MerryJaneDoe

Personally, I prescribe to Carlin’s philosophy. The problem will take care of itself.

https://youtu.be/UTPlKwkryEk?t=461

Deadpan sarcasm doesn’t translate well from a verbal medium to a written medium.

Unless you’re in an echo chamber…

I think scale is the issue.

Basically, it was legal to rape, murder and/or kidnap Africans. It was so profitable that the main slave dealers were African tribes/nations who would sell their prisoners of war to the slave trade - thus encouraging more war and more slavery.

Estimates of African deaths (on the low side) are double that of the Holocaust.

This went on for 400 years. (Nazi power lasted only about 12 years by comparison.)

And even to this day, the African slave trade is responsible for much of the racism and division we see. So, yeah, slave trade shaped our world in many ways.

Because we teach kids all about civil liberties while mostly ignoring civic duty.

Civil liberties are 100% dependent on citizens completing basic civic duties. If people aren’t willing to do the bare minimum (like vote), then we end with a society of people who just want all the good stuff and none of the responsibility. Which is pretty much where we’re at today.

I get what you’re saying, but reading these examples has me shaking my head in frustration.

The administrator doesn’t work in the office. They work in a different office, or from home.

Meetings between two higher-ups can’t be cancelled because 1. The employee wouldn’t even know that a meeting was scheduled and 2. The meeting is scheduled via Outlook and the only way to cancel it would be to have access to your boss’s computer while it’s unlocked.

But supposing you could do these things, and you caused a 2% loss in efficiency by gunking up the keyboard and canceling the meeting.

Great, they lost 2% for the day. It’s 2% loss of efficiency for people who only work at a 75% efficiency to begin with. They get another keyboard and reschedule the meeting. Tomorrow, you have to start all over again. It won’t be long before you’re found out.

The system is built with these things in mind. The number one security concern in any company is the employees. This is not a new thing and corporations are very good at creating systems of accountability.

…get busy asap and fuck it up from the inside…

Easier said than done. Security and risk mitigation is one of the first (if not the very first) concern of any IT company in this day and age.

I’ve been a system engineer. Digital assets are locked down, meaning that I couldn’t access anything outside of my scope (which was small and midsize banking websites). Physical assets (servers) sat in three remote locations, highly secure and staffed by a different team. Everything is backed up 5 different ways in 5 different places. Every keystroke is logged. Every door uses a passcard.

It’s built to be a trustless system of sorts, where no single person holds the keys to anything too important. Regular audits and individual accountability for every outage are the norm. About the only way to fuck it up would be to somehow incite a mass exodus of seasoned engineers.

I think what people often miss about these systems (not just IT, but all of our systems from finance to healthcare) is that they are supported by very intelligent, motivated individuals. These people are fighting hard to make sure that nobody can fuck up their work. They aren’t sitting ducks - they are nigh impenetrable sentries.

Is it? Why is China “bad”?

Grades are meaningless to some people. They matter greatly to other people.

Video games are meaningless to some people. They matter greatly to other people.

The difference is that I didn’t get a scholarship and an education due to my ability to play video games. It was my grades that paid my tuition.

I had Google help me out with this one. For illustrative purposes, let’s take the Tesla Semi (an electric commercial truck) battery. You could transport about 4 MWh worth of electricity. That’s about 4 months worth of electricity for an average American household. Here’s the details:

A single Tesla Semi utilizes an estimated 850 kWh to 1,000 kWh battery pack, which weighs approximately 10,000 to 12,000 lbs. If a trailer were filled strictly with these large, fully integrated packs rather than smaller, individual battery cells, only about 4 to 6 of these high-capacity, 1-megawatt-hour systems could physically fit within the weight limits of a standard trailer.

Battery Capacity & Weight: The Semi uses roughly 1 MWh, which consists of four, high-capacity, smaller packs.

Total Weight: A full 1 MWh pack weighs between 10,000 lbs (4,570 kg) and 12,000 lbs.

Capacity Limit: Due to weight restrictions of 80,000 lbs for a loaded semi (with a 2,000 lb increase for EVs), you cannot simply load 80,000 lbs of batteries into a trailer.

Physical Space: While the trailer has massive volume, the 10,000+ lb per pack weight means the trailer would reach its weight limit long before it is full of, say, Model S packs (if that was the method).

Was it a Raspberry Pi?

Yes, that’s kind of my point. We all are brainwashed, from Day One. You don’t have a choice which ideas you’re exposed to when you are a child.

As an adult, though, you can start to exert control over the narrative. You can explore ideas that your parents and school didn’t share with you. You can pick up a book, learn what you want to learn, share ideas that were previously off limits.

Mass media (esp. doom scrolling) attempts to regain control of that narrative. And, yes, of course, mass media’s job is to insert new beliefs. Why else would I have an opinion on Israel, a country I’ve never been to, that has no immediate relevance to my life? Why don’t I have a similarly strong opinion about countries like Kiribati or Abkhazia?

Loo at American history. This really is business as usual, sad as it might be.

Not a fair comparison.

In a nutshell, you can’t directly replace gas power with electric power. Gotta have some sort of conversion. Gas is very portable and offers big bang. Solar generally needs to be generated on demand or stored. Then it needs to be transported. We can’t transport the solar power from Texas to Michigan the same way we can truck gas across state lines. The longer an electric line, the more power is lost.

Another issue with this graphic is that it implies that solar panels are a one-time expense. This isn’t true. They generally last about 20 years.

I’m a champion of green energy, but a stickler for details.

Alas, I fear the US might be too far gone for ranked choice to have an effect.

The problem is quality of candidates. Since Citizen’s United opened the door for unlimited corporate money in elections, literally 90% of candidates are on someone’s payroll. “Grassroots” is a thing of the past. Mass media and name recognition are everything.

Absolutely!

Ummm…how though?

Where are progressives on that scale? Oh, and do fascists, I definitely want to know how a fascist stacks up against a liberal!

A person can be smart. “People” are not. Groupthink changes a person, especially when tribalism is involved. The masses are easily led by “us vs. them” narratives.

I don’t think mass media is brainwashing people, because I don’t think they’re making them adopt new beliefs.

And where did those beliefs originate?

My takeaway from this article:

The city manager makes $400k/year.

If our leaders want to live an upper-class lifestyle, they need to deliver stability to the middle-class. Dude, you don’t get paid to sit on your ass. Work this shit out, water is fucking important.

“There was no brainwashing…”

Define brainwashing. Tell me why a farmer who lives 3,000 miles away from NYC should be emotionally affected by 9/11, but not by the countless other injustices in the world. How else do you define mass media if not “brainwashing”?