There's the idealized America that we learn about in school, then there's America as it is.
I guess ideals are a nice tool to compare something against to measure something's relative value. But they can also be used as a whitewash. Maybe the difference is how engaged an informed citizen body is with the government.
Ideal or not, it's propaganda. We're lead to believe only other countries use propaganda to control their citizens, shield them from truths, and paint foreign countries as "lesser than" or, worse "the enemy". All the while, we're doing the same thing. Maybe I've had the wool pulled over my eyes my first 4 1/2 decades, but it seems pretty clear now.
They don’t pay teachers enough to challenge the norm and deal with the fallout. Whether that’s by design or not… probably? The idea here being to incentivize teachers to do the bare minimum.
> There's the idealized America that we learn about in school, then there's America as it is.
I strongly dislike this take.
There is the idealized America that we wish America was, and there is an entire continuum from that point all the way to "no functioning state at all Mad Max hellhole". Treating all points that are not exactly at "idealized America" as equivalent discards a massive amount of nuance and effectively makes it impossible to advocate for incremental change.
Yes, America is not perfect. But that doesn't mean that the America we had before Trump's massive corruption is identical to the American we have today.
To be fair, taking bribes for your presidential library has been apart of American politics for a while. Also, sorry, I forgot we don't call it "bribing" anymore, it's called "lobbying" now ;)
This is exactly the track we're on, if you hadn't noticed the last week. The train has left the station. We likely are arriving a lot sooner than you may think.
For the past 40 years one party in particular has lectured me about how they are the ones who instill the values of this idealized America you mention, how they are the ones who are the real patriots, and how they only can interpret what the founding fathers intended.
We are discovering that enough of the electorate does not care when some politicians do it, so that the ideal is unenforceable, and I think it’s because of the media.
after Nixon various people came together to form media organizations explicitly to prevent holding people like Nixon accountable, today is a result of that and our failure to hold Nixon (and before him the leaders of the south in the civil war) accountable
Sure, during the 2018 election, candidates, parties, PACs, and outsiders combined spent about $5 billion – $2.5 billion on Democrats, $2 billion on Republicans, and $0.5 billion on third parties. And although that sounds like a lot of money to you or me, on the national scale, it’s puny. The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year. Americans spent about 2.5x as much on almonds as on candidates last year.
This conflated two things as equivalent, and they are not equivalent.
Buying almonds is a market exchange with good transparency around what you’re getting and how much it’s going to cost.
Elections are not open market exchange. For starts, you aren’t buying a good. Another is that this discounts a lot of other election adjacent activities like all the party volunteers who are unpaid, for example. Those don’t count toward spend but if it did I imagine the totals would get much higher.
Not to mention, we are talking about someone getting elected who very well does have influence over citizenry. Buying almonds is just buying almonds. Getting elected is a transference of power.
Honestly elections are surprisingly cheap for what is gotten in return, but they couldn’t be more different
I'd say that by spending money on elections, both as donations and as taxes, we do buy a good: good governance (preferably) and peaceful transfer of power.
The problem is that the market is not efficient: only 2-3 offers, mostly from the same two brands, each brand with its own known serious problems. The process is actually an auction of sorts (first past the post), and returns are not accepted!
USA should eliminate first-past-the-post voting, and replace it with something like ranked choice voting. Allows for more brands in the election, as people can preference minor parties and not 'throw away their vote' if they didnt get enough votes in total.
2018 wasn't a presidential race, which consistently have higher spending. 2020 and 2024 were each over $15B, and there is a steady upward trend in real dollars.
The current supreme court also has a tendency to strike down campaign finance regulations. Everyone knows citizens United, but more recently e.g. AFP v Bonta (2021) struck down reporting requirements in California, which paves the way for unlimited anonymous spending, and Snyder (2022), which reclassifies anything except the most obvious bribes as "gratuities". We'll probably have more 5-4 or 6-3 decisions in the next four years that increase money in politics.
Not sure how is paying for food relevant to paying for politician. In many countries there is absolute cap per campaign to make it fair. Making it 'fair' is maybe not that relevant in two party system but still that amount of money from single entity is corruption.
Yup, it distorts what a politician will say and what bills they'll sponsor if they're elected. The most dangerous thing the $12 billion in almond money will do is buy a politician to allow them to skirt worker protections and environmental protections to continue maximizing almond money. That puts the interests of the politician not with the general population who wants clean water and safe non-abusive jobs but rather the few almond farm owners who want to maximize almond production while minimizing worker costs (and perhaps locking out new almond farmers from the industry).
This sort of kleptocracy is the problem with American politics. Bribery laws are so laughably bad that you have to literally stuff gold bars in your suit pockets before you run the risk of being prosecuted. You have to be a grade A moron to get caught.
