Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the what's-the-word dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment offering an additional resource on our post about the White House’s new app:
The other half of the story
The analysis by “thereallo” covers the Android version; there’s a dissection of the iOS version at Security Analysis of the Official White House iOS App
It’s just as bad and sheds additional light on why this is a security and privacy disaster.
In second place, it’s a reply from Rocky to a commenter who was angrily getting everything wrong about the Murthy ruling:
What’s pathetic clownboy, is that you think you understand legal matters.
You blather on about merit while totally missing the point why they ruled they way they did and it is just mindboggling that you are unable to connect the dots here. It is very simple, it was concluded the plaintiffs suit had no merit, substance or proof of injury (you know, the part you are desperately ignoring) that would trigger Article III standing.
But keep screaming about lies while we point out your stupid clownishness.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from martin1961 deploying an aphorism in response to Virginia’s legally misguided attempts to compel CSAM scanning:
When you come across a man made obstacle, do you
A) dismantle it and carry on, or
B) find out why it was placed there in the first place ?
Next, it’s Drew Wilson pushing back against a commenter who disputed the comparison of the social media moral panic to previous moral panics:
That would be because the comparisons are justified. Video games were supposedly going to corrupt the youth by turning them into murdering psychopaths who would be deadly effective because they train all day on their “murder simulators”. That never played out no matter how many times the media blamed video games for anything violent.
The same is being done with social media. Social media is corrupting the youth because the youth will become distracted or have no sense of morality because they are seeing easily accessible pornography on platforms like YouTube (something that doesn’t even pass the laugh test in my books).
If there are any fundamental differences between the two, I’m not seeing it. There was never really any evidence that video games were going to turn the youth into murder machines and there was never any evidence to say that social media will inherently destroy the youths moral compass, attentiveness, or whatever else the heck that is being fabricated by politicians and the media.
The irony here is that by making your argument, you proved Masnick’s point about someone always insisting that “this time it’s different”.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Pixelation with a comment about RFK Jr.’s struggle to fill the CDC Director position:
Job ad
Needed: Whipping boy. Experience required:Conspiracy theorist.
In second place, it’s Arianity with a quip (plus a nice note) on last week’s comment post regarding the considerable length of one of the winning comments:
Congrats to Azuaron for getting their first article published on TD!
In all seriousness though, that article’s comment section was one of the best I’ve ever seen in terms of people actually productively trying to work through issues and explain their positions, even if I didn’t agree with everything.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Thad on our post about Pete Hegseth’s war on truth:
It’s not a war, it’s a military operation on truth.
Finally, it’s MrWilson with a good reply to anyone making confidently wrong statements about the law:
Another thorough legal analysis from Trust, Me, Bro, & Associates, all graduates of the Gut Feeling School of Law, magna cum dumbass.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
I think I’m starting to find humor again. Now that even the republicans are starting to see that Trump is going senile. When they say he is playing “12-D chess”, that’s code for “He’s lost his mind and is no longer with us, and we see it now.” There is some light at the end of the tunnel.
Re:
The 12-D chess thing is even more hilarious when you consider that they might actually believe it, because 12D chess would be… I don’t even know, but it certainly wouldn’t be Trump…
Re: Re:
What you have to remember is that most of Trump’s supporters are people who are so dumb that Donald Trump looks smart to them.
Re: may not be good news
Might be an on-coming coal train with JD Vance as the fireman.
Re: Re:
Vance is dangerous, and his backers perhaps even moreso, but he’ll never command Trump’s cult of personality.
Re: Re: Re:
He’s already a laughingstock outside of MAGA. Between his distinct lack of charisma, his awkward interactions with people, and the couchfucker jokes, dude’s cooked even before you get to his policy positions.
The way I see it, Dems will win in 2028 because MAGA will be in too much disarray to gel behind whoever the GOP picks to replace Trump. Given that and the “blue wave” we’re likely to see this year, that gives Dems about six years to figure out how the fucking hell to keep whoever the GOP puts up in 2032 from being seen as anything more than “Trump but far worse”—because the 2032 candidate will probably be worse than Trump in numerous ways but “better” in the sense that he’ll be younger, smarter, and not suffering from dementia. That would also leave six years to construct some actual fucking guardrails on the presidency and American democracy so no other president, regardless of party, can do what Trump has done.
American hegemony has taken a massive hit thanks to Trump. The United States is no longer the stable superpower its leaders projected it to be. Even if that hegemony can be partially rebuilt, it will never reach the same level of power and influence that it once had. So now would be an excellent time for Democrats to start planning a Project 2029 and a Project 2033—not only to rebuild what power and influence can still be rebuilt, but to protect what’s left from right-wing despots intent on starting World War III because they sincerely believe in the Rapture.
Re: Re: Re:2
Dems will win in 2028 because Trump is polling below syphilis. 2028 isn’t the problem; it’s everybody forgetting all this shit in another 4 or 8 years like the last two times.
Thing is, though, who is that? The GOP’s been trying to find That Guy for ten fucking years now and the best they’ve managed to come up with is…JD Vance.
Ultimately, though, it comes down to turnout. The white evangelicals always turn out. We saw what happens when Democratic voters turn out in 2020, and we saw what happens when they don’t in 2024. And the Democratic leadership seems to be making the same old mistakes of trying to win over Republicans instead of trying to keep the coalition they already have.
The trouble is that, as we’ve seen, no amount of guardrails will matter if two branches of government refuse to restrict the third. They need to expand the Supreme Court, that’s a given, but they need to do more than that; they need to make sure the current (post-Southern Strategy) strain of the GOP never controls all three branches of government again. Short term, they need to grant statehood to DC and PR; long-term, we need to seriously start discussing the abolition of the Senate and the electoral college and term limits on the Supreme Court, all of which require constitutional amendments.
I don’t think that the current Democratic leadership is up to the task. But hopefully we get some more genuine progressives into office in the next couple of elections.
Re: Re: Re:3
The sooner they replace centrist needledick cowards like Jeffries and Schumer, the better. The DNC needs some willing-to-fight fuckers who think a better country is possible if they were allowed to use their power in service of that vision. No more half-measures, no more capitulating to Republican wishes—just passing everything on the Dem base wishlist (e.g., everything you listed off), then daring Republicans to undo it all. We don’t need glad-handers any more. We need elbow-throwers.
Re: Re: Re:3
We also need to ensure any Congress can’t give up its powers to the executive ever again. And perhaps some departments that fall under the executive should be moved to their own branch with zero political appointees.
Re: Re:
Peter Thiel would never operate a coal-fired railroad.
Re:
It’s just a metric that means it takes him 12 days to make a chess move. The quality of that move is disregarded as irrelevant to the metric.
(But also he can make 3 mutually exclusive moves in 2 minutes at the drop of a hat, not counting the take-back moves after his hand has already left the piece. The metaphor just breaks down like his mind and the minds of his correligionists.)
I'm famous !!!