Notices by sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net), page 6
-
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Aug-2024 05:34:48 JST 
sj_zero
"weeell, you can be wife #9" -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 09:13:45 JST
sj_zero
A lot of people posted the Colbert clip where the CNN anchor got laughed at for being called impartial.
The same anchor later went on Bill Maher and started talking about Democrat anchors and Republican anchors and how there's representation of "both sides"
I don't want Democrats, I don't want Republicans. I want critical thinkers who are seeking truth.
The Republicans are wrong on things, and the Democrats are right on things, and vice versa. If a newscaster can't put aside their religious fervor for the party they want to vote for and report accurately and analyze honestly then they shouldn't have the job, regardless of their party. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 25-Aug-2024 12:40:13 JST
sj_zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs8zGMT6_gg
Can you build a gasoline engine from a bunch of assorted blocks of aluminium, brass, and steel?
Wish I could. That's pretty epic. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Monday, 19-Aug-2024 03:37:11 JST
sj_zero
I don't know who needs to hear this, but a million dollars isn't really that much money. You can be a millionaire if you have a paid off house and a modest 401(k). People can do it on a blue collar wage. It doesn't happen overnight, it takes sacrifice every payday because you end up living well below your means, and a little bit of luck to invest in the right things, but it's quite doable.
I should also mention that not every blue collar job is a path to be a millionaire. If you're barely making enough to make rent, it just isn't in the cards. But there's still people working blue collar jobs wind up retiring as millionaires. Not even boomers, millennials (the oldest millennials are only in their 40s, but many are well on track to being millionaires)
So if you want to study the habits of a lot of millionaires, you're going to be looking at people who are living modestly. They are people who could be living much more extravagant lives than they do, but instead save for tomorrow. A lot of millionaires drive old beat up cars because shiny new vehicles are a waste of money. Also, a lot of millionaires are old because they've been working for a lifetime, saving for a lifetime, paying down debt for a lifetime and that's how they became millionaires.
But the other thing to remember is that every year being a millionaire means less. Just in the past few years, even if you accept the official numbers, a millionaire with exactly a million dollars in net worth is 20% poorer than they were. So it's kind of an arbitrary measure that's taking on a greater and greater portion of earners until one day a can of coke is a million dollars.
Another important point is that every 401(k) millionaire is going to be paying working class taxes for every dollar they take out of that financial instrument. Anyone telling you that they are going to magically avoid the taxes doesn't know how those taxes work.
The tax implications also mean something important for the big staters slathering over the wealth of many millionaires -- most of those millionaires will be getting taxed at normal rates for income and they'll be using it to retire not to act as sinister political forces or to exploit others -- they paid their dues (sometimes literally for union jobs) for decades and now are using their accumulated wealth to life for a few decades before they pass away (and get hit with inheritance taxes) -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 11:48:16 JST
sj_zero
If you're building a secure safe, you want someone who knows how people normally crack safes so you don't easily fall for the stuff most people would hit first.
(Though apparently all safes are designed to eventually be cracked, so they are set up to try to keep a determined thief out for a certain amount of time so your other stuff can take effect like security) -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Aug-2024 08:41:50 JST
sj_zero
I go with my son. Not everyone on the fediverse is woodchipper feed. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Aug-2024 08:40:17 JST
sj_zero
All I do now is go to the park... some times twice a day, sometimes three times day... -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Aug-2024 01:16:44 JST
sj_zero
https://modernity.news/2024/08/12/dr-fauci-reveals-hes-infected-with-covid-for-third-time-after-being-vaccinated-and-boosted-six-times/
lol -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Monday, 12-Aug-2024 11:46:38 JST
sj_zero
My garden: everything dies.
A random block sidewalk in vietnam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYnUQ5CITs -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Monday, 12-Aug-2024 10:20:31 JST
sj_zero
Goddamnit Hitler you need to wash your dishes.
"Vould you like me to Conquer Europe?"
No, I want you to wash your dishes
"Do you vant me to kill ze jews?"
NO I WANT YOU TO CLEAN YOUR GODDAMNED DISHES -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Saturday, 10-Aug-2024 14:01:03 JST
sj_zero
With respect to collectivists who can only see the world through their lens and who create an internalized ideal man in that image, they only think you can make your life better through the collective, and so they can only judge themselves by every sin in the universe that still exists because the collective has failed to act in a godly manner, and because they judge themselves as an avatar of the collective the failure of the collective is the failure of themselves and so they can never truly do good because the collective has failed to bring utopia, and so the only righteous act is further revolution because surely if the all-good collective has not achieved utopia surely it is only because not enough of everything under the sun has been brought into their collective yet.
