chaogomu

@chaogomu@kbin.social
1 Post – 801 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

The town didn't actually have an election.

No elections in the last 60 years. It's just been old white men trading the office of mayor around to their children when they die or get tired of it.

And no one in the community actually knew who the mayor was, well, none of the black residents knew, because the mayor and city hall never let them vote.

So, Patrick Braxton got fed up with the situation and filed the paperwork to run for mayor, and since the previous mayor had never bothered with any paperwork, Braxton won by default. The only person in the last 60 years to actually run for mayor instead of being appointed by their father.

Braxton is also a volunteer firefighter, and the only member of the force who responds to fires at black people's houses.

The article is a wild ride. The white population of the town just seem to be caricatures of racism and bigotry.

1 more...

It's not that they didn't block UV, it's that they installed UV lights in the DJ booth because it would "look cool".

It was a purposeful choice, and no one stopped to think about why it was a bad idea. Which is totally on brand for people running a convention based around NFTs.

12 more...

The thing is, the LLM doesn't actually know anything, and lies about it.

So you go to How Stuff Works now, and you get bullshit lies instead of real information, you'll also get nonsense that looks like language at first glance, but is gibberish pretending to be an article. Because sometimes the language model changes topics midway through and doesn't correct, because it can't correct. It doesn't actually know what it's saying.

See, these language models are pre-trained, that the P in chatGPT. They just regurgitate the training data, but put together in ways that sort of look like more of the same training data.

There are some hard coded filters and responses, but other than that, nope, just a spew of garbage out from the random garbage in.

And yet, all sorts of people think this shit is ready to take over writing duties for everyone, saving money and winning court cases.

33 more...

The inverse is also true. Israel has kept these people bottled up in what amounts to open air concentration camps for the last 70 years, and constantly killing Palestinians for that entire time.

Israel has never cared about collateral damage in their war on the people who lived there before.

So imagine a people, treated like criminals for their entire lives, all because they lived on the land that Zionists wanted.

All that resentment for the unceasing oppression let the worst elements gain power.

The path to change is not to expect the oppressed to stop lashing out. Only in ending the oppression can there be change.

But the Israeli government isn't interested in stopping the oppression. They could have done that at any time in the last 70 years. No, they seem to want a full genocide.

5 more...

In this specific case, Apple axed the show because Stewart was going to talk about China's less savory behavior.

The show had been announced to have a third season, and then suddenly when Stewart was gearing up to tackle some of the issues around China, Stewart was instantly fired.

And this isn't the first time China had demanded the firing, or public apology, of a prominent American who is even slightly critical of their government.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/hollywood-corporations-apologize-to-china

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-brief-history-of-corporate-apologies-to-china-2019-10-09

12 more...

Conservatism was literally created as a backlash against the democratic movements of the US and France.

Conserving the power of the rich, to create a new nobility.

Monarchy was always the end game.

2 more...

So nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the supposed "Texas right to secede" is actually bullshit, and a complete misunderstanding of the actual right that they have, which is to be broken up into five separate states.

Except even that is bullshit, because it was talking about the Texas Territory, which was larger than modern day Texas.

The constitution clearly says that;

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

So yes, Texas could request to be broken up, but congress still needs to okay it.


Now, as to the "right to secede", that bullshit was settled with the Civil War, States do not have the right to secede, not even Texas.

Republicans like to pretend the Civil War never happened, and want a repeat, I guess.

12 more...

I seem to remember a guy being convicted for possession of child porn, and the very much adult porn star actually came to his trial to testify in his defense... I'll see if I can find a link about it, but that will be some risky searching.

6 more...

Strokes, but also broken necks.

And some of these quacks do "adjustments" on children and infants.

2 more...

A reminder that ADF, the group that creates these lawsuits with fake clients, is funded almost exclusively by Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society, and the man who Trump used to pick all judges, including the three supreme court picks.

Almost every single conservative judge is a member of the Federalist Society.

3 more...

Failed it three times, finally succeeded at the age of 34, just a few months before the election that put her in the House.

She also married a (somewhat rich) sex offender. But has now divorced him in favor of a guy who was groping her in the theater she was kicked out of. She was also giving him a handy.

