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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • Its a pretty strategically and economically impactful piece of legislation pushed by, and then signed into law, by Biden, in 2022.

    It basically sets up a bunch of tax incentives and funds to go toward building out domestic computer hardware research and manufacturing.

    Its the kind of thing that would lay the foundation for the US building a lot more of its own computer hardware, instead of importing it.

    So when the Trump tariff apocalypse hits… assuming the CHIPS Act does not get repealed, it will be the only saving grace in terms of possibly lowering computer hardware costs.

    Trump and Republicans are likely to try and take credit for this, if domestic chip fabs start coming online before 2028, pretending it is something they came up with.





  • So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?

    If elected, I vow to cease all offensive arms and munitions shipments and funding for such to the State of Israel on day one.

    What Hamas did on Oct 7th was an outrageous act of terrorism committed against a civilian population, but the response from the Netanyahu administration has caused orders of magnitude more death and destruction against innocent residents of Gaza, and this over zealous military response has enflamed tensions in the region and risks escalation into a much broader conflict.

    I will still supply the Israelis with defensive funds for their Iron Dome, we will send them Patriot missile intercept systems, but we will no longer send artillery shells, bombs, ammunition, anything that can be used to further their wildly mismanaged offensive operations.

    Further, I will actually commit to setting up and operating a temporary harbor for food and medical supplies to enter Gaza.

    … Something like that, blah blah blah, make it clear that all sides in this have some level of culpability for wrong actions and that she will do what she can to minimize the harm the US is culpable for.

    Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?

    IMEU polls in July and August showed roughly that 30% to 40% of likely Dem and Indp voters in multiple swing states would be more likely to vote for a Dem candidate if they did what they could to halt the Gaza genocide.

    Would this turn off likely Republicans voters from her? Basically no more than they already were turned off from her. But she would have gained a whole bunch of Dem voters who specifically could not bring themselves to vote for a candidate complicit with genocide.

    Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.

    Nope. You can stop enabling offensive action by ceasing to supply offensive systems and munitions, and still maintain your commitment to Israel’s defense by giving them defensive supplies.

    You don’t need to totally disarm the IDF. That would involve going into a ground invasion war against our ally which is obviously insane.

    This would not be throwing an ally under the bus. It would be stomping your foot down and reigning in an ally that’s gone on a mad rampage with bombs you have given them.

    And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.

    Nah, I’ll use that word, because it is an accurate descriptor. I am not sorry at all if this somehow offends your sensibilities.




  • If you are talking about deontology and utilitarianism from two to three hundred years ago…

    Maybe your characterizations are accurate.

    But uh, in more modern ethical theory…

    Both camps have realized that pure adherence to the older forms of these ideas leads to absurdities and moral prescriptions which do not broadly match actual empirical responses to hypothetical scenarios.

    As a result, most modern ethical theories are some kind of a hybrid of deontologic and utilitarian principles.

    Anyway, let me try to illustrate this with a 'hypothetical' ethical question:

    You have 300 dollars. This is your food budget for for 30 days. Say you only eat one meal a day, and if you do not eat at least one meal every 3 days, you will starve to death.

    An ethical meal, produced by well compensated and treated laborers, costs $40 dollars.

    A non ethical meal, produced by unpaid slave laborers in a far away land, who often die of exhaustion and exposure, costs $10 dollars.

    Both meals have equal nutritional value and tastiness.

    Does the deontologist decide that any level of harm to people they don’t know is permissible and eat 30 $10 dollar meals?

    Or do they decide no level of harm is permissible to others and buy only 7 $40 dollar meals and then starve?

    Or do they purchase some combination of $10 and $40 dollar meals so as to minimize permissible harm to themselves and others according to some kind of calculation?

    Is the deontologist in this third scenario not employing some kind of utilitarian calculation?



  • Nurse bursts in to OR

    Doctor!

    This new study show that there is a 30% chance the patient will die if you ignore this allergic reaction they may have if you keep pursuing your current treatment plan!

    Doctor scoffs

    It can’t be that big a deal, if this was serious, the patient’s family would have let me know by mailing me that study with appended handwritten notes from my favorite peer reviewers from JAMA, and a gold star sticker!

    But Doctor! It’s not the job of the family to know how to practice medicine, that’s your job! And anyway, I have a copy of the study right here!

    Pff, no appended notes, no gold star, ignored.

    Patient dies.

    Huh, damn, things might have been different if the family had told me how to do my job in the exact, precise manner in which I accept advice. Oh well! Maybe the next patient’s family will figure out the correct way to tell me how to do my job next time. After all, I can’t be held responsible for not accepting information readily available to me… without a gold star sticker!


  • So uh, skipping a bunch of excess lore:

    “Dogs are one of the most beloved pets in the world. They are loyal, friendly and make great companions. Despite their differences, all dogs share a few key traits – they are affectionate, protective of their owners, and eager to please. Dogs require proper care, including regular exercise, grooming, and veterinary checkups. In return, they provide unconditional love and can even improve their owner’s physical and mental health. Whether as a family pet or a working animal, dogs have been an integral part of human society for thousands of years.”

    The chat bot is named after a dog because a dog-named chatbot is more likely to make users treat it with patience, kindness, and understand that it does silly things sometimes, but it means well.

    Its marketing. PR.




  • They did know it had a serious impact on likely Dem voters, and likely Independent voters, in swing states, and they did it anyway.

    … Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-israel

    From July 25 through August 9, pollsters asked voters if and how the Democratic nominee pledging “to withhold more weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians” would impact their vote. In Arizona, 35% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).

    Even bigger shares of voters said they would be more likely to support her in November if President Joe Biden—who dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Harris last month—secured a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In Arizona, 41% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 2% who said they would be less likely. In both Georgia and Pennsylvania, it was 44% versus 2%.

    Biden dropping out and being replaced with Kamala was an opportunity for Kamala to change the Dem stance on this.

    Kamala would have stood a much better chance at winning if she massively broke with Biden and did an about face on Gaza, and there is basically no way her campaign did not know this.


  • If you have a particular ideological hang up revolving around the difference between explicit and implicit consent to be governed…

    You can view yourself as morally correct for not voting for anyone whom you do not fully support.

    Thus you have not given explicit consent to either candidate, or the voting system itself.

    Its basically ‘Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote, therefore I am not responsible.’

    Its the trolley problem, but you just walk away from both tracks and the lever, and then claim that you did not consciously act to cause any harm, therefore you are guiltless.

    Unfortunately by this logic it does also mean that you give implicit consent to literally everything your government does if you do not speak out against everything it does that you don’t like, or take some explicit action to countermand.

    It’s an extremely sophomoric, cowardly and irresponsible stance to take in a situation like this, but there is an underlying logic to it… its just that this logic is ridiculous and absurd.


  • So far what I have learned about what Kamala has learned is:

    It is now the darkest night in America.

    But…

    There are billions of stars you can only see at night!

    You know, faint, distant glimmers from long, long ago, that you can squint at and imagine they form coherent, stable, meaningful structures… which are not, and never really were there at all.

    I do not know if she was intentionally attempting to invert/reference Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’ and HW’s ‘Thousand points of light’, or if she somehow thought this was an original, meaningful metaphor.

    Either would be pathetic and disgusting.

    Anyway, quite literally that may have been how democracy in America died, to another speech of meaningless platitudes, ending with thunderous applause, congratulating that a failed struggle was worth it, because even though it failed, it played by the rules and was gracious in defeat.