Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the chat-room dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That Anonymous Coward with a comment about religious rules, regulations, and exemptions:

I enjoy how their deeply held beliefs can never ever be questioned, because that would be a burden on them and open a can of worms…

Like when Hobby Lobby was screaming that having to have insurance with contraception included violated their deeply held beliefs… up until you look at where they had invested the companies retirement fund into a corporation that makes contraceptives. We’re against it unless we can profit from it really isn’t a biblical thing I’ve ever heard of… but then the book does turn to ash in my hands.

Or the “pastors” of like 3 people “churches” who were recruiting new members by offering them letters to explain it was a biblical sin to get a shot to save others lives.

I did enjoy the CEO of one of the hospital systems, in CO IIRC, who published a list of all the medications that were just as bad as the vaccine according to several religious reasons & they had to certify they had never used any of them. Things like tums, tylenol, ibuprofen, ex-lax, preparation h…

Deeply held beliefs are things that you live every day, not just roll in for the Mass on Xmas Eve once a year.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment suggesting some things society could do to preempt the growth of hate movements:

  • Task law enforcement with actually pursuing cases of harassment and stalking.
  • Pass real minimum wage, worker safety, and employee rights laws so people can have good jobs that are not at the whim of the Quarterly Earnings Report.
  • Fund K-12 and public Universities so that good education is available to anyone who wants it. This includes proper funding for small classes and special education.
  • Universal health care independent of employment and funds.
  • Break up the real estate/NIMBY cartels so that people can afford quality housing.

Let a man get a good job with which he can provide for his family, and you will be amazed at how angry he isn’t.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about automated takedowns on Twitch:

There’s an important point to be made here: automated takedowns like this are diametrically opposed to platforms like Twitch, which are real-time.

Sure, the players can challenge the takedown. But they’re unlikely to be able to re-create the original livestream experience, as they’ll have to re-create the original buzz to get people to log in, at which point people have to have some expectation that the stream won’t immediately go offline again and waste their time.

Now move this from the gaming forum to the political one: you can have takedowns like this shape an election campaign, and there’s nothing the site host or the campaigners can do about it.

Next, it’s an anonymous response to the White House’s suggested tech platform “principle” of transparency in moderation decisions:

Before that, how about some transparency in things that really affect the public, like how various government departments make decisions, and a big reduction in what the government can had as a secret matter.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Bergman with a response in a comment exchange about Texas’s religion-justified homophobic bigotry:

I defy even Texas to prove gay secks causes more gay people to exist! 🤣

In second place, it’s That One Guy with a comment about the death of Amy Klobuchar’s news link tax bill:

‘How dare you add you idiocy to my boneheaded bill?!’

Amy Klobuchar proposes stupid bill.

Ted Cruz proposes stupid amendment.

Amy Klobuchar throws tantrum and yanks bill.

How about that, two wrongs made a right

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from mvario regarding the DEA’s silly fearmongering about colorful fentanyl:

wait…

I’m having an adverse reaction to looking at that picture of Fentanyl! I was told by a helpful police officer that it could happen. I’d best go for a lie-down.

And finally, we head back to last week’s comments post, where one commenter raised a “quibble” with another’s Star Trek reference, and tracyanne had this to say:

That’s The Trouble with Quibbles.

That’s all for this week, folks!


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Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”

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26 Comments
That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3

In what way?
An immortal is hardly dangerous, well unless we found a cult & then get bored and have everyone die.
Or we spend time looking at this neat plague carried by rats and manage to make it more virulent.

It wasn’t concern about others, it was just a bit of shock that when you worry about something, immortal really should be lower on the list than sociopath.
Besides the commenters here are useful to me, they vote me insightful or funny sometimes.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

Hyman Rosen (profile) says:

Religious Sincerity

The Volokh Conspiracy has excerpts from the Georgia Supreme Court discussing how the courts should go about judging religious sincerity. One factor is that we’re all sinners – we may sincerely hold a religious belief even though we act in violation of it. Another, of course, is that the government is not permitted to judge the sincerity of a belief by how well it conforms to some establishment church.

tl;dr – it’s complicated and difficult.

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/24/georgia-supreme-court-on-sincerity-and-religious-exemptions/

morganwick (profile) says:

Regarding second place for insightful:

Of course, the people with the real power in society either actually want hate movements to exist, or at least consider them an acceptable alternative to people being able to actually stand up to them. Keep them busy blaming the Jews, darkies, and bitches and they won’t be blaming the people that’s really to blame for their plight.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re:

“As a nation we need to stop worshiping wealth. We need to realize that we are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and start working for the betterment of our society.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/7/5/1398182/-Temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires

There are 12 cookies, a CEO takes 11 and warns you that other guy is going to steal your cookie.

It really is that simple.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

Hyman Rosen (profile) says:

What is really simple is the politics of envy. Point at the people who have been successful and accuse them of cheating and theft, so that the failures will be fooled into giving you power. Let the failures rob and riot and loot and burn with impunity and tell them that it’s not their fault.

Wealth is the ability to live your lifestyle without worrying about being able to pay for it. It should be worshipped, and people who don’t have it should do what they can to reach that status so that their children won’t have to. That was me. I grew up poor, but with a lot of luck and serendipity, got into a lucrative career (computer programming), married and had a child, and he is going on to the same field but with college completely paid for, a small nest egg, and therefore great prospects.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Except you are living in a zero-sum game system, not everyone could be wealthy no matter how badass dedicated, strong, and smart they are, because some people lock up wildly inordinate amounts of wealth. And then they use most of it for nothing, it’s not even in the system, they just hold onto it for those days where they might outlay a tiny fraction of it to influence politics or business to help them take and keep more wealth.

Hyman Rosen (profile) says:

Re: Re:

That is false. As a simple counterexample, you could imagine a society where everyone has a small plot of land that grows all the food they need to survive, and contains a house where they live. Then someone writes a song and teaches it to their neighbors, and it spreads to everyone. Now everyone has received an improvement to their lives at no cost to anyone else.

Toom1275 (profile) says:

Re:

What is really simple is the politics of envy. Point at the people who have been successful and accuse them of cheating and theft, so that the failures will be fooled into giving you power. Let the failures rob and riot and loot and burn with impunity and tell them that it’s not their fault

Note: As with evwrything else Hyman rosen has ever said, this too is the polar opposite from reality.

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