It sounds like a bunch of people switched parties and now Brexit is pretty much dead.
We've had this happen in the U.S. on occasion, most recently during Bush 2's term, with one fink in the Senate, but never anything like 21.
My confusion is this.
Because of the Parliamentary system the U.K. has, and the way they form their governments (the Queen is technically the head of state, but the actual governing executive is run by the PM, which is equivalent to our Speaker of the House). this is of much greater import than changing one legislative bodies political balance. This SEEMS to this more akin to what we would have if there were enough disloyal electors in a presidential election...ie: a genuine constitutional crisis.
Am I wrong?
This looks absolutely appalling, but I don't know a lot about the U.K. system so I'm genuinely curious.
1
While the British people were mildly pro-Brexit, Parliament is overwhelmingly Remainiac. This is a last-ditch effort to delay Brexit or block a no-deal one, and is apparently why Johnson was going to prorogue Parliament (close the session) for a longer-than-normal period.
I gather that the MPs that voted to thwart Johnson didn't formally switch parties but will most likely be expelled. This could force an election? I saw an article a couple days ago that suggested Johnson didn't want a vote on Brexit per se, but a vote of no confidence in Parliament forcing an election would probably be a different matter, and, I guess, might have gotten more pro-Brexit people elected.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Sep 3 22:56:35 2019 (Iwkd4)
2
I'm no expert in Parliamentary systems, but from what I understand this is more like George H. Bush not winning re-election than a constitutional crisis. A big deal politically, but not a constitutional crisis. The thing to remember is that A Prime Minister is not co-equal to the legislative branch, but instead works for them. If you think of the UK government as a company, Parliament is like a Board of Directors, the PM is the Chairman and CEO they hire to run it, and the voters are the shareholders. The BoD has every right to boot the Chairman and CEO anytime they please, but it will create turmoil when it happens. In this case, the BoD has decided they don't like the CEO's strategic plan and are preparing to fire him, while he is potentially fighting it by trying to force an early shareholder's meeting (ie an election) to change the membership of the BoD.
After the shock of the initial, marginal, vote to leave and then surprise rebuke Theresa May's government got in the last early elections, which some Remainers have spun as a change in heart in the electorate, nobody is entirely sure where the British electorate really is on the issue. Not to mention a lot of voter anger about how Theresa May botched the whole thing. A lot of Members of Parliament aren't entirely sure of how their voters will vote if Brexit is the main issue, especially as many MPs are closet Remainers looking to throw monkey wrenches into the process. Throw in the potential for a Scottish and Irish succession over Brexit and you have the makings of a complete political Charlie Foxtrot, but it's still within the realms of what the UK equivalent of our Constitution is supposed to handle.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Sep 4 06:33:46 2019 (jl9eJ)
3
In some parliamentary systems, bucking the party like this would be complete career suicide - you'd get removed from the list of party members, and after the next election you'd be gone. (Sure, theoretically the other side could add you to theirs, but in practice they generally prefer people from inside their own party...) The UK's different in that members run in their own boroughs, but you have to have approval of the party to run as a member of that party, so if the party kicks you out, you can't run as their candidate. You CAN run as an independent if you think your constituents just like you that much. It's not common, but it's been done before; Winston Churchill swapped parties, later was disowned by his new party, spent several years as an effective independent, and didn't really become a Tory again until the war broke out.
Most of these guys are not Churchill caliber.
That said, in situations where the government indicates that a particular bill is a measure of confidence, and that bill fails, it's customary for the prime minister to do one of two things: to turn over government to whoever can put together a working majority, or to call for elections and then see what shakes out of that tree. So let's look at both alternatives.
Say Boris says "no new election - Corbyn, put a government together." On paper, Corbyn could just collect the very-soon-to-be-ex-Tories, his own party, the Lib Dems, and literally every other non-Tory in Parliament and roll with that. Actually DOING that will be... politically touchy! Labour and the Lib Dems are never easy coalition partners, especially if they're relying on votes from the SNP too. They might get together long enough to delay or even temporarily derail Brexit, but it's not a stable long-term governing group.
Or Boris can say "okay, let's have an election". Looking at it from the Tory perspective, it's important to keep in mind that while the party is generally pro-Brexit, there are significant local variations, and the leadership is mostly anti-Brexit (they're from the social class which is not much inconvenienced by EU membership, and whose fortunes are mostly buoyed by it...) This puts Boris in a nasty spot. If he can't deliver Brexit, there's the potential for serious long-term damage to the party; a bunch of Tory voters who want Brexit are going to conclude that there's no chance of achieving it from within the current party, and they're likely to jump (to the appropriately-named "Brexit Party", a sort-of-successor to the UKIP without all the Farage baggage.) So he more or less has to run in favor of Brexit, but he might lose some seats on that issue.
On the other hand, an election's even more dangeous for Labour. Remember that at the last election, Labour did not take an anti-Brexit position; that's because among Labour voters, there are a bunch of pro-Brexit voters as well. It's popular among, well, small-l labor due to their dislike of having to compete with European workers. Labour picked up a lot of seats in that election from being able to get votes both from their own pro-Brexit voters and also the anti-Brexit voters who turned out in response to having lost the referendum. But Labour can't play both sides of that fence now. They've got the potential of losing some of the seats they won last time, as pro-Brexit Labour voters conclude "either we vote Tory or we get no Brexit".
