The unimportant news thread

Started by Lethevich, March 05, 2008, 07:14:50 AM

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Todd

Quote from: amw on September 24, 2019, 08:42:00 AMor breaking up companies like Apple and Microsoft

This is conflating things a bit.  Apple produces products that die after three years but are largely replaced in less than two, while Microsoft is not a particularly large player in consumer electronics.  To Microsoft's great good credit, it has largely escaped ire in the current bout of pseudo-/quasi-populist awkwardness and, ultimately, ineptitude.  Some die hard types may want to break it up, but the US government couldn't do it at the turn of the century, and it can't and won't now.  (If Yurpean doofuses try, the US should engage in all out economic warfare against the Old World and actively pursue a policy to destroy the EU.  It should do the latter anyway.) 


Quote from: amw on September 24, 2019, 08:42:00 AMFor that matter, why does the USA maintain strict sanctions on a number of oil producing countries that prevent them from diversifying their energy outputs?

This one is fairly simple.  It is an exercise in old-fashioned great power politics with an eye toward maintaining dominance over the dollar-denominated hydrocarbon market and putting economic pressure on the two other great powers that actually matter.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Jo498

Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

greg

Quote from: Jo498 on September 25, 2019, 01:51:36 AM
Maybe also wrong about booze (a thing in common with some brands of American Puritans)

http://archive.fo/mgEXF
I'm not going to read the whole article, but title question is actually very good.

Just going to guess that it concludes that it gives down-and-out people something to live for so they don't cause mayhem by murdering people/committing crimes.

Which I've never understood why people love booze so much, but just that that's the attitude about it, what I hear all the time...
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

Jo498

I haven't read all of it either. I thought that the main thesis was that moderate alcohol consumption worked as social lubricant, especially facilitating flirting situations and thus a relation of the sexes not dominated by how many camels your or her father has.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

"If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible." - Charles Baudelaire
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

drogulus


     Dept Of Franco-Italian Hoax

     Italy and France Prepare for Imminent Collapse of Mont Blanc Glacier

The crisis backs up another warning issued this week by the World Meteorological Organization, which released their new report to coincide with the climate summit in New York. In it they warn that if temperatures continue to rise at current levels, the ice on the Eastern and Central Alps could disappear completely within two or three decades. They say the only ice that would remain only in the Western Alps, where the crumbling Mont Blanc glacier is about to break down.


     
     

     
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Ken B

Justin Trudeau in blackface again and an Afro with his crotch stuffed.

https://mobile.twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1178051702785806341

Don't try this at home unless your father was Prime Minister.

Jo498

The worst thing is not the faking of photographs or the ridiculous mummery but that someone bothers to fake a picture with a straw and that it is actually considered "important news" what kind of straw someone uses. (I am all for environmental protection but the banning of plastic straws is maybe the worst fig leaf in this field ever.)
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

greg


"Women are struggling to find men who make as much money as they do" (NY Post)

It should be obvious why I facepalmed myself into next year from reading this.

I predicted this years ago. With the gender pay gap argument and the general attitude that women should be making as much money as men, of course women will struggle to be satisfied in relationships because usually they want a guy who makes more money than them.

So either one of two will have to happen:
1) female nature will change according to society's new customs (good luck with that, since this is an evolutionary thing)
2) women will settle for guys that make less money than them.


Or 3) just admit that you want population stagnation. Which I don't necessarily oppose, just be logically consistent, please!  ::)



(also notice how it's framed as a women's issue, never mentioned that dudes are struggling, it's only that women who want to be with guys with more money than them are struggling.)
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus

#3130
Quote from: greg on September 29, 2019, 12:05:13 PM

"Women are struggling to find men who make as much money as they do" (NY Post)

It should be obvious why I facepalmed myself into next year from reading this.

I predicted this years ago. With the gender pay gap argument and the general attitude that women should be making as much money as men, of course women will struggle to be satisfied in relationships because usually they want a guy who makes more money than them.


(also notice how it's framed as a women's issue, never mentioned that dudes are struggling, it's only that women who want to be with guys with more money than them are struggling.)

     Most times I read about the struggles of dudes in the industrial belt and the rural and small town Red Wastelands. I think you might be cherry picking a little. because though I've seen such articles for years, the ratio favors struggling dudes, at least in the Fake News Media I read.

