breadbreadbread

> Associated Press, 18 November, 1993

I would argue that statements made 30 years ago are irrelevant to the current debate, considering that would also bring into discussion every opinion held by GOP operatives over that time period and boy that ain't pretty.

Im generally opposed to equating LGBT issues to gun-control issues. This dichotomy was brought up by a previous comment and I dont really want to get bogged down in the issue. After all, one is an issue of bodily autonomy and freedom of expression, and the other is an issue of "what do we do about this thing that is expressly designed to harm other humans".

My personal views on gun control aren't really reflected by any sitting member in congress, and I will admit that a lot of debate on both sides are largely reactionary and you can take impassioned statements from either side out of context. Fine. I will still hold that the right will shut down at any nuanced discussion of the issue, which I see as the main problem. If the GOP took a principled but open-minded stance, you could negotiate down from the reactionary Dem position down to one that thinks critically about privacy as you suggest... but the GOP doesn't allow that discussion.

> That said, which LGBT rights do you think they oppose?

My right to self expression. My right to live a life of my choosing without fear of retaliation. My right to tell others about my existence. As evidenced by objections to bills that would enshrine my safety in finding employment and healthcare. As evidenced by politicians that equate my speech to pedophilia. Are my rights to safety and speech privileges given only to cis/straight people? What are the "common sense" regulations to me living my life? Do you see how I may not agree with the false equivalency of gun rights and lgbt rights?

I don't think my description of right wing talking points is caricature. The right wing do see any reasonable reform as "taking our guns away", their side is the one that fails to see nuance. That absolutist, literalist read of the constitution is the side without nuance, categorically. My view of gun control is neutral, I want to protect the rights of citizens to stand against their government and I acknowledge that loose gun laws can lead to harm, direct or indirect. That is the most neutral position possible and sitting members of Congress would consider me far-left and fascist for it. The Right is seemingly allergic to nuance, incapable of digesting reasonable objection. How do you meet in the middle with that?

I don't think the GOP is a unified bloc. I think it is beholden to a vocal minority without whom they wouldnt win elections because running on their last 20 years of policy alone hasnt worked. If we destroyed the current political parties and had everyone in government rerun as independents, that vocal minority would still find a political foothold.

My opinion of Republican values regarding LGBT rights comes directly from spoken statements from sitting members of congress and state legislators. If Republicans can point to actual legislators that say "no one should have guns", I'll listen. But typically I find that gun-control "debates" involve a nuanced "common-sense" gun control side and a "they want to disarm you and take your stuff" side. Which again, comes down to disinformation spreading among the right and preventing good-faith arguments for gun-control.

Your statistic is based on the opinion of individual voters. My concern is with the forces in government that have made my friends in Florida fear that they cannot talk about their lives without being branded a pedophile. The sitting members of congress who think trans people are an abomination. The 20-something states that allow for conversion therapy for minors. But sure, I'm glad I can feel safe talking about marriage with 44% of rep. voters.

i think thats a false equivalency. First of all I see them as people, I just see them as people who dont care about my personhood. Second of all, my value judgement of the right is based on the actions they take against my personhood, whereas their value judgement of me is based on.... who I am? who I love? the clothes I wear?

aw thats cute. less than 50% of republicans think gay people can get married

I didnt say that "we don’t have enough of either"

Admittedly I was a bit rambley because i am scared for the safety of myself and others in this political climate. And everytime someone tries to "diagnose" the problem, they do so by treating the left and the right as the same, as value-neutral, as though they are two people on a tennis court following the same rules hitting a ball back and forth. I think this fundamentally misses the fact that both sides use vastly different tactics and have different standards for truth. I think that the values of each side cannot be put on the same line ("I think cops should be held accountable" and "democrats stole the election" are not equal and opposite positions). I think both sides are playing completely different games and each can claim the other is losing/winning/cheating, that is the problem... not individuals misperceptions.

>I would suggest that the people you should be angry with are the ones behind the singular corporate uniparty which pits us against each other by creating false narratives and rhetoric that spread through our media ecosystem.

