BernardoVerda 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1058)

• On the post: Ukraine Turns To Flying Machine Guns And Autonomous AI-Controlled Drone Swarms To Counter Russian Numbers

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2024 @ 07:04pm

  No. He loves you too.

• On the post: Ukraine Turns To Flying Machine Guns And Autonomous AI-Controlled Drone Swarms To Counter Russian Numbers

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2024 @ 07:03pm

  Anti-personnel mines. (Yes, I know that the USA has declined to sign that treaty.)

• On the post: Vermont Man Who Cursed At, Flipped Off Cop Scores Settlement From The State

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2024 @ 11:51am

  "Just so" stories

  I'm an old retired geezer, who's worked in several different fields -- from outdoors physical to office work -- and I have never, not once, heard this "origin story" ever before. Naturally, this makes me a little suspicious. And in fact, a quick web-search indicates that "flipping the bird" has been recognized as a vulgar insult since at least the ancient Greeks (and occasionally, in some cultures) as a gesture to ward against "the evil eye". So I can't help but wonder if this "Just So" tale about the one-finger salute having once been, or plausibly being considered, a threat, might actually be just a newly invented narrative in service of an agenda.

• On the post: Vermont Man Who Cursed At, Flipped Off Cop Scores Settlement From The State

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2024 @ 11:35am

  Arguably, one of the most effective ways to pressure "the system" to implement those things, could well be to have some sort of personal "malpractice" liability insurance, that the individual officers would be responsible for paying. It's hardly as if these police officers are underpaid -- if medical practitioners can manage, then at their pay scale, police officers certainly could too. This way, perhaps the police unions (or at least, the police union memberships) might be much readier to see those other, oversight measures as being in their own interest.

• On the post: Civil Rights Complaint Filed Against Illinois Schools For Using Cops To Handle Normal Discipline Issues

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2024 @ 01:31pm

  And as we have seen here, school officials don't necessarily know how to exercise reasonable judgement, so relying on them to enforce discipline may have been problematic as well -- especially in cases like described here, where the school system has clearly demonstrated a pronounced (and historically problematic) racial bias in its application of "discipline".

• On the post: RIAA Of Six Years Ago Debunks RIAA Of Today’s AI Lawsuit Claims

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2024 @ 07:07am

  He doesn't understand his own comments, either.

• On the post: RIAA Of Six Years Ago Debunks RIAA Of Today’s AI Lawsuit Claims

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2024 @ 01:11pm

  Am I really going to have to learn to read the poster/by-line first, before I bother reading the comment?

• On the post: Assange Walks Free, But Press Freedoms Are Still In Peril

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2024 @ 02:18pm

  He aided our fascist adversaries, both foreign and domestic.

  Well, it that's your issue, what's the problem? After all, that simply puts Assange in good company with the Republican Party, the previous American President, and the biggest television broadcaster in America.

• On the post: Gavin Newsom Jumps On Moral Panic Bandwagon To Ban Phones In School Despite Evidence Suggesting It Doesn’t Work

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2024 @ 04:00pm

  That's really quite awful. Stephen King could probably write a best-seller horror novel based on that.

• On the post: Gavin Newsom Jumps On Moral Panic Bandwagon To Ban Phones In School Despite Evidence Suggesting It Doesn’t Work

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2024 @ 12:42pm

  I seem to have been unusually fortunate, in that the schools I attended while growing up were very much run on the principle that students are young people in an educational institution, learning to become responsible adults and encouraged to act accordingly... rather than prisoners in some sort of penal institution, irredeemably irresponsible and untrustworthy, that need to be subjected to strict authoritarian control.