Quote from: greg on September 29, 2019, 12:05:13 PM

So either one of two will have to happen:
1) female nature will change according to society's new customs (good luck with that, since this is an evolutionary thing)
2) women will settle for guys that make less money than them.


      You aren't even trying, are you?

      Both the economy and the social arrangements will change together, and not only to make you feel shitty about them, that's a bonus, but consider how such dinosaurs as us must have felt when they figured out that their little feathery cousins would survive the asteroid. Where I have the most sympathy for you (though not for me because I wouldn't know what to do with it) is how the economy is arranged sort of on purpose so that harm is felt among dudes particularly, and where I'm least sympathetic is how you search for goats to scape without any sign of embarrassment.
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SimonNZ

apropos of nothing - just caught my eye:

Missouri man charged 'set 13 wildfires on way to high school reunion'

"A suspected arsonist traveled from Missouri to northern California to set more than a dozen wildfires before attending his 50th high school reunion, it was reported on Saturday.

A former classmate told the San Jose Mercury News Freddie Owen Graham appeared happy at the party on 21 September. Graham, a native of Milpitas, California who has lived in the Kansas City area for three decades, didn't seem troubled or upset, Rich Santoro said.

"He was excited to come. I talked to him five or six times during the night. He was happy he was there. He told me, 'I didn't expect to have this much fun."' Santoro said.

"It turns out he had already set the fires."

State fire investigators said Graham gave them a different impression. After he was arrested at the airport in San Jose, Graham told them he was in an "emotional" state over the loss of his wife in 2018 when he tossed flaming pieces of paper on to the side of a road.

"Because she passed away and could not be with him, it made him emotional, starting the fires," the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection report said.

Santoro recalled Graham being sad about attending the reunion without his wife.

Graham is being held on $2m bail on 13 counts of arson. He also faces two special counts of arson during a state of emergency, which was declared by Governor Gavin Newsom in March, ahead of the wildfire season.

Prosecutors said Graham drove through a foothill area north-east of San Jose and set 13 fires over the course of two days.

Although the fires caused no injuries or structural damage, they took dozens of firefighters using aircraft, bulldozers and other equipment hours to extinguish.

Graham was identified as the suspect after someone saw him, wrote down his rental car's license plate number and notified firefighters.

He was arrested when he was returning a rental car at the airport – his second of the weekend, after reportedly swapping out the one seen by a witness at the fire."

greg

#3132
Quote from: drogulus on September 29, 2019, 03:46:29 PM
     Most times I read about the struggles of dudes in the industrial belt and the rural and small town Red Wastelands. I think you might be cherry picking a little. because though I've seen such articles for years, the ratio favors struggling dudes, at least in the Fake News Media I read.
The stories you are hearing about is probably more about physical blue collar workers... which just happen to be mostly dudes. And probably not framed as a "men's issue" but a blue collar issue that just happens to overwhelmingly affect men. (Just a guess- no idea which articles you have in mind).



Quote from: drogulus on September 29, 2019, 03:46:29 PM
Both the economy and the social arrangements will change together, and not only to make you feel shitty about them, that's a bonus, but consider how such dinosaurs as us must have felt when they figured out that their little feathery cousins will survive the asteroid. Where I have the most sympathy for you (though not for me because I wouldn't know what to do with it) is how the economy is arranged sort of on purpose so that harm is felt among dudes particularly, and where I'm least sympathetic is how you search for goats to scape without any sign of embarrassment.
Social arrangements will change, and it's good to be aware of what effect it will have and be openly honest about it.

Not sure you need to feel any sympathy for me personally, since my income is more or less 50% above what's average, so that's not the issue.

It's the slight frustration at seeing people completely lack the ability to actually understand the consequences and trade-offs of how they would like things to be and then complaining later and framing it so it's not a result of their own choices.  ::)


Just to reinforce my point:

From the same site, an article with a tone about how obvious the pay gap is super, super real, guys:
https://nypost.com/2019/04/02/many-men-think-the-gender-pay-gap-is-fake-news-poll/

And it mentions in there they suggest a quota for hiring women, etc.

