beliquititious

@beliquititious@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨“Is anyone out There?” - HamRadio⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The mesh stuff looks so interesting. I wish I had the money to experiment with it, but like 3d printing, fpv racing, and Arduinos before it, I’m too broke and too much of an antisocial loner to really participate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨On 9/11 what was the internet like after it happened? Did people quit being dicks or trolls and showed some decency? Or was it like we have today and nothing changed?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Social media didn’t exist for the most part in 2001. There was LiveJournal and Something Awful. Most online discussions happened using instant messaging between people you knew or on discussion forums that usually were focused around an interest or niche topic.

  All of those platforms had trolls but they were much more benign than they are today. Islamophobia spiked and there were spirited debates, but nothing like the vitriol we see today on even the most banal posts. The communities were much smaller to the point that most regular posters knew each other and had interacted many times, civility was maintained by that familiarity like it would be in a real community. The anonymity that comes from massive userbases were you’ll never encounter the same person twice is really what created the naked hostility we have today. There was a forum called Storm Front, which I believe is still around, a literal nazi forum but you had to be deep into the Internet to even know it existed.

  After 9/11 more conspiracy theories started popping up and making their way to more mainstream sites as sort of proto-memes and it was a bad time to hold an opinion that wasn’t pro-US nationalism, but again nothing like the horrific things we see today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are you going to never forget 9/11 this year? What are you never forgetful for?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I will never forget that the CIA trained Bin Laden.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I wrote a script for a movie and sent it off to a studio or whatever. What prevents the person who recieved it from claiming it as their own?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s Rosemary’s Baby, minions and all. The minions in the movie just looked more like satanic cultists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I wrote a script for a movie and sent it off to a studio or whatever. What prevents the person who recieved it from claiming it as their own?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The classic “poor man’s copyright” is to mail the script to yourself in a sealed envelope and put it somewhere safe unopened. Then if anyone steals your idea you have a dated postmark on the envelope to prove when you created it. You definitely don’t have to worry about the studio stealing your idea though. They have systems in place that keep the people who read spec scripts isolated from other creative employees at the studio for that exact reason. Lawsuits are way more expensive that low balling an option offer.

  Other people have pointed this out but the major studios don’t really buy spec scripts anymore. They want something that comes with an audience already so you either need to build that somehow on social media or write for existing IP (but you’d need to license it yourself). Before a good apec script might have been adapted into an existing IP like your spy being rewritten as Jason Bourne, but since VC money bought out the studios they want more than a good script to produce a film these says.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When every candidate you supported loses the election⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s an expensive joke, those vintage campaign stickers are like $30 a pop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are US cops (or sheriffs) able to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Cops don’t even have the ability to enforce laws of the United States outside their jurisdiction. That New York cop you mentioned couldn’t arrest/detain/engage a criminal if they were on vacation in LA. Depending on the place some departments might allow it, but just as often they get annoyed.

  There used to be a retired sheriff in my neighborhood growing up who maintained his peace officer license. He had lights and a siren on his personal vehicle and would pull people over and ticket them. The local court though would just dismiss everything he issued.

  Abroad it would depend heavily on the location, but it seems unlikely many countries would tolerate a foreign law enforcement officer doing anything related to police work. There are all sorts of treaties and agreements about that sort of thing so likely a vacationing cop would create an international incident if they tried anything. I’m sure in some situations like murder or sexual assault they might get a pass, but it seems unlikely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is people's attention on their surroundings terrible today?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d actually say bus fatalities probably isn’t a good data set to use if you wanted to do like actual research about it. There are too many variables that easily accessed public data doesn’t cover. Like you’d want to filter accidents caused by the driver or another vehicle, the number of buses in circulation over time, demographics of the victims, among others.

  Someone has that data, but it’s probably specific to a city. Additionally there are entire classes of people with near zero chance of being hit by a bus, such as people living in rural areas and people who mostly travel during hours buses aren’t running, like 3rd shifters in cities with a limited bus program.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is people's attention on their surroundings terrible today?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Out of curiosity I searched around for the amount of people killed by buses over time, the classic not-paying-attention death, and it seems like the number has been fairly stable since 2000.

  My hypothesis was that if people were getting less good at paying attention that number should rise. One factor I couldn’t control for is people becoming more aware of being hit by a bus and being more alert in that specific situation. That would also explain the stability of the number as the population has risen quite a bit since 2000 but the bus fatality rate has remained the same, which might imply the bus death per 100,000 would actually be going down. I also didn’t look at the rate of injury, so safety technology could be shifting more fatalities to non-fatal injuries.

