Each time that Obama expanded a domestic policing organization that then went to American cities and executed citizens, the same thing was said about him, yes. All zero times.
Yeah, I’m in agreement here. I get how this mindset might be off-putting, but we’re still in a phase of human development where if you don’t fight, you’re going to lose to people who will.
Trump is an example of someone who wants to fight, and now all of us who just want to get along are now playing catch-up, trying to figure out how to respond.
> Thanks for resolving my internal dialog about returning to Lobsters.
I still load it from time to time, but the value of going there seems to diminish year over year. Every story that gets traction on Lobsters is already posted to HN now.
Many of the commenters I valued on Lobsters have given up on the site and left.
I catch myself starting to comment there and then deleting it because I’m worried about going too much against the acceptable narrative for each topic on the site, no matter how gently worded and hedged I make the comment.
>I catch myself starting to comment there and then deleting it because I’m worried about going too much against the acceptable narrative for each topic on the site, no matter how gently worded and hedged I make the comment.
but it's exactly the same here. hell, even reddit is less bad - even a thousand other people can't silence you there. how many terminally online powerusers does it take to get a comment [dead] and/or [flagged], three? five? and there are dozens of them in every controversial thread, where the approved opinions are expressed with as much low quality vitriol and snark as they please, while the wrong opinions get shut down no matter how civil and/or factual they might be, silently downvoted or flagged out of existence. I could find a hundred examples from my numerous throwaways, but without being as vague as this, I know I'll just get flagged.
now I often find myself doing the same thing you do - not bothering - and I hate what that means.
It’s not the same here at all. I get downvoted into negatives some times but there are enough people who appreciate differing opinions that as long as my comments are well intentioned and contain accurate information they usually go positive again.
On Lobsters, if you say the wrong thing, even as a well-written and researched comment, you could get slapped with a banner at the top of every page inviting you to delete your account.
> I could find a hundred examples from my numerous throwaways,
I’m sorry, but if you have collected a hundred examples and had to generate that many throwaway accounts I have a hard time believing the comments were actually civil or well researched. I can believe that from time to time an angry comment section will downvote a good comment until it’s dead, but if one person is collecting a hundred examples across countless accounts then I think there are deeper problems with the commenting style that need to be evaluated.
>if one person is collecting a hundred examples across countless accounts then I think there are deeper problems with the commenting style that need to be evaluated.
no, no, I didn't mean they were all mine - like I said, I don't bother making high effort comments when I know for sure they'll get [flagged][dead]. what I meant was that I could find such comments in any controversial thread I ever saw, which I could locate from my throwaways' histories.
>as my comments are well intentioned and contain accurate information they usually go positive again.
flagged comments don't, and there are no consequences for using the flag button to express disagreement.
As a U.S. citizen, I’m beginning to ask myself how to take more meaningful measures to help bring an end to this behavior. I’m not a political activist and generally try to mind my own business, but that mindset only worked when I felt I could trust the system to self-correct. It seems our judicial system can barely keep up, and Congress is doing next to nothing.
That strategy may be cathartic, but it will have the opposite of the desired effect. If there's any hope of changing someone's mind, it has to start by respecting their opinion no matter how wrong you think it is. If you start a fight you'll get a fight.
I agree. Trying to punish will just deepen resentment, and they will live in their echo chamber while you live in yours. Then it's just side vs side, with the pundits leading the dialog.
We have to remember that we aren't all working from the same perceptual or moral framework. This is a struggle for me, as I love my parents but our believes have diverged considerably.
I think the challenge right now in the U.S. is that for many, it doesn't feel socially safe to question your own side. In reality, we need to feel free to judge actions individually, and judge leaders as a true accumulation of their actions. If we fear rejection from our party/family/friends for not walking in lock-step with the official party stances, that influences a lot of our thinking. No one wants to feel continually guilty about their own views (especially when there are social consequences for changing them), so we often shove aside conflicting details, make jokes, and signal to others that we're still a part of the tribe.
This may eventually work after a long effort, but in the meantime, the person with the fascist thoughts will be deriving social support from you not having cut them off. "Haha, I love fascism, and Bill still likes me and hangs out with me, so I guess I'm good!"
I'm sorry, but some opinions are not worth respecting. People who e.g. excuse the genocide in Gaza, deny what happened in Tiananmen Square or who insist that the Jan6 insurrections were "just tourists" should not receive a participation trophy.
They didn't say "think differently", they said "promoting fascism".
If you look at J6 attempted self-coup where people were chanting death threats agaisnt the vice president and had a hangman's noose ready and pipe bombs were found and say "that was a peaceful protest", while also looking at the woman who was shot dead through the side window of her car while departing from a group of ICE officers and call that "self defence againsy attempted vehicular manslaughter", you may have a problem.
If your reaction to "Punish them socially" is to claim "That’s the most facist thing I’ve ever heard." of the person who essentially just said "stop talking to these people, stop inviting them to parties and stuff", when your fellow citizens are dying at the hands of federal officers who are being given defacto immunity, you may have a problem.