And then writes an article 5 months later about how not enough men are economically attractive to women. I mean, whatever floats their boat.  ::)
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

Jo498

There is another "side effect": We all know the dime novel stories from the bad old days: lordling marries governess, tycoon marries secretary, surgeon marries nurse etc. This led to some socio-economic mixing by all these women "marrying up" and men "marrying down". Nowadays people pair up more closely within their socioeconomic strata, leading to more stratification (aka inequality). But because identity politics (despite lip service to "intersectionality") overall blinds people to economic inequality (that's why it serves as a divide and conquer tool for the 0.1%) this is not so often talked about.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

drogulus

Quote from: greg on September 29, 2019, 07:33:15 PM
The stories you are hearing about is probably more about physical blue collar workers... which just happen to be mostly dudes. And probably not framed as a "men's issue" but a blue collar issue that just happens to overwhelmingly affect men. (Just a guess- no idea which articles you have in mind).


     What I have noticed is that many articles are about how men in particular are hurt by being insufficiently educated in an economy that is more stratified. Articles like that are sometimes given a "men's issue" cast. In most cases I translate men/women issue articles into Drogulese about what the underlying problem is, if there is one, or what other problem might be more worthy of attention.

     I know I don't need to be sympathetic. But you do seem to take it personally the way society is changing, and I recognize how people are hurt by it, and the fact that history is all about rising and falling classes doesn't make anyone hurt by change feel better.

     Since I'm retired I feel less connected to how difficult the economy is for young people. This is at an emotional level, while on the Droguloid level my interest is if anything greater. For me everything that happens is history in the making, so for a history buff maximum fun.
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Ken B

Brownshirts where I live. Masked thugs yelling at an old lady with a walker
https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1178498843597344768
Three miles from where I am sitting.

SimonNZ

That link didn't give the wider story. Is it this?"

Violent clashes break out at Maxime Bernier event in Hamilton

do supporters of the Canadian People's Party really wear Make America Great Again caps?

Ken B

Quote from: SimonNZ on September 30, 2019, 04:06:08 PM
That link didn't give the wider story. Is it this?"

Violent clashes break out at Maxime Bernier event in Hamilton

do supporters of the Canadian People's Party really wear Make America Great Again caps?

I don't know much about the CPP. The election is in full blight swing and I have seen one lawn sign for them. I don't think their sartorial choices justify what we see on the tape in any case, but I doubt MAGA caps are a common choice. I did see one in one of the videos, probably intended to be an in your face thing. I saw none in other photos of the event. I have never personally seen one in Canada . 🤷‍♂️
I think the remark in the CBC article about "some" wearing them is unevidenced and sounds motivated.

Here is another link.
https://www.rt.com/news/469904-antifa-protest-bernier-canada/

Sadly the RT report seems less tendentious than the CBC report.


SimonNZ

#3138
Well speaking as a lefty I don't get what these x-dozen so-called Antifascists  game is. Because whatever it is they're terrible at it. So bad at messaging and controlling their image that I speculated once they must be an invention of Fox, so effectively do they play into the Fox narrative.

At the time of Charlottesville it seemed like their idea was to protect lefty protesters from actual self describing Nazis and their violence - a sort of dont-start-nothing-wont-be-nothing stand. I could get behind that. But even then they need to lose the silly masks and acting like they want to start a fight rather than end one. And stop yelling at grannies.

But still the amount of right wing attention and anxiety they generate is vastly out of proportion to any threat. And they're not brownshirts if they're not supported by or affiliated with ANF political party. And if they're ostensibly fighting fascism - however misguidedly.

Ken B

Quote from: SimonNZ on September 30, 2019, 06:24:02 PM
Well speaking as a lefty I don't get what these x-dozen so-called Antifascists  game is. Because whatever it is they're terrible at it. So bad at messaging and controlling their image that I speculated once they must be an invention of Fox, so effectively do they play into the Fox narrative.

At the time of Charlottesberg it seemed like their idea was to protect lefty protesters from actual self describing Nazis and their violence - a sort of dont-start-nothing-wont-be-nothing stand. I could get behind that. But even then they need to lose the silly masks and acting like they want to start a fight rather than end one. And stop yelling at grannies.

But still the amount of right wing attention and anxiety they generate is vastly out of proportion to any threat. And they're not brownshirts if they're not supported by or affiliated with ANF political party. And if they're ostensibly fighting fascism - however misguidedly.
Nonsense. You can be a fringe brownshirt as well as a mainstream one. Thuggery is thuggery, it doesn't need an electoral platform.

So prolife means prolife, the Moral Majority are the moral ones, Trump is a stable genius, and you take all self applied labels at face value?  If you are dressed in black with a mask assaulting people in the streets then you are the fascist no matter what you call yourself.