14 more...

Oil companies are ultimately to blame. After all, it was the Rockefeller Foundation who did the early radiation studies in the 50s, and then blatantly lied about the results to make radiation sound super scary. They claimed that there was no safe dose of radiation, and that any exposure, no matter how small, led to a direct, linear, increase in cancer risk.

And then the oil companies funded politicians who declared education to be the enemy, so now Americans don't know enough physics to know that every day, they are swimming in safe doses of ionizing radiation. That ocean water has millions of tons of natural uranium oxide dissolved in it.

US nuclear policy has been based off of these lies, it's part of why nuclear power is so expensive.

Those same oil companies actually paid to found Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to specifically advocate against nuclear power, by spreading fear and lies about how nuclear physics work.

The Rockefeller foundation still funds Greenpeace, and still requires that Greenpeace be anti-nuclear to receive that funding. All while being heavily invested in oil.

27 more...

CNN was bought out by a right wing billionaire.

They were barely centrist beforehand, and now they're sliding subtly further and further right-wing in their reporting.

https://www.vox.com/2022/8/26/23322761/cnn-john-malone-david-zaslav-chris-licht-brian-stelter-fox-peter-kafka-column

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/10/objective-cnn-rightwing-week-in-patriarchy

A bail bondsman has more legal options for going after someone than any other type of loan officer, including the use of bounty hunters.

21 more...

The problem is, you can't trust ChatGPT to not lie to you.

And since generative AI is now being used all over the place, you just can't trust anything unless you know damn well that a human entered the info, and then that's a coin flip.

7 more...

Allegations? You mean the fact he openly admitted it to his biographer?

14 more...

2011 is well outside the Statute of Limitations for infringement...

That's three years with some wiggle room for ongoing infringement.

This is likely an intimidation/shakedown thing.

1 more...

Jay Leno did the most to further that hit job. He spent months spreading lies, all while McDonald's became a major sponsor of his show.

4 more...

Yup, the air blower companies have also funded anti-paper towel studies. It's somewhat funny.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/25/hand-dryers-paper-towels-hygiene-dyson-airblade

The Lochner Era might have been worse than the pre-civil war era.

To know that the Lochner Era was like, just imagine this court in 10-years.

The Supreme Court during the Lochner era has been described as "play[ing] a judicially activist but politically conservative role".[5] The Court sometimes invalidated state and federal legislation that inhibited business or otherwise limited the free market, including minimum wage laws, federal (but not state) child labor laws, regulations of banking, insurance and transportation industries.[5] The Lochner era ended when the Court's tendency to invalidate labor and market regulations came into direct conflict with Congress's regulatory efforts in the New Deal.

The Lochner court struck down laws that would have lessened the impact of the 1929 stock market crash, and also struck down efforts to shorten the depression.

FDR flat out said that if they didn't knock it off, he would appoint as many justices as needed to undo the damage.

This current bill is maybe not the way to do it. Just add a few more seats (13 Total, to match the number of appeals circuits), and then maybe name the Federalist Society a hate group and ineligible for federal service in any capacity.

1 more...

Here's a simple fact, there are Chinese nuclear plants that are releasing more tritium into the ocean during normal operations than Fukushima is, or ever will.

Another simple fact, all the tritium released worldwide is basically negligible when you look at the diffusion rates in ocean water.

I've got no clue what China is really wanting with the seafood ban, but it's not to punish Japan for releasing Fukushima water.

22 more...

The difference is that this actually is safe.

See, the radiation released is actually lower than the background radiation of standard ocean water, because the ocean is full of naturally occurring uranium oxide. It's water-soluble.

Anyway, the tritium in the discharge water is diluted so much that it will be a non-issue. This just gets headlines because people are kind of stupid when it comes to the scary radiation word, as if you weren't bathing in ionizing radiation right this very second from all the natural sources around you.

You have gamma from cosmic rays, alpha and beta emitters in the soil, and a dozen other sources of radiation around you.

9 more...

They ditched the "don't be evil" years ago. Now it's "As many ads as possible".

I hear that they can cover up to 80% of a user's visual field without inducing seizures.