Thats a two way street buddy. I can't listen to the other side if they are blabbering on about their own false narrative. This comment section is full of people who think that its the lefts fault and are absolutely incapable of looking at their own party. I don't know how to explain to you that I do not give a shit about Democrats or Liberal media or the "singular corporate uniparty", let it all burn and I will still be fighting for LGBT rights and there will still be people who think I shouldn't exist.

thats because Democrats are largely impotent whereas republicans have let fringe hateful ideas become their platform. If one person in the room smells like shit, can you blame other people for taking a step away?

Florida's HB 1557 doesn't go that far, but the rhetoric that people use to support it has echoes of fascism. All of the right-wing talking points around trans issues equate teaching kids about lgbt issues to pedophilia. For many supporters, even walking around as trans is seen as sexual deviant and dangerous. When a bill is passed that enshrines into law that "it is bad to tell kids about this person", and the supporters casually say "breaking this law is pedophilia", what do you think is going to happen to trans people trying to live their lives in Florida?

which doctors Alex Jones?

gas being expensive doesnt make destroying indigenous lands ok???? this is incredibly disrespectful to anyone who fought for the environment and for indigenous sovereignty

So It sounds like you are conflating this with other platform discrimination issues, perhaps Twitter banning people after repeated misinformation (1) or banking and infrastructure platforms banning N*zis (2) (it's important to note that banking platforms also often ban sex workers and the platforms they use).

In the first case, that is banning people for actions that they take directly on their platform that goes against terms of service. Great, easy, we know that that a private business can set rules for their own platform.

For the second, I think its reasonable that a company might be cautious allowing certain groups to actively fundraise and recruit if they demonstrate a direct harm to others (hate groups with militias).

For this case of Doordash x Sex Workers, the case is a lot less defensible. If true, this would mean that Doordash is extending their terms of service to include off site activity. This does raise some red flags... but from case (2), we know that that can be defensible if A) that action hurts others and B) if the service used directly aids in those acts.

A) Consensual Sex Work is not harmful, and the moral panic around it is probably more harmful than the act itself and B) Doordash does not directly aid in the operation of Sex Work... So yeah I think some outrage around this is warranted if it is true.

"doing something about it" is a privilege awarded by wealth, not competency. He could have installed someone with experience in free speech advocacy and policy but he took it for himself. People need to seriously understand that being good at one thing doesnt make you good at all things. There are people who dedicate their entire careers to understanding the challenges of enacting "free speech" (which is often more complicated than just "no moderation"). Elon Musk not that, he is the guy with 5 companies who is mad that people dont like him.

Oh Easy Question: No.

rent control

I do like some of the corner case resolutions tho. Calling a slice of pie, "Bent Toast" tickles me.

I hate the cube rule of food. I know its mostly a joke about taxonomy but some people take it so seriously. Categorization is highly contextual and fluid and any attempt to be authoritative or argumentative about it bothers me. IDGAS if a hot dog is a sandwich I just want a hot dog

> Bitcoin recognizes the history of the debasement of monies very well

I understand that crypto evangelists say that they have "fixed" the problems with physical markets, but time and time again I see crypto projects repeating the biggest failures of monetary history. Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dump, corrupt or fraudulent banks, heists, money laundering, tax havens for the super-rich. In physical economics, we still have those problems but we've built up regulation and fluency to protect ourselves over hundreds of years, and crypto seems to be back in the wild west and people are seriously getting hurt by it. I can't take crypto seriously until it accepts that the regulation that it so desperately tries to avoid actually does protect people.

> they're paid to push inflationism, which benefits the early receivers of new money at the expense of savers, fixed-wage earners and property owners.

Tell me, how do cryptocurrencies benefit fixed-wage earners over "early recievers of new money"? Who do you think benefits most from crypto? It's not wage-workers. Crypto is just an unregulated market with unpredictable volatility, and as such it will always benefit those who can accept that risk early (rich people) more than the people who cant (not rich people).

