mozz
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev
- Comment on The Computer We All Wish We’d Had In The 8-Bit Era 3 months ago:
The interfaces are relatively modern too, with VGA and a PS/2 keyboard.
- Comment on We Talked To Real Swing Voters: What They Told Us Will Shock You. | More Perfect Union (15:57) 3 months ago:
OH LOOK
Here are the main points covered in the transcript:
- Elliott County, Kentucky has unusual voting patterns, having voted for Democrats in every presidential election for 144 years straight until 2016.
- In 2016, Elliott County had the largest swing from Obama to Trump of any county in the US.
- Despite voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Elliott County voted for Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in recent elections.
- The county is rural, 99% white, with limited economic opportunities and a median household income that has barely changed in over 30 years.
- Historically, Democrats were seen as the party for working class and poor people, associated with unions and FDR's New Deal programs.
- Over time, the Democratic Party shifted focus away from rural blue-collar voters towards white-collar suburban voters.
- Many residents express frustration with both parties and feel abandoned by politicians.
- Economic concerns, including stagnant wages and lack of local opportunities, are major issues for residents.
- Immigration and border security have become top concerns for some voters, despite the county's distance from the southern border.
- Governor Andy Beshear won in Elliott County by focusing on local economic issues and distancing himself from the national Democratic brand.
- Some residents recognize they have more in common with working-class immigrants than with wealthy politicians.
- There's a desire for working-class unity across political lines, but also a sense of grasping at any potential solution to local economic struggles.
- The influence of money in politics and the growing wealth of billionaires are seen as problems by some residents.
- Trump's outsider status and promise to "drain the swamp" appealed to voters frustrated with traditional politicians.
This summary captures the key points about Elliott County's unique political situation, the economic challenges facing its residents, and the complex factors influencing their voting patterns.
Emphasis is mine
I actually think the forgotten-ness of rural voters and their jobs and ability to make a living by both sides of the aisle is a hugely important story specifically vis-a-vis why Trump got so much support. I don't fully disagree with the thesis of the video.
However
I like to talk about this explosive growth of working class wages over the last 4 years (nowhere near enough but also something worth giving credit to Biden for). I wondered if that applied also to Elliot County -- I still don't really know the answer, but I found this, and if you click back to 2020 the bars only go up to $60k and in 2022 they were going up to $95k so that tells you some level of something.
It's also notable that I was able to predict what the piece would say without anything to go on other than educated guessing about what it might cover.
I would be curious to see something actually diving into how things have worked out (specifically taking Elliot County as an example) for the last few years, where that $95k actually came from, how common it is, how things worked out in 2023 and why, etc etc. Basically a real unbiased version of what this video is a somewhat blinkered form of, would be fuckin fascinating.
This isn't it though
- Comment on We Talked To Real Swing Voters: What They Told Us Will Shock You. | More Perfect Union (15:57) 3 months ago:
Here’s my prediction about “More Perfect Union”, just based on the channel name and the downvotes:
- Weirdly high production values
- Reasons why people don’t support Harris / Democrats and you shouldn’t either
- General leftist vibe but no particular leftist plans other than DEFINITELY NOT VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS
- No particular affiliation with any existing leftist organization or personality, just arrived from nowhere
I could be totally off base. That’s just my guessing prediction based on a learned level of suspicion that at this point verges on furious unfair cynical prejudice
Brb
- Comment on 5 Reasons Why Bill Skarsgard's The Crow Remake Bombed At The Box Office 3 months ago:
There are different types of bad movies. There are those that find an unintended audience after the fact, reframing them as sources of amusement to be ridiculed, those that are simply too dull to be thought of ever again and then there are those that are made with such staggering incompetence that they barely even exist. The latter category is the one that I find hardest to endure, films such as The Snowman (a head-scratchingly awful thriller that was technically unfinished yet still released) veering from bad to refund-level unwatchable.