Ignoring a court order can lead to jail time. Not enough for being part of an attempted coup, but I'll take any of these assholes getting any time in jail at this point.

14 more...

because they suck at driving or were driving too fast.

They ran a red light just before the crash, and other officers refused to use a breathalyzer on them. No blood samples were taken either.

Not all bigots are secretly gay. Some are just hate filled assholes. Most are hate filled assholes.

3 more...

400mg of caffeine is the daily maximum dose recommended by several health organizations. And that's for healthy adults. Keep in mind that one charged lemonade had more caffeine than a full can of Red Bull, and a full can of Monster combined. It also contained a lot of taurine which increases the effect of caffeine.

The charged lemonade does not taste caffeinated, and there were basically no warnings about it in store. The marketing and in store branding made it seem like a sort of Gatorade, i.e. an electrolyte drink.

It was also sold next to the fruit juices and such. Which would imply less caffeine.

It was also part of the unlimited sips program, providing free refills. Drinking two or three would cause a healthy adult to start having heart palpitations, and those who are at risk would go into cardiac arrest after one (which is what happened with the first death)


Since the first death, Panera has reduced the amount of caffeine in the lemonade, and many stores have started putting it behind the counter rather than out in the open. They've also added warnings about the caffeine content of the drinks, but still don't warn about the compounding effects of taurine.

These lawsuits are likely going to be settled out of court, because Panera did fuck up here, and they also don't want the bad press of multiple deaths linked to their overly caffeinated drink.

8 more...

Before the witch hunts kick off, keep in mind that this "list of associates" also includes victims and others who have sued Epstein for other reasons.

Wait for the checked and collated list before we start hunting.

Elon is a fragile narcissist, all Putin has to do is say nice things about Elon, and Elon will eat out of Putin's hand.

2 more...

He said he never wanted to hurt Paul, but still seems to want to kill Nancy.

That basically makes him completely unrepentant. Here's hoping he finds a shred of humanity in his many, many years behind bars.

It was not one mobster or another. He made his name prosecuting the Italian mob so that the Russians could move into NYC.

Strom Thurmond famously switched parties because the Democrats decided to end segregation.

The story there is actually fascinating. There was a time during the late 50s, early 60s when it could have been Republicans who were champions of civil rights.

After all, it was Eisenhower who started desegregating the military, and who ordered the 101st Airborne in to protect the Little Rock Nine.

Southern Democrats were the people pushing back against it all, because they were the conservatives.

Republicans and Democrats worked together on the 1957 civil rights act. And when there was pushback against it, Democrats and Republicans worked together to weaken the bill with some bad amendments. Stom Thurmond set a record for a standing filibuster during this process.

Then Eisenhower pushed through the Civil Rights act of 1960. This made it easier for black people to actually vote, but that was it.

The moment that sort of cemented things with the racists choosing the Republican side was the election of JFK. Well, not exactly the election itself, but a moment during the election.

Martin Luther King was arrested in October 1960, Kennedy publicly(ish) called King's family, and pulled favors to get King released, which likely saved King's life.

Oddly, Nixon and King had known each other for a few years at that point, and King had given Nixon advice a few times. Nixon, was told by his campaign manager to maintain silence about King's arrest. Kennedy and King had only recently met, although one of the people working on Kennedy's campaign was a long time friend of the King family.

Anyway, King was released, and national newspapers credited Kennedy, and lambasted Nixon for his silence. King as well was angry at Nixon, because the two were friends, or so King had thought.

So Kennedy was elected, and the black vote helped. Nixon took that as a bit of an insult.

Kennedy, didn't really do much for civil rights as president until shortly before his assassination. He met with civil rights leaders in 1963 and made a speech a few months before his assassination.

It was actually that assassination that let Johnson push through the Civil Rights act of 1964. "Fulfilling Kennedy's dream" justified a lot of shit in the 60s, from civil rights to moon missions.

So yeah, 1964, Berry Goldwater ran on a platform of segregation and racism as a Republican and drew in Thurmond's support. That failed, but Nixon took up the tactic in 1968 with the Southern Strategy, and that cemented the party switch. The southern racists all jumped on to team Republican.

