mozz

