Octopus Overlords

gbasden wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:55 pm

hepcat wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:52 pm

gbasden wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:20 pm

hepcat wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:17 pm While I despise Trump and all his lackeys, I think stunts like this are going to backfire. You attract more flies with honey and all that.

I just have so many philosophical issues with this. Yes, if both parties are engaging in good faith, fine. But Trump and his followers break norms and shit the bed daily. Why is it the responsibility of the left to play nice?

Because it’s hard to claim you’re the better person when you sink to their level. At some point deceny and sense may return. But it will take that much longer if folks don’t try to rise above it all. And yes, I’m perfectly aware how hypocritical I sound. However, IRL I have tried to be an adult in situations like that. If nothing else, it keeps ammunition out of the orange one’s hands. He lives for shit like that. It lets him Jim Jones the hell out of his sheople.

But on the Internet? It’s game on, baby!

If somebody is doing something truly horrible, I think it's morally wrong to treat them as a civilized person who just has a different opinion. I love the fact that people are following around Kristen Nielsen around and playing the sounds of the crying children her agency has created. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders is blatantly lying every single day from that podium I don't mind that she's told she's not welcome in polite society. I don't want Stephen Miller treated like a respectable human being.

coopasonic wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 1:06 pm You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:13 pm

coopasonic wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 1:06 pm You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

Having read dbt's other musings, I don't think it's nearly as complicated. Just as light skinned people are "mistaken" for white, "darker skinned people are assumed to be black.

It's pigment related. Unless you're a eugenicist, it's purely looks based.

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:37 pm Absolutely no bad intent. Just typical dbt speculation.

Why do my goats only vote during the primaries sort of thing.

coopasonic wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 3:35 pm Oh I wasn't saying anything about dbt, jsut the 100% white thing sounds wrong.

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:13 pm

coopasonic wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 1:06 pm You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

Having read dbt's other musings, I don't think it's nearly as complicated. Just as light skinned people are "mistaken" for white, "darker skinned people are assumed to be black.

It's pigment related. Unless you're a eugenicist, it's purely looks based.

To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestry must be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? The nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation. In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. As we shall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.

gbasden wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:55 pm

hepcat wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:52 pm

gbasden wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:20 pm

hepcat wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:17 pm While I despise Trump and all his lackeys, I think stunts like this are going to backfire. You attract more flies with honey and all that.

I just have so many philosophical issues with this. Yes, if both parties are engaging in good faith, fine. But Trump and his followers break norms and shit the bed daily. Why is it the responsibility of the left to play nice?

Because it’s hard to claim you’re the better person when you sink to their level. At some point deceny and sense may return. But it will take that much longer if folks don’t try to rise above it all. And yes, I’m perfectly aware how hypocritical I sound. However, IRL I have tried to be an adult in situations like that. If nothing else, it keeps ammunition out of the orange one’s hands. He lives for shit like that. It lets him Jim Jones the hell out of his sheople.

But on the Internet? It’s game on, baby!

If somebody is doing something truly horrible, I think it's morally wrong to treat them as a civilized person who just has a different opinion. I love the fact that people are following around Kristen Nielsen around and playing the sounds of the crying children her agency has created. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders is blatantly lying every single day from that podium I don't mind that she's told she's not welcome in polite society. I don't want Stephen Miller treated like a respectable human being.

Kraken wrote: Sun Oct 20, 2013 6:59 pm Little Libertarians On the Prairie

Fascinating story worth reading in full. If you don't have time, here's the gist:

A few months after the stock market crash, in the winter of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder sat at a small desk in Mansfield, Mo., and began scratching out her life story on a cheap yellow pad. That beginning would lead to a children's book series that would inspire millions of people to follow its simple values of optimistic self-sufficiency in the face of danger and economic struggle.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was on the brink of having an award named in her honor, from the Association for Library Service to Children, when in 1952 a reader complained to the publisher of “Little House on the Prairie” about what the reader found to be a deeply offensive statement about Native Americans.

The reader pointed specifically to the book’s opening chapter, “Going West.” The 1935 tale of a pioneering family seeking unvarnished, unoccupied land opens with a character named Pa, modeled after Wilder’s own father, who tells of his desire to go “where the wild animals lived without being afraid.” Where “the land was level, and there were no trees.”

And where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”

The editor at Harper’s who received the reader’s complaint wrote back saying it was “unbelievable” to her that not a single person at Harper’s ever noticed, for nearly 20 years, that the sentence appeared to imply that Native Americans were not people, according to a 2007 biography of Wilder by Pamela Smith Hill.

