlers" encroach on native lands, violating the terms of the peace treaty. Government claims to be helpless to stop them.
3. Settlers increase provocation, level of violence.
4. Natives retaliate in a dramatically violent way that is intended to deter further settlement.
5. Government engages in wildly disproportionate military campaign.

@aral Meanwhile I waste my time trying to convince my fellow (U.S.) citizens that we are the enemy. A friend asked me "You don't respect our troops?" I replied, "Dude, if we were in a Stars Wars movie, our troops would be the ones wearing the white armor."

@hipsterelectron @richpuchalsky @futurebird Teaching emacs to children is child abuse and anyone caught doing it should be subject to harsh prison sentences. I had a LISP addiction in my 20s and it nearly ruined my life. This stuff is no laughing matter.

@Radical_EgoCom @homohortus @sz_duras You are repeating yourself. It isn't improving your argument.

@Radical_EgoCom @homohortus @sz_duras I suppose it depends upon how you define "success". I assert that replacing one set of totalitarians for another isn't a "successful revolution".

@Radical_EgoCom @homohortus @sz_duras Supporters don't "dissappear" [sic], they are persuaded to change their support. If there are so many unpersuaded people that you need to use armed violence to protect the new system against them, then the new system has failed.

@Radical_EgoCom @homohortus @sz_duras Where are all those counter-revolutionaries coming from? If whatever we replace capitalism with isn't obviously better than capitalism to a majority of people, maybe we didn't replace capitalism with the right thing?

@aral Every software engineer I've ever worked with has had to come to terms with the fact that Microsoft has been (more or less) wildly successful despite their obvious cultural commitment to "good enough" mediocrity. Anyone with a built-in desire to do things "the right way" (as they would call it) has eventually had to accept that such desires have no basis in economic reality; you will not receive anything other than emotional rewards for doing quality work.

@sspopovich @QasimRashid @pluralistic I feel like we've entered a new cycle of crack downs followed by protests which will motivate further crack downs, etc. It's weird that our owners don't have the historical awareness to know how these self-stoking cycles eventually end. I guess it goes to show that the rich aren't particularly bright or well-educated.

@ArneBab @Buthowhighishigh @yurnidiot This is also why we are so dependent on fossil fuels, why our food is full of weird crap, why our transportation system is pathetic, and why we allow our children to be periodically slaughtered en masse. Every problem in the U.S. is caused by some well-entrenched group or industry that is making billions of dollars from things being exactly the way they are and buying politicians to keep them that way.

@ArneBab @Buthowhighishigh @yurnidiot The key to almost every problem in the U.S. is that our political system is completely corrupt. Health insurance will not be well regulated because the health insurance companies contribute enormous amounts of money to the election campaigns of all two (count them) of our political parties. Whomever is elected owes the health insurance companies for their position and depends upon them to get re-elected.

@azphilosopher @pvonhellermannn All attempts to regulate capitalism have failed or are failing. Capitalism views any attempts to restrain it as an impediment to optimal profitability and seeks to undermine those restraints by any and all available means.

@evacide Our culture could not live by any reasonable application of the right to bodily autonomy. Among the areas affected would be:

1. Drug prohibitions.
2. Vaccine mandates for public schools.
3. Conscription.
4. Circumcision.

@burnoutqueen @gwynnion The Democrats would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie. Is it a mistake to assume that winning elections is their primary goal. Their primary goal is to defend the oligarchy from leftist populism. They accomplish this by absorbing leftish voters (a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump) while delivering nothing except empty symbolism. The U.S. will never have universal healthcare, will never stop waging war, etc. unless and until the Democratic Party is destroyed.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I don't know, specifically, who he is firing but, hopefully, he is addressing the revolving door between our health agencies and the pharma companies.

@WAHa_06x36 @gwm - the difference between Trump and Harris w/regards to the mass murder in Palestine is that Trump will say "I'm glad. I hate Palestinians". Meanwhile Harris will wring her hands and describe how terrible she feels about the whole thing, yadda, yadda, ...

Those differences will not matter to the dead.

@WAHa_06x36 @gwm - how many dead children does it take to change Harris' mind on the ongoing mass murder in Palestine? If she were capable of having her mind changed, she would have changed it by now.

@WAHa_06x36 @gwm - if you want the people in Gaza to stop dying, why would you vote for someone who has repeatedly indicated, *through* *her* *actions*, that she has absolutely no intention of doing a single thing to make that happen?

@WAHa_06x36 @gwm - I'm not naive. My problem is that I don't consider the people who live in the U.S. to be more worthy of consideration than everyone else.

@WAHa_06x36 @gwm - I don't intend to vote for Trump. If the Democrats wanted my vote they should have nominated someone who doesn't support genocide.