Finally, there's one extremely wild card in this deck - Corbyn himself is pro-Brexit. From a completely different perspective than the rest, of course... he's an unrepentant socialist who wants out because the EU wouldn't permit the kind of sweeping economic changes he'd like to push through, so what he has in mind won't ever come about if the UK stays in. But the rest of the party leadership is rabidly anti-Brexit, so it's not like he can act on that...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Sep 4 12:35:51 2019 (v29Tn)
Oh. These Bastards Are Getting Bold
Free Speech advocate Tim Pool has just been paid a visit in the middle of the night....and then they came back after being warned away by police.
Watch the video. It's pretty scary...until it gets scarier.
This is serious business, we saw what they did to Andy Ngo.
* For some idea of how far things have fallen and how crazy things have gotten, when reading that asterixed hot-take remember that one of the founders of VICE news was...Tim Pool.
1
There is no reason whatsoever for a stranger to show up on your doorstep at 4:30 AM. Tim probably needs redundant cameras and more lights at this point.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Aug 29 14:12:24 2019 (Iwkd4)
2
Tim Pool is living on the wrong side of the Delaware - unlike New Jersey, which is generally hostile to the 2nd Amendment, Pennsylvania is one of the states with a Castle Doctrine law (Literally the only good thing to come from Tom Corbett's term as governor.).
I found the 'explanation' that the visitor gave the local cops to be amusing - he rode a bus from DC to Philly, got off in Philly, and walked across both Philly and one of the the Delaware River bridges AT NIGHT (Which is probably enough to draw all sort of attention from the authorities if he actually did that.), and an additional 10-15 miles to reach Pool's home. Assuming he rode either a bus line or a small time bus operator, the guy had to have gotten off somewhere in Chinatown (Especially if he rode Greyhound, which has only one stop in the city.), which is over half of the city away from the river. You can walk it - but it ain't going to be a short walk.
Of course, maybe it is just a lie...
Posted by: cxt217 at Thu Aug 29 23:20:06 2019 (LMsTt)
3
Pool specifically mentioned that the bridge the guy would have crossed is NOT a pedestrian bridge.
Posted by: Rick C at Fri Aug 30 09:22:32 2019 (Iwkd4)
Revisiting the Isekai Theory
It's been a rough week.
I got in around midnight, did some housework and went to bed sometime thereafter. I woke up in a state of intense overpressure and ran too the bathroom and realized it was 17:30!?. I slept over 16 hours?
Anyway, I turned on the news and discovered that I've awakened in a conspiracy thriller.
UPDATE 10PM:There are now reports that Kaptain Kiddie Diddler was NOT on suicide watch,....because why on Earth would he be?
Of course, I've read enough of these books to know that the suicide is never the MAIN problem. Its covering up something much bigger.
Generally the next element in the plot would be something equally far fetched like a weapons test gone disastrously wrong...
They covered the ambulances with plastic, because reasons.
...or the government suddenly authorized the use of cyanide bombs against..."wildlife".
Or life that's now in the wild.
FULL DISCLOSURE: It is the position of this blog that the chances that any of these are related is slim and there are probably perfectly pedestrian explanations for everything. Well, except for the Epstein thing.
A Few Thoughts
...that, even more than submerged utility pipes or dated pop-culture references may cause distress to some readers will be posted 'blow the fold'.
The illustration 'above the fold' is for those who wish to avoid the politics, to which it is hopefully unrelated.
An Actual Conversation
Andrew Yang, (One of the Democrat's surfeit of presidential candidates) actually sits down with Ben Shapiro and discusses policy and they have a long polite discussion about his proposals. While I don't agree with him on a couple of points, and strongly disagree regarding internet regulation, Yang actually seems mostly sane as he presents and defends his positions.
Its a sad commentary on our civics that this interview is worthy of note.
That Patreon did what they did to one of their customers who had not violated their TOS, was unprofessional at best and somewhat worrisome for anyone on the platform. However, what, to my mind at least, elevated this to "Serious Business" was the fact that Pay-Pal and the other online payment outfits pulled the plug on Subscribe Star when Subscribe Star did not refuse service to the clients ejected from Patreon.
At that point the situation became a blacklist..one with teeth.
In that vein, over at Ambient Irony, Pixy links to an article at One Angry Gamer that describes similar actions being taken against a Death Metal band.
The piece points out that the precedent for this was Obama's OperationChokePoint which weaponized financial institutions against businesses the Administration did not like, like porn stars and gun dealers. Choke Point was put down in 2017, but some of the electronic and informal infrastructure and more importantly the precedent for such counter constitutional restraints of trade presumably still exist. about 15 paragraphs down though the OAG article proposes that Pay-Pal and company are still getting their marching orders for these bans from the FDIC and this is all a deep state conspiracy.
Here's the thing.
I don't think the FDIC took a stance on Sargon of Akkad.
However, the same article links to a rather scattershot video by SFO that has some things to say about MasterCard. (He's really dug deep into Mastercard)
THAT is less silly, because Master Card (and financial bottlenecks in general ) came up not only in the Peterson/Rubin video above in the transcript of the much discussed phone call between Matt Christensen and Jaqueline Hart concerning the larger matter of free speech on Patreon.
