• 0 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 3rd, 2023
  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•New executive order puts science under political control
    13·
    4 days ago

    From the EO: “Every tax dollar the Government spends should improve American lives or advance American interests. This often does not happen. Federal grants have funded drag shows in Ecuador, trained doctoral candidates in critical race theory, and developed transgender-sexual-education programs. In 2024, one study claimed that more than one-quarter of new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants went to diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives. These NSF grants included those to educators that promoted Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies in the classroom, masked as rigorous and thoughtful investigation.” yikes.

  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Neo-Nazi group leader sentenced to 20 years in prison for planning an attack on Maryland’s power grid
    9·
    4 days ago

    I too am against a surveillance state and thoughtcrime punishment but I am conflicted in this instance. Here’s why they were watching him: "Russell apparently wasn’t on law enforcement’s radar until police responded to a 2017 double homicide at a Tampa apartment building and found him outside crying, dressed in military fatigues. One of his roommates had killed the other two, officials said.

    Police concluded Russell had nothing to do with the deadly shootings. But while detectives investigated, they discovered a stash of highly explosive materials and a cache of neo-Nazi signs, posters, books and flags. Russell was in the Florida National Guard at the time and had attended the University of South Florida.

    Investigators said Russell co-founded the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, which is German for “atomic weapon.” They found flyers in his possession that said, “Don’t prepare for exams, prepare for a race war.” Russell also kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in his room and read books like “Mein Kampf” and “The Turner Diaries,” both reading staples of white supremacist extremists.

    Devon Arthurs, who later pleaded guilty to killing his roommates, told detectives he shot them for teasing him about his recent conversion to Islam. He also said it was to thwart a terrorist attack by Atomwaffen and claimed Russell had materials in the house “to kill civilians and target locations like power lines, nuclear reactors, and synagogues,” prosecutors said." Article Link

  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•We are this close to class consciousness 🤏
    2·
    5 days ago

    I read Thomas Pikettys Capital in the 21st Century recently, and it informed me on this topic. I still agree with you that those are the two most important class distinctions, but if I’m speaking with someone who is capable of nuance in the realm of socioeconomics I would give this statistic from that book: The top 1% own 30% of the wealth, the top 10% (which includes the 1%) owns 50% of the wealth, the next 40% (so not including those two prior categories) owns the rest, and the bottom 50% owns nothing. So there is now a patrimonial middle class that serves as a buffer between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, but this statistical analysis doesn’t really help with getting people aware of the fact that they are the poor and that they are poor BECAUSE a select few are outrageously wealthy.

  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Talking politics has bartenders on edge in Trump’s Washington DC
    7·
    6 days ago

    Reminds me of this: "Back in 2020, a writer named Michael B. Tager wrote a few tweets about his time at a dive bar in his native Baltimore.

    While he was enjoying an after work beer he noticed the bartender booting out a seemingly quiet patron. This patron was wearing a jacket covered in Nazi symbolism.

    When Tager asked about why he booted the guy, the bartender, a seasoned pro, said that if you let one Nazi in, slowly they replace the clientele.

    “You have to nip it in the bud immediately,” he said, as Trager paraphrased. “These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after a while, they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.”

    “And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh *****, this is a Nazi bar now,” he continued. ”And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”

  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•The Supreme Court just revealed its plan to make gerrymandering even worse
    21·
    7 days ago

    Not really. It’s always been like this: “We the People white, male, wealthy landowners of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union of white, male, wealthy landowners, establish Justice for white, male, wealthy landowners, insure domestic Tranquility for white, male, wealthy landowners, provide for the common defence of our ownership of slaves, promote the general Welfare of white, male, wealthy landowners, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our [white, male, wealthy] Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

  • brendansimms@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Why do neurotypicals like AI slop?
    21·
    8 days ago

    “I see AI as a positive because it undermines the monopoly on intellectual property of capitalists”

    I would contest that it does the exact opposite. Massive companies have been given free reign to legally steal (see Meta’s plagiarism/piracy court docs) from the entire internet. They then roll out the ai model, that they own, which can recreate things (art, writing, technical docs, etc) that are amalgamations of all the stolen work. They then sell subscriptions for people to use their ai, funneling people away from paying real artists.