Speaking of grade A morons. Our political establishment here in Ohio jumped into bed with a huge publicly traded energy company who was pushing millions of dollars each to various individuals. I'm still boggled that these people thought they could bag millions of dollars and no one would notice.
It used to be that when payoffs to politicians were discovered it would be paltry amounts like $10-30k that no one would notice and which are easily ingested into someone's finances without ringing any bells with the IRS or regulators. You would ask yourself why they would risk their career for such a small amount of money.
These politicians and appointed regulators in Ohio were trying to literally absorbed generational wealth without regulators or the IRS noticing. Impossible.
Our governor DeWine, who was definitely knowledgeable of all this and involved, was smart enough to keep his hands off the money--though they did fund his campaigns legally. He stands to serve out his final term and be replaced by one of the others in the cabal. (Yost), or Viveck Ramaswammy. The times.
It is not allowed. People are conflating a private lawsuit between Donald Trump and some large corps, with the Justice Dept suing large corps. Justice Dept can't settle and give money the money away. Let's not let politics lobotomize our common sense.
The grift never ends. The library will then purchase tens of millions of dollars worth of The Art of the Deal and stock the shelves with his wisdom.
BTW, the Orange One has now modelled himself after Adolf Hitler, a man who's political accomplishments no other has yet to achieve in human history. If you don't have time to read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, watch Hitler: A Career. It is quite clear that they (Trump's team) are applying the lessons from that era and are aiming at retaining power.
It's hugely different. We limit donations from lobbyists, force them to register their activities. This settlement goes straight to Trump's pockets like Frank Hagues desk drawer.
"You can't sue, or at least you can't win any kind of $$$ as a result of a lawsuit, or at the very least you can't settle a lawsuit for $$$ if you could possibly use that $$$ for campaigns or if you could use it to pay off loans from a past campaign."
(or maybe that but where "you" == Trump).
A rule of that sort would mean that you'd have no recourse whatsoever against any torts interfering with your political campaigns. Utilities could cut water, gas, electric, and sewer services to campaign headquarters for any campaigns they don't like. Etc.
That cannot be a rule. Perhaps a no-settlements rule would be OK -- you have to win at trial or you get nothing (and loser pays).
In this case I'd say that on the one hand a settlement has the potential to be a bribe since we don't know what a trial might have yielded, but also that $25m is objectively not very much considering Meta's action and its impact on the Trump campaign. That the Trump campaign has no debt (I think?) and it's over and he can't run for re-election, all mitigates the settlement resembling a bribe.
In the United States of America private corporations can refuse to permit a presidential candidate to use their platform. Meta had a very strong first amendment defense. ABC had a very strong defense against the libel case because most of us agree that sticking a finger into someone's vagina without them asking for it is in fact rape. CBS got sued over damages for misdescribing an interview with his opponent. He won that election. What damages are there? The NY Times has reported that CBS executives view the settlement as a way to win favor.
Technically true but it's very clear what's going on. The court case was one pretty much everyone agreed Trump would lose. Trump literally told Zuckerberg the court case needed to be resolved if he wanted to get into the inner circle... ta-da, $25m later, it's all gone.
Settling cases even when its clear you are going to win is actually a thing that happens more often than you would think. Sometimes the settlement is cheaper than paying lawyers in a drawn out trial. Not to mention the PR cost.
I suppose, but i don't really see the advantage of doing it as part of the settlement. If zuck wanted to give trump a bribe why not just donate directly?
In addition to what lazide said, this suit was filed in 2021. Zuck didn’t know then that Trump would win the next election or which way public sentiments would change. But now here we are.
You really don't want to know about GRAS (Generally recognized as safe) then. 700 food substances were grandfathered into the food supply chain and most new things are self-affirmed by the company selling them.
Sometimes no bugs are allowed at all, people be getting upset if their pop tarts have bugs in them.
Sometimes it's like some bugs are allowed and just part of it like when I buy organic broccoli at the farmers market and need to soak it to get whatever those things are in there out. Or when I get those little mummified bugs in the bottom of oatmeal tins.
Sometimes it's like the food is literally coated in bugs like all that stuff that's coated on schellac. Which, finally to bring it back to a callback to your point, is both GRAS and also made of bugs.
Shellac isn't made of bugs - it's made by bugs. Specifically, it's the resin secreted by a female lac beetle onto the branch of the trees that they live and feed on.
The problem is that there's no definition of ultra-processed. It's generally a "I know it when I see it" type of thing but of course that means it's unevenly applied in a world without nuance.
