tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post4241839019698018093..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: End the Cheating First! -- Chapter 4 of Polemical JudoDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1735757628750350322020-09-04T15:40:57.430-07:002020-09-04T15:40:57.430-07:00Darrell E:
Similar also for the RP voting base, w...Darrell E:<br /><i><br />Similar also for the RP voting base, which is the demographic you probably mean. Sure, there is plenty of real racism among them and that's a convenient lever for their propaganda masters to use. <br /></i><br /><br />Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Trump supporters are all racists. To me, racism is very specifically a belief that people of different races really do have different value due to their race. And while racists usually believe that their <b>own</b> race is the superior one, that isn't even a necessary condition. One can believe that the races are hierarchical that that oneself is one of the inferior ones. That guy in <i>Life of Brian</i> who hangs upside down in the dungeon going, "Great race, the Romans!" is an example.<br /><br />It is entirely possible to perceive that one is the beneficiary of white privilege without being racist. You would just be thinking you lucked into something that you are happy to take advantage of. Or something you don't want to lose. You can vote for Trump thinking he's protecting your standard of living, which would surely fall if you were bound by the law. That's not racism--just a willingness to cheat.<br /><br />Or even worse, you might fear that some <b>other</b> group might become the ascendant one, and that you could end up being treated the way black people are today. Trump has a lot of people convinced that he alone protects them from such a fate. That's not racism either--just cowardice and a touch of paranoia.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-28840833142189526222020-09-04T15:09:38.296-07:002020-09-04T15:09:38.296-07:00onward
onward
onward<br /><br />onward<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-2197673445318416942020-09-04T13:38:23.879-07:002020-09-04T13:38:23.879-07:00My father, who had covered Capone era tommygunning...My father, who had covered Capone era tommygunnings in Chicago, was a top reporter for Stars & Stripes in WWII. Knew Erie Pyle. The unexplained and inexplicable move by Trump's DoD to shut down Stars & Stripes is is one more thing Vlad would want, among so many already delivered. Can't have anything compete with the Fox News blaring in most noncom ready rooms. The officers need to command that those TVs rotate through the news networks for varied perspectives. It's that or fret about what will happen to the officer corps, when they stand up for the Constitution.<br /><br />Duncan... very well and fairly stated.<br /><br />TCB that fellow seems not to have extrapolated what the middle classes, who know bio, cyber, nuclear, will do if they get really mad.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-31401388952103532262020-09-04T13:22:11.025-07:002020-09-04T13:22:11.025-07:00God DAMN.
The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stri...God DAMN.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow">The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason</a><br /><br />Hitler couldn't shut down the Stars and Stripes. Brezhnev couldn't shut down the Stars and Stripes. And we will let that little fascist fuck draft dodger Benedict Donald Trump shut down the Stars and Stripes?TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-47568513447627786772020-09-04T13:20:55.292-07:002020-09-04T13:20:55.292-07:00Larry/Darrell,
I see "They stand for the pri...Larry/Darrell,<br /><br />I see "They stand for the principle that their kind is to be protected but not bound by the law" as best summarized as they value hierarchy. Anything that enables or preserves hierarchy is good (such as capitalism) and anything that changes the hierarchy, especially anything that is fair/flat/equal (like democracy) is bad.<br /><br /><br /><br />David Smelserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08596446730839038592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67976693110533794652020-09-04T13:19:24.057-07:002020-09-04T13:19:24.057-07:00Yes, Occam's Razor. It does seem likely that ...Yes, Occam's Razor. It does seem likely that most early peoples practiced bullying, cheating, and feudalism. Years of reading the blog has mostly convinced me of that. But because I have stars in my eyes for anarcho-communism ala Ursula LeGuin, I like to hope that at least SOME societies were egalitarian, altruistic, and libertarian. The burden of proof would be on me if I were to assert that ALL societies stemmed from this utopian ancestral state, but that I will not try to prove. I instead rely on hope that of the thousands of generations of modern humans that have lived and the millions of iterations of tribes, in some village at some time, a paradisaical state probably existed on which I can base the future global anarchosyndicalist paradise... :DDuncan Ocelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12793350396157268839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41674392605181789942020-09-04T13:14:53.912-07:002020-09-04T13:14:53.912-07:00In his article We’re Not in This Together, Ajay Si...In his article <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/were-not-in-this-together-chaudhary" rel="nofollow">We’re Not in This Together</a>, Ajay Singh Chaudhary argues that the privileged actually stand a decent chance of seceding to their walled redoubts and living on Amazon drone shipments while the rest of us endure the worst of global warming under a neofeudal yoke. He says that<br /><br /><i>part of what makes this such a plausible outcome is that it is another intensification of the existing world. Approximately 25 percent of the American workforce is already employed protecting wealth and surveilling other workers. This is a trend one can see in other countries; it tracks inequality. As we’ve already seen, the business-as-usual world is a radically unequal one. But the intensification of phenomena like this would be so significant as to be a qualitative shift. Such a world is not speculative fiction; it is the continuation of an existing trend.