DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
2yr ago
"Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix has been a break out hit. Some of the reactions have been... interesting.
The Guardian declared it the most dangerous show on Netflix.
Boingboing says Archaeologists reveal the white supremacist nonsense behind Netflix's "Ancient Apocalypse"
So what's behind this?
Hitler famously cherry picked some ideas from archeology / anthropology to push his agenda. Post WW2 academics found that it was easy to push out rivals by claiming their ideas could result in a new Hitler.
As a result anthropology is filled with people who think that they have a vital role as guardians of society.
This mostly results in making historical narratives more dishonest and less cool. The Bell Beaker culture is often referred to as the Corded Ware culture. They claim it was spread as a peaceful diffusion of culture. Genetic testing that showed that as the culture expanded neighbouring Y-DNA haplogroups disappeared. This is dismissed as one of those great mysteries.
When a body is found carrying a spear and multiple hand axes, they are ceremonial trade goods instead of weapons. The arrows in the back of the body were presumably his change from the trading. That joke was stolen from an academic I can't track down.
Ancient Apocalypse is really just fun and harmless, but the reactions point to a deeper problem.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Do the shoe on other foot test.
Imagine powerful right wingers from around the world, many in government, were attending an annual conference together at an exclusive resort in Montana run by a wealthy conservative with extreme ideas and a Nazi father.
Would blue collar lefties really think it was NBD?
There's a famous quote,
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
In this case it's not raising prices exactly, but various schemes to increase the wealth and power of the attendees.
DradisPing
1yr ago
The Muslim Ban was rejected by courts twice, and only a watered down version passed on the third attempt.
I think you're missing key info on the legal fight here. You're presuming the courts are some neutral arbiter here, but there was major forum shopping. All three versions were before the same judge in Hawaii who issued injunctions blocking all three. The judge was a personal friend of Obama an Obama flew out and had lunch with him after he was assigned the case. The 9th wasn't going to overturn so it was blocked until it got to the SCOTUS.
Immigration hawks noticed this and decided that they could forum shop too. So the lawsuits against Biden's policies were all filed in Red friendly districts.
Which goes back to a key point of the bill you left out. All lawsuits would need to be filed in the notoriously politically corrupt DC courts. Future Republican Presidents would likely be blocked from ever using the Border Emergency Authority. All new asylum requirements would be watered down as too strict.
DradisPing
11mo ago
I can give a broad overview.
Post Vietnam war there was basically a domestic truce declared between the pro-war and anti-war sides. People who served in the war were patriots who loyally served their country. War protesters were patriots who wouldn't let their countrymen die in a misguided war.
When Kerry got back from Vietnam he became a major figure in the protest movement. There's some dispute about what he actually said personally, but he at least associated and sat on panels with people who were saying horrible things about US soldiers. People from his old unit got at least the impression that he was saying he saw them commit horrific war crimes.
Since this was back in the 70s there aren't many recordings showing exactly what he said when.
Once things quieted down it wasn't heavily criticized due the de facto truce and he went about his political career.
Then in 2004 when he was running for President he wanted to play up his war record. Bush only served in the air national guard while Kerry was deployed and won a silver star. Bush is a little younger than Kerry and got a deferral to help on one of his father's campaigns. By the time he would have been deployed things were winding down in Vietnam and the NG didn't really need him for anything.
In the Presidential campaign Kerry cast himself as a proud veteran. Meanwhile other swift boat veterans were still pissed off at him. They had been quietly shit talking him for 30 years.
Some of them got in contact with Republican organizers and we got a bunch of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads.
Basically a bunch of people who had reason to dislike him came forward and badmouthed his claims about his military service. I have no idea what the truth is or the specifics of the claims.
The Dems organizers didn't really understand that just because other veterans weren't talking about him publicly didn't mean they didn't still carry a grudge. They don't run in the same social circles.
So from the Dem point of view it was a manufactured conspiracy that came out of nowhere.
DradisPing
5mo ago
One of the strengths of John McCain as a candidate was that due to torture in Vietnam he couldn't raise his arms up very high. Thus the press could never run with the "Nazi salute" narrative.
It's an old slur the press loves to run with. The reality is that people wave at crowds all the time in ways that can look like Nazi salutes in short clips or photos. Republican candidates are actually taught to avoid waving in certain ways so that photographers can't claim that their waving is a roman salute.
Musk, of course, never received such training.
Meanwhile Dems can wave freely with gleeful abandon. Lady Gaga introduced Hillary Clinton while wearing some sort of ode to an SS uniform.
DradisPing
1yr ago
I'd recommend "The New Right" by Michael Malice, "Ship of Fools" by Tucker Carlson, and "The Case for Trump" by Victor Davis Hanson if you want to understand them.