  Either way the bus data does not suggest that people are paying more or less attention than they always have. Further research is required as the results were inconclusive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't smaller countries get together with other smaller countries and form a "bloc" that could go in the game of the big "Superpowers"? Instead of the US, RUS, and China all the time?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They do, but the alliances are unstable. The problem is in determining what you mean by compete. Militarily that’s next to impossible. The advanced weaponry the US, Russia, and China can wield requires an advanced technological society to produce. Many smaller countries just don’t have the infrastructure, and worse would be hard pressed to access the materials to make them. Even fpv drones, like the Ukrainians are using against Russia, require advanced computing technologies that take decades to develop internally. But unless the countries have all of the materials within their borders they’d have to trade for it and be at the whim of the superpowers who control most of the world’s supply. The science is available for much of the tech with maybe a 20 year lag time, with more current science being highly controlled and classified.

  Economically there is more leeway. If the allied countries had natural resources or cheap labor they could trade that with other nations, but some resources such as oil, lithium, and rare earth metals pose an serious and deadly risk for any government looking to leverage them on a global market. Dozens of countries across the world have been destabilized and overthrown by the CIA alone, nevermind the 20 or so countries the US has directly invaded and dismantled for favorable oil trading.

  Realistically a small group of countries allied together is the same as the individual countries going it alone. You’d need a larger alliance that is continent scale to have any real power when dealing with the superpowers. But even that is no guarantee as the US/EU relationship demonstrates. Without military strength the alliance would have no hard power to wield on the world’s stage. Any nascent alliance would have to overcome meddling from the CIA/FSB/MSS if they started to become successful and threaten superpower interests.

  Realistically the only countries on Earth that are sovereign are the superpowers, the rest are subject to their demands.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valid point⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I’m out I keep my phone on airplane mode and in a little faraday bag. I am not dragging out my phone and waiting for it to reacquire signal every time I want to buy cigarettes. Nevermind that defeats the point of the faraday bag…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Counting on you to keep it going⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  He could have gone by will or bill or billy. He chose that name.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6 Days⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Almost all of the remaining WW2 vets are dead. We didn’t do shit, our vets lost their wars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What are you suggesting?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I donate sperm?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You might consider your family history of diseases. Heart disease, diabetes, and some types of mental illness among many others are passed down from generation to generation. If you’ve got parents or grandparents with any of those things that can be passed down, you might consider not donating. If you go to the NHS or a paid clinic they’ll 100% screen you for those things, but you might save yourself the trip if you know you’ve got them in your family tree.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should hate speech be protected under freedom of speech laws?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean I kind of see what you’re saying but it doesn’t really pass the smell test.

  Yelling in someone’s face is assault. Spreading harmful lies about specific individuals or businesses is lible. Speech that incites violence is not protected by the first amendment. And the rest: January 6th and the misinformation machine aren’t something that can really be legislated. Lies unfortunately are protected speech unless they incite imminent violence. As much as I would like to hang the raid on the capital on Trump I watched his speech (and Bannon’s) and he only ever implies violence. The crowd whipped themselves up into the violence frenzy we saw that day.

  Words absolutely can cause harm in the right conditions, but the ones that do the most damage would definitely not be hate speech. Fox News ran a segment last year where one of the hosts said homeless people should be killed and within a few days there were three separate incidents where armed men walked into homeless encampments and opened fire. I think the death toll was 9 people across the three events. But fox news spreading lies about ivermectin and masking during covid killed potentially tens of thousands. In the case of the homeless what the host did was already illegal, but the lies can’t be legislated.

  The more I think about it the less I’m concerned about hate speech. The things that need to be illegal, inciting violence, already are, and the things that aren’t are murky at best and a slippery slope at worst. Especially when you consider who would be determining what is or isn’t hate speech. Right now the powers that be would label your comment as hate speech because it’s critical of the gop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should hate speech be protected under freedom of speech laws?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Forgive my ignorance, but how can words infringe on the rights of others? As a member of a minority class with several hateful and hurtful slurs (that were on their way to becoming hate speech prior to the second Trump administration) I understand that some folks can get very upset but I don’t think anyone has the right to not be upset. I could be misunderstanding something though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Mirror AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s irl cyberpunk ice. Absolutely love that for us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s a human problem. It’s in our genes. Some of us are supremely selfish and some of those people have no regard for the health and wellbeing of anyone who gets in their way. Just look at our history.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If a TV series you loved from the 90s, 00s or even early 10s instead came out today - how different do you imagine it would be? How would the writing be different? Who would be casted instead?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  B5 would be called woke propaganda because of the parallels to what’s going on in the world today. The narn/membari conflict, the night’s watch (or whatever it was called), etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any way I can realistically send a message to Donald Trump and have him read it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Realistically, no. You need luck more than anything.