To use your example, surely hand made noodles aren't ultra processed. But are Bertolli noodles ultra processed? The only difference in ingredients is what emulsifier is used.
Food, biology, etc. is complicated and reducing it to TikTok sound bites often results in squabbles.
I routinely make noodles by grinding durum wheat in a home flour mill and making the dough by hand. Probably the lowest level of processing possible I guess.
Let's look at the coverage of California's requirement that Type 48 license holders provide drug testing kits to patrons. Because the article/reporter wanted to provide a look into both sides of the issue (those who like the requirementand those who don't) they included this quote:
"While I've heard about drink spiking, I suspect that it's extremely rare, at least here in the Palm Desert area."
If the reporter had been providing all the facts, they would have immediately followed that with the rate of occurrence of drink spiking. If it was "extremely rare", they could have then followed up with a government official's thoughts on why the requirement is necessary even if the drink spiking is "extremely rare".
There was no such information provided, leaving the reader with one man's opinion that is clearly only conjecture but given credibility by being included in the article. In an effort to present both sides, but surely on a deadline that prevented proper research, they left the reader with the idea that drink spiking is rare and that the government is simply overreaching.
Mainly indirect measures; reports at womens centres for example- not all spiking events are reported by any means .. but a rise in reports likely follows a rise in spiking (or the effectiveness of a recent campaign to report such things).
Consistent sampling of the dregs tray at various bars would be an indicator, as would sewerage sampling (as used to track other drug use).
Conceivably spiking rates might also be reflected in certain types of bathroom grafitti or social media posts.
I find it hard to believe that someone would say something similar about any other aspect of cultural identity and not be instantly flagged for it.
Are you truly advocating that people should no longer be proud of their cultural identity? Are you applying that to all the folks in tech who proudly identify as Christian or Jewish? Does it apply to Italian Americans and Indigenous people? What about folks who are proud to speak endangered languages, like West Flemish or Romani?
>> Are you truly advocating that people should no longer be proud of their cultural identity?
My take on the comment was that so long as a trait is relevant to some people, it will be dispised by some other people. Either it's completely benign or it's somewhat polarizing. There are few things that only range from neutral to positive without detractors.
All of the examples you give are unique in their own ways, I don't have the wherewithal to go through them all, but if I choose one:
A person describing themselves as being Christian is only signaling that they are a follower of the Christian faith to some degree.
They are different for that reason. Christian doesn't have a physical appearance associated with it (well, other than say vestments or pendants).
All Christians are Christian.
Not all Asian-appearing folk are culturally Asian, not all culturally Asian folk are Asian-appearing. Even the concept of "Asian culture" (I do of course accept that such a concept exists) is super general in a much wider ranging way than the Christian faith. Maybe that explains it better.
To illustrate it in another way, imagine some LLM prompts:
"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a Christian about their faith?"
"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a White person about their culture?"
There is just a fundamental... grammatical wrongness(?) about the last one in my mind, I'm not sure that I can explain it if it's not already obvious.
Because my friend who just worked for years to become an American citizen after immigrating here and working for the US government still has other Americans tell him to "go back to where he came from" because he's evidently not American enough for them.
A hell of a lot of people want to "just be American" and a lot of Americans won't let them.
Some people are just angry and will direct it at whatever. Not saying it's OK, but once you really internalize the idea that people's reactions say more about themselves than about you life gets better.
That makes the bold assumption those people aren't your boss or your customers or your landlord or the policeman stopping you on the side of the road. There's real risk, both financially and physically, to just assuming that "random anger" is something you can internalize and ignore.
People who are "just angry and will direct it at whatever" can be very dangerous, as we've seen in the US even this week and in every school shooting and terrorist attack for years.
This is, terribly, the American experience. It used to be the Irish and the Italians before we decided they were "White enough." It doesn't mean we should just ignore it and accept it. If you're mad, that doesn't give you a pass to be a racist asshole to the first person less pale than a porcelain plate you see.
If anything, the fact that people have to know and cope with random Americans being this exact sort of racist asshole to them is the reason they form their own communities and see themselves as Black Americans or Asian Americans or any other sort of national or racial group.
> It’s because many of those “Americans” do not try to integrate, want to bring their culture with them...
That's okay, more varied culture enriches, and I enjoy the added richness.
>...and have a “what’s in it for me” view of [insert anything here].
That unfortunately describes a huge share of human beings on this planet.
> The label “X-American” (replace X with a foreign country) should not exist
I disagree: I think it's totally okay for people to recognize a part of their identity (key words: a part of, since a person's identity comes from many sources), rather than being forced to hide it.
> If you identify as this you are marking yourself as different from Americans.