</i><br /><br />Though it is a minor detail of the whole argument, I would like to know where he is getting that shockingly high 25% figure. Surely there aren't THAT many Brinks armored car guards. Chaudhary must be counting a lot of people who do not think of themselves as surveillance/wealth protectors. I suppose this means everyone at the bank, not just the guards.<br /><br />Related to this, I sometimes want to cite Dr. Brin's statement about how much land in the former colonies was taken from British landowners (especially the aristos and the King himself) after the American Revolution, but I can't find any source. It seems that, in the case of Tory landowners who left after the revolution, this was something that worked piecemeal through the early US courts for almost thirty years. Nowhere could I find a clear estimate.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-11418704479650977982020-09-04T12:56:32.558-07:002020-09-04T12:56:32.558-07:00Duncan fair enough. Certainly my remark comparing ...Duncan fair enough. Certainly my remark comparing elementary school kids to pre-agricultural tribes seems politically incorrect and disrespectful. But geez. Isn't the near universality of bullying and hierarchy and so on, among kids, indicative of a high likelihood that similar behaviors, seen very often among tribes with similar levels of "education", might be carry-overs? Doesn't the burden of proof fall upon you, since Occam's Razor make "human nature" the simplest explanation?<br /><br />Weren't religions and early justice systems obsessed EXACTLY with steering adults away from such behaviors?<br /><br />Jim your snarky paraphrasing was very good as a gambit! It was not explicitly incorrect! But at the same time it put my assertion in the very worst possible light, while utterly shrugging off my key point. That we did it before and have all the tools to do it again.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-47547756568393082002020-09-04T12:48:06.770-07:002020-09-04T12:48:06.770-07:00This has the darkest of implications:
https://www...This has the darkest of implications:<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/04/pentagon-stars-and-stripes-newspaper-trump<br /><br />The pentagon is ending Stars and Stripes, the independent armed forces newspaper and website. In four weeks. Before the election. Stars and Stripes are part of DoD, but do not answer to the generals. They are well-respected and listened to, separate from the brass but a deep part of the culture. They cost $15mil per year. <br /><br />The attempt at the GOP seizing power is moving exponentially now. matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17757867868731829206noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58405096146011925412020-09-04T12:45:27.548-07:002020-09-04T12:45:27.548-07:00I don't know, David. I doubt children are a g...I don't know, David. I doubt children are a good analogue for preagricultural tribal societies. It's true that children haven't been fully taught our society's rules, but their brains are also not fully developed and they haven't had time to become wise. Preagricultural societies were certainly composed (at least in part) by adults who had had time to learn about human interaction, who were logical, and who took actions to make their world one they want to live in. <br />I don't think other animal species provide good analogues either, because they don't think quite like we do. <br />The best bet for retro-prediction is to conjure up a group of adults who haven't been educated into our social norms. BUT, it's folly, too, to assume that early societies did not have their own norms to which their children were socialized.Duncan Ocelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12793350396157268839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-79514909346499721622020-09-04T12:40:20.936-07:002020-09-04T12:40:20.936-07:00David said
"Absolutely wrong. There are some ...David said<br />"Absolutely wrong. There are some new methods of cheating, yes and these are being applied right now in a desperate bid to PREVENT the restoration and revamping and improvement of Rooseveltean methods that boosted the middle class (albeit mostly the white middle class, but others too) at the expense of wealth disparities."<br /><br />let me paraphrase:<br />"totally wrong, oh sure there are lots of new ways the wealthy are cheating and they are using their wealth power to keep their power and wealth but i hope and pray that a new FDR will come along make america great again and that is why you are wrong about the unprecedented advantage the wealthy have now. "<br /><br />Did you read the article i linked to? Did you look at the evidence provided?jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07865068658069680309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-32618379571655792582020-09-04T12:08:24.920-07:002020-09-04T12:08:24.920-07:00Larry Hart said...