Yet Harper’s decision in 1953 to change “people” to “settlers” in the offending sentence did little to quell the critics in later decades, who began describing Wilder’s depictions of Native Americans and some African Americans — and her story lines evoking white settlers’ Manifest Destiny beliefs — as racist.

Now, after years of complaints, the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, says it voted Saturday to strip Wilder’s name from the award.
...
In its decision to remove Wilder’s name from the award, the library association had cited “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work” when it announced the review of Wilder’s award in February. The award, reserved for authors or illustrators who have made “significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature,” will no longer be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. It’s now the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

Defiant wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:37 pm How not to campaign:

Mr. Patel has waged the most millennial of campaigns. On a recent Thursday evening, he was sitting in a former bar in the East Village that he uses as his campaign headquarters. His campaign manager handed him one of three phones that was logged into the dating app Tinder, and Mr. Patel began furiously swiping right.

All around the bar — adorned with blue-velvet booths and a sound system that was playing Kanye West — campaign volunteers, logged onto Tinder, Grindr or Bumble, were doing the same thing. Mr. Patel calls it Tinder banking: Participants set up an account with a picture of an attractive person, usually not themselves, and begin seeking matches. Mr. Patel uses a picture of his brother.

He compared it to the practice of creating a fake online persona to lure someone into a relationship. “It’s kinda like catfishing,” he admitted, “but you are telling people who you are.”

When someone responds, Mr. Patel replies with a political pickup line: “Hi Sarah. Are you into civic engagement?” He soon reveals who he really is.

link

dbt1949 wrote: Mon Jun 25, 2018 5:01 pm What brought the black/white thing up for me was the morning news about a white woman who called the cops on a "black" girl selling water without a permit.
First of all let me say the woman was a jerk, but that said both the media and the girls white mother claimed the woman was racist.
The little girl had a white mother ergo she has to be mulatto.Or is that a bad word too?
But for sensationalism the media chose to make her black, when in fact she could have been called white just as easily.

The girl's mother evidently married a black man because she wants to be identified with blacks. Otherwise why call her little girl black.

But back to the jist of my "concern". I think the original woman was an ass and was just reporting the girl for selling water without a permit and that the liberal media is only too happy to stir the pot and make news by bringing up the race card.

Evidently me bringing this up has some people concerned that I must be a racist too just for bringing up the subject.
I remember a while back there was some concern because I used the term "black blood" in referring to my wife's lineage. I was ignorant to that being a bad term and I guess I am ignorant for bringing up this subject too.
Or am I a racist? Or can no one bring up such subjects without being a racist?

malchior wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:42 am 4) My personal problem is this is more of the terrible trend of social media mob justice - god help us all.

YellowKing wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:50 am I thought about that with the case of the woman who called the cops on the black firefighter walking around the neighborhood. Apparently they walk around in people's yards and take pictures as part of their inspection. If I saw a guy walking around in my yard taking pictures, I don't care if he's black, white, or heathen Chinee (joke), I'd be concerned. That wouldn't be racial profiling - it would be "dude I don't know walking on my property" profiling.

Paingod wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:16 am Is it too early to be really depressed about the retirement announcement yesterday in the Supreme Court? I feel like it's not. I'm very disturbed at the way this is working.

They block Democrats from pushing their own candidates, and then flush in their own immediately when the Presidency changes hands. Now they're salivating at the chance for a second nominee. I see the clip of Mitch saying they're going to vote in someone before this fall's election, and he visibly wishes he had an erection the size of Kansas when he's speaking. I hear the glee in Trump's voice as he announces "we have a pick" and I just want to vomit.

El Guapo wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:17 amOn the plus side, you live in Maine, so there is something small you can do here. Call Susan Collins's office and let her know that you won't be voting for her in 2020 unless she delays any confirmation until after the mid-terms (or whatever your litmus test here might be).

Paingod wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:39 am

El Guapo wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:17 amOn the plus side, you live in Maine, so there is something small you can do here. Call Susan Collins's office and let her know that you won't be voting for her in 2020 unless she delays any confirmation until after the mid-terms (or whatever your litmus test here might be).

I can certainly do that, but I doubt the effectiveness. I've left her more than one message letting her know I plan to vote against her as soon as I can if she doesn't oppose whatever insanity the GOP is up to. So far she's been ignoring me, but her voting base is small - given that it's Maine and all.

I'd be willing to bet that come 2019, she'll be another one to say "Hey, I'm done now. I won't run again" like the other ... what ... 30+(?) GOP members that have thrown in the towel? I always thought of her as more of a moderate member, and I just can't see her wanting to stay aligned as the party shifts from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Evil. I could be completely wrong.