One of the major issues is that the bureaucratic technocrat class has devoted most of their energy into setting up systems to prevent them from every having to face any serious consequences.
Pete Buttigieg is a great example. His Secretary of Transportation appointment was supposed to be an easy resume builder on his path to his Presidential run. He's been cocking it up, but everyone knows it won't hurt his political ambitions.
California should be the crown jewel example for bureaucratic Dems. But wherever competent management is needed you can see total failure. Electricity has been a disaster for over 20 years. The high speed rail project started planning in 1996 and has been a total failure throughout every step. Water planning is a disaster. Forest management to reduce fires is absent. The homelessness camps are entirely caused by mismanagement.
I could go on and on.
But to make it worse, DC is filled with people who have open contempt for the residents of "flyover states". They devote all of their energy to social signalling and fail at their actual jobs.
DradisPing
11mo ago
No, the other special prosecutors were all Senate confirmed federal prosecutors assigned a new duty as special prosecutor. Mueller was a former federal prosecutor, so some could have argued he wasn't currently qualified, but the Senate would have re-confirmed him if needed so there wasn't really any point in pushing the issue.
Jack Smith was a state prosecutor who was famous for going after a governor in a prosecution the SCOTUS eventually overturned 9-0. Then he went to the ICC where he used his novel prosecution skills against war criminals.
Basically if the Jack Smith appointment stands then a future Republican AG is free to give any mad dog red state lawyer full federal prosecutor powers with no confirmation, oversight, or budget control.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Politcio has started off their election day coverage with a tweet that's enraging Republicans....
The 2020 presidential election was rife with allegations of voting machine hacks that were later debunked.
Yet there are real risks that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday’s vote.
https://twitter.com/politico/status/1589568452699820032
The flip from "election deniers" to "legitimately and patriotically questioning the election" is going to be fun to watch and compare.
DradisPing
11mo ago
What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away?
Fundamentally the issues are caused by wealthy leftists not having to live the consequences of their ideology.
If you really want to improve things I'd suggest spending your weekends operating a shuttle service that takes the rougher individuals from downtown to and from the upperclass parks and neighbourhoods.
DradisPing
1yr ago
That's the standard way for organized leftists to 1984 something from Wikipedia. Vote to merge the article in question with another semi-related article. Move over some of the content, redirect old links, delete the original article. Then vote to minimize and delete the moved over content as it doesn't really fit with the new article.
Every step can be argued as neutral, but the end result isn't.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I don't see why slavery in the US is at all relevant to the UK in a historical sense.
The international English speaking left is actually extremely Americanized. They will often come off as anti American, but they are really just anti red tribe.
The right tends to be more rural, small town, outdoorsy, and proud of their nation's history. They are often painted as wanting to Americanize their countries but really it's just that they have no particular grievance towards red tribe America and don't see any problem with borrowing ideas that seem to be working.
The left sees itself as part of an international progressive movement to improve the world. The movement is largely centered in the US and had it's greatest victories there. The enemies of that movement must be demonized. Even if they are thousands of miles away.
So the left in the UK will talk about America a lot. The BBC has things like Doctor Who meeting Rosa Parks instead of exploring racism with local history. Obama is extremely beloved and above criticism in a way that he isn't in the US.
I find it a very interesting topic that isn't widely discussed.
DradisPing
9mo ago
The people pushing MeToo didn't really understand the situation.
The first sexual harassment was in 1974. By the 90s lawsuits we common enough that Michael Crichton's Disclosure (1994) featured a fake sexual harassment complaint as part of a conspiracy.
Business men protected themselves through a mix of better behaviour, legal strategies, and other techniques to avoid trouble.
However since the lawyers involved were strongly left wing, liberal strongholds like Hollywood and the Media were given a pass and ignored. This was compounded by the fact that those industries attract a lot of pretty girls, have powerful men at the top, and look down on traditional sexual rules.
This wasn't well understood on the left, and they all insisted on believing that Republican businessmen are the worst people ever and much worse about things that MeToo covers.
So activists pushed MeToo hard. Then they noticed that all the big fish going down were on their side. So they sort of stopped talking about the whole thing.
DradisPing
10mo ago
When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought
Most people in the US have a vision to Tyranny built around English aristocrats oppressing them with uniformed troops.
The reality is any tyrannical group coming into power is going to be too weak at first to use the police to oppress their enemies. Instead there's a gang of government supporters who are allowed to commit crimes against the disfavoured groups without the police intervening. Often they are masked, but not always.
This is a very loose category that includes everyone from the KKK to Hitler's brownshirts to Antifa. Maduro has 'colectivos'. They are just everywhere.