"We keep rhetorically ask...Larry Hart said...<br /><br />"<i>We keep rhetorically asking what values Republicans stand for these days, and up until now, I've been saying "White grievance", but maybe it's a <b>more general</b> "They stand for the principle that their kind is to be protected but not bound by the law."</i>"<br /><br />I think it definitely is more general. Racism and fear of losing privileged status are real things but they are a subset of what the underlying motivations are of the people that lead the RP. DT is no doubt a racist asshole but he doesn't give a shit about pure white trailer trash either. Or even white hard working middle class. Or anybody except perhaps Ivanka. Sure, he acts like he's out to further their interests and he stokes their fears and hatreds of others for purely selfish political gain, to con them to vote for him. But those poor dumb bastards are delusional to think that Trump would ever intentionally do a damn thing <i>for them</i> except to pretend to be a not complete asshole towards them for precisely as long as they continuously, without pause, fellate him. As he has said about plenty of white folk that refused to pleasure him, "pure scum."<br /><br />Similar for most of the other RP higher ups and their tools. Anyone, regardless of color or station, that isn't of use to gain their ends is villainized.<br /><br />Similar also for the RP voting base, which is the demographic you probably mean. Sure, there is plenty of real racism among them and that's a convenient lever for their propaganda masters to use. Which to my mind is one of the most egregious crimes the RP and Trump have / are committing. Due to their efforts overt racism in the US has regressed by decades. Yes, it was still there, now it's re-legitimized. In a just world they would rot in jail for this alone. But the RP voting base reviles folks like you and I with plenty of fervor too. It's more general than racism, it's <i>othering</i>, of which racism is a subset. Old as mankind, or mammals more likely. Othering doesn't require different skin color, though that is definitely a major inspiration for it. Darrell Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14054311762477388637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64303867149431849712020-09-04T11:49:21.360-07:002020-09-04T11:49:21.360-07:00“Spoiler alert: the current era of neoliberal capi...“Spoiler alert: the current era of neoliberal capitalism has given the owners of capital an unprecedented advantage over workers even surpassing the robber baron days of the late 19th century.”<br /><br />Absolutely wrong. There are some new methods of cheating, yes and these are being applied right now in a desperate bid to PREVENT the restoration and revamping and improvement of Rooseveltean methods that boosted the middle clas (albeit mostly the white middle class, but others too) at the expense of wealth disparities.<br /><br />'I find it rather bazar that David thinks that our society invented the idea of Fairness.'<br /><br />I said no such thing. I said agricultural societies tend into aristocratism,<br /><br />"Even though for the vast majority of the time humans have been humans, we existed in hunter gather societies in which fairness and equality were facts of daily life."<br /><br />1- non sequitur since I have specifically said "agricultural" and/or '6000 years."<br /><br />2- You know no such thing. Closer examination of such societies has shown that romanicization of their non-stratified societies was bullshit. Moreover the closest analogue that you can see ANY DAY is your nearest elementary school. Watch the bullies and victims. There's your basic "tribe" in every single society on Earth that has such schools... or that doesn't.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-7343261055309764622020-09-04T11:18:08.815-07:002020-09-04T11:18:08.815-07:00I find it rather bazar that David thinks that our ...I find it rather bazar that David thinks that our society invented the idea of Fairness. Even though for the vast majority of the time humans have been humans, we existed in hunter gather societies in which fairness and equality were facts of daily life. As a matter of fact there is a good amount of evidence that non-human social animals have a “fairness instinct”.jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07865068658069680309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69618318786186173862020-09-04T11:00:59.977-07:002020-09-04T11:00:59.977-07:00Well David sense our current society is the only o...Well David sense our current society is the only one that has figured out a way to quantify social power, ours is the only one you can actually make a graph of social power over time.<br /><br />So perhaps a more accurate statement on my part would have been <br />“Spoiler alert: the current era of neoliberal capitalism has given the owners of capital an unprecedented advantage over workers even surpassing the robber baron days of the late 19th century.”