jaybrendansmith
Joined 1,032 karma
Running Product and Engineering teams for b2b
- jaybrendansmithCompletely agree with this. There's a reason the FCC exists and it has nothing to do with electromagnetic frequencies. This agency, just like the Fed, needs to be broken away from politics completely. It's almost too late.
- It might be just me, but I just like to be surrounded by human energy. I don't need to talk to anyone, and actually that can make it worse. But to be onstage, playing live music, in the zone, surrounded by positive energy: Really there's nothing better in this world.
- We should all be concerned. I was watching Ken Burns, and it seems Washington ordered all his troops to be inoculated for Smallpox, and it made a huge difference in that war. Vaccines are good science, and the amount of testing we do to check safety is simply astonishing. We got extremely lucky with Covid-19, it was a warning shot, and we are taking away the wrong lessons from it. When bird flu comes with 50% mortality (half of the people you know will die, mostly children) we will go into complete lockdown with a required MRNA vaccine and we will thank God or Providence that we have people with the knowledge to make them.
- A great essay. I would say this is 'business ethics' for certain. It is not typically personal ethics, nor Christian or Muslim ethics. But this describes better than anything I have read what happens to every corporation, eventually. Bean counters and ombsbudsmen vs operators, day 1 vs day 2, all comes down to this. If you are CEO, you must always side with the operator, the 'man in the arena'. It is difficult to do it but that's what your authority is for. Where this falls into serious trouble is with externalities. For this we still do need strong regulators.
- There's a difference between favors and corruption, there has always been. It's something called regulations. We the people must tolerate a certain amount of favors, but there's a line: You cannot accept these favors while in office, particularly so when the exchange involves a public good or decision. You must sell your peanut farm before you hold office. You can't accept a plane from a foreign government in exchange for use of an airbase while in office. The things you do in office must be for the people. The things you do after may be immoral but they don't impact your decisions while in public service.
- This too, shall pass, but we need to make it happen. I am looking forward to the day when we spit on their remains, destroy their ballroom, torch his painting and turn this administration into a footnote in history that future historians will hold up as an object lesson. Let's hope it happens without too much bloodshed, but we fought too hard and for too long to watch this happen to this once great republic.
- And when you can build one, you will also get telepathy, telekinesis, clairaudience and clairvoyance. I can't wait until I can send a directed thought to someone else.
- MAGA is a Russian Psyops initiative. Very effective.
- Not really sure what he is but this comes immediately to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strahd_von_Zarovich "He is a malignant narcissist trapped by his malignant narcissism – forever alone, forever feared and unable to change. Salvation is beyond him. He is framed as inhumanity personified, often serving as a cautionary tale: once you lose your humanity, you can never get it back."
- Excellent, but was thinking more of a Cloaker, Soulleecher, or Succubus. These creatures seem safe/helpful or innocent, but then attack, draining your life force and leave you as a discarded husk.
- But you must admit it was a gamble at the time. My mother got Covid early, before lockdowns. She spent a week in the hospital and almost died. She then had a stroke, she can no longer walk. She also got cancer, and now can barely talk. Please don't tell me it was not deadly dangerous to older folks. If the bird flu comes, and with it a mortality rate of 50%, and there is a vaccine, everybody will be locked down and forced to take the vaccine. It wont matter what anybody's opinions are about the possible harmful effects of lockdowns or vaccines.
- As a democratic socialist, I find this article fails to back its claim that equity is theft. Workers at startups get equity; this is why they work so hard. Would a worker cooperative be better? Possibly, but there is little incentive for the person with the capital to risk their wealth if they don't get a stake that is commensurate to the risk they are taking. I think if anything, startups are a massive improvement over public corporations because they regularly provide a means for a talented person with no capital to become an owner. If I were to critique capitalism, I would hardly start with a startup, which is the closest thing we have to a worker cooperative. I would go after private equity, which is perhaps the most evil of all of capitalism in its various forms, the equivalent of a blood sucking creature straight out of the D&D Monster Manual.
- I think this concept is good from the perspective of focus and targeting issues, meaning that de-emphasizing certain issues seen out of touch with the mainstream is important. But remember that a lot of that is the fruit of the right's propaganda arm, Fox News and all the rest, hanging cultural albatross in order to push the perception that candidates are extreme left. One of the most successful things about Mamdani is message focus - he's as good if not better than Bill Clinton - which if managed correctly can become shared talking points. Having a central messaging office like Fox News is what sits behind most of the Republican Party's success. Of course, one must be careful to ensure the messaging does not start to warp reality, which explains much of what has gone wrong with the Republicans. (e.g., They believe their own Bullsh*t)
- I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20 hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.
- This is all about student loans, and destroying the academia, with a nice dose of quackery and anti-intellectualism thrown in for amusement. While it does not impact me at all to know my degrees are no longer 'professional', it really impacts folks trying to get loans to pay for college. Having less nurses and teachers out there is going to create many problems in the coming years, that is if we actually care about we the people.
- I still am having trouble comprehending that we are in a timeline where our own police are gassing US citizens. Don't they all take an oath to 'protect and serve'? Who do they think they are protecting and serving? We the People, that's who. That includes someone who is peacefully protesting these federal lawbreakers and oath breakers.
- Anybody imagining themselves as alive during the Franco regime and not considering throwing a Molotov cocktail or two doesn't believe in freedom, equality, or democracy. It's disturbing to see how many fascists seem to comment on Hacker News. Begone, you contemptible Francoists!
- It's not existential for the Republicans. THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT. This setup is essentially anti-democratic, which is why they are able to murder hundreds of thousands of aids patients in Africa and kill 'future you' through their cancelling the bulk of investment in life sciences.
- The point is they should not have to. The funds were already appropriated by congress. This is a political maneuver by the Republicans to avoid bringing congress back into session, because they want to give the justice department time to redact the Epstein files and remove all evidence of Trump. We all know he's a pedophile and a rapist already, but the Trump base doesn't want to believe it. You simply cannot make this stuff up, it reads like a ridiculous Hollywood script. This article lays it all out plainly in black and white, for all the good that it will do.
- Actually, there is $500 billion that is REQUIRED to be used to fund SNAP. But Republicans are not activating it, because if they do, they need to bring congress back in session, and then they will be forced to vote on releasing the Epstein files. Get it?