Class Socialism as an ideology once covered most of the planet. It was dominant in Asia, controlled much of Europe, existed in Africa and South America, and was represented in small parts of North America. It had all kinds of people, white and black, asian and indigenous American. Most of the population of humanity. Yet, if you talk to the people who still subscribe to it as to why it failed, it's because they didn't have enough -- They just needed that slice of europe, they just needed the rest of North America, they just needed those people included in their collective and then utopia would have finally taken place.
This collectivist viewpoint bent on always expanding the collective and not considering individual merit a virtue and considering individual striving for achievement to be a vice against the collective since that could mean there are different classes of people.
Such an ideology can be likened to the dot com bubble's failing businesses: "We lose money on every sale, but we make up for it on volume". Already with most of the world's population, already with most of the world's landmass, but if they just have a little more then they'll be ok.
By contrast, seeking individual virtue is something that you can't rely on anyone else for, you have to do it yourself. If you aren't succeeding, then you have to work harder, to be better. You'll never live in a utopia, but you have a very real chance of finding personal happiness and fulfillment. People succeed in this regard every day.
Of course, extreme individualism has its own problems -- human beings are social creatures and so you can't just sit in your basement pumping iron every day and hope to be successful -- but the key here in my view isn't being anti-social, but rather putting responsibility for your personal happiness and success on yourself rather than on everybody else.
On the other hand, if you have a business that makes money on each sale and you scale it up, then you can become rich. In the same way, you can build a community of individuals who each take personal responsibility for their own success, and in so doing have a community that works on its own without having to take over the entire world and all her people.
Individuals who have their own power usually can't change the entire earth, but they can change their part of it for sure. A good man can become a good husband to his wife, and a good father to his son or daughter. A good woman can become a good wife to her husband, and a good mother to her son or daughter. That unit alone, producing good children thereby, is a unit in and of itself, a self-contained center where happiness is found by a lot of people. Then perhaps you have a neighborhood with some good families, and some good neighborhoods in a good community, and before you know it you've got a good place to live. That place is not created by conquering and subjugating everything around them, but by strong individuals using their personal agency to make the world in front of them worth living in.
There are a lot of people who will not pick a piece of litter off the ground in front of them, but hubristically expect to conquer global climate change. If you can't even pick up a piece of litter to make your own community a tiny bit better at nearly no cost to yourself, how do you expect to change the climate of the entire earth? It's absurd. There are people who argue that a starving person in Africa is of the same moral substance as someone starving right in front of you right now, and so the person in front of you has no particular reason to be helped while the person on the other side of the world also remains unhelped. This too is absurd -- if you can't even help your own community, what do you think you'll do on another continent? It's orders of magnitude more effort to help someone who isn't even in front of you.
In my view, that's how you actually change the world: Make yourself strong, make your family strong, you might then get a chance to make your neighborhood strong, and perhaps even your city, your state, your nation, and if you become someone who has done so much good, then and only then can you actually change the world. Skipping steps only shows your personal hubris.
It should be self-evident -- how does one make the world better if they've failed to even make themselves any better? Obviously they can't. If you take failure and multiply it by a thousand, you have a thousand times the failure. However, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's part of the ideology -- imagine that someone else, someone somewhere in the collective, will save you if only you submit to it. And in so doing your submissive impotence becomes virtuous and utopian, and anyone who refuses to submit, anyone who wants to find their own strength, is a threat to the collective, and a threat to utopia.
Besides the honest outcomes, I think there's also a dishonest hidden truth: By outsourcing competence to the collective, you aren't responsible for seeking to be virtuous, and so you don't have to. By aiming at changing the entire earth and refusing to compromise, you're never responsible when you inevitably fail. Why try to raise a child, or feed the hungry, or clean litter, and face potential failure for something mundane, when you can aim to change the climate of the entire earth and if you inevitably fail you're just failing to do the impossible? The former makes you a pathetic loser, the latter a noble visionary who just happened to come up short. Moreover, pretending you are fighting to change the entire globe gives you a noble excuse not to even try to do the inglorious, boring, tedious things that make up doing the right thing in your personal life.
A couple things to be careful of reading the above: Obviously I'm not attacking all forms of collectivist thought. I'm attacking a specific type of thought, while implicitly supporting another. Second, I'm not calling for perfect individualism, but rather that people ought to follow a certain trajectory where they take personal responsibility for their competence and virtue before trying to contribute to a collective whole rather than jumping into a collective and thinking that doing so will inherently solve problems.