• On the post: Gavin Newsom Jumps On Moral Panic Bandwagon To Ban Phones In School Despite Evidence Suggesting It Doesn’t Work

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2024 @ 12:31pm

  "Grifting" is an obligatory job skill for a politician -- even the "good" ones. The political process and the voting public both make some level of grifting a practical necessity, for any politician seeking to get elected, or reelected. The difference is how deeply and how willingly they participate in the grift. While some have a care for the concept of integrity and avoid grift as carefully as the political game will permit, others eagerly grasp the grift as a pillar of -- even the foundation of and reason for -- their entire political career. And although grifters can be found in all sectors of political inclination, it's very clear that in contemporary politics, the happy grifters, untroubled by concerns for personal integrity or care for their constituents, quite naturally and unmistakably gravitate towards the so-called "Right" wing of the political spectrum, to the point that "Right" wing is ballasted as much by grift, as by any interest in democracy or constructive public policy.

• On the post: Gavin Newsom Jumps On Moral Panic Bandwagon To Ban Phones In School Despite Evidence Suggesting It Doesn’t Work

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2024 @ 12:13pm

  Pool. Pinball. Rock & Roll. Ouija Boards. Cable Television. Dragons & Dungeons. Satanic Cults. Computer Games. The Internet. Social Media... You know what? I'm sensing a kind of... pattern here. I think the real problem might be all the supposed adults, who apparently are disturbingly vulnerable to Moral Panics of all sorts -- and can't resist the urge to project their own insecurity, immaturity, and inability to think clearly, upon "the children".

• On the post: Publisher Of ‘Carcassonne’ Sends C&D Notices Over Use Of The Word ‘Meeple’

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2024 @ 04:10pm

  That simple fact simply doesn't matter, because the real question isn't "Who's right?" The real question is "How much are you willing to spend fighting this in court?"

• On the post: Warning: Believing The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning May Be Hazardous To Teens’ Health

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2024 @ 01:18pm

  Three thousand year old Jewish scholastic and legal tradition recognizes, and describes at least eight genders -- as these differences could actually make a difference in religious observance and legal obligations. That's what happens when one is more concerned with understanding the reality one is faced with, than with trying to decree realities that are inconvenient or that one feels uncomfortable with, simply don't actually exist.

• On the post: Publisher Of ‘Carcassonne’ Sends C&D Notices Over Use Of The Word ‘Meeple’

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2024 @ 12:44pm

  Apparently that doesn't mean what you think it means, either.

• On the post: Publisher Of ‘Carcassonne’ Sends C&D Notices Over Use Of The Word ‘Meeple’

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2024 @ 11:43am

  Degenerate rant deliberately not quoted

  You keep using those words. None of them mean what you think they mean.

• On the post: Publisher Of ‘Carcassonne’ Sends C&D Notices Over Use Of The Word ‘Meeple’

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2024 @ 11:40am

  Even if 'Meeple' was/is trademarked, is that actually enough to bar use by others, in light of it being a long-established, generic term (in fact, so long and so established, that everybody was surprised to learn that the term was trademarked, let alone belonged to an established brand)? It seems to me that 'meeple' has suffered a fate similar to 'kleenex' -- except there's no dispute over whether Kimberly-Clark invented the term. "Meeple" has become, perhaps always was, and in any case ought to be considered a thoroughly generic term.

• On the post: Warning: Believing The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning May Be Hazardous To Teens’ Health

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 18 Jun, 2024 @ 04:04pm

  Which, to a certain cast of mind, is an excellent example of how "social media" is a huge problem that we have to "keep away from our children" (more honestly, "to keep our children away from").

• On the post: Canada Imposes 5% Tax On Streaming To Fund Local News, Diverse Content

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2024 @ 11:12am

  It depends on the talking heads, and the interviewers, and the production support (researchers, fact-checkers, etc). But yeah -- most "talking head" news programs are just filler, with no meaningful push-back on facts or logic, nor meaningful digging in to the roots of the story.

• On the post: 11th Circuit Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot And Killed Dog That Had Already Been Neutralized By A Taser

  

  BernardoVerda ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2024 @ 11:01am

  "This is my weapon, this is my gun. one is for shooting, one is for fun."

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