Notices by Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social), page 5

This has been a consistent issue with news coverage of the race; it's telling that both stories I read ended with "we have reached out to the Harris campaign for a reaction".

What I want to see is the headlines for these stories to be phrased "Trump claims..." - make it clear that it's just some shit he's saying and not an actual change in the situation.

Several news outlets are reporting that Trump is saying he has agreed to the September 10 debate with "the same rules" as his previous debate against Biden.

What none of these reports are saying is whether (a) the other parties have also agreed to these terms, and (b) whether the debate is officially [back?] on.

This has been a problem the entire time, where Trump simply declares that some thing is going to happen without any of the other parties' input.

In part their numbers are so low because unlike other top schools, the traditional affirmative action program benefitting white students - legacy admissions - is not officially a practice at MIT.

Because of our ratfuck Supreme Court, colleges can no longer consider membership in historically underrepresented groups when deciding who to admit.

This was a change largely pushed by white conservatives.

I find a [very] small consolation in the fact that MIT's first "post-woke" class of freshmen actually has *fewer* white students than last year's (the rest of the numbers are predictably awful):

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rxvd2z6ldo

Second, if your business model would be destroyed by common-sense regulation, *you should not be in business*.

There's bad regulation that can destroy a business model. Poorly-conceived CAFE rules are why Ford doesn't make actual cars anymore, only trucks.

But the kinds of things companies complain about - safety, minimum wage, benefits, etc. - are the kinds of things where you have to say "Look, if you can't pay your employees a living wage, you don't deserve to have a business. Sorry."

Most of the "innovation" coming out of big companies lately - whether it's banking, tech, or something else - has been finding news ways to extract money from customers. Regulation that ensures products and services are safe and non-exploitative stifles this kind of "innovation", sure, but there's no reason we should be supporting new ideas whose goals are to harm people.

The only kind of innovation we want is innovation that *helps* people and creates new better products.

There are three arguments around regulation that I think we need to dispense with entirely. When a new rule or regulation is proposed, industry tends to push back with one of:
1. It will stifle innovation
2. It will destroy our business model
3. It will cost jobs

These are all nonsense and should be challenged as such.

We need to kill the default assumption that business = good, profits = good, and that whatever the market will bear = good.

The market is inherently amoral, corporations are inherently amoral, and the only way to ensure that the invisible hand doesn't crush us to a pulp is to set up a robust regime of incentives and penalties to guide it in the right direction.

Truly innovative companies will take risks and find ways to succeed in any regulatory environment.

The jobs argument is the hardest one, but I have two responses to that:

1. Show me you actually care about jobs. Because I promise you that most companies complaining about jobs have have had record profits and have given that money back to investors while *cutting* jobs.

2. Justify those jobs. Shutting down a Mafia organization puts a bunch of hitmen out of work. Doesn't mean those jobs are worth more than the harm they cause. I'm sure your creepy tech company's employees can find new gigs.

@mcc that's the thing tho - if you dig down you can keep answering "why" to a point, but then... Why SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)?

At some point, are the fundamental symmetries that give rise to the standard model feel arbitrary; the values of the masses of the particles, the strength of the fundamental forces, and the coupling constants feel arbitrary; this is (in part) why we still have string theorists.

@mcc to be fair, a lot of QM is... "somehow shit is like this, and that's why we exist... somehow"

@AzulCrescent in my experience about half of queer women are gremlin-sexual. You have nothing to worry about.

Trump campaign is blaming Iran for the hack but we all know it was gay furries, right?

@foone PHP FROM OUT OF NOWHERE WITH A STEEL CHAIR

@ColesStreetPothole @benroyce @StrangeNoises @mekkaokereke @ddritter this is a prime example of the folks creating a feature failing to ask the all-important question, "WW4D?" (i.e. "what would 4chan do with this?")

Because in retrospect it's an extremely obvious avenue for abuse, and anyone who was thinking about exploitability would have seen it immediately.

Let me remind y'all that the trolls are out there and they are not sleeping.

Whenever you see a new service or piece of technology you have to ask yourself, "What would 4chan do with this?" And then assume they are, even if you're not the target.

White queers wield relative power on fedi, so aren't great targets. That has improved things somewhat but it's also effectively "squeezed the toothpaste tube", redirecting the abuse to less powerful minorities.

Fellow* hwite** queers:

If you were ever well and truly in the closet, like, to the point you didn't get called a faggot or dyke on the regular, and then you did come out, and started experiencing abuse and discrimination...

Did you imagine that homophobia/transphobia/etc. didn't exist before you personally experienced it?

No?

Then: be aware - nay, _expect_ - that other marginalized people are regularly experiencing abuse you don't see.

*, ** For broad definitions of "fellow" and "white"

I suppose I could just do that thing that my wife and I have been talking about forever and create a seniors derby league that uses modified contact rules.

But that's way more work than just showing up to a practice twice a week.

Seriously, I found the one team sport that doesn't require you to use your hands and now that I can't do it anymore I am LOST.

Up at three panicking about what lower-contact team sport I'm going to take up now that I'm not playing roller derby, but also still terrible at anything that requires throwing or catching a ball.

Am I suddenly going to become a *hockey* person?!?