1 more...

Pol Pot took it a step further and murdered anyone who wore glasses, because wearing glasses was seen as being educated.

Authoritarians of every type hate the educated, because the educated often hate authoritarianism.

He smoked pot on Joe Rogan's show.

He doesn't seem like the sort of person who can have the self-control to stop there. He's try uppers and downers and anything else to make himself feel good now that people are calling him out on his bullshit.

The dude was on top of the fucking world in February 2018 when he launched his car into orbit. In July of that year, he called a guy a pedo because the guy said Elon's toy submarine idea was worse than useless.

If he had kept his dumb mouth shut, we would all still mostly believe in Elon's bullshit myth.

Instead, it's mostly common knowledge that Elon is a narcissistic man baby, and has been for his entire life.

He would rather we didn't know about the emerald mine, but everyone knows. We know he bought his way to every success he's ever had, and that he has zero natural talent.

And that has to drive him mad. So he does drugs and plays video games to escape from reality. A reality where he isn't loved, and is actually viewed as the prime example of the problem with allowing billionaires to exist at all.

The thing is, McCarthy also broke promises to the Democrats. He cooperated one time to keep the stock market happy, but otherwise reneged on half a dozen other deals. The only way for someone to be less cooperative would be if they let the government shutdown.

3 more...

Reverend Moon's church funded literal Nazi death squads in South America after WW2. So yeah, they're pretty bad.

The problem with "taking in" the Palestinians, is that it actively helps Israel's ethnic cleansing efforts and theft of land/property. Israel has stolen peoples homes, land, and livelihoods, and has been doing such since 1947.

You have to be careful with that sort of thing. Also, there are a fuckload of Palestinians, Most countries are not setup to absorb millions of extra citizens.

Even so, a lot of Palestinians have left the country over the decades, and have ended up in those same Arab nations you claim won't take them. The Arab nations just can't take millions at once.

17 more...

From the last time this was posted, radio frequency radiation, not nuclear radiation.

It's an important distinction.

RF strength violations have more to do with the signal range and possible interference with other signals than health impacts.

2 more...

This presents an interesting problem for Republicans, and by interesting I mean an unwinnable scenario.

See, if the conservative judges put Trump back on the ballot, they will instantly give more ammunition to people already screaming for court reform.

That's the one thing the conservative legal movement fears.

On the other hand, if they don't come up with some excuse to justify putting Trump back on the ballot, the maga mob will declare them traitors and might actually try to kill them.

The trick will be threading that needle, and I don't think it's possible.

18 more...

Greenpeace was founded to be an anti-nuclear organization. See, most of the founding members were members of the Sierra Club (another environmentalist organization) but the Sierra Club was actually pro-nuclear power. The Sierra Club was actually fighting against the installation of new dams due to the effect of wiping out large swaths of river habitat and preventing salmon runs and such.

Anyway, in 1971 there was an underground nuclear bomb test by the US government in an area that was geologically unstable. (there were a bunch of tests to see just how geologically unstable). Protesters thought that the test would cause an earthquake and a tsunami.

Anyway, the people who were unhappy with the Sierra club not actively protesting nuclear power, wanted to protest this nuclear bomb test too, so they formed an organization called the "Don't make a wave committee". They sued, the suit was decided in the US's favor, the test went off, and no earthquake happened (which is how the earlier tests said it would go).

At some point, the "Don't make a wave committee" turned into Greenpeace.

Also about this timeframe, Greenpeace started receiving yearly donations from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Rockefeller Foundation is the charitable foundation created by the Rockefeller heirs that "uses oil money to make the world a better place" but they kind of don't. They've been anti-nuclear since the beginning, and even directly funded some radiation research in the 1950s that lied about safe exposure limits to radiation, claiming that there was no safe limit. That research went on to shape international policy, and by the time new research came out, the policy was already written and thus hard to change.

As a side note, another alumnus of the Sierra Club was approached by the then CEO of Atlantic Oil and directly paid a sum of something like $100k (in 1970 money) to found another anti-nuclear environmentalist organization called Friends of the Earth.

1 more...