  Besides, what value does telling him that have?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Everything I Say Leaks,' Zuckerberg Says in Leaked Meeting Audio⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Billionaire “genius” unaware that to find leaks you tell different people different things and see what gets out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Zombie' spiders infected by never-before-seen fungus discovered on grounds of destroyed Irish castle⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  New phobia unlocked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I wish I could be unemployed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Fake, no way that chimp could afford mushrooms and black light posters

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You wouldn't even need to stop going to work!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say pragmatist, rather than a reformist. Reform makes the least mess to clean up after and leaves the smallest window for a hypothetical Joe the Billionaire from starting an actual monarchy after the overthrow of the system. If I had my way we’d replace the constitution with a new one that establishes a strong, expanded bill of right and the power to enforce it at a national level and all other decisions would be made at a city or county level, with state governments becoming caretakers and losing all legislative, executive, and judicial power beyond what’s needed to maintain the roads and grid(s).

  Replacing consumerism as a means of validation and acceptance is easier than it looks. Alienation is a combination of disenfranchisement, social rejection, and a lack of agency. The “buy nothing, buy less, buy used, buy local” is part of the zine I’m currently writing. The idea is that you replace consumerism with community. Buy nothing groups, swap meets, farmer’s markets, flea markets, craigslist meets all provide real human interaction and social validation. Actively trying to avoid any money possible going to billionaires and corrupt state coffers means more time spent shopping, specifically in meatspace, rather than online (where huge chunks of your money go to billionaires).

  I’ve actually been working on compiling all of the zine and essay content into a website, I will make a note and drop you a link when it goes live (months still, but this year). If I wasn’t already on a watch list (old crusty anarchist), I will absolutely be on one when that goes up, lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You wouldn't even need to stop going to work!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we’re misaligned because my unstated goal is to reduce the risk to migrants and trans people from a tyrannical government. Reducing state power would greatly reduce their ability to round up immigrants and dick over the queer community. It would mean less money to pay police to be assholes at the very least.

  It’s also a safe in-point for people wanting to take direct action but afraid of the legal consequences of more glamorous activities.

  Buying nothing, buying less, buying used, buying local (in that order) is easy-ish for most people, saves them money, and breaks no laws or contracts. Not paying your bills is a dumb idea, but not buying shit you don’t need is a win win for individuals. It would take several years to build a critical mass and if people change their relationship to consumption it would be easier to sustain that pressure.

  No temporary strike, protest, or other action will save us. We need long term personal change that will slowly starve out the billionaire class and their lackies.

  I am trying to organize a national buy nothing campaign, but the only resources I have are grass roots tools, like rambling in internet comments and writing weird zines. I’d suggest trying to reduce your personal spending by 20% and encourage people you know personally to do the same, if everyone did that the powers that be will take notice and in 18 months we’d see change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You wouldn't even need to stop going to work!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The government is a tool of the billionaire class. Weakening it weakens their power. Also any buying nothing movement would harm the billionaires much more than the government.

  You know that “defeating” the billionaires would screw over everyone on earth more than toppling the government of Florida or Texas? They have so much power removing their wealth, especially suddenly would destroy the global economy…

  Any solution to the larger problem of oligarchy is going to hurt everyday americans. Buying nothing would at least give them extra money in their pocket to adapt to the changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You wouldn't even need to stop going to work!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Fun fact: Most red states derive a significant portion of their tax revenue from sales tax. In some places (like Texas) it accounts for 80% of the state’s budget. If enough people significantly reduced their spending in red states, they could cripple the government and break no laws or contracts that would expose them to legal liabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interesting analogy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Neither argument hold any merit and is an example of the tyranny of history. Who cares what a bunch of dead assholes thought was theirs? The people who live there (not the politicians who pretend to represent their interests) are the only people that have any legitimate claim to authority on what should be done about the region.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are mental health patients strip searched in mental hospitals here in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree, but what else would you call being forced into a facility you can’t leave? Especially if the pigs brought you there. The way people in crisis are handled in this country is appalling.

  I have been in several mental health crises that I should have been in involuntarily hospitalized for, but was too afraid to ask for help because I would rather die than lose what little freedom I have. So I might be biased (and very bitter).