A little bit of a tempest in a teapot. It doesn’t sound like they’re actually going to stop distributing existing drivers, they’re just not accepting any new drivers or updates (unless they’re critical security updates) for those packages.
Unfortunately, we’re not all the ones that decide if we’re on board or not. Our employers are. We live in a world where profits are privatized and losses are socialized, so when this goes, it’s going to hurt the general public a lot more than it will every hurt the Epstein Class.
The problem is the cost of that correction is going to fall on us. Or did we forget that the flavor of capitalism we live under is the “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses” kind. We’re not the ones in the casino, but we’re the ones who will lose our shirts when they lose.
“You know who doesn’t buy my drugs? Maidenless losers.” Said every drug dealer in history. It’s not even good marketing hype, it’s just sad at this point.
Their capture by US feds and banning people who speak out against US foreign influence operations would lead me to believe otherwise.
they act in a different way from the other, which they very much do. The basis of their power comes from different roots, and because of that, they have different interests, different goals, different avenues of action, different preferences in compromise with wider society.
I firmly disagree. There is no meaningful difference in motivation or expected outcome. The behaviour is functionally identical. In neither case is there any commitment to compromise with society, both Aristocracy and Plutocracy leverage economic factors to control and contain the wider community, to arbitrary and capricious ends; frequently little more than the further consolidation of power. The terminology is different, it sounds different, but it does not behave different in any meaningful way. Any social contract is entirely grounded in what we choose to demand as a society, not intrinsic to the flavour of elite class.
It’s the same motive, the same tools, and the same outcome, just re-branded and with a fresh coat of paint. Plutocracy in this era leverages scientific and evidence based psychological conditioning, social control, and new communication mediums to play on a variety of fundamental cognitive biases and limitations instead of leveraging religion alone as the primary means of containment of the governed, nothing more. As I said, it’s Aristocracy with a business degree. If you want to get specific it’s Aristocracy with a business degree and a marketing team instead of just the clergy.
The point is that the basis of aristocratic power comes (in part) from a position of extraordinary legal privilege, not simply being able to escape consequences for crimes.
We’re so very close but we’re not quite getting that last point. What I’m saying is it’s a distinction with very little meaningful difference. It’s interesting from an academic point of view, but that’s it. How they rationalize their privilege and sell their legitimacy to people makes no difference.
In principle you are correct, in practice the functional difference is very much negligible. As anyone who has ever tried to hold a plutocrat accountable in court can tell you, their equality under the law is more theoretical than how the world really works. The cults of personality, the careful reputational management, the nepotism and cronyism, dynastic rule and insularity, it’s all there, it’s just got a different window dressing.
On paper their power is different. In practice, not so much.
Fascism is what you get when Aristocracy gets a business degree. The difference between a feudal lord and a CEO is non-farm income.
medical terms are now no longer medical terms and just purely an insult
Language drifts over time, that’s normal, always has been. Stay on target soldier. FORMAL language however needs very strict definitions or it just stops working. Words mean things is true. That still doesn’t mean you get to say the “R” word.
What I’m hearing is laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation?
We spent 100 years engineering the world to decrease birth rates and punish people for having children “they cannot afford”, then immiserate the majority of people, eliminate any kind of opportunity to enjoy life, community, family, or recreation without spending ungodly amounts of money to enjoy simple human pleasures that have been part of being human for hundreds of thousands of years, work them relentlessly 24/7/365 (or as close as we permit them) for the sake of business efficiency, destroy the environment so survival itself becomes dependent on the business cycle, and we wonder why no one wants to raise a child in this environment?
Honestly, we have spent a century ruthlessly punishing people for even thinking of making a marginally irrational decision and then wonder why they won’t indulge in an objectively irrational activity for the emotional fulfillment.
As far as I’m aware, no on officially still worships Baal, although there might be some surviving fragments of that tradition in Tunisa oddly enough. Carthaginian beliefs pre-Christian/Islam was deeply Phoenician.
Edit: Grammar
Moloch (seemingly derived from the words for King and Shame) was the one who required child sacrifice. Baal was a storm god, like Zeus. Often considered the chief rival of Yahweh (YHWH) during the Jewish conquest of Canaan as they were, at the time, both storm gods.
I think you’re getting hung up on the figurative language. A “sin tax” isn’t about a religious sin, it’s about taxing something that’s obviously bad, but not harmful enough to justify criminalizing it and often popular enough that people would be outraged if you just banned it. Like cigarette taxes, weed taxes, alcohol taxes and the like. Things that not only harm you, but the community that then has to deal with the consequences of your choices.
The idea is those taxes then go to fund mitigation programs. Rehab, or gym membership tax credits or things like that.
There’s nothing intrinsically bad or “archaic” about forums. It’s the forum platforms that sucked for some people. It took some thought and work to manage a forum. The only advantage a Discord server had was that it’s simple enough, a brain damaged squirrel could run one. It saved you from having to do your homework and just created a simple plug-and-play space that required no skill on the owner/mods part.
But, if that sin has a measurable impact on public health? Then yeah, I’m okay with sin taxes.
Why would it be a sin if it didn’t cause objective harms? The whole point of taxing and regulating these things is that the harm they cause isn’t just personal or moral, they materially impact communities, just sometimes in ways you don’t typically think about. If someone is calling for a “Sin Tax” on truly victimless crimes, that’s not a sin tax, that’s just plain old social censorship.
Not sure if Stoat does audio rooms, but I know you can use SonoBus for that
I think we’re all clear on the assignment. We’ve all taken a hit for the sake of “Buy Canadian” and other movements, to help with re-alignment, and we all know we’re going to have to support each other as shocks continue to hit. An important factor, however, is the pain needs to be distributed in a reasonable way. The TSE index funds are seeing solid and gaining dividends. We need to see some more movement from the top income brackets in putting those dividends back in to domestic industry to help compensate for inevitable job losses.