JACQUELINE: The problem is is patreon takes payments. And while we are obviously supportive of the first amendment, there are other things that we have to consider. Our mission is to fund the creative class. In order to accomplish that mission we have to build a community of creators that are comfortable sharing a platform, and if we allow certain types of speech that some people would call free speech, then only creators that use patreon that don’t mind their branding associated with that kind of speech would be those who use patreon and we fail at our mission. But secondly as a membership platform, payment processing is one of the core value propositions that we have. Payment processing depends on our ability to use the global payment network, and they have rules for what they will process.
MATT: Are you telling me that this was Patreon’s decision then, or someone pressured you into this?
JACQUELINE: No - this was entirely Patreon’s decision.
MATT: Well then I don’t understand passing the buck off to somebody else.
JACQUELINE: No, I’m not passing the buck off. The thing is we have guidelines, but I’m trying to explain, #1 it is our mission to fund the creative class and obviously some people may not want to be associated.
MATT: Well if it’s your mission, then payment processors are irrelevant. It’s your mission. That’s what you’re pursuing.
JACQUELINE: We’re not visa and mastercard ourselves - we can’t just make the rules. That’s what I’m saying - there is an extra layer there.
MATT: Right, but that extra layer is not necessarily relevant if your own goals that you’re pursuing are already doing that anyway.
JACQUELINE: I don’t necessarily see it that way. I sort of see it along two lines - so if we said, we want this to just be a free speech platform - we’re 100% dedicated to free speech - then that isn’t really true to our mission.
MATT: What percent dedicated are you to free speech?
(Long Multipage Break)
JACQUELINE: We’re not a free market. Again, this goes back to -
MATT: Okay. I’m glad you admit that.
JACQUELINE: This goes back to what I was saying about that we are a payment processor and that is one of our core value propositions that we have, is that payment processing depends on our ability to use payment networks and we have to abide by those rules.
MATT: But that is not what you’ve been telling me repeatedly. You go back and forth between telling me we have to uphold our ideal, and then passing the buck off to payment processors who are holding you to this standard, begrudgingly I suppose. Either you agree with that standard or you don’t.
JACQUELINE: What I’m saying is we have to have policies whether or not I personally believe in something or-or.
MATT: When I say ‘you,’ I mean Patreon, obviously.
JACQUELINE: The problem though is that Patreon itself has to base their guidelines on the people that they work with and that they share information with and so-
MATT: But you have been telling me this whole time that you support those guidelines.
JACQUELINE: I do support those guidelines.
MATT: Okay. So -
JACQUELINE: But you have to base those on something so this is what I’m saying. Even if I personally came into Patreon and said, you know, ‘I believe 100% in absolute free speech’ I-I will not be able to make that the guidelines even if that’s what I personally believe. We have a lot of people here who believe that, but -
MATT: Well let me ask you this - has there ever been a case where a payment processor has come to Patreon and said ‘you guys are enabling too much hate speech, we’re gonna cut you off?’
JACQUELINE: As in Patreon?
MATT: Yeah - is there a reason you have to bend the knee to these payment processors? Have they made you bend the knee before?
JACQUELINE: I-I’m not going to get into a discussion about our payment partners specifically.
So...I think this is not a great government conspiracy.
However, there do seem to be a bunch of like minded people who have decided to determine whose cool and whose not. This is at it most basic the same as a bunch of preppies or mean girls in High School working to protect the exclusivity of their clique, and the emotional sophistication is probably similar.
Illuminati this ain't.
However, this clique controls banks, so the power they wield and its implications are consequential.
The upper echelons of our society and the world at large are in many ways a monoculture that has gotten exceedingly provincial over the last decade or so despite their aspirations to cosmopolitanism. The secular faith that they discarded their old timey religion for has at its disposal the manic enthusiasm of the newly converted feeding its own ruthless Inquisition. The Gramscian march that created this intolerant and incurious monoculture is a thing of the left so there is an inherent political aspect and bias to this, but we need to be clear headed about the situation.
The situation is genuinely troubling, but it is not hopeless. Decentralization and preferably distributed networks are the best ways to neuter the gatekeepers. Rubin, Peterson and others look to be working on that.
Shades of Bank of America and their treatment of gun and gun accessories manufacturers - their anti-Second Amendment attitude and effort to shut-down credit and financial services to said firms started before Choke Point begun.
Oddly enough, Wells Fargo (For all that I dislike about them.) still seems to be no issues handling the same people that BoA wants to destroy. I guess the massive fraud and malfeasance scandal they suffered makes them willing to avoid offending anyone willing to do business with them.
Posted by: cxt217 at Thu Jan 3 18:33:44 2019 (LMsTt)
3
I made up my mind at "Our mission is to fund the creative class."
I have been operating under the illusion that PayPal is a payment processor; one that was highly convenient to me. I did not realize they were a fund-raising organization for select artists.
PayPal is a bank in all but name, and should be treated as a bank - up to and including being quashed by the SEC if need be.
It is time for people who believe in big brother government for everyone else to get a taste of what they want the 'others' to experience but not themselves.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Jan 4 17:25:03 2019 (LMsTt)
Sargon is a Vlogger from the U.K. who opines on everything from video games to human rights.