She's let them screw her twice now (that I can recall; I can't recall on what, exactly - I think the tax cut was a big one - just that she agreed to vote YES on something based on promises by her party twice (since Trump came around) that never came to fruition). She must know people are seeing that.

El Guapo wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:42 amFWIW she's basically said that she's going to run for re-election in 2020 (she was previously deciding between that and running for governor). She could change her mind, of course, but that appears to be her current plan.

Holman wrote:What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

Holman wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:28 am

YellowKing wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:50 am I thought about that with the case of the woman who called the cops on the black firefighter walking around the neighborhood. Apparently they walk around in people's yards and take pictures as part of their inspection. If I saw a guy walking around in my yard taking pictures, I don't care if he's black, white, or heathen Chinee (joke), I'd be concerned. That wouldn't be racial profiling - it would be "dude I don't know walking on my property" profiling.

What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

YellowKing wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 12:12 pm

Holman wrote:What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

You can't extrapolate one person's intentions from what their neighbors have done or haven't done.

Maybe the uniform is obvious to us, but maybe it isn't obvious to her. Maybe she's a scared old lady who didn't get a good look, she just saw someone traipsing around and panicked. If inspections were done all the time, and this lady knew this was an inspector, would it make sense to call the police even if she was a racist? Of course not. I think we have to assume she didn't know it was a fireman.

And just because they "never" get complaints when the inspector is white doesn't mean this is a race incident. Maybe they don't get complaints period, and this was the first one. Who knows - I can't find the original article so I don't know if this was addressed. Maybe in the same circumstance this particular lady *would* have called the cops on a white fireman. We don't know.

Was there some racism involved? Hey, probably.

But I would hope that someone would give me the benefit of the doubt first, before rushing to judgment and calling me a racist. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty" in this country? Apparently when it comes to race, it doesn't exist. Repeated behavior? Sure, call it for what it is. One incident should not be national news dragging someone's name through the mud though.

We have a diversity supervisor at work whose entire job consists of making sure our organization is not biased (intentionally or unintentionally), works with our marketing, etc. This guy knows racism in and out, and as an African-American I'm sure he's experienced it firsthand on numerous occasions. But one message he shared with us in our department meeting was "Always assume good intentions." Because he understood the very real danger of jumping to conclusions and making someone out to be maliciously racist when they may have just made a mistake, were a little tone deaf socially, or simply didn't have the understanding due to lack of education.

hepcat wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:03 am

malchior wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:42 am 4) My personal problem is this is more of the terrible trend of social media mob justice - god help us all.

This is what bothers me most in these situations. Being an ass used to result in people calling you an ass and moving on. Nowadays it can mean the destruction of your entire life. There isn't a single one of us here who hasn't done something they've regretted. Any one of those incidents, if broadcast to the world, would now potentially be devastating to their lives.

That needs to stop. Unfortunately, I blame humanity and not politics for this. Social media has done more damage to our society in my opinion than it has good.

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

LordMortis wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 4:25 pm

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Heh, my parents kept their pulse dial phone right up until they sold their house, what, 10 years ago. ATT SBC Ameritich ATT Michigan Bell Telephone wanted to charge them $5 more a month to convert to tone dialing and so that was the end of that conversation. Made no sense to me whatsoever, but that's bureaucracy. We will make things insanely more expensive four ourselves in order because we want an excuse to make a few more dollars from you.

Which make them (and me) much more hostile today as everything is now short term subscription based following the SaaS mold. We will get you in cheaply, force you to adapt to us, and then out date your model and force you into this much more expensive system in order for you to keep everything else you have working.

/shakes cane menacingly

Chris Hayes wrote:In re: the viral DHS post: the article only has 13 bullet points (not 14) and the 88 appears to be working off the fact that 88% of applicants pass their credible fear interview. (But a far lower percentage are granted asylum)

Rip wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 5:04 pm

LordMortis wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 4:25 pm

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Heh, my parents kept their pulse dial phone right up until they sold their house, what, 10 years ago. ATT SBC Ameritich ATT Michigan Bell Telephone wanted to charge them $5 more a month to convert to tone dialing and so that was the end of that conversation. Made no sense to me whatsoever, but that's bureaucracy. We will make things insanely more expensive four ourselves in order because we want an excuse to make a few more dollars from you.

Which make them (and me) much more hostile today as everything is now short term subscription based following the SaaS mold. We will get you in cheaply, force you to adapt to us, and then out date your model and force you into this much more expensive system in order for you to keep everything else you have working.

/shakes cane menacingly

It makes perfect sense if you are in telcom. Just like MS charging a lot to support XP years after it was EOL or cable systems charging for analog TV support after it was phased out. It takes special equipment to handle/deal with old systems. Someone has to pay for the increased cost.