The second amendment is very effective against this loose category. Without it inner city crime gangs would have been driving out the the suburbs and rural areas to rob and kill.
Things like the 2020 election are about allegations of widespread corruption. Guns aren't helpful there. They need to tighten laws and gather evidence.
DradisPing
8mo ago
It feeds into the culture war. This was a multi agency raid with judicial warrants to kill a squirrel and racoon.
Blue tribe members love to talk about how much government money is spent on rural people. But then things like this are counted as spending money on rural people.
It touches on other aspects. The agents used the search warrant as an opportunity to grill the woman of the house on her immigration status, which is something they never would have done to someone in NYC.
It's common to hear online that people can't understand why other parts of the state would want to separate from NYC when it brings in so much tax revenue.
But a rural view of the situation is sort of like this: A man from the government walks up and demands $5. He then pays his friend $10 to slap you as hard as he can. Then the man goes on a long rant about how much he spends to govern these fucking takers.
Sure, the government man is net spending money. But the rural guy isn't exactly happy about the transaction.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.
The view of natives by educated liberals was very different at the time. Now people think of them like wood elves with a sacred culture. At the time they were viewed more as backwards illiterate hillbillies who needed to be brought into the modern era.
So there were no foster homes in native areas. If a child needed to be put into the system they were shipped off to a city and adopted. This was before birth control pills so young mothers having children they couldn't take care of was more common.
There's still a lot of debate about how aggressive social workers should be, so I'm sure it is easy to find cases where the child should have stayed in the home.
DradisPing
3mo ago
As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off.
I think it's more accurate to say that he sees foreign policy as solely within the power of the President and doesn't like the fact that there are a bunch or orgs around DC funded by the US government with official sounding names that are undermining the foreign policy of the White House.
DC loves these para governmental organizations. In the case of USIP the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence are ex officio board members. The rest of the board members must be appointed by the POTUS and confirmed by the Senate. So it seems like it's sort of part of the executive branch but also not when it comes to oversight.
DradisPing
11mo ago
Nerd wrangling is a specific skill. There are common patterns for failure for large engineering teams. Being able to recognize these and correct them is important.
Human behaviour inevitably means that organizations will be run by ambitions and internal alliances unless something stops it. Managers want to build their resumes by running ambitious projects. They often like or dislike ideas based on how much they like the individual who brought it up.
A tech leader needs to be able to bust things up a bit when they aren't functioning. That's why Musk is often described as being unstable and disruptive by existing management in the company. It's also why he has such a strong history of success at coming in as a new CEO.
Musk isn't deeply involved in developing tech, but when he gets a message from an employee about a problem and a response from the higher ups, he can tell if the higher ups are bullshitting him.
For that he does need significant tech skills, but doesn't need to be a specialist in any of the products.
Altman seems similar to me.
As for the tweet, general political commentary on twitter doesn't usually involve deep thoughts. He's stating a clear rebuttal that midwit followers can use in political discussions in their daily lives. The fact that a statement from the VP running for President can be rebutted with econ 101 says more about the state of the country than Musk.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Can you imagine being dumped by a girl because she wants a man old enough to buy her cigarettes? But you're 27?
It'll be interesting to see how the tobacco ban plays out for immigrants. I'm guessing that in 10 years the law just won't be enforced for PoC.
Weirdly, the usual weed legaliser types were in favour of the ban.
That's not surprising, the weed legalizers generally aren't libertarians. They just really really like weed.
DradisPing
2yr ago
I file that under "their own damn fault". For decades they've been demonizing foreign government media funding while responding with a dismissive "totally different" to anyone who points out they get a lot of government funding. The CBC is big enough and powerful enough that it's employees can isolate themselves from criticism they don't want to hear.
DradisPing
2yr ago
It should go without saying that the commission being sent to oversee things is... not exactly non-partisan
It's wrong to expect them to be. Elections are naturally adversarial. All the major candidates should be able to send observers for key moments.
Actually one of the big problems with the American election system is that counties are allowed to manage their own elections, but they have a strong incentive to stuff the ballot boxes. When dealing with elections where the total votes in the state are what matter, the political power of the county is directly proportional to the number of votes cast.
If county overwhelmingly supports one candidate then they have exactly zero incentive to stop ballot box stuffing.
Observers from outside the county who support the other candidate are the only solution.
DradisPing
2yr ago
Johnson is clearly talented as a filmmaker/director, so how can he be so clueless as a writer?
He's a "rule of cool" writer. He writes things that seem fun in the moment but he doesn't do verisimilitude or rich world building. His range is very limited.
Look at Looper. The parts where limbs are cut off in the past and disappear in the future don't make any sense under any consistent time travel rules. It's pure "this is cool, don't think about it".