<br /><br />(again the article is worth reading)<br />jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07865068658069680309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88640278843262317122020-09-04T10:34:11.824-07:002020-09-04T10:34:11.824-07:00jim, yes it is an interesting insight that power h...jim, yes it is an interesting insight that power has been quantified in our society. But you and they draw the diametrically wrong conclusion from that, as exemplified by:<br /><br />"neoliberalism has given the owners of capital an unprecedented advantage in social power. "<br /><br />...which is utter, drooling ludicrous absurdity. Across 99% of the last 6000 years, elites has NON-quantified utter power over those below, taking whatever they liked, including your daughters for their harems. Your ignoring that fact is just as loony as your ignoring where YOU got it in your head to criticize unequal power and to actually believe it can be corrected.<br /><br />You believe it because you grew up in a society that actually believes a level playing field is theoretically possible and has come closer than any other (it's hard) progressively, across 2 centuries. And 'quantification" HELPS that progress by showing the cheats and injustices more effectively.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84158786830148543812020-09-04T09:59:34.423-07:002020-09-04T09:59:34.423-07:00https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/09/04/sto...https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/09/04/stocks-are-up-wages-are-down-what-does-it-mean/<br /><br />The above link is a really interesting take on one of the fundamental ideas in economics--- Capital.<br /><br />In it the author makes some really interesting points and backs it up with more interesting data.<br />Fist he points out that both neoclassical economists and Marxists understanding of capital is flawed.<br />He notices that our civilization has a unique feature to its distribution of social power. Our society seems to be the only one yet that has found a way to quantify social power. Other societies had differences in social power and you could tell who had more and who had less power but it wasn’t really quantified. <br /><br />“Capital, Nitzan and Bichler argue, is not a ‘thing’. It’s an ideology. Capital is the ritualistic quantification of property rights. And because property rights stem from the power to exclude, it follows that capital is the ritualistic quantification of power.”<br /><br />Then he goes on to show how a metric of social power can be created. Then goes on to show how this Power Index has changed over time.<br /><br />Spoiler alert – neoliberalism has given the owners of capital an unprecedented advantage in social power. <br />jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07865068658069680309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-49354779046691544062020-09-04T08:58:29.096-07:002020-09-04T08:58:29.096-07:00From an extremely prescient episode of "Batma...From an extremely prescient episode of "Batman" from 1966:<br /><br /><i><br />Robin: "Did you hear those rumors in the lobby? The Penguin running for mayor."<br /><br />Batman: "It's a free country, Robin."<br /><br />Robin: "It won't be if he's elected!"<br /></i><br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43979588146477704992020-09-04T07:35:19.548-07:002020-09-04T07:35:19.548-07:00Donald seems to be unusually adamant that he didn&...Donald seems to be unusually adamant that he didn't refer to the residents of a US military cemetery as 'losers'. His tweets have an unusually plaintive tone: almost as if he realises he might have to face consequences for once. How about the same penitence put on Patton after he struck a shell-shocked soldier: visiting every unit under his command to apologise in person?Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-14972880444690572952020-09-04T05:35:06.836-07:002020-09-04T05:35:06.836-07:00A few months back, someone here (sorry, I forget w...A few months back, someone here (sorry, I forget who) described the paradigm held by right-wingers that there must be an upper class of people who are "protected by the law but not bound by it" while the great mass of the populace is "bound by the law but not protected by it." The more I consider those phrases, the more I believe that to be the very root of the culture war we see played out between the white grievance crowd and the social justice crowd.<br /><br />In theory, America has a system of law which does <b>not</b> conform to the above. All are both bound and protected by the law. In practice, of course, there are always those powerful and or rich enough to flout the law. Still, historically it was always necessary--or at least polite--to give lip service to the ideal that everyone is equal under the law, and to make up reasons why someone deserved special consideration in an individual case of lawlessness, vague or nonsensical as those "reasons" might be.