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A comment on another thread mentioned California's predisposition to New Age cults. California makes it easy to avoid touching grass. It lacks the population d

by screye 2y ago

A comment on another thread mentioned California's predisposition to New Age cults. California makes it easy to avoid touching grass. It lacks the population density of the Northeast Corridor which forces social collisions. It lacks the conservative pressure of middle American Suburbia which forces conformity. Lastly, it allows you to circumvent globally consistent corporate culture through well-paying backend (not people facing) jobs. Intelligent misfits must touch grass. Like glacier carved mountains, normal social collisions force misfits to step outside their own head. It scrubs the trivially repulsive parts off them. Ofc, young misfits being willing to entertain novel/strange ideas results in bullying from normal people. It's tempting to disregard all normal people as close minded bigots. However, it's important for misfits to continue pushing at understanding. Normal people are harmless. But,these misfits are both intelligent and high agency. So they have a capacity for both great good & evil. Put simply, these misfits need common sense. Because when spiraling misfits find spiraling misfits, they can accelerate into dark places real fast. Add a few drops of common sense, and it stops the stupidest ideas right at their inception.

toss1 2y ago
Excellent description of how things can go off the rails, very far off the rails. It also brings to mind the role of FU money insulating people from consequences and allowing them to live with near-zero empathy or common sense, or consideration of how their actions will affect others. Brings to mind what entirely un-elected Elon Musk is doing tonight, having just gotten full access to the full set of highly internal US treasury payment data, which would ordinarily be considered a massive security breach... [0] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treas...
- d0mine 2y ago
  Isn't it like an engineer requiring access to logs to optimize the backend?
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    I am glad that Trump and his gang are clearly generating productive political change in this country, just not from the top!
    - toss1 2y ago
      You are definitely using the right word in writing "gang", but not in the way you think But of these changes, from wanting to cut out from the workforce anyone but white men to creating unhinged and unnecessary trade wars with our closest allies and trading partners (even more than our adversary China), if you actually think any of these are "productive", you deserve some choice words about low intelligence that are not printable in this forum. This will NOT end well, even for the wannabe-oligarchs trying to install themselves as our new overlords. Under authoritarianism, everything always gets worse, at varying rates. This new authoritarian regime is no different.
      - DiscourseFan 2y ago
        Unlike, say, Weimar Germany, the US has very strong local institutions and a professional military that definitely doesn't support his agenda (recall 2020). All Trump is doing is destroying the federal government; but, its not as if the US needs a federal government for much. As long as there is the military and money keeps getting printed all services can be moved locally. State and local tax instead of federal tax; people will have far more control over their own governance. I'm not saying there won't be violence, but its facile to think it could've ever been avoided.
        toss1 2y ago
        The institutions are indeed better, but they are under a decapitation attack, and the attackers have a lot more successful historical authoritarian assaults on democracy to hone their attacks. Plus, one party is aprox 100% corrupted and in on the assault, and holds power in both legislative branches and a large portion of the judiciary. For example, the biggest breach of critical US data on EVERY resident and business in the US Treasury has just been executed by unelected Elon Musk, and no one stopped him. He also forced his way into a SCIF (Secure Compartmentalized Info Facility) and other offices without being stopped. Musk has locked out those appointed to protect him, congress is abdicating it's responsibility & power, and law enforcement is not acting against the administration. It is not entirely certain that money will continue being printed, considering Musk's assault on the Treasury. I would not be surprised to find he convinces Trump to route payments through his "Everything App" X, which he desperately needs to support (some serious & credible analysts are considering this may be a motive for those moves). The investment markets are at this moment in free-fall, only two weeks into the administration. This may provoke the people into a sufficiently massive response, or it may not. Yes, the blue states are starting to work together to route around the Federal Govt, which may or may not be a good thing. Avoided? Certainly could have been avoided. Stronger institutions preventing forcible targeted deregistration of 3.2 million+ voters before the election (enabled by a SCOTUS captured by illegitimate Senate confirmation games, which gutted the Voting Rights Act) would have helped when the margin was ~1.6 million votes. An independent press that did not normalize pathological and criminal activities by one candidate would have helped. The list would go on for a very long time, and the point is that the institutions are ALREADY very weakened. They barely held against a criminal administration last time. The size of the cracks appearing in only a fortnight do not bode well for this time. [edit: add updated info in para.2]

by screye 2y ago

toss1 2y ago

Excellent description of how things can go off the rails, very far off the rails. It also brings to mind the role of FU money insulating people from consequences and allowing them to live with near-zero empathy or common sense, or consideration of how their actions will affect others. Brings to mind what entirely un-elected Elon Musk is doing tonight, having just gotten full access to the full set of highly internal US treasury payment data, which would ordinarily be considered a massive security breach... [0] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treas...

d0mine 2y ago
Isn't it like an engineer requiring access to logs to optimize the backend?
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  I am glad that Trump and his gang are clearly generating productive political change in this country, just not from the top!
  - toss1 2y ago
    You are definitely using the right word in writing "gang", but not in the way you think But of these changes, from wanting to cut out from the workforce anyone but white men to creating unhinged and unnecessary trade wars with our closest allies and trading partners (even more than our adversary China), if you actually think any of these are "productive", you deserve some choice words about low intelligence that are not printable in this forum. This will NOT end well, even for the wannabe-oligarchs trying to install themselves as our new overlords. Under authoritarianism, everything always gets worse, at varying rates. This new authoritarian regime is no different.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      Unlike, say, Weimar Germany, the US has very strong local institutions and a professional military that definitely doesn't support his agenda (recall 2020). All Trump is doing is destroying the federal government; but, its not as if the US needs a federal government for much. As long as there is the military and money keeps getting printed all services can be moved locally. State and local tax instead of federal tax; people will have far more control over their own governance. I'm not saying there won't be violence, but its facile to think it could've ever been avoided.
      - toss1 2y ago
        The institutions are indeed better, but they are under a decapitation attack, and the attackers have a lot more successful historical authoritarian assaults on democracy to hone their attacks. Plus, one party is aprox 100% corrupted and in on the assault, and holds power in both legislative branches and a large portion of the judiciary. For example, the biggest breach of critical US data on EVERY resident and business in the US Treasury has just been executed by unelected Elon Musk, and no one stopped him. He also forced his way into a SCIF (Secure Compartmentalized Info Facility) and other offices without being stopped. Musk has locked out those appointed to protect him, congress is abdicating it's responsibility & power, and law enforcement is not acting against the administration. It is not entirely certain that money will continue being printed, considering Musk's assault on the Treasury. I would not be surprised to find he convinces Trump to route payments through his "Everything App" X, which he desperately needs to support (some serious & credible analysts are considering this may be a motive for those moves). The investment markets are at this moment in free-fall, only two weeks into the administration. This may provoke the people into a sufficiently massive response, or it may not. Yes, the blue states are starting to work together to route around the Federal Govt, which may or may not be a good thing. Avoided? Certainly could have been avoided. Stronger institutions preventing forcible targeted deregistration of 3.2 million+ voters before the election (enabled by a SCOTUS captured by illegitimate Senate confirmation games, which gutted the Voting Rights Act) would have helped when the margin was ~1.6 million votes. An independent press that did not normalize pathological and criminal activities by one candidate would have helped. The list would go on for a very long time, and the point is that the institutions are ALREADY very weakened. They barely held against a criminal administration last time. The size of the cracks appearing in only a fortnight do not bode well for this time. [edit: add updated info in para.2]