The current administration already punishes people for thinking differently with a lot worse than not inviting them to dinner; is the kind of regime that creates refugees and asylum seekers out of its own citizens, who flee from it.
The problem is that after years of people crying "facism" for mean tweets, lowering coprorate taxes and eforcing a national border, the term has lost any meaning. Maybe we need a new term?
> The cop who shot Ashley Babbit was given “de facto immunity.”
Video from inside the Capitol building showed her attempting to climb through a broken window outside the House chamber when the officer, who was guarding the entrance from the rioters, fired.
As in, while committing a crime. Not through the *side* window of a car.
> Half the country is outraged that leftists think just because they don’t like immigration law, as it is written and voted for, that it’s okay to obstruct deportations and drive vehicles into innocent ICE officers doing their job.
Read this carefully:
Side. Window.
She (Renne Good) did not, and could not, have been driving the car into the person who shot her through the side window.
Because, and I don't know if this is news to you, cars do not drive sideways.
> If Oklahoma declared itself a sanctuary state from unions and declared it didn’t have to adhere labor law would you agree with their right to do so? If Salt Lake City decided to be a sanctuary for polygamy and underage marriage and started obstructing the FBI when they came in to arrest people would you be cheering?
What about! What about! What about!
The current administration is violating your own constitution. The behaviour of ICE is unlawful within your own rules.
> Imagine the chaos if every city just ignored the laws they don’t like.
I don't need to imagine, it looks like Trump.
> Calling each other facists and nazis is just lazy, inaccurate, and an excuse for elevating oneself over ones political opponents.
There are bronze plaques on the ground in my city dedicated to the victims of fascism. I don't speak for others, but I tell you this myself: Trump has been following the same footsteps as those whose dishonour is memorialised by the names of their victims upon those plaques.
> The first shot was through the windshield and the. she turned the wheel and the second two shots were fired through the side window as she was turning away.
Video clearly shows the wheels were cut before forward motion started.
> The officer suffered bruised ribs from the impact of the vehicle.
This seems to be an attempt to rewrite the laughably false “internal bleeding” anonymous propaganda leak CBS news laundered into something remotely credible; there is literally no reason to believe this true, and clear reasons to dismiss it, including video showing thet except for maybe his hand reaching toward the vehicle as it passed, no part of his body was impacted.
That’s not how physics works. The amount of energy needed to get two tons of vehicle to move from rest is enormous and that energy was transferred to a human body. The force of a two ton vehicle moving even a couple MPH is substantial.
The energy needed to get something up to speed is not really relevant to what happens when the thing hits a person unless the person cannot move.
Consider this thought experiment. Take a two ton car with a flat plate on front, accelerate up to say 2 mph, and hit someone.
Now try the same thing but instead of a two ton car lets use a 20 000 ton freight train.
The train takes way more energy to get up to 2 mph. At the time of collision it has 20 000 times as much kinetic energy as the car and 20 000 times as much kinetic energy.
But for the person who gets hit those collisions will be nearly the same. They get accelerated to 2 mph with pretty much the same acceleration profile in both cases. The car is slightly less than the train because the person (especially if they are American!) might be massive enough to cause a slight but noticeable decrease in the car's speed.
Anyone, the key is that the body gets accelerated over a short time to 2 mph. If the body was a rigid body that would involve a very large acceleration for a very short time.
But humans are squishy. The muscles and soft tissue compress and that spreads the time the body takes to reach 2 mph greatly reducing the acceleration, which greatly reduces the damage. The way you get injured in such low speed collisions is by getting knocked over and injured in the fall, or knocked over and run over by whatever hit you, or by being between the colliding object and some immovable object so you can't be accelerated.
Another way to look at that collision is to replace the train with something really big, such as the whole Earth, and instead of accelerating the Earth into the person we'll accelerate the person into the Earth.
That can be done by holding the person horizontally above a solid metal plate and dropping them. If we drop them from 2.69 inches above the plate they well reach 2 mph at the time of collision. You aren't getting bruised ribs from a 2.69 inch fall horizontally onto a metal plate.
> And Facism starts with civilians who act as enforcers and intimidators, not with the police. Hitler’s brown shirts and Mussolini's black shirts elevated the Facists to power. The SS came afterwords. Antifa is far closer to the brownshirts than any other organization in the US. Power through intimidation and chaos. Facist.
Here's a video of the people you refuse to recognise meet that exact description:
I am more than willing to listen. You seem to be the one who ignores words.
I never claimed the J6 crowd to be non-violent? I was referring specifically to the murder of Ashley Babbit.
The J6 crowd gathered once. They did not systematically intimidate fellow citizens nation wide while hiding behind masks.
I will reiterate Antifa and the coalition of masked and violent left wing protesters resemble hitlers brownshirts far more than the anomalous J6 morons.
> I am more than willing to listen. You seem to be the one who ignores words.
