defunct & ditched account 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2022 @ 07:54pm

  I love how the last sentence is a non-sequitur given the article that preceded it. A non sequitur is a conclusion that does not logically follow from the argument that precedes it, in case anyone were wondering.

• On the post: Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2022 @ 07:50pm

  You just made the kind of complaints only a fascist would make.

• On the post: Medieval Times Tries To Bully Its Workers Out Of Unionizing With A Bullshit Trademark Lawsuit

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2022 @ 08:08pm

  The only reason it's clear the Medieval Times in each logo is related is by the context of the article. Otherwise, I'd assume the company is a single-location small town 'pub' in Wisconsin and their union was an acclaimed troupe of touring actors... who simply happened to share a similar name. That is to say, the union has a much better logo.

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2022 @ 05:52am

  I appreciate your response in all seriousness, I realize I was harsh and you responded by being open-minded and understanding my frustration with this situation. Though I also want to say, it's not just/necessarily privilege but perspective and context as you point out. What you said deserves a response, but one thing occurs to me: your complaints about censorship are valid, but part of the problem is that society self-censors, simply not knowing things or where to learn of them acts as a sort of non-censorship obscuring of knowledge. If you don't know the right questions or ask, or what to look for... how can you get a more comprehensive understanding of the world around you and the problems? That's not a problem unique to you, I know. I have that problem too, so does everyone. Someone on our site wrote an essay about issues with and barriers in language and perspective, but I don't know if they posted it. I've only read part of a draft, but basically the conclusions it leads me to is that we have to work harder to communicate, cooperate and find solutions even if it's an imperfect process. You seem earnest, and some of what you've said has reminded me of solutions other people have used and some of their modern equivalents. It's actually given me some thoughts about non-violent revolution that I think your government's own increasingly-totalitarian nature might enable. I'll say more later, but I think a government's stagnancy and need for control become a self-sabotaging cause of their own stultification. That may be the world's best defense against Chinese neo-imperialism (as it's been against Americans and Russians, and the other groups of colonizers you mention that preceded them in both neo-colonialism and colonialism) and your own best defense against the multiple governments including your own. You mention Lenin, but I think we've got a few better options than he did & we can learn from the mistakes of the Russian revolutions. Armed revolution usually doesn't work out so well in the long run, because it legitimizes the use of force and tends to concentrate power around people who are basically just warlords (like Stalin is an example). Those people then control internal narratives, perhaps most helpful warning Eric Blair wrote into his frankly-overrated pieces of propaganda (1984 and Animal Farm); I feel like the DPRK may be the best example of this, though China obviously has done it to an excessive degree (those 'cool' COVID-tracker wristbands), as has Russia as of late with suppressing anti-war news. You already had that going on though, with the excuse that controlling people means everything will be nice and orderly. Equally you know that niceness and such comes of ignoring those who get ground to nothing by it, building invisible fences not just around you but within you. To cut this reply short, I just think that works differently in countries that use concepts of freedom and liberty to cover from socioeconomic inequality and centuries of oppressions; the problems that make some people freer and happier tend to get paved over. And every time they push back up through the concrete, there's a gaslighting effect that makes it seem like a new problem instead of a problem that exists in continuity to the base problems that enable such unequal freedom. Eesh, I need to make sure to finish drinking my coffee before starting replies though.

