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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2024

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  • We both know the reasonable way to interpret your post, and the way nearly everybody would interpret it, is that that’s the current or final count. It’s also outdated to say 74 million fewer people voted for Harris, but at one point, that was in fact the count. But it’s more than outdated - it’s misleading to the point of being factually inaccurate to any observer.

    I can’t believe instead of being like “oh shit, I made a mistake, my bad, I better think for a second about this in the future” you’re going to try to justify it. Whatever, that’s social media at this point I guess. Surely I’m not the problem, says everybody feeding misinformation in a giant circle. I thought Lemmy might be better, but it’s just not. Thank you for convincing me to finally give all social media up.



  • I haven’t read the book - and probably won’t, since Dyer’s not a historian, has no relevant credentials listed on his website, and has never written a book before - but based on the article, it doesn’t sound like he’s saying anything new.

    It does sound like it’s being weirdly misrepresented, because Dyer didn’t “reveal” anything and his wealth isn’t any more or less “intimately connected” than any other wealthy person’s at that time. It also sounds like it overstates his wealth. He primarily got his money from being Master of the Mint, which until Newton was a symbolic post intended to give him income in return for his major contributions to science, but in standard Newton fashion he ignored the implied social norm and took it seriously instead. That gave him a comfortable income to essentially have some nice things. We’re not talking billionaire wealth.

    As for the connection to the slave trade - based on the title, I’d expect him to have owned the slaves, or led the expedition to enslave people in order to be “intimately connected.” For the time, this was about as connected as any landowner was to slavery. That’s not to say it was fine, just that this is expected for anybody of his station and is absolutely not new or surprising information.

    But I guess I’m acting all surprised that the Guardian made a shit article, and that shouldn’t be news to either.



  • My gut says “that’s probably true, but that doesn’t mean much.” Let me pick it apart.

    • LBJ attempted his War on Poverty and Great Society, and while it didn’t go as far as he wanted, he still got some good stuff out the door. Food stamps, medicare, medicaid, minimum wage, just to name a few. No contest compared to everybody that came later.

    • Nixon was a Republican, and I’ll skip all of them because by this point in history they would never be as economically progressive as Biden.

    • Ford was a Republican.

    • Carter ran on being socially liberal and economically conservative. Outside of minor policy like the Community Reinvestment Act, there’s no help there, obviously.

    • Reagan was a Republican.

    • Clinton ran on the Third Way, which was sort of what Carter did but even more disastrous. Notable policy included gutting welfare and widespread deregulation.

    • W was a Republican.

    • Obama got ACA passed and used an obviously Keynesian approach to economic recovery with the recession he was given, pulling away from Clinton’s conservative Third Way.

    • Trump was a Republican.

    • Biden did a similar Keynesian approach to economics.

    I would assume your statement hinges largely on the “biggest infrastructure bill” type rhetoric, because he didn’t do anything new, he just continued to fund things that the government needs to fund in order for the country to operate. He sure spent a lot, but whether that’s the metric we should be using for most progressive is up for debate.

    Personally, I’d say Obama was more progressive because he actually did something substantial and new with the ACA, but it doesn’t put him in another tier above Biden. Of course, neither comes remotely close to LBJ.

    What that statement really shows is how far the government has fallen from even attempting to provide value for people.







  • Two things I don’t see anybody saying:

    1. BlueSky is has venture capital funding, giving it greater marketing capabilities. Capitalism isn’t won by having a better product, it’s won by convincing people they should buy your product.
    2. Dumb luck. Sometimes things just go viral, and you can try to figure it out in hindsight, but even that’s just a guess. If people could accurately predict what was going to be popular, venture capitalists wouldn’t have like a 90% miss rate.


  • One major problem here is the lack of community. It was easier to get in-person events organized when the default was to do things in person. #resistance isn’t just more common because people aren’t willing to be in person, but because it’s not as easy to get involved.

    As far as actual political groups are concerned, a lot of them have very little online presence, or their information is only available through something like Facebook where you need an account to view it. Those that are more available frequently only hold their meetings online, and many make it difficult to find how to get involved because you have to navigate through all their requests for donations to find there’s very little else available.

    But that’s just my experience over the last few years. I imagine it’ll get a lot worse when these groups aren’t legally allowed to exist.






  • Like for a reasonable, ethical individual, that should 100% be enough.

    Conservatives have never been reasonable, ethical individuals. Slavery, Jim Crow, against women’s suffrage, against the equal rights amendment, against social security, against gay and trans rights, the list goes on forever. The country’s fight isn’t to change a conservative’s mind, it’s to get enough of the non-conservatives to engage, protest, and vote such that they overwhelm the small but galvanized conservative base.

    When you win on those issues, those conservatives don’t change their mind. They continue to support slavery, or voter suppression, or the issues of their time, but eventually they die off. Then you have new fights with the new conservatives.