He's a bit of a troll.
OK he's a lot of a troll, albeit a particularly erudite one.
He's definitely a mixed bag, occasionally doing absolutely spot on commentary like this take of the ethics and politics of STARSHIP TROOPERS of all things, and sometimes being an utter, douche, like here where he says mindnumbingly stupid stuff in defense of the Incel asshattery that is the asinine THOT audit. Sargon's a leftie and an atheist and so I disagree with him about a lot of things, but one of the things that I do agree with him about is his uncompromising stance on free speech.
Here he is on his best behavior...
It seems that almost a year ago, for some inexplicable reason, Sargon used the "N word" while mocking and berating some white supremacists who's loathsome antics he has been reporting on; and who in turn have been getting all stalky and doxxy with his family.
Now, using the "N-word" is always an inadviseable thing for us honky crackers. Indeed, this rule applies even when talking down to literal nazis...as is evidenced by the fact that the literal nazis he was responding to reported his unwoke language to Patreon's reassuringly named Trust and Safety Council,* which promptly banned him....for something he'd said on a livestream that was not in any way associated with Patreon.
"And we should care because...?"
Here's why this bit of internet drama is a concern...
A solid argument can, of course, be made that Patreon should be allowed disallow any behavior on their platform that gives them hives.
That's freedom.
However, if they are going to do that then that needs to be in the TOS, you can't just nuke someone who has not violated any of your terms of service. Which is exactly what Patreon did. Worse, the offending behavior was not even on their platform.
This is unethical. Highly unethical and means that Patreon at this point cannot be trusted to honor contracts.
Thus Patreon sucks and will screw you over as soon as you're on the outs with the "cool kids". The fact that the deplatforming seems to have been initiated by neo-nazis it not technically relevant but adds another layer of dreadfulness to the affair.
"'kaaay...So patronize someone besides Patreon."
INDEED! There ought to be no need for concern here.
Sargon should take his money to a competitor who wants it. Everybody wins.
That's FREEDOM...enabled by capitalism.
Lo and behold, it turns out there is at least one Patreon-esque outfit struggling to get out of Patreon's shadow and find some killer ap to differentiate themselves from Patreon.
He was followed there by other creators** who were also de-platformed by Patreon. More significantly, he was also followed by a surprising number who feared that they might be banned due to their views and Patreon's demonstrated perfidy and lots of others who migrated in solidarity with some outre' concept called "freedom of speech".
"See. Competition works."
"Now, why are people saying that a limey s**tlord's bad
customer service experience is DEFCON 5 for free speech?"
Well, it most assuredly wasn't.
Until it was.
You see, Pay-Pal, the ubiquitous online payment service then told Subscribe Star to ban Sargon and the other Patreon refugees. Subscribe Star refused and Paypal has now just cut off Subscribe Star's payment system. Stripe did too, and according to Subscribe Star, appears to not be releasing the creators funds it is holding!
Subscribe Star, to their considerable credit, is not buckling.
15 Dec 06:57
Dear friends.
We are here now not to tell you that "we are sorry but they made us to shut our shop down and now we are going to cry ourselves to sleep goodbyeâ€.
Just the opposite - we are fighting back and integrating new unbiased and predictable processors that will allow us to grow with you. This takes time, we estimate anywhere between 2 and 3 weeks from start to finish. This may require us to extensively travel across the globe for the best possible solution.
Stars, you have to know - all your money were successfully rescued from the PayPal and will be paid out to you in a timely manner. We had less luck with Stripe, but it all manageable.
Subscribers - we temporarily paused accepting new subscribers, as well as new donations and tips. All previously contributions are safe and will be distributed to corresponding Stars properly. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Our team is working tirelessly for all of us being able to secure our future without fear of being bullied by the crooks in corporate suits and their subservient weasels.
We are online and will stay so. We wish you the same.
Talk to you soon!
Truly yours,
SubscribeStar.com Team
"OK. That's genuinely scary."
That is the sort of thing that can lead to lead to idiot conspiracy theories, but this is where it gets scary. Here, is Jack Conte, founder and CEO of Patreon on Dave Rubin's show a few months back discussing the culture of Silicon Valley.
If the embed doesn't cue right, the money quote is from 30:17 to 32:30
So these tech CEO's are all sitting down together or via conference call and deciding (amongst other matters of import) what their workers salaries are going to be.
"Oh God. That's his....COVER STORY!?"
Conte is describing the smoke filled rooms of Gilded Age trusts. These guys are also talking to each other about the issues of the day and who should and should not have a platform. This is a syndicate.
It get's worse..
You see, there was another Patreon-like outfit until very recently. Thunderclap was very much the same thing as Patreon although worked largely through Facebook.
In August of this year, Thunderclap was shut down when Facebook disallowed it from using their services.
Being a Russian company Subscribe Star is somewhat outside of Silicon Valley's more direct sphere of influence, certainly they are more immune to the social pressures of acceptance in the virtual Versailles of the San Jose' virtue signaling clique. However, like all online businesses, Subscribe Star is still dependent on online payment services, which, as we are seeing, do feel those pressures. And of course, it's run out of...Russia...so it has all sorts of other potential issues, particularly regarding freedom of speech, election meddling and dangerous ursine bicyclists.