• On the post: Hundreds Of FBI Employees Are Simply Walking Away From Misconduct Charges

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2022 @ 05:09am

  You're incorrect, both in stating I don't offer answers and in failing to realize the point of asking those questions was to see if you're capable of thinking instead of simply feeling bitter that you feel powerless. Did you actually engage with the thought exercises those questions ask? Of course not, you simply dismissed thinking as pointless because you assume you have no recourse other than hobbling the government, but not eliminating it entirely for some reason. Having seen that in practice, that form of 'limited government' simply results in well-armed bigots and rich pedophiles running what little there is of the government and abetting fascism. It doesn't benefit anyone who doesn't already have power, though. I'll ask one more question: You complain about an alphabet soup of agencies, but how are they really restricting you personally from anything? And I mean specifically how. Like what is it you can't do? (that's not a second question if you're counting, simply clarifying since you seem to have trouble grasping the text)

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2022 @ 04:58am

  In the same way Trump is one of them too, making excuses for them. That's why I included Trump's loving euphemism for his fascist friends. People like them couldn't have done it without their legion of fanboys and the occasional weirdo that lusts after them in a sexual manner (in Trump's case, the mom of the Oakland shooter apparently had the hots for Trump; like wtf). I tend to think of the rocket manchild's followers as more like the most devoted of stans, dude can literally do no wrong in their eyes. Remember, they see all his fails as some kind of success; like idea all his business failures taught him lessons so he could be better at business. Or the common response we see about the Twitter deal that indicates every foolish move by him is just X-dimensional chess to his stans. If you ask, them he's a proud African who left because he hated apartheid; if you bring up the anti-Black racism that runs through his companies the act like it's 'fake news' or clam up because they don't have a way to spin it beyond weak denials. Again, I want to bring up Jackson Palmer calling him essentially a talentless grifter who can't code. Which if you look at his 'engineering' and 'innovations', extends to him not really knowing shit about engineering and totally capable of coming up with ideas he didn't steal from a 1940s science fiction novel. They can't accept that he really didn't do anything to get where he is aside from have enough resources and be in the right time at the right place. Nah, he's not simply 'one of them', he's the one they're hoisting up on their shoulders, singing 'for he's a jolly good fellow' about. And that's somehow more perverse than him simply being one of many pointless bigots with too much money.

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2022 @ 04:34am

  I mean Operation Paperclip is an outdated reference when Nazis continued on well after WWII into the present day, it's just an American habit of not actually objective to fascists unless the fascists become inconvenient and disrupt the economy. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't do more to get rid of Nazis, when they don't died by old age or suicide, they die fighting people they picked a fight with. Which is essentially them dying when their victims attempt to defend themselves; I'm just saying that people aren't murdering Nazis since the deaths of Nazis are legally justified. Ironically, the only people who really murder Nazis are other Nazis, and that's probably just down to arguments about who gets the biggest pile of meth. One could say vigilante justice of Nazis is technically murder, or argue from the idea that execution is murder. Killing Nazis runs up against the problem that most of them are now part of white supremacist terrorist organizations and/or criminal drug operations, and as such have a lot of guns per Nazi on average. The socialist gun nuts won't be an effective counter, since they apparently forgot to redistribute their guns to less-fortunate comrades (I'm not complaining, I don't want to end up in those idiots GULAG any more than I want the Nazis around). And again, cops are just some kind of Venn diagram with Nazis. So really, maybe we should be doing more to get rid of cops and guns, since that would kneecap Nazis pretty effectively. Maybe actually reimpose some recruiting standards on the military and/or just get rid of the Army. Etc. Those are legalistic solutions, since it's pointless to ask that we all go kill Nazis again until it's too late.

• On the post: John Stossel Loses His Pathetic SLAPP Suit Against Facebook And Fact Checkers

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2022 @ 04:17am

  He's always been an idiot, so maybe you became less of one. Then again, you're asking that question, so maybe you haven't gotten far enough. My question: what makes a pretend or 'pseudo' libertarian different than a 'real' one?