<br /><br />As in so many other ways, Trump appeals to those who don't even care about such lip service to equality, and are happy to have a president who finally lets them stop pretending to do so. <b>His</b> wife's family gets to make use of chain migration even though chain migration is evil, because he is special. Just as Limbaugh deserved leniency for his drug problems while condemning anyone else in the same situation because he is special. <br /><br />We keep rhetorically asking what values Republicans stand for these days, and up until now, I've been saying "White grievance", but maybe it's a more general "They stand for the principle that <b>their kind</b> is to be protected but not bound by the law." Their ridiculous character assassination of liberals and Democrats as lawless thugs is actually a reaction to the proposition that "If Democrats are in power, you'll be bound by the law as well as protected by it, and they'll be protected as well as bound." Which translates to them as a threat to their very way of life. Dr Brin keeps asking the MAGA crowd to define when America was great? It was when everyone knew and accepted that white Christian men were protected but not bound by the law.<br /><br />"Black Lives Matter!" is a call for recognition that black people must also be protected by the law. The counter that "All lives matter!" is a cynical assertion that when black people assert their right to protection, they are asking for a special privilege that doesn't apply to anyone else.<br /><br />Note that this is not a symmetrical phenomenon. Democrats don't campaign or govern on the basis that white Christian me should be bound and not protected by the law. They do so on the basis that the law applies equally to everyone. To fever-brained Republicans, the one is the same thing as the other.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72388785071704349452020-09-03T20:03:51.181-07:002020-09-03T20:03:51.181-07:00John Oliver reviews the RNC and events in Kenosha....John Oliver reviews the RNC and events in Kenosha. The Oliver link is the one at the bottom of the page:<br /><br />https://milwaukeerecord.com/city-life/watch-john-oliver-condemn-the-kenosha-police-who-wont-condemn-the-murder-of-two-protesters/<br /><i><br />...<br />Okay, if that is what most people in society are thinking, then we are...and this is true...a terrible society.<br />...<br /></i>Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90911879666014063692020-09-03T15:51:11.502-07:002020-09-03T15:51:11.502-07:00Obvious in retrospect...
https://www.nytimes.com/...Obvious in retrospect...<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/nixon-racism-india.html<br /><i><br />...<br />For decades, Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger have portrayed themselves as brilliant practitioners of realpolitik, running a foreign policy that dispassionately served the interests of the United States. But these declassified White House tapes confirm a starkly different picture: racism and misogyny at the highest levels, covered up for decades under ludicrous claims of national security. A fair historical assessment of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger must include the full truth, unbleeped.<br /></i>Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66241550643617731592020-09-03T15:50:45.952-07:002020-09-03T15:50:45.952-07:00This is the most far-out project we funded at NIAC...This is the most far-out project we funded at NIAC and not one I am especially proud of. But we need to keep up a 10%+ ratio of kooky and these kooks are very, very smart. So... what if?<br /><br />https://futurism.com/nasa-funded-scientist-new-thruster-light-speed?utm_source=The+Future+Is&utm_campaign=5582321a06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_03_05_41&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_03cd0a26cd-5582321a06-245786297&mc_cid=5582321a06&mc_eid=67de8498f4David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48956713572523749842020-09-03T15:29:45.602-07:002020-09-03T15:29:45.602-07:00Please pick your battles and don't lose credit...<i>Please pick your battles and don't lose credit by choosing this one.</i><br /><br />The problem is that, if enough of his voters follow his advice, it will slow things down even more from all of the cross-checking that will need to be done. And Lord help us if they miss a few. Then Trump uses them as examples of how mail-in votes are rigged. So we need to convince as many of them as possible to vote only once.<br /><br />Perhaps, rather than accusing Trump of encouraging people to vote twice (even though that is precisely what he did), we should tell them how to verify their vote was received and counted instead.A.F. Reyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08102355714883828348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58823401070717380122020-09-03T12:18:17.377-07:002020-09-03T12:18:17.377-07:00Sorry David but the impact of the use of LED light...Sorry David but the impact of the use of LED lights is not seen in the data. Look at the last 20 years of global carbon dioxide emissions the only times they have gone down from one year to the next is during economic hard times (the great recession and the covid recession/depression). Although it is true that you can get the same amount of light from a LED using less energy than an incandescent or florescent light bulb, the energy saved by stitching light sources ended up getting used for other things. The switch to LEDs would only help if the energy saved by switching never gets generated in the first place. If the “saved” energy gets used for something else the energy isn’t really saved. jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07865068658069680309noreply@blogger.com