It was no real surprise that a tortured update of 1994’s cursed goth revenge thriller The Crow would be a misfire – it’s been in development since 2008 with multiple directors and actors attached ever since – but it’s genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release. Filmed two years ago and dumped on a low-expectation late summer weekend, The Crow 2.0 is a total, head-in-hands disaster, incoherently plotted and sloppily made, destined to join the annals of the very worst and most pointless remakes ever made.
I have no idea; I haven't seen it. But the initial reports aren't great.
- Comment on 5 Reasons Why Bill Skarsgard's The Crow Remake Bombed At The Box Office 3 months ago:
- It was very bad
- Comment on Boeing Embarrassed as ‘Stuck’ Astronauts to Return with SpaceX. 3 months ago:
Imagine how embarrassing it would have been if some of these executive who've been so aggressive about cost cutting had their spouses or children die in a totally preventable inferno, or suffocate to death.
Super embarrassing.
Fuck em. They're lucky
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Some of us do; Lemmy doesn't display votes, but that doesn't make Lemmy votes private. Discussion here. PieFed apparently has a technique for keeping your votes actually private (mostly) from even the platforms that do display them.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
The list of people upvoting this comment makes for fascinating reading
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
It is different when real imminent harm to real organisms in the actual real world is involved
If someone is posting that crystals will cure your cancer, or you can feed your baby honey to build its immune system, or vegan cat food is safe, it is a good admin’s job to curtail your free speech rights unless you can demonstrate pretty convincingly that you are not the wrong one (with more than “I KNOW bro, I’m vegan, so that means I’m right and stfu”).
And doubly, triply, so if you are actively censoring people who are trying to debunk your misinformation through exercise of their own free speech.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Quite right.
- Someone posted that a vegan diet is ok for cats
- Someone else posted that no the fuck it isn't
- !vegan mod removed the previous post
- Admin (presumably Rooki) restored the deleted comment and deleted comments that a vegan diet is ok for cats
- Mod flipped the polarity of the reversals back again, and banned Rooki
- Rooki unbanned themselves, flipped the polarity back again (so now it's only the anti-vegan-cat comments)
So I was wrong, I think. The !vegan mods did delete some of the debunking first, but it wasn't from Rooki. I think.
Also, it's still going on; the mods are as of a few hours ago still undeleting vegan-cat advocacy comments and banning people who disagree with them.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
an instance admin (not a community moderator) stepped into a community (!vegan), removed a bunch of "disinformation" comments
Is this true? I thought Rooki just posted a counterpoint, not removed anything. Maybe I am wrong.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
100%
That's the funniest part to me. Rooki was extremely evenhanded about it.
They posted misinformation, Rooki left it up but posted a counterpoint. They banned Rooki, Rooki didn't ban them in return, just restored the counterpoint and removed their ability to ban. At no point were any of their free speech rights interfered with in any way, and now they're all butthurt that they are no longer able to censor the admins on their own instance, in service of promoting animal abuse.
Good luck guys. Like I say I would look at it as a learning experience about how the world works.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
I didn’t think it needed to be spelled out, but I am not seriously suggesting doing this; I am making a particular satirical point.
If you think forcibly taking control of an organism and feeding it a diet which isn’t what it would prefer with its free will to be eating, and may not even be healthy for it, is so messed up that I shouldn’t even be joking about it, because contemplating it happening to you is fairly horrifying, then yeah you kind of have a point and we can agree on that.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Yep
More common, I think, than someone saying “well I opened the door to it by trying to ban them first, it’s only fair that I have to find a new instance now, that was a valuable lesson and now I understand better how it probably felt on the receiving end of the bans I was happily handing out before”
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
I’m gonna start a community which is devoted to kidnapping vegans and feeding them an all-meat diet and cite some dodgy studies about how that type of diet actually leads to better health outcomes for them as self-reported by other enthusiasts within the vegan kidnapping enthusiast community
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Yes, and instances have their own overriding sitewide rules. Some instances exist specifically for misinformation or the encouragement of reprehensible behavior, or at least advertise themselves as a safe space for it, and some don’t.
