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> I advocate the peaceful destruction of their facility in Utah... How? Either voting doesn't work or we as a people are too collective stupid to vote for anyo

> I advocate the peaceful destruction of their facility in Utah... How? Either voting doesn't work or we as a people are too collective stupid to vote for anyone different. How many like Reid, Fienstien and Hatch just keep getting elected despite their actions? Maybe we need some real people to run? Maybe we need to be smart enough to vote them in (and out when their time is up - I'm looking at you, Hatch). A there letter agency doesn't just disappear because we complain to each other. It is going to take years to undo what is being done.

logfromblammo 9y ago
Shut the water off. There won't be enough cooling for the servers. Maybe shoot a hole in the bottom of a big, oil-filled transformer at the nearest power substation.
- giardini 9y ago
  This is at least the second post on this topic in which logfromblammo has suggested that people perform criminal acts. (S)he earlier suggested keying cars and cutting tires. Those are simply wrong and criminal.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    I’m curious at what point civility breaks down in a failing state, at what level does his course of action make sense? I like to establish these limits before emotion can cloud judgement. He may be brash but he’s not wrong yet.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      I don't think there ever is a discontinuity. It just slowly ramps up, such that the only ones who notice are the ones who just woke up from comas. Every line in the sand is crossed slowly, with shuffling feet, so the line is wiped out as it is approached. Watershed events that are a clear trigger or threshold are rare. Mostly, it just gets worse slowly enough that no one ever hits their limit and breaks. That's how we got to 2017 from 1967, after all--one hour after another, without pause, for 50 years. And then one day, you think "WTF just happened? How did everything get so incredibly awesome and yet also completely awful at the same time?" If you think, "Gee, I should have done Y way back when X happened," then you should probably be doing Y now, even long after X happened. I think about how it must feel for ordinary people when important history is happening around them, and if they would have even noticed at the time. It probably feels a lot like a fish feels after biting down on the bait. Everything is fine and normal, then boom, something grabbed me and is pulling me and now the water is gone and some blobby hairy thing has its appendages stuck into my gills and I flop and squirm and flop some more and the water is still gone and everything's going dim and my mouth hurts and the blobby thing is cutting my belly open with its shiny claw and now I can't feel my body and a gull just ate my eye and is tugging at my guts and I can't even flop any more. And I... And it was all so fast... I want to go back... At what point is it acceptable for the fish to start fighting? It has to start while it is still in the water, while it still can fight. But it doesn't yet know that it should. What do you do if the event that makes it perfectly clear that you should have been doing something all along is also the event that makes it impossible for you to do it? What if the event that would have retroactively justified your behavior never happens?
  - b6 9y ago
    Wrong and criminal aren't necessarily the same. If the NSA is out of control it is our right to shut it down (hopefully without violence).
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Certainly criminal. Wrong is an ethical judgment that is up to the individual. "Tit-for-tat" strategy tends to beat "always cooperate" strategy in simplified social gaming models. People who always obey all laws, regardless of circumstances, are chumps who will inevitably be exploited by those who write the laws and those who selectively enforce them. In general, the law exists for the protection of everyone in society, but there exist exceptions when breaking the law is the right thing to do. Peaceful, lawful protest is no longer protecting minority voter blocs. Continuing to do it in the expectation that it will eventually work is just as insane as implementing trickle-down economic policy for the Nth time and expecting that it will benefit the middle class this time, when it failed to do so the previous N-1 times.
b6 9y ago
I don't think the problem is that we're too stupid. It's just that first past the post voting inevitably results in Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum, both of whom support, e.g., continuing the drug war, expanding mass surveillance, etc.

logfromblammo 9y ago

Shut the water off. There won't be enough cooling for the servers. Maybe shoot a hole in the bottom of a big, oil-filled transformer at the nearest power substation.

giardini 9y ago
This is at least the second post on this topic in which logfromblammo has suggested that people perform criminal acts. (S)he earlier suggested keying cars and cutting tires. Those are simply wrong and criminal.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  I’m curious at what point civility breaks down in a failing state, at what level does his course of action make sense? I like to establish these limits before emotion can cloud judgement. He may be brash but he’s not wrong yet.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    I don't think there ever is a discontinuity. It just slowly ramps up, such that the only ones who notice are the ones who just woke up from comas. Every line in the sand is crossed slowly, with shuffling feet, so the line is wiped out as it is approached. Watershed events that are a clear trigger or threshold are rare. Mostly, it just gets worse slowly enough that no one ever hits their limit and breaks. That's how we got to 2017 from 1967, after all--one hour after another, without pause, for 50 years. And then one day, you think "WTF just happened? How did everything get so incredibly awesome and yet also completely awful at the same time?" If you think, "Gee, I should have done Y way back when X happened," then you should probably be doing Y now, even long after X happened. I think about how it must feel for ordinary people when important history is happening around them, and if they would have even noticed at the time. It probably feels a lot like a fish feels after biting down on the bait. Everything is fine and normal, then boom, something grabbed me and is pulling me and now the water is gone and some blobby hairy thing has its appendages stuck into my gills and I flop and squirm and flop some more and the water is still gone and everything's going dim and my mouth hurts and the blobby thing is cutting my belly open with its shiny claw and now I can't feel my body and a gull just ate my eye and is tugging at my guts and I can't even flop any more. And I... And it was all so fast... I want to go back... At what point is it acceptable for the fish to start fighting? It has to start while it is still in the water, while it still can fight. But it doesn't yet know that it should. What do you do if the event that makes it perfectly clear that you should have been doing something all along is also the event that makes it impossible for you to do it? What if the event that would have retroactively justified your behavior never happens?
- b6 9y ago
  Wrong and criminal aren't necessarily the same. If the NSA is out of control it is our right to shut it down (hopefully without violence).
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Certainly criminal. Wrong is an ethical judgment that is up to the individual. "Tit-for-tat" strategy tends to beat "always cooperate" strategy in simplified social gaming models. People who always obey all laws, regardless of circumstances, are chumps who will inevitably be exploited by those who write the laws and those who selectively enforce them. In general, the law exists for the protection of everyone in society, but there exist exceptions when breaking the law is the right thing to do. Peaceful, lawful protest is no longer protecting minority voter blocs. Continuing to do it in the expectation that it will eventually work is just as insane as implementing trickle-down economic policy for the Nth time and expecting that it will benefit the middle class this time, when it failed to do so the previous N-1 times.

b6 9y ago

I don't think the problem is that we're too stupid. It's just that first past the post voting inevitably results in Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum, both of whom support, e.g., continuing the drug war, expanding mass surveillance, etc.