I think many philosophies and religions follow a similar idea. Individuals must find Christ, must follow God's commandments, must work to improve themselves. Individuals must try to reach nirvana. Individuals must work to be worthy of their station in life. However, that does not mean individuals are not doing so alone. There is often still a church, a temple, a society, some collective it's implied that individual is working within. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 22:28:26 JST
sj_zero
Over 100 racist circuses planned, dozens of news outlets confirmed -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Thursday, 08-Aug-2024 19:56:59 JST
sj_zero
Tulsi Gabbard, former vice-chair of the DNC, elected representative of her state from 2013 to 2021, and veteran of the Iraq war, is now confirmed as being on a US government terror watchlist. Every time she flies, her ticket has a label "SSSS" which tells the TSSA to thoroughly check her for contraband such as bombs or weapons.
Look, you don't need to agree with her on issues to realize there's something deeply wrong here. No, Tulsi Gabbard isn't a terrorist. She's not going to bring any bombs on a plane. The reason she's on that list is because the process is the punishment and she's being punished for dissenting from the establishment.
And if that can happen, then why should anyone believe anything the government is saying or doing? If they're willing to do something so slimy to one of "their own", why wouldn't they be willing to do worse to their actual ideological enemies? -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Thursday, 08-Aug-2024 18:59:57 JST
sj_zero
I like reacts on soapbox. I can give an indication of what I'm trying to say when I react to a post, rather than just +1 (good) -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Aug-2024 03:38:26 JST
sj_zero
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/05/nx-s1-5063345/misinformation-online-fueled-all-out-race-riots-in-the-united-kingdom
The headline of this article is misinformation online.
As far as I can tell, the story of a bunch of schoolchildren getting stabbed by a migrant is absolutely true. So where's the misinformation? 3 kids are dead. That's true. Where's the misinformation? -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Monday, 05-Aug-2024 22:12:14 JST
sj_zero
The leader of Bangladesh has fled to India.
It took me a while to figure out why there were protests, it seemed like the media really wasn't interested in talking much about it.
Turns out 55% of government jobs were held in a "quota system" that set aside jobs for the descendants of "freedom fighters", women, and minorities. Only a tiny portion of jobs are judged by merit. In 2018 there was a big movement to dramatically reduce these quotas and they won, but recently the changes were rolled back leading to the current protests.
It seems crystal clear why the establishment media isn't taking about the motives behind the riots in detail, it's a riot against something they're all fundamentally in favor of implementing here. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 04-Aug-2024 09:44:15 JST
sj_zero
"Trump Shooter Cause of Death Revealed" -- I found this news headline unintentionally hilarious.
Was it the bullet to the face? I bet it was the bullet to the face. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Thursday, 01-Aug-2024 11:08:53 JST
sj_zero
Everyone should really try to set up a searx instance on their machines. There's only a few hundred users right now. If enough decent folks started running it and scraped a little piece of the Internet they care about (you can even set it up as a proxy server to scrape any site you've been to) then we'd have a search platform that, while imperfect, would at least actually have all the sites places like Google refuses to show. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Thursday, 01-Aug-2024 07:55:47 JST
sj_zero
In a recent effortpost I analyzed the socialist nature of German national socialism, Italian Fascism, and Marxism. In today's language we could consider them to be respectively racial socialism, national socialism (the term national that the Germans used refers to an ethnostate while today we consider a nation something more like a land and it's government) or state socialism to avoid confusion with German national socialism, and class socialism.
Both Mussolini and Hitler cite Marx in their ideology. Mussolini was a member of the socialist party prior to his creation of the Fascist party, and is named after 3 different socialists. Hitler may have opposed Marxism and Bolshevism, but many of his writings and speeches credit Marx explicitly in the creation of National Socialism. His intention to exterminate the Jews was borne of the same ideological framework that had the Soviets exterminating the Kulaks. Engels published an article advocating for the genocide of Hungarians as not appropriate for inclusion into the dictatorship of the proletariat which also helped justify the German genocide of Jews. Although Hitler rejected class socialism, he often described how his ideology was socialism perfected, without the flaws of Marx. Later, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that German national socialism implemented 8 of the 10 points of socialism laid out by Marx and Engels.
Fascism makes sense as state socialism, a left wing continuation of the enlightenment project intended to be the next step after feudalism and capitalism. This can be understood easily because neither racial fascism nor state fascism intend to restore the monarchy or the nobility, and instead to collectivize the nation under the racial folk or the nation-state respectively.