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
I think it’s funny that the vegan mods in question pivoted effortlessly from “this is our place, fuck you, you are banned, we’ll decide what is and isn’t allowed” to “halp halp they’re censoring me, what about my human rights, you can’t do this”
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Yes
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
You’ve got to be joking
- Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct 3 months ago:
Hey, check it out! I was right in thinking that the studies indicating good outcomes for the pets were poorly structured.
We found that there has been limited scientific study on the impact of vegan diets on cat and dog health. In addition, the studies that have been conducted tended to employ small sample sizes, with study designs which are considered less reliable in evidence-based practice. Whilst there have been several survey studies with larger sample sizes, these types of studies can be subject to selection bias based on the disposition of the respondents towards alternative diets
There aren’t studies saying that it is dangerous for the pets, which is a little surprising to me. Long story short the jury’s still out. But IMO it is completely fine for the admins of an instance to come down firmly against potentially animal-abusive practices, just as they would against political misinformation or nonconsensual pornography or what have you, regardless of how much in favor of those things are the members of the community promoting it.
- Comment on Designing Friction (philosophical essay about technology) 4 months ago:
A lot of the best communities to be in have a barrier to entry
The community of pilots, the people who work in medicine or on floor X, the people who are proud of what they can accomplish and recognize automatically that the value of the interactions they have are not worthless.
Idk how you bring that to the online space. But it is missing, yes. I like this essay.
- Comment on What's everyone favourite Nic Cage movie, and what do you think is his biggest hidden gem? 4 months ago:
Bringing out the Dead is a goddamned underrated masterpiece. It's Nicholas Cage in his perfect unhinged element, playing perfectly to his strengths in a movie where they can really shine.
- Comment on Just why?? 4 months ago:
They don't want to touch you
- Comment on So Mark Zuckerberg called me 4 months ago:
John Oliver did this with the nuclear speech, and what autocorrect came up with was arguably more coherent
- Submitted 4 months ago to aneurysmposting@sopuli.xyz | 11 comments
- Comment on Microsoft and Reddit Are Fighting About Why Bing’s Crawler Is Blocked on Reddit 4 months ago:
You need to read again the thing that was described, more carefully. Imagine for example that by “a page,” the person means a page called /juicy-content or something.
- Comment on Microsoft and Reddit Are Fighting About Why Bing’s Crawler Is Blocked on Reddit 4 months ago:
I know this because i wrote a page that IP bans anything that visits it, and l also put it as a not allowed spot in the robots.txt file.
This is fuckin GENIUS
- Comment on Why The Democrats Never Get Anything Done 4 months ago:
Have fun with your propaganda, okay? I hope your misinformation videos go really, really well.
- Comment on Why The Democrats Never Get Anything Done 4 months ago:
You almost sold me on the value of reading the whole transcript over, and seeing what I thought of it, to see if there's something to what you were saying. I mean, that's not at all what a "Gish Gallop" is, but you're not wholly off base on it being maybe off base for me to read the bullet point transcript and assume that GPT got the whole thing perfectly right.
So, I read the first paragraph of the real transcript.
Way 2024 is an election year, and unfortunately for Biden, his approval rating is in the toilet. I won't go through his whole track record, but just to refresh your memory, Biden promised a $15 minimum wage and didn't deliver. He promised to enshrine the federal right to abortion and didn't do that either. He promised to cancel about $10,000 of student debt per person and ultimately came in way under that number. And then, of course, you have the recent stuff with the southern border where Biden's being far more xenophobic and draconian than most Republicans, even after calling Trump out for the same thing and promising to put a stop to the border wall, which he also didn't do. You get the picture. But politicians never keep their promises, so no one's really surprised. Even now, as we're hearing the Biden campaign make basically the same promises, it's because, trust me, this time is going to be totally different. They just needed more time. Now that he's on the campaign trail, Biden is mostly pinning the blame for this sort of stuff on Republicans. It's time to rally every last Democratic voter behind him, and with a solidly Republican House and a sort of blue Senate at the moment, the reason things like that border bill didn't get through was because it was blocked by a strong Republican opposition. So it makes sense that Biden is really keen on making them look like obstructionists. But that really doesn't explain all the broken promises.