Listen, people understand that technology has value outside of the scams and stupid memes. The problem is that crypto-evangelists seem to think that good intentions are all you need to build a functioning alternate economy. "Don't mind the bugs, we'll fix them later, for now entrust us with all of your money and information". It is precisely because it is flawed software that people hate on NFTs and blockchain and web3. Fix your shit and self-regulate before you promise the future to people who are already struggling in the existing economy.

1. Consumer "choice" isnt really a choice in a lot of instances. Many people would love an electric car if they could afford it, or if their community had the charging stations that would make it viable. If you arent in a place to finance a new car you dont really have a choice.

2. fuck thats a really cynical take on progressive activism. what's it like thinking that no one believes anything?

MITM is a networking term for when an agent in a trust based communication system falsifies data in order to exploit the system. I don't think using a term that isn't directly used in a whitepaper is a flaw in my argument. Decentralization, in general, guards against MITM by using consensus mechanisms instead of trusting any individual link, so blockchains are theoretically resilient against individual agents breaking the rules. That is literally the basis of blockchain tech. What I am getting at is that there are still ways to exploit a system while technically operating "within the rules" and blockchain makes those easier to get away with.

> Ultimately, what you critique is simply an inherent part of the system YES THATS THE PROBLEM. Systems arent immutable facts of the world. We can change them. Systems are built by people and people can be wrong or at the very least mislead.

by offloading the responsibility of trust and accessibility onto middleware, blockchain has successfully reinvented the bank!

personally i think its a problem that a technology that is supposed to be the "future" requires so much institutional knowledge to even begin to discuss privacy improvements. If you want go write your own article that explains these technologies to the average twitter user and see how long it ends up being.

What I get from this is that all web3 promises are smoke and mirrors. ok your photos arent stored on the blockchain... the blockchain just stores your image URLS.... so then if there is still a traditional repository for content off the blockchain, you now have two points of failure instead of one.

For a technology that is supposedly comes from a privacy and security philosophy, blockchain evangelists and devs DO suffer from a lack of adversarial thinking. It has cornered the market in fraud and manipulation, just look at all of the pump and dump and phishing scams that are perfectly tailored to its design.

Blockchain is built from the ground up to prevent exactly one type of security vulnerability: man in the middle attacks. It is absolutely abysmal at protecting against any other form of attack. Anything that involves, say: social engineering, is fair game. After all it is YOUR fault if YOU leak personal information that can be used to destroy YOUR life. If that ends up in the blockchain its not MY fault, I cant do anything... what do you want me to do? change it? punish someone? oops sorry I cant!

Ultimately this form of thinking is the logical conclusion of "personal responsibility" arguments. Why criticize the system when you can instead pretend the problem is the individual? Crypto doesnt have philosophical issues, you are using the wrong wallet. It isnt MY fault that someone made an NFT containing your home address and bitcoin wallet ID, YOU trusted your information with the wrong service.

The ultimate scapegoat is blaming the end-user. At some point you need to take the L and at least admit these are oversights. Blockchain tech has been around for over a decade and it's had plenty of time to solve these problems but instead it has dug its heels in and said "no all of this is by design and good actually"

before brexit, things also werent nearly as bad as the leave crowd made them out to be, considering they were worried about a nonexistent migration apocalypse. Kind of a moot point to say "well the other guy was being crazy"

Banking doesnt get you anywhere with a frustrated workforce

To me, TCGs are defensible because they are Games in which you are knowingly consenting to a system in which collection is a part of the experience. The manufacturers give a standard MSRP for cards during their printing period. Aftermarket cards are priced based on the utility given within a game system and that feeds into a collectors valuation. This is, I think, an acceptable outlet for the humanistic urge to collect things. I do think its exploitative but at least the messaging is clear and fair.

I take issue with systems which exploit gambling urges for profit. NFT's claim to be the future of DRM for independent artists, but they are exploited into becoming pump-and-dump schemes and wildly speculative markets. They use language used to defend artistic IP but ultimately function as a game with arbitrary rules.