Cynicism isn’t helpful. The U.S. was a democracy and now that’s in jeopardy. To pretend that an imperfect democracy is equivalent to the electoral autocracy we seem to be headed for is disingenuous and betrays the many substantiative freedoms we enjoyed under the former.

Yep. Pretty smart to take the financial hit for a short time and gather free publicity for it while trying to save a declining franchise.

They do until they don’t. Hitler came to power with the support of the brownshirts and then turned on them during the night of the long knives while shifting his rhetoric from the working class to the middle class.

But yeah, I take your point. Trump definitely doesn’t mind if his followers instigate political violence against his opponents.

Transmission providers don’t build much new line for other reasons… It’s hard, for example, to get utilities, environmental groups, landowners, and regulators from multiple jurisdictions to agree on things. This idea that providers would build more if there was just a bit more demand on the system (instead of simply pocketing the tariff increase) is fanciful. Moreover, that demand would simply generate more headwinds for renewables, who actually need transmission.

So utilities (presumably transmission providers who have a government-granted territorial monopoly, mind you) are complaining about not getting tariff on those behind the meter megawatts?

It seems like an alternate way to spin this story is that Big Tech is making agreements that avoid putting load on the nation’s aging and overloaded transmission infrastructure, which would be a good thing.

Not that I’m endorsing them per se. Electricity pricing and policy is complicated, and increased demand will directly or indirectly increase consumer prices (though long term it could lower them or even help fund nuclear renaissance). But it just seems like another case of big companies being crybabies when they think it might help them get their way.

To the contrary… it’s a real concern. That’s why we shouldn’t falsely equivocate the CCP censorship apparatus to the haphazard moderation impulses of a childish social media CEO.

We’ve got a lot more to lose, especially with the long-emerging (and currently accelerating) conflux of state and social media.

For insurance, the pending KOSA bill opens a huge opportunity for future government censorship: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/09/new-kosa-same-as-old-kosa-but-now-with-elons-ignorant-endorsement/

Which of my statements do you disagree with? How would you characterize the state of freedom of speech in the PRC?

He wasted a decade plus of his life chasing a lost cause.

Metal detector enthusiast who found a hard drive in the landfill 12 years ago:

“Yeah, I should get around to seeing what’s on that.”

China censors all literature, film, music, and internet discourse employing advanced technologies and multiple tens of thousands of people while also running the world’s largest prison for journalist. VPNs are blocked. Apps like Signal are blocked. Online gaming for minors is limited to 3 hours per day on weekends and holidays only. People get harassed by police for what they post online. Many go to jail for criticizing the government, spreading pornography or health related sexual content (including anything LGBT), supporting Taiwanese independence, or casting doubt on Chinese folk legends. Then, in addition to that (which I have not even begun to do justice to), all media companies run their own internal censorship regimes so as not to get in trouble with the authorities. And this rolls downhill: you the individual self-censor to not get in trouble with your boss or worse.

That’s the logic of a witch hunt. I mean, obviously there are behaviors so suspicious you’d feel almost complicit not to report them. But a lot of the times all we have are the subtle impressions built up by our unconscious brain and it’s not until the answer is shown that it all clicks into place and what once was hidden is now so obvious.

Yes, but presumably with more back channel pressure on Netanyahu to tone it down and avoid expanding hostilities. Small consolation perhaps, but objectively better for Palestinian advocates.

This. I cannot conceive of a world where everyone peacefully coexists and nobody uses violence to extract advantage (or revenge) from others. That’s fantasy. A warlord will always arise and in time such authority legitimizes and becomes a state. The best we can do is to democratize that authority and spread power around as widely as possible.

But that is funny. Granted, I go for deadpan and maybe Lemmy isn’t into satire, but it’s worth at least a smirk.

I don’t agree with Akareth fully, but I’d argue it’s difficult to write correct code at scale without static typing.

The other centrist option is the zero state solution. Just glass the Levant and let any survivors fight it out mad max style while the rest of the world refuses to have any interaction with them. Unlike the two state solution, neither side had to trust, cooperate, or develop empathy and respect for the other. It’s extremely expedient: any one of a handful of leaders could implement this solution within just a few minutes. And nothing says “this peace is permanent” like a charred radioactive hellscape.

My “lose lose” zero-state solution benefits over 8 billion people who will never again have to endure on the nightly news the bitching and posturing of these two mutually genocidal tribes.

Pretty hard to avoid the drawer. Maybe find a new home for that scale (maybe sideways in a deep drawer?), throw a few rarely used tools into a ziploc bag, and introduce a caddy or two to corral the small stuff.

Photographic art is drowned in a world of snapshots. That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly. Of course, there are a lot of awesome upsides and people can still do photography as a hobby, but there’s a real “you can’t go home again” feeling. You probably would have had to been into the hobby prior to the smartphone to appreciate the loss.

Hmmm… well, with Trump dissolving our coalitions, we’ll get to see how a nice a place the world is after the pax Americana. Next thirty years should be interesting.

Yes., absolutely. The post-WW2 world order was led and architectured by the US. Think of the Marshal plan, Breton Woods, NATO, the UN, the space race and cold war, and the huge impact of the US Navy providing global security for oceanic trade.