• On the post: Hundreds Of FBI Employees Are Simply Walking Away From Misconduct Charges

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 07:37am

  That's so simplistic; people who are corrupt seek power, power structures that enable them to do that ensure they do become powerful. However, those power structures themselves are corrupt because they're based on theft and unearned authority. The idea that only the powerless are good is a religious one, an idea that enables people with power not to be held accountable. If your source of power is illegitimate, that corrupts everything that comes after and creates a practice of ever-exapanding exploitation to grow and maintain that power. Which is why the United States is so powerful, it has pursued that Roman strategy of theft and occupation since before its Founding Fathers were born. The foundation of the US as a country was enshrining the practices that had already existed for centuries in a veneer of civility and law. So should it have and wield all that power? No. Should it use its power to hold the same people that it privileges to account? I guess, but that's a lot of shoulds. Should in one hand and shit in another, see which fills up first. However, if you are going to remove power or negate it from an irresponsible state, who then does it return to? Does it return further to white terrorists who want to create a feudalistic white supremacist nation where they all live in mansions and shoot whatever Black or Brown person gets in their way? Does power return to all citizens, including those guys, because that's what's 'fair'? Even though sharing stolen power equally with them simply enables people who are already corrupt and have no real claim to that power? Or does power return to the people it was stolen from in the first place? People that have witnessed centuries of misused power and abuses, and been the constant victims of it.

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 07:08am

  I've heard he talked to them and has decided they're some very fine folks.

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 07:07am

  Let me disabuse you of a few things here: I've never seen any such vigilance, but I come from an upbringing that never imparted the illusion that the United States (or frankly any other country) is a free society. There is no bandage for people like me to pull away because it was always an oozing wound of oppression. Maybe as queer Native woman, I had far less chances for illusion, but my perspective is that ever since 1492 the Western hemisphere has been a constant stage of atrocity against people just like me. That is the foundation the US was built on, and the materials it's built from. And at the same time, my ancestors in Europe were being persecuted for their religion. Part of why I have no patience for coddlers of fascists that often appear commenting their crocodile tears about free speech, people you need to learn are simply perverse little fascists. Boyo. I'm unsure why anyone would think corporations have helping people as a priority; at best they provide services as a way to monetize help people need (and would get for free in a 'Free Society'), generally they simply serve their only prerogative. That prerogative is usually profit, so naturally quarterly reports matter where people never have. People are employees to a corporation, and frankly as fungible as lightbulbs in the corporations' perspectives. Like replacing a burnt-out lightbulb. In the history of the United States, corporations have hired private militias that have persecuted, harassed, and killed workers. Some such corporations, such as the Pinkerton Agency, are themselves the foundation and inspiration for federal police forces. I can see why you're conflicted, but I am not. As I see it, this entire place is made of five-centuries deep entrenched bullshit. The closest I come to feeling conflicted is in hoping people like me can salvage something from a world filled with settler-colonial states and makes something ACTUALLY good and free, instead of the false promises that people apparently believe. I only ever see things moving in that direction when Black and Brown women are doing the leading and motivating. Perspective is a funny thing, because for a long time it was shocking to me that what is obvious to me is somehow arcane or obscured to people like yourself. You don't seem to realize that tools like moderation remain available in situations that aren't filled with bigots harassing people to death. Some dickhead above said that targeting trans people was an invisible line these Nazi fucks crossed. That's incorrect for so many reasons, least of which is that they had been harassing trans people from the beginning, as well as people that care about them. It's a pretty fucking clear line where moderators become pointless in some cases, and one such clear line is organizing harassment campaigns that result in actual harm to people, targeted against marginalized people. I've never seen anyone give a fuck about that except the victims, which as I said is the real line that was crossed in the hate-forum context: they fucked with the wrong person. Who then mobilized a bunch of other victims and the people that actually gave a shit about them. That's vigilantism, but one could also call it community solidarity and standing up to bullies. The only people who will ever do that are people who actually have your back, not people who really only see you as number with some associated names. That is, not governments, not cops, not corporations, not churches, none of that shit. Those people have all been in on oppressing the most marginalized people from the beginning, and the further away one is from that the easier it is to never notice it's a problem in the first place apparently. Or to not be invested in seeing it as a serious problem even if you do see it. The cards I'm dealt are knowing that people lie me are kidnapped off roads and never found, or found in ditches, found in woods, founds as the barest remains after being eaten by the pigs of the farmer that kidnapped and killed you, the people that kidnap you and lock you in a barn for their own amusement. I see cards showing the only people that helped those women and girls avoid that fate are themselves. That's the reality I grew up with, as well as the reality that by the time anyone with power or responsibility or authority does something about it, victims that had looked like me in life would already be dead. And here it is, the same thing happening to trans people, Black and Brown women especially. It feels awfully familiar, reading about trans women disappearing and only being found months later, perhaps again in a ditch or washed up on the banks of a river. Some people see this as a concern of enabling a government to do worse things, but it already does enough bad simply through inaction. That's not to mention cops being the perpetrators of these kidnappings and murders and quite often rapes, which their jobs give them the resources to do on a serial basis without being caught. There has never been real accountability for race-based hate, because the systems of accountability insulated racists from the very foundation of the American government; a government used as a template by many 'free societies' that came after. Also a template Nazis used to murder civilians en masse for being part of marginalized groups they wanted extinct, starting with disabled people but also including Black people (hunted in gangs, not put in camps), nomadic people, trans and other queer people, and obviously Jewish people. Quite similar to the system President Lincoln imposed on Natives in America, including feeding people just enough food to die slowly on. No, all I hope is someday we can make this better, but it's an uphill battle out of centuries of bullshit as I said.

