Notices by Gilbert Pilz (gpilz@mastodon.social)

@fesshole The problem with parenting is that the job requirements keep shifting. By the time you've really got the hang of the "caring for a 2 year old" thing, they are 4 and the job is completely different. If your employer did that to you, you wouldn't put up with it. "Look, I understand that no job is static but, if you are going to keep changing mine, you've got to clearly describe those changes ahead of time."

@HeavenlyPossum The elite have always rationalized their power and wealth using whatever cultural tropes were available. It was just "the natural order of things" according to "God's plan". How could you question God's plan? Then it was "the natural order of things" according "the science of evolution". How could you argue with "science"? What is interesting is the weird side-effects of these rationalizations.

@HeavenlyPossum The was pandemic educational. It became starkly obvious that *things* *just* *don't* *work* unless an army of people nobody every thinks about do their "unskilled" jobs on a regular basis. We called them "essential workers", forced them back to work under unsafe conditions, praised them for a brief period and, once the pandemic was over, promptly forgot them.

@pattykimura @WarnerCrocker Who is going to arrest Kash Patel, the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office? How are they going to do that?

@pattykimura @WarnerCrocker I think that we are all learning that "the law" is just words on paper if there isn't a large enough consensus to abide by the law. We've lost the cohesion necessary to maintain a civil society.

@WarnerCrocker Our slide into despotism is accelerating.

@laxla @dan613 @aral This is why I think the danger of GMO crops is *not* that they might harm the consumer, but that they will lead to crop failures because even 20 years of testing is nothing compared to natural selection. We repeatedly underestimate the number of variables and the complexity of their interactions.

@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.