We're in a situation where the current bolt hole for free expression is a sketchy site run out of Russia, a situation that is so transcendentally wrong that it has left even the foul-mouthed Razorfist temporarily unable to cuss...
Razorfist embed atypically SFW
I understand if one doesn't want to click on a Razorfist link, but he's right. When speech is disallowed, violence becomes the medium of discourse. This is a bad highway to be on.
We often joke that Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World are not a three volume how to manual. For some people though, they are. We've now got fricking "Trust and Safety Councils" that turn anyone with the correct politics who hate the right people this minute into members of their little Stassi. With the power to control the information and to deny people financial services if they hold unpopular views, comes incredible power for mischief.
We've covered the Chinese Sesame Credit System before and that, I am convinced, is where many of the individuals behind this policing of speech want to be.
All it takes to bring about this dream of the anointed is for each of us to say "That guy's an asshole! He deserves what he gets. That bitch over there had it coming too, serves her right." and be silent, or smug, or report the asshole to the Trust and Safety Council. Then, because every one of us is an asshole to someone, we'll be kept in our place by the very crab bucket culture we are nurturing. Meanwhile, the archdukes and marquesses of Palo Alto "tend their fields" by cutting off any poppies that grow too high.
With that coming to pass, like the Greek City States before it, the 300 year aberration that is the enlightenment will disappear into the 300,000 year+ history of humanity as a short lived deviation from the mean. Things relating to freedom will go back to much as they were for the majority of that time, albeit with rather less ability to express heretical thoughts.
We're not there yet though.
There are people who will hold their noses and stand up for the rights of shitlords to opine on the matters of the day and who understand that words are not violence but rather the way violence is avoided. There are still search engines like Duck Duck Go and Epic that offer the ability for a Z-list blogger in Virginia to look up a news story that some seem to want to want to bury and we still have access to books written by great minds who saw where the path we are on leads and warn us from the grave*** to avoid the mistakes their societies made and take a different exit.
Despair not, the fact that this post and every link in it exists is proof that all is not lost.
But be aware. Be vigilant, and keep your eyes open for the inevitable rough patches on the unlit road ahead.
UPDATE 12/16:Fixed links/syntax and made small caption edits.
UPDATE 12/16: Removed Google screencap and associated text as it could not be duplicated and was not germane to the post (see comments).
*and totally not Orwellian at all.
**at least one of whom seems to have actually been a genuine racist degenerate
***So perhaps a Russian site being the guardian of liberty is not so incongruous as we might suppose.
I'm not sure what happened with that Google search; it is returning results for me.
At least you weren't searching for the news about mrflglrp mmmf mmf where even reporting about the mmf mrfle has been mmfed.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sun Dec 16 09:35:29 2018 (PiXy!)
2
Google wasn't giving any results for PayPal Subscribe Star in NEWS in the timeframe LAST 24 HOURS.
I used that criteria because I was looking for a non-blog news source and there was nothing about this particular story in Google's NEWS.
Using the same criteria Duck Duck Go gave the Financial Times article linked as well as a You Tube Channel. Though I did not think to screengrab that.
The blank Google screen startled me.
This is the same search on Google now.
Now it gives exactly one result.
Here's Google results as of this comment from NEWS and PAST WEEK (the story is over 3 days old now)
I think the bigger issue here is that this isn't seen as "NEWS!" by the journOlists.
I got notably better results Friday on Duck Duck Go, though today between Google ALL and DDG is infinitesimal.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Dec 16 11:07:36 2018 (gxCG3)
3
While I don't feel much like defending Patreon at the moment, I'd rather nip potential conspiracy theories in the bud. What Jack Conte was describing in terms of sharing salary data is what is known as "compensation benchmark data" and it's extremely common in every industry and only not available when you're talking about highly specialized skills (e.g. independent musicians who have a wide range of specialties). It helps companies determine if they are paying over/under market rate to an employee (or a group of employees) and adjust compensation accordingly. As a manager, I've used such benchmark data to get significant salary increases for a couple of my staff in the past where they were transferred to me highly underpaid. Sites such as Salary.com provide the same sort of service to employees.
Basically, how it works is that a company develops a profile for each employee defining job role, time in that job role, location of job role, and what they are currently paying. They'll subscribe to a service where that information is averaged with many other companies that have similar employee profiles to determine what the market rate (really more a range) for employees meeting that profile is.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Sun Dec 16 11:52:12 2018 (Q7Wqc)
4
Patreon, unfortunately, is developing a bad history. About a year ago, they attempted to make a change to their Patron payment terms where they instituted transaction fees. Given that many Patrons give $1-$3 a month, this would have substantially increased costs for them. It was actually a bit worse due to the timing of charges as some, formerly rolled up charges, would have become spread out over the month, but Patreon's scheme is too complicated to go into here. The reason it didn't happen is that Patrons bolted en mass when they learned about this, turning many Creators instantly non-viable. This resulted in Creators threatening to bolt en mass. Patreon backed down in short order.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Sun Dec 16 11:54:49 2018 (Q7Wqc)
5
As the search result doesn't seem to be reproducible and the search criteria were overly narrow anyway, I removed the google search screencap and the associated sentence as noted in the update.