I think we're done here.
- Comment on Why The Democrats Never Get Anything Done 4 months ago:
I really feel like you replied without watching the video
That is accurate yes. I've watched Second Thought videos before, and I'm familiar.
because none of that is from the video
The fuck it isn't. I decided it was probably unfair for me to get into too much of a back and forth about the video without having any idea what's in it, even though I am highly confident that it's shit. So, I grabbed the transcript quickly and asked ChatGPT to summarize the whole thing in bullet points. That way I can still switch away quickly and hurt it with the algorithm.
Here's what it came up with:
- Introduction to Second Thought: The channel is 100% viewer-funded, encouraging support through Patreon.
- 2024 Election and Biden's Approval Rating: Biden's approval rating is very low, and his failure to fulfill several key promises like the $15 minimum wage, federal right to abortion, and significant student debt cancellation is highlighted.
- Broken Promises and Blame on Republicans: Despite having a Democratic majority for two years, Biden blames Republican obstruction for his unfulfilled promises.
- Democratic Control and Disappointments: Even with control of the presidency, Senate, and House in 2021, Democrats failed to deliver on progressive promises, leading to disappointment among voters.
Bullshit. The student debt cancellation in particular is transparently false to blame on Biden since he tried to do much more than the rest of the system (the Supreme Court in particular) allowed him to do.
I listed some key accomplishments above. I actually am fairly content with how accurately I guessed what kind of transparent bullshit and Biden-blaming and failing to recognize important stuff he actually did accomplish, was in this video.
Now it gets interesting:
- Obstructionist Democrats: The video mentions the recurring issue of Democratic senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema obstructing progressive legislation, drawing parallels with past figures like Joe Lieberman.
- Lobbying Influence: Lobbying and corporate donations are identified as major influences on conservative Democrats, who often block progressive policies due to financial incentives.
- Revolving Door and Career Incentives: The potential for lucrative lobbying jobs post-politics motivates some Democrats to obstruct progressive legislation to stay in the good graces of corporate donors.
If this was the core of the video, it'd be grand. "How do we get rid of the Manchins of the world" sounds great. "How do we blame Biden for anything and make sure we don't vote for Democrats" is guaranteed to make things worse. Like I say, I'm actually fairly happy with how well I was able to determine what was in the video just from the thumbnail, title, and what channel it's from.
- No Labels Organization: Founded in 2010, No Labels aims to bring together centrists and moderates, often funded by Republican donors, to undermine progressive candidates.
- Democratic Leadership's Role: Democratic leadership actively supports centrist candidates who obstruct progressive policies, revealing a strategy to maintain corporate support while appearing progressive.
- Managed Democracy Concept: The thesis borrows from Sheldon Wolin's "Democracy Inc.", arguing that gridlock and obstruction are intentional to prevent majority rule and maintain corporate influence.
Yeah. More good stuff. It's a big problem. Let me guess - the solution is not to vote for
BidenHarris.- Systemic Gridlock: The design of the American political system, with its gridlocked Congress, ensures that corporate interests are prioritized over majority rule.
- Democrats' Dual Strategy: To remain in power, Democrats need to appear progressive while catering to corporate interests, resulting in a strategy of controlled obstruction by a few key figures.
- Electoral Politics and Voter Demobilization: Elections focus on mobilizing voters with progressive rhetoric, but post-election, corporate interests take precedence, leading to voter disillusionment.
Yeah. All of this stuff is pretty bad.
Honestly? If this video was being made in 1995 or 2004, it'd be great. Since then we've moved on to an actually progressive Democrat in the White House, against all fuckin odds, and the Republicans have moved on to actually wanting to shoot all the Democrats, let alone what they want to do to the socialists.
- Long-term Implications: The video concludes that radical change in the US will not come from the Democratic Party but from organized mass movements, as the party is too entrenched in corporate interests.
Accurate yes
- Support and Community Engagement: The video ends by promoting its Patreon and Discord community, emphasizing the importance of viewer support for independent, principled socialist content
Yawn