You have, here, changed the subject and disregarded reality and projected what-about on me as rhetoric, and even on this comment are motte-and-bailey-ing:
> I never claimed the J6 crowd to be non-violent?
I started by introducing them as an example of a thing where failing to see that they were violent and dangerous was a sign of having a problem. You reacted explosively. You what-about-ed with Babbit. You deflected, you tried to diminish the riot, you claimed there were no firearms. You have a problem.
I maintain that your own words:
And Facism starts with civilians who act as enforcers and intimidators, not with the police. Hitler’s brown shirts and Mussolini's black shirts elevated the Facists to power.
describe the J6 crowd, who are your civilians acting as enforcers and intimidators.
I could also add:
The SS came afterwords.
Today is 5 years later than J6.
> They did not systematically intimidate fellow citizens nation wide while hiding behind masks.
If you bothered to watch that video, you'd see many of them were behind masks.
If you'd bothered to watch the video of (or indeed still pictures from just before) the, to use your word, "murder", of Reese Good, you'd see she wasn't.
ICE however, do operate nationwide and do frequently wear masks. These days, anyway. They didn't used to feel the need to break their own rules. They didn't used to be the villains, according to not only "the left" but also other law enforcement.
I really should be going to bed rather than wasting the effort to write this down, but I guess the impending risk of the end of the world is weighing heavily on me.
Start holding the opposing party responsible to run good candidates for office and adopt a platform that can appeal to independents.
The knee jerk reaction is to run your party’s candidates and platform to the opposite extreme. Instead you should move towards the center. I really hope the democrats realize this (some do and are speaking out) soon.
To what end? I think this has become the “feel good that I am doing something about it” approach but it literally has almost zero effect beyond creating rhetoric from the politicians.
You need to hold your political leaders responsible with your vote. Don’t just automatically vote for the politicians that are “saying” the right things. Find out what your representatives are “doing” and hold them responsible for their actions or more importantly, inactions.
I think we have to acknowledge the grievances of people who got us into this position in the first place and don't stop making those grievances and the tangible steps being taken to solve them known on every public platform available.
Some people are just so stupid they are beyond all help. They are eternally offended and will always have made up "grievances". For example one really funny "grievance" is that intermarriage is equal to violent murderous genocide. Its best to laugh these "grievances" out the room.
One thing that could help would be for Democrats who live in congressional districts where there is no way a Democrat will ever get elected because there are too many people there who just vote for the candidate with the 'R' by their name on the ballot without actually looking into either candidate's positions to switch their registration to Republican.
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
I live in a district like this and the primary is determined by who is endorsed by the President.
Also these voters are dumb but they aren't that dumb. Unless you know a person who actually has presented as a Trump supporting republican for the last decade and is secretly willing to switch sides after the election, you're not going to trick them.
The point is that center right Republicans (the kind that used to win most Republican districts before 2012) could still win if they could make it to the general election. They often can't because most Republican voters, like most Democrat voters, aren't into party politics enough to bother voting in the primaries.
It is the voters who are most likely to be to be farthest from the center who vote in the primaries, and these are the ones who don't want a normal center right representative.
If Democrats switched parties and voted in the primaries they might be able to counter the usual extreme primary voters so a center right Republican could win.
Getting involved at the local level is a good place to start. Local governing bodies, city councils and other civic organizations represent meaningful opportunities for change.
Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
Realistically, it’s also a function of how many iterations it takes for an AI agent to correctly solve a problem with a given language. I’d imagine most AI agents would frequently have to redo J or F# code, as they are fairly uncommon languages with much smaller training set than JavaScript or Python.
I can say that for F# this has been mostly true up until quite recently. We use F# at work and were mostly unable to use agents like Claude Code up until the release of Opus 4.5, which seems to know F# quite well.
Let go of any specific expectations of how you spend your days as an engineer. It’s likely going to be less and less coding by hand, a lot more code review, more taste-making (what code and features _should_ or _should not_ exist in a well-build system) a lot more opportunity to deepen adjacent skills. Personally, as a startup-oriented engineer, I am expanding my impact beyond traditional engineering and into broader product design, deeper UX experimentation, and adaptive architecture. I’m expanding my skills a bit into what used to only be the domain of PMs and designers. I also expect that PMs and designers will begin expanding their boundaries as well.
It seems like it will be mildly fun for a few minutes, but not all that revolutionary. Does it leverage what makes Lego great and why people buy it for their kids and themselves? I don’t think so. Triggering your imagination and seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego, in my opinion. Creating a brick that offers a few presets for specific types of models and play seems limiting.
But who knows, I’m almost 40, and I’ve been out of the target demographic for a long long time. My favorite sets were from the Space Police era.
It uses NFC, where the NFC tag carries a payload to tell the brick what to do. So in theory they can develop new skills for the brick and release new "trigger" blocks for it.
But to your point of: "seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego", the first comment I saw on the instagram post about this was "but I like to make the pew pew noised myself".
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