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 06:22am

  Sounds like you're just along for the ride and if you want it to stop, you need to find bigger wrenches to throw in the gears than the grit of words denied by censorship. To be clear, I'm referring to something you may find impossible and I'm sure discussing would put you in hot water for: complete overthrow of the government via revolution. After all, that's usually called treason here in the US. If you don't, though, what will disrupt that trajectory? A diasporic movement seems even less-likely. Given that civil society is so controlled, what actual civil solutions do have that would have any impact at all?

• On the post: An (Im)perfect Way Forward On Infrastructure Moderation?

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 06:13am

  Who is 'we' here? Because plenty of people clearly don't care about violent bigots, seeing it as their literal birthright to be racist. The history of America kind-of supports that viewpoint, and that's the history they want the present to be. And as of 2016 they keep voting their Nazis in. Ever heard of shitbags like Paul Gosar? Not only elected, but publicly harassing political foes. Nothing is going to change until they're dealt with more throroughly than all those Nazis that frankly got off light. Plenty of Nazis not only didn't die in combat (not murdered, given that they were belligerent enemy combatants with a tendency to commit war crimes like murdering civilians en masse), they became government officials after WWII. America aided and abetted the freedom of Nazis after WWII, after all.

• On the post: Hundreds Of FBI Employees Are Simply Walking Away From Misconduct Charges

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 05:59am

  Can fix what's working as design?

• On the post: Chicago Sun-Times Kills Its Paywall; Makes Its Content Free For Everyone

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 05:54am

  You know, I stopped reading NYT for two reasons, even after the paywall: their already overrated reporting became less worse and they started plagiarizing competitors. Because when you decide that the article you're reading isn't worth finding a way around the paywall anymore... Then it's neither worth stealing or reading. I almost feel sorry for people paying them any money, but those people are clearly schmucks so no.

• On the post: Chicago Sun-Times Kills Its Paywall; Makes Its Content Free For Everyone

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2022 @ 05:49am

  Maybe he likes to read more than the sports section, because every time I've read the Tribune, it's like trying to interpret the meaning of two week old reheated cow patties.