He's a bad match for Star Wars. It's space opera in a rich exotic universe. Consistent rules and world building are very important for the genre.
His "Star Wars" spin off trilogy was going to have no spaceships, no lightsabers, and no force. Basically it was not Star Wars. He just couldn't get his own trilogy made.
To understand what went wrong, you have to understand who Kathleen Kennedy is.
Yes, she worked with Spielberg and Lucas for years. But she was never a creative. She's an enforcer.
Her job was to manipulate and bully the studio and the press into doing what the creatives needed.
She managed to rise up the chain to be in charge of LucasFilm. But she's still not a creative, and she doesn't even like Star Wars.
She wants to make feminist empowerment movies. She doesn't know what makes a good SW film, but she's sure as hell not going to let some dirty man babies tell her what to do. So she hired directors that had recently done some big sci fi movies (Star Trek and Looper), told them to include feminist empowerment messages, and assumed everything would work out.
The Hilary email server thing is really a special case that usually isn't well explained...
She wanted a separate email system so:
-
She and Huma could co-mingle Secretary of State business and Clinton Foundation business. Foreign governments were making requests about official business to the clintonemail.com address, and getting donation requests for the Clinton Foundation from the same email address. There was a pretty strong subtext there.
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Keeping the emails off of government servers kept them out of FOIA requests.
Now what makes it a big scandal is that the bureaucrats in DC were helping her. She was powerful and popular in DC. No one else could have pulled it off.
The email server was discovered when Judicial Watch noticed that they weren't seeing any emails from Hilary's account in their FOIA requests about Benghazi.
The staff in charge of FOIA requests knew all about the separate email server and argued that those records weren't in their possession so they couldn't search them. But responding to the request with "no relevant records found" is dishonest given that they knew they should have had the records.
It came out that it wasn't secured properly and foreign intelligence services were likely reading classified emails there. That defeated the "what's the harm" excuse.
It's not the worst scandal that's ever happened, but it does stand out as unique. Hilary had been so powerful in DC for so long that she knew how to flout the rules. There really isn't anyone else who could have done something similar.
I agree that in general high level officials get sloppy with classified information and do things that an ultra aggressive DOJ could prosecute them for. It seems inevitable given the amount of sensitive information they deal with and the fact it's impossible to live in a SCIF.
DradisPing
1yr ago
The James Damore incident was evidence of a culture problem. Google is no longer a place where an autist can openly name a problem.
People good at internal politics muscled their way into the Google AI projects. Everyone else is afraid to criticize them.
After spending megabucks there's internal pressure to launch. So the project goes live with glaring flaws.
DradisPing
1yr ago
2012 - 2016 is when the SF tech industry switched from "free speech and neutrality are critical for our growth" to "kicking around our political enemies is a whole lot of fun". I think Obama's re-election campaign was the turning point.
Ellen Pao was probably always more comfortable with censoring and control. But in her actions she was just following the prevailing winds in SF.
In the past I've heard a lot of jokes about "The People's Republic of Pennsylvania". I don't know much about the state, but the Secretary of Agriculture has been making news lately.
The latest evolving story is about Rusty Herr and Ethan Wentworth who ran a bovine reproductive services company called "NoBull Sires, LLC".
The dispute arose back in 2010 because the Ag Department sent them a cease and desist plus a statement of fine on the grounds that using an ultrasound was practicing veterinary medicine without a license. The counter argument was that the Ag Department was out of scope of the law. Routine checks don't meet the requirement of "diagnosis and treatment" for practising veterinary medicine, even if they involve an ultrasound machine.
Notably the Ag Department seems to have never filed the paperwork with a court, which is a prerequisite for enforcement. So they were likely aware of the legal issues. In 2020 the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medicine Association sent a complaint to the Department of State.
On April 10-11, 2024 they were arrested and sent to jail for 30 days for "contempt of court". The problem is that the Ag Department seems to have issued the arrest warrant on their own. The case has never been in court. They have not been before a judge.
So they are both in jail serving a 30 day sentence that didn't involve a judge and they haven't been allowed to see a judge.
There is a culture war angle here. The press seems to be reluctant to get involved for a few reasons. These days they like to defer to the bureaucracy, particularly when the Governor is from the right party. Plus Pennsylvania is in play for 2024 so they are reluctant to kick up a fuss that could help Trump.
I'm only finding coverage in the farming press right now and they don't really dive into the legal issues.
https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/news/livestock-ultrasound-operators-jailed-accused-of-unlicensed-vet-practice/article_39004570-fcd8-11ee-8396-1f8ec41b214f.html
https://agmoos.com/2024/04/17/pregnancy-is-not-a-disease-two-men-jailed-without-bail-for-repro-ultrasounding-of-dairy-cows/
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