This all continues to make sense in the framework I've laid out, of "racial socialism, state socialism, and class socialism". They all implement socialism, but in different ways that aren't compatible with one another. As a result, they will all ultimately clash with each other (and even fascists and german national socialists clashed over their ideologies despite being allies)
Some people think fascism and national socialism are right wing because they're authoritarian, nationalist, racist, and seek to preserve existing hierarchies, which all can be quickly refuted.
You can also see the whispers of angry Marxist in saying "it's authoritarian so it's right wing" well does that mean every communist state ever is right wing? It doesn't seem a legitimate analysis to assume something is right wing solely because it is authoritarian. Rospierre's reign of terror was undoubtedly authoritarian but by the standards of the day extremely left wing.
Nationalism also seems like something you can't really peg on the right wing specifically. Were there no Soviet patriots? Considering Stalin's one nation policy that seems unlikely.
Racism is a non-starter. Marx himself was highly documented as deeply anti-Semitic despite being an ethnic Jew himself, and shockingly racist even for his time In Marx's time, there was little distinction between the capitalist and the Jew, and in his essay "On the Jewish Question", he writes "What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money". Many socialist regimes implemented state racism such as the Russians cracking down on Jews or the CCP participating in the Uigur genocide.
As for maintaining or restoring old hierarchies, that's also obviously wrong. Both Germany and Italy had an existing hierarchy of nobility prior to the takeover by fascism or German national socialism, and those ideologies sought to reconstruct society in its own novel image, a hallmark of socialism in the 20th century. One might consider it right wing that there were any hierarchies at all, but by that measure marxist and boshevik socialists were also right wing since they all ended up building new hierarchies in place of the old.
This understanding of what marxism, fascism, and german national socialism is important because today everything is claimed to be nazi or fascist if the speaker doesn't like it, but we need a real framework for what is and is not fascist. Simply saying "I don't like that" does not make something fascist or national socialist, it needs to fit within the frameworks of racial socialism or state socialism. We can define violence against fascism as violence against state socialism.
So back to the topic at hand, would I agree that violence is justified to fight such a thing? Well, that's tough to say. It's easy to say about Italian fascism since my grandfather did fight them and justly so. On the other hand, Spanish fascism existed well into the 1970s and only ended because the dictator died and his heir just happened to give up power to create a liberal democracy. And in yet another point of view, the left has created the postmodern bureaucratic state and largely staffed it, creating the current situation where 120 years ago the government made up 10% of GDP but today makes up 50%, and the so-called free market that remains is overwhelmingly regulated so much that it's ultimately the state in control. Outside the context of world war 2, I don't think I'd be willing to use violence regardless of how much I disagree with it. The government won't stop doing this simply because I physically attack it. In fact, it's likely to make things worse. We have countless examples of such, including situations like the Reichstag fire which justified state crackdowns.
Political violence by be cathartic, but often it's ineffective, or even horrific. The French Revolution may have killed off many from the aristocracy, but the reign of terror turned into a crime against humanity, a purge of anyone remotely dissenting until the crowd finally turned and ended the reign of terror by purging those tasked with purges. Violent revolutions in the Soviet Union and China resulted in mass death and further tragedy. By contrast, a lot of good things have come from people winning the argument relatively peacefully Europe's relative democracy didn't come about through revolution, but by convincing the royal families to give up power over time. The world slave trade ended not because of a particular act of violent revolution, but because anti-slavery won the moral argument.
With respect to current movements that widely use violence allegedly in pursuit of attacking fascism, I don't see "antifa" burning down FDA offices or central bank buildings or department of education buildings or welfare offices. So why don't they attack these elements of state socialism if they oppose fascism? In my opinion it's because they're lying. Opposition to fascism is a facade being used for good old fashioned thuggery.
Who do we attack? Anyone we don't like! If you think killing a baby in the womb is an unjustifiable violation of that baby's human rights and that shouldn't be allowed, then we don't like you and we'll attack! If you think local law enforcement should arrest people who have committed actual crimes that violated other people's rights, then we don't like you and we'll attack! If you want to vote for someone who wants to reduce state interference in the economy, we hate you and we'll attack!
Other than the fact that nobody wants to piss off violent terrorists, nobody believes that the violence is remotely in the name of opposing fascism. Often those antifa folks seem to be fighting in pursuit of more state socialism rather than less. They aren't fighting for liberty or smaller government, they're supporting and supported by the state, and part of the state that wants to encompass everything in our lives. -
Embed this notice
sj_zero (sj_zero@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jul-2024 21:45:30 JST
sj_zero
There's some stuff they seem to have done right, considering the etymological roots of algebra, alchemy, and alcohol. The Islamic golden age and it's aftermath should be a lesson but our ruling class doesn't read history.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the