Each individual (Americans included) is different from all the other billions of individuals on this planet (other Americans included), and that's okay. It would be weird to try to be forced to deny that totally-okay fact. Thus, a self-described Hoosier or Floridian or Cheesehead or Californian or Plumber or Texan might differentiate themselves similarly without renouncing any "American-ness". Adding one of many possible identity labels (whether race or origin or sports team or profession etc) doesn't negate all others.
> They will push for pro Indian initiatives (see H1B abuse, etc) at the expense of Americans. Ironically, this is also the cause of the discrimination they’ll face.
Ironically, this claim is itself racist: Asserting that people of a certain race are coming to get you because of their race, and thus discrimination against that race is justified, is racist (and a tired racist trope at that).
Unfortunately though, most racists I have seen are racist simply because they feel the other race is different from them, and feel that their victims are bad and/or deserve less than themselves. I've seen racists remark with nothing less than anger and disgust at baby pictures of children of other races. Babies, dude.
For another example, I'll open up and share an unfortunate case I had with a family member when we were visiting a science museum: Upon seeing how many non-white people were there, said family member made several off-color remarks to me. But these people (many of them children) weren't abusing anything, they weren't doing anything "at the expense of Americans". They were just normal people, many of them likely citizens, learning and having a good time. Them being interested in science isn't a problem, and they weren't stopping anyone else from coming to the museum. It's just that they were disproportionately represented among the sample of Americans interested in science. Good for them, science is good.
Except it doesn't. Look at the places that have the "happiest" people on earth, e.g. Denmark. They are monocultures where nearly everyone has the same traditions and history.
And in recent times they have had a lot more immigrants, and it's causing a lot of chaos.
Varied culture divides. It creates "us" and "them" groups, this is baked into our tribal psyche as humans.
I'm sorry to hear that you personally don't like the richness that other cultures add, but on the plus side, I do! :)
> Varied culture divides. It creates "us" and "them" groups, this is baked into our tribal psyche as humans
It takes someone seeking to divide, to divide. Embracing your culture and a part of your identity doesn't inherently divide anything. Ironically, the division often happens when someone says 'THEY embrace a culture I don't embrace, that must mean THEY are dividing us".
I recently went to an Ethiopian restaurant, enjoyed it, chatted with the owners, and didn't feel like they were dividing themselves from me, despite them embracing their culture. It'd be a shame for most restaurants to shut down because they embrace a culture that you don't embrace.
Have you considered the possibility that you are the one dividing people based on the components of their identity and culture and deciding which components are okay for them to have (because they match yours) and which aren't? Removing all culture but yours would be pretty boring (nothing personal, this goes for any monoculture).
Are you truly advocating that people should no longer be proud of their cultural identity?
(Shrug) If you didn't build it, what could possibly justify taking pride in it?
Pride in inborn cultural identity gets you things like Nazi Germany. It's not a win for either individuals or societies, only for intermediate subgroups whose interests rarely coincide with either.
I'll be honest, I don't understand the example in this article -- it doesn't seem to be evidence of the thesis/complaint. The two dark mode screenshots are basically the same and, at a glance, I trust the Google one more because it's showing me a snippet of the authoritative source, Apple.com. Beyond that, there's no ads in the Google screenshot, which was a huge part of the thesis statement.
There are many more-prolific killers who had manifestos and weren't charged with terrorism. That charge is being selectively applied here for pretty obvious reasons.
But the intent of 5e murder wasn’t to strike terror. Well, it did strike terror into CEOs of health insurance companies. It doesn’t feel like that alone would meet the bar.
I don't understand this comment. At best it's tangentially related, but it's also worded vaguely enough to sound like Mullvad (the topic of this post) is doing something bad.
Mullvad states they're based on Sweden -- are you claiming they aren't? They list where all there servers are located and who owns them, if that's your concern.
They seems to have extensive information about why you'd want to use a VPN or not. They don't log customer data and moved to a RAM-only infra. They're cheap with one flat rate.
So what exactly would you call BS? What would you like to see them do different?
> I’ve never thought of it being used maliciously, it’s for visibility. It would be a shitty manager that would use it that way and if they’re already shitty then this tool won’t change that.
I've had three jobs where Pluralsight Flow was introduced. At two of them, the managers immediately started using the metrics for feedback, performance reviews, employment decisions. At the third, the developers saw this coming a mile away and refused to engage with or evaluate the tool.
Unfortunately, the absurd pricing of these tools means that people who approve them have to get some sort of ROI. Since they don't have a good way to measure productivity/output/knowledge silos, they instead turn to "Well Jose had less PRs this week..."
It will, but the remedy for all the cases will be to donate $25 million to the president's library.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meta-agrees-pay-25-million-s...
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