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Texts Suggest Way More People In The Silicon Valley Elite Should Have Imposter Syndrome

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2022 @ 01:02pm

  To make a comparison, it's a bit like saying, "I have an idea, it's called soap. And the second half of the puzzle of making soap work is... soap. Also, you store it the thing you normally store soap in, but that's a totally new idea because I just invent soap." Then later on (this is the other part) realizing soap has existed for thousands of years and saying, "Oh wait, nevermind." Especially as the proposed details of this reinvented soap made of soap and stored in whatever you normally store soap in, is actually a worse version of soap and doesn't really wash everything off even after 20 uses in a row. To me it's not even a WTF so much as something cryptobros have mused about for years and even built without realizing some other cryptobro already made because no one who thinks it through really wants it. Genius AI guy apparently thinks a database made of database and stored in the normal place one stores databases is new until he realized it's not; since that's how literally every blockchain functions: a database stored in the way databases are stored. I don't think any of that blockchain social media stuff has really taken off, hence my particular joke about this 'genius' idea. He says it's a puzzle, but there is no puzzle there, it's not novel, it's not new, it's not even difficult in theory. Just pointless. Jackson Palmer said he's a grifter and his quote shows him somehow ignorant of the existence of hard drives as a type of memory; the Secondary memory normally used for storing large amounts of information. Or maybe he hallucinated the need for everything to be held in RAM. It's almost like he stopped learning about computers when they stopped storing everything in RAM (and ROMs, which I somehow wonder if he's ever even heard of), where you loaded everything from floppy discs you'd have to continually swap out. How that pertains to blockchains is that they're already stored as copies on hard drives, which again is a type of memory. Aside from the cryptocurrency scams, blockchains are used by companies for internal logistics where only appending information to a database is appropriate. Again, blockchains are databases that add data and read dat, but don't remove it and organize data in blocks for reasons related to that. It sounds like all he's thinking of is a centralized blockchain storing relatively trivial information, which is a bad blockchain use case and probably a part of why the previous/current attempts were/are duds. Since data is only appended and read, any data contained in the blockchain remains in all future versions of it. No deleting tweets whether they're 'spam bots', misspellings, full of TOS violations for hatespeech, no reconsidered thoughts like deleting memes from the day before comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler. None of which should be a problem for a Free Speech absolutist like him, so I don't see what the problem is. Maybe someone explained to him that in addition to that, it'd almost certainly be incredibly slow with the intended use and need to update blocks etc. Why then, reinvent Twitter?

• On the post: Employees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2022 @ 12:02pm

  I'm not going even to start on Meta's ideas about emulating a keyboard and other aspect of a normal work environment in VR. I keep imagining people tethered to virtual cubicles and forced to wear headsets (that they paid for) to do any work at all, entirely in that virtual space. Neo's desk job in the Matrix is a great comparison in some ways and a big nope to that. Seeing that did a lot to push me to go into the liberal arts instead of continuing some IT-related path in college. Unfortunately I never quite escaped the tech matrix.

• On the post: Employees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2022 @ 11:52am

  Top used emoji to be sure.

• On the post: Employees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

  

  defunct & ditched account ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2022 @ 11:51am

  So I read those books, saw those movies; my take away was that a 'metaverse' would be an awful and uncool place to exist. As a way to access information, a text-based interface seems better and maybe that's why webpages full of text continue to outlast attempts at getting people to adopt a technology that most people don't find as cool as enthusiasts. As you point out, they're dystopian fantasies that use a cyber realm as a major plot device and to a lesser degree a major part of their settings. However, even in those fictions people who spend a lot of time in VR are outcasts or at least niche weirdos practicing what's essentially an arcane and unpopular art. I feel like anyone trying to bring those worlds into existence either lacks critical thinking skills and would be easily exploited, or are those intending to exploit them. About a year ago I visited a local VR arcade to do some research for the story. It was incredibly off-putting and reminded me more of a basement recroom (despite being ground floor) than an arcade of any kind, even the now-defunct LAN arcades from when I was younger. Aside from myself, my partner, and the proprietor it was empty for entire time I talked to him. The hype for VR revives itself time and again, since the heydey of Jaron Lanier. Who fears really seem to be Zuckerberg's playbook. Oh well, Sweet Baby Rays in 3D!

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