Imagine putin started setting his trolls on the agenda of whatever kompromat they have on trump. I imagine it’s a lot. That would definitely make trump mad. First and foremost he protects his ego.

I’m not sure if that’s how posting things to the public works. Optics will always be a part of that.

Honestly the jump in the etfs is kind of crazy. I expected a rebound from the recent dip but not like that

Isn’t there value in niche projects? If we just had freebsd it wouldn’t cover all the usecases there are and it shouldn’t. Niche usecases sometimes need niche software

I’m curious, doesn’t WhatsApp require a phone number to be attached to an account? As in, I thought activating it doesn’t work on devices without a SIM card?

Hm yes, but if someone takes a picture of me without me asking for it that’s different

For background, Kristall is obviously cristal in German, which is associated with cleanliness and purity and high value. The name plays into the idea of “cleaning” Germany from the “dirty” parts of society

It’s actually uncommon to refer to the November pogrom as Kristallnacht in German because it’s the positive spin the Nazis put to that. It’s not outright taboo but it can be a dog whistle

Yeah I remember reading about it. This is probably a step in the right direction without having looked at all the details

Stopping the wealth accumulation at the top through taxes on property above a threshold.

And, supplementary:

Stopping tax evasion by implementing a global tax cooperative so nations can stop competing in a downward race on tax rates

The difference is that we can’t do so for political information in a democracy

I think I see where I failed to communicate. The laws that germany enacted are not about information. They are for (or rather against) instigating hate and violence against groups of people. Which I wouldn’t classify as ‘political information’. I do get that that is a slippery slope and that this tool needs to be used with a lot of caution and oversight. But I think it is a necessary tool especially because of this:

It is, however, reasonable for the majority to enact advertising protections that would benefit the dumb/manipulable minority.

A manipulable minority that acts on these calls to violence is enough to deeply damage a democracy.

Once again, the question is, “Are the majority of people too dumb or easily manipulated to be trusted with the system?” If so, then we should do away with the system altogether and have a government of philosopher-kings decide how resources should be distributed.

An important thing to remember is that a large enough minority can really disturb a democratic system. We are seeing this right now in germanies eastern states where the AfD has won about 30% of the votes making any coalition between the other parties very unfavourable. No-one currently knows what the coalition talks will resolve to. The majority did vote for democratic parties but that isn’t enough, it has to be an overhelming majority that votes for democratic parties.

Also: I’d argue that representative democracies are a lot more susceptible to this kind of flaw where parties have to resort to manipulation to get the votes of people. Other forms of democracy do not have that flaw as extensively. We do not necessarily have to get rid of democracy to fix or at least improve that flaw.

I have a question for you. Do you think advertising works not just as an informative medium but as a manipulative medium as well? Do people have free will while shopping or are they completely following whatever ad is in front of their faces? Or is it maybe a middle ground between the two extremes that’s actually the truth?

This isn’t about ideas it is about calling for violence towards people. This isn’t how you get Nazis this is the “you already have Nazis and need to do something about it”

Also, funnily enough, the proletariat or what’s left of it, are the ones currently flocking to the right-wing extremist party here in Germany.

That’s an opinion one can have, but it’s different from calling everyone that might want a more restrictive policy a nationalist fascist

I think I can say that I am living in germany, currently a country not under the government of national fascists, that has a law against so called “Volksverhetzung” which has been introduced quite literally to prevent some speech of the nationalist fascists, to prevent them from spreading their hateful ideology. Maybe you wanna think about that for awhile.

At some point speech becomes hate speech that actually hurts people. In Germany there are laws against that, I’m sure the US has too.

I mean that’s completely wrong as far as laws go. Socially that’s pretty much true

Yeah that “will single out meat prices” got my eyes rolling so hard I might have a knot in my nerves now.

Meat production is one of the main contributors to the climate crisis. We need to produce less of it. I get that campaigning with that message would probably not be popular, but just focussing on groceries would have been enough right?

Hm yeah I think getting subtitles isn’t a thing for this kind of content

Go Back to his Minecraft stuff from like 2013. It’s great