For those wondering what Pixy is going on about above, this is the screencap in question.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Dec 16 21:17:22 2018 (gxCG3)
6
They must have been shamed into it because there are now results both for "paypal subscribe star" and "paypal subscribestar" and the second one is now an autocomplete suggestion.
Posted by: Rick C at Sun Dec 16 21:20:50 2018 (Iwkd4)
7
@ StargazerA5
Labor law is outside my bailiwick, but as I understood Conte, while he does mention publicly available databases, he's also referencing private agreements with other Corporations. More significantly to the subject at hand, the salary issue is presented in context of Rubin's question regarding the opinions of other CEOs in the valley regarding free speech issues.
Conte seems to be saying that these issues are being discussed which makes sense given what has appeared to be coordination between various platforms in deplatforming incidents in the past. The Rubin interview itself was in response to an earlier round of Patreon deplatformings which seemed to involve some behind the scenes coordination as the people and organizations involved found themselves unable to find alternatives.
As I said in the post, this can quickly degenrate into crazy conspiracy theory territory and that is a concern but it does bear scrutiny.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Dec 16 21:53:20 2018 (gxCG3)
1
4-Channers are supposedly finding information that his voter registration changed to Republican about the time he was arrested.... Others note that the "Vanifesto" (h/t Mike Kupari) showed a very distinct lack of sun fading.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Oct 27 00:30:57 2018 (Ix1l6)
Oh This Will Help Calm Things I'm Sure (UPDATED)
It looks like some creep has sent pipe bombs to prominent Democrats. I guess he/she decided that the actions of the Unabomber and James Hodgkinson are examples and not horrible warnings.
Also. Regarding today's outbreak of TwitterMadness: We really don't know anything about these things or who sent them other than the silly logo, so holding forth about False Flag ops, Incel edgelords or Larry The Cable Guy fandom is the exact opposite of helpful.
Remember, whoever did this was probably a nutbar. This would make trying to figure out motive via inferring who logically and rationally stands to benefit a fools errand since logic and rationality may not be in play.
UPDATE 2:
Finally! Some actual facts from Pixy in the comments.
...those fake ISIS stickers are literal false flags.
So THERE! No matter how this turns out, certain people will be able to save face. Thanks Pixy!
The part me that possesses morbid curiosity is interested in seeing the reactions of the usual suspects if the responsible party turns out to be a whack-a-doodle who targeted Soros, Obama, Clinton et al because they were not left-wing or progressive enough.
Then I realize that we would know exactly what the reactions would be.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Oct 24 17:17:58 2018 (LMsTt)
2
It's pretty easy to tell. If the news goes nuts when they find the guy, he was a conservative nutbar. If the story disappears completely, he was a Liberal.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Oct 24 21:10:18 2018 (Ix1l6)
3
The modern version of Occam's Razor is Ahmed's Clock: if it looks like a Hollywood bomb, it probably is. This is related to Viagra News: if the story stays up for more than four days, they found a conservative to pin it on.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Oct 25 00:30:54 2018 (tgyIO)
4
The NY Post has an article this morning saying these were "bombs": they had no detonation device.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Oct 25 11:02:07 2018 (Iwkd4)
5
What are we at now, seven bombs? And not ONE went off. Seriously, the Unabomber was an old guy living in a shack in Mexico on a shoestring and did better than that. Fireworks explosives? Not even black powder, or cordite removed from bullets? I'd expect a reich-winger to do better than that. CNN was even comfortable with taking a picture of theirs, rather than getting the h__l out of the room. Hmmmm.
Some were hand delivered? Where's the security camera video -- when the Austin bomber struck, it was up within about 72-96 hours after the second one -- so I'm waiting. If he's that incompetent a bomb builder, it would be VERY suspicious if
he were able to perfectly avoid leaving any trace for the FBI to track
him down.
There's only two ways it's going to turn out
Prediction 1: this "incompetent bomber" will somehow be a perfect genius in erasing his or her tracks and never be found. = FALSE FLAG
Prediction 2: He'll turn out to be a loon and the FBI will catch him very soon. = CRAZY
Posted by: Ubu at Thu Oct 25 12:39:41 2018 (SlLGE)
6
Someone pointed out that those fake ISIS stickers are literal false flags. I don't know if our Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight is that smart though.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 25 23:44:01 2018 (PiXy!)
7
Looks like he's a right-wing lunatic who was arrested for making bomb threats back in 2002.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Oct 26 11:40:32 2018 (PiXy!)
8
Annnnnnnd.... prediction 2 it is. Some have asked "seriously how could he have run around will all that on his van and not have it vandalized?" Well, if I saw that many stickers on a van, I wouldn't mess with it!
I've said for years: anyone with two or more bumper-stickers on their car is too damn proud of their kids, or a loon.
Posted by: Ubu at Fri Oct 26 12:51:28 2018 (SlLGE)
Also in Colorado, some of the voting instruction books are missing pages.
It's unclear if the Adams county ballots have been found or replaced, but according to the article, the Weld County Ballots were duplicated, meaning that there are thousands of extra ballots floating around in the wilds of Colorado.
Dispatches From the Department of Disquieting DevelopmentsPixy linked to this the other day and I think it really deserves rather wider distribution.
On the surface, it's a very dry, inside baseball discussion by a Paul M. Jones discussing a proposed Code of Conduct for open source code and IT work. This sounds both benign and banal until you realize that where benign and banal cross is their...intersection
The Contributor Covenant version on which the RFC is based is authored and maintained by intersectional technologist and transgender feminist Coraline Ada Ehmke.
"Well, I'm sure THAT won't
immediately go pear shaped."
And yeah...It's about as much a dumpster fire as one might expect, but, like so much else today has some really creepy undertones.
I strongly urge you to read the whole thing, which is replete with links to various other takes on the issue including Ehmke's. I further urge you to bring it to the attention of people with larger readerships.
The apparent importance of one proposed COC may seem deceptively limited in scope, but the implications are quite troubling and reflect what is already happening. Several examples from the tech world over the last few years are been brought up in the notes at the end.
This far beyond coders, pretty much everybody can be burned by this.
They are watching other people be drummed out for the sin of "not a team player" because their hobby is shooting, or hunting, or even fishing. (Fish have feelings too, you murderer!!!) Or somebody found a pic on-line of them at a Pro-Life rally, or somebody saw them walking into a church on Sunday morning.
Speaking of the Stassi, this video that keeps popping up on Instapundit every few months is also relevant and shows where we are going to end up if we as a society don't get off the PC train.
1
Somehow, these people managed to finally get Linus Torvalds. (They've been trying to subvert him for years.) They expect us to believe that he is retiring from the Linux kernel group and seeking training on interpersonal relations of his own free will.
It's f***ing creepy. Everyone knows what this is. We've seen this before. The people who talk about it are getting censored on the usual forums.
For the love of God, if these people ever have you up against a wall and your nuts in some sort of blackmail vise, NEVER APOLOGIZE. Never acknowledge their moral authority over you. If you do, if you let these sociopaths bully you into subordinating your moral evaluations for theirs, then they own your soul! It's off to the reeducation camps for you. This is how these people operate.
Never surrender to these people - if you're important enough to target, then too many other people are counting on you to keep your independence.
Posted by: madrocketsci at Thu Sep 20 19:41:54 2018 (TTXhu)
Posted by: madrocketsci at Thu Sep 20 20:05:04 2018 (TTXhu)
3
Oh yes: This Coraline Ada Ehmke person is somehow also involved in imposing the code of conduct on the Linux kernel hackers.
Posted by: madrocketsci at Thu Sep 20 20:19:20 2018 (TTXhu)
4
Modern SJW resembles the 1950s joke about the Soviet Union - yeah, you have the right to say what you want ONCE.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Sep 21 16:38:10 2018 (EGo5e)
5
Somewhere I saw a list of projects that this Ehmke person has managed to lever this CoC into. And it seems to be the sole contribution this person has made to any of them.
Posted by: Mauser at Fri Sep 21 21:02:09 2018 (Ix1l6)
I was going to add some missing PDF features to that project and submit a pull request, and maybe gently introduce them to the concept of documentation, but oh hell no.
Mind you, there's almost no activity on their repo or their forum, so it's not like there's any even theoretically offensive conduct to police.
This video is three years old and it looks like Extra Credits was not only ahead of the curve on this story, but, due to their area of expertise, had some very interesting perspectives about the Chinesesocialcreditsystem. The video also has some facinating bits of info regarding the Orwellian nightmare in question that haven't been widely reported.
One of the entities that runs the SCS is Tencent, the company that owns Riot Games, Epic Games and... Blizzard.
Furthermore, it looks like a couple of specific features of the social credit system seem to have been given beta tests in Blizzard's popular MMO, World of Warcraft.
The whole social credit system is the stuff of nightmares, but the fact that western game companies are so heavily involved in the development of this is even more worrying as this has some...implications.
Perhaps Twittermobs are a beta test to explore more social manipulation of a more kinetic nature.
This might sound paranoid. And you might think to yourself "That's retarded!" ...but if you didn't just think that...but you tweeted it, well, then you just got banned.
So who's retarded now?
UPDATE: OK, so you so you just got suspended for a week. These things add up.
Tencent has an undisclosed minority shareholding of Blizzard Activision, which while, yes, you can say they 'own' Blizzard, does not mean they 'owned Blizzard and has access to all the data that Activision-Blizzard has.'
In so far as the Chinese copying mechanics from World of Warcraft - I would not surprised but they hardly need a data dump of everything Blizzard know to do so - Tencent is the owner/operator of much of Blizzard's franchises in the PRC. That includes World of Warcraft - though if the PRC had thought some feature from WoW was useful they would not needed any sort of ownership of Blizzard to copy and implement said feature.
Of all the things to worry about in this discussion - I would rank whatever Blizzard and other Western gaming companies have as being low on the totem pole.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Aug 28 22:23:18 2018 (BcQU4)
2
I only got suspended for a week for using the r-word.
Twice.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 29 03:36:51 2018 (PiXy!)
3
Extra Credit's History series was quite enjoyable. Their history of sci-fi didn't start off too well, telling too much of the story of Frankenstein, but has gotten better as they focused more on the authors. Their relatively new Politics series was.. laughable. On one of the episodes they were basically making a plea for better discourse and treating each other's positions with respect, but all of their examples of good and bad showed their biases. They were naive enough they didn't even realize it nor the irony.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Aug 29 17:26:01 2018 (06P2d)
4
@cxt217: True, but its still troubling. The idea that WOW was used as a Beta run for a population control program is so outlandish that it's just....
Wait. There's nothing surprising about that at all.
@PixyMisa: I have amended the post.
@StargazerA5: That's the thing about biases....if you're not exposed to heterodox views, it's the easiest thing in the world to not be aware of.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Aug 30 19:02:54 2018 (3bBAK)
1
Of course Boot knows who Cromwell was. It's just that he's been driven insane with rage that Hillary lost.
Posted by: Rick C at Fri Aug 24 14:32:39 2018 (Q/JG2)
2
I really cannot find fault with Boot's statement (or, really, statements). He's not White; he's not American. He speaks only in support of his tribe.
Good for him. He should just eff the hell off to Israel and leave us alone.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Fri Aug 24 21:23:10 2018 (ug1Mc)
3
Max Boot has not been an Israel supporter since Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister against. So no, unless he is going to drop into Gaza, that is not happening.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Aug 24 21:40:27 2018 (BcQU4)
Boot's an American citizen, though he's an immigrant from Russia, He is just about as white as I am and I'm one pasty honkey. I don't know how Israel gets into it. His "tribe", as far as I can tell, is low-T self appointed aristocrats. His statement is all manner of faulty.
Clayton, it looks like someone is logged into your account and is posting crazy stuff!
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Aug 24 22:12:54 2018 (3bBAK)
5
I've never understood the "Jews aren't white" thing. All the Jews I've know have been white. Sure, they're a distinct sub-set of white, but so what? Regardless of their cultural distinctiveness, they're not hijacking planes to fly into buildings, or raping and murdering their way through Europe and the US.
Their tendency to vote for the politicians whose policies are not in alignment with my own is annoying, but that can be said of plenty of other groups as well, and there are enough exceptions to make blanket condemnation rather silly.
Posted by: jabrwok at Mon Aug 27 07:42:20 2018 (BlRin)
People who manage these pages that have significant followings are going to be asked to complete an authorization process in order to keep posting on their page.
"Well...that doesn't have any troubling implications."
Oh lighten up Sarcastic Coffee Girl. It's obvious that the idealistic nerds are just building a road to a glorious** future that we can get a glimpse of in this two year old Wired article and these two pieces that (entirely coincidentally I'm sure) ran on Drudge today.
* definition of "big" is not firmly established at this time.
** definition of "glorious" may involve momentary discomfort.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Aug 21 22:53:32 2018 (PiXy!)
2
"complete an authorization process"
Time to root your phone & spoof your location, *before* they start watching for that like the makers of Pokemon Go have started doing.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Aug 21 23:51:20 2018 (ITnFO)
Are the people doing the authorizing going to be formerly 'rehabilitated' inhabitants of Saudi-controlled or influenced institutions of incarceration? You know, like Youtube allegedly employed?
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Aug 22 22:34:26 2018 (BcQU4)
Alex Jones is a jerk, a creep, a lunatic, deeply offensive, societally corrosive, and an affront to all decency.
He also, to the best of my knowledge, is not advocating anyone get banned for saying things that he finds disgracious to his demented world view.
This makes him vastly less loathsome to me than the people who advocate de-platforming him, and somewhat less loathsome than those who think that this is 'not the hill to dies on' .
More in depth thoughts on this here, here, and here. A less current but more succinct take on this issue has been making the rounds as well.
Astonishingly, There are Things Happening in the World Besides Term Papers and Exams
This is one of the most interesting...
The bit about the Black Financial University site getting demonetized is interesting and downright scary. It looks like algorithims and outrage mobs are threatening to turn the internet into something as bland and even more risk averse than the 3 networks were pre-cable.
As a child growing up in the era after the first attempts by network standards and practices departments to appease the outrage mobs, I can attest to the sort of place that leads to.
Oh. Dear.
Yeah kids, the future's gonna be THAT bad if GoogleFacebookAmazon runs it.
A quick perusal of Maven's activism page leaves me somewhat less sanguine than Mr. McCollum, but still very hopeful. We eagerly await further developments there and elsewhere.
Oh
Some years ago I was taking a class on historical methods. This involved learning proper citation and research techniques for HISTORY MAJORS. This was a 300 level course. Everyone in it was at least interested in HISTORY.
The course was taught around the Holocaust, on the third day of class (my first day) a young lady tapped me on the shoulder and quietly asked a word that the instructor kept repeating in his lecture, but had given no explanation for, as if it was somehow supposed to be common knowledge...
"What's an Auschwitz?"
"A NAZI concentration camp. One of the big ones."
"A what?'
"..."
The scariest thing about this is that in the course of the class it became clear that his young woman was not actually stupid. She was quite bright. She just didn't know.
More than one-fifth of millennials in the U.S. -- 22 percent -- haven'theard of, or aren't sure if they've heard of, the Holocaust, according to a study published Thursday,
...
...
Two-thirds of millennials could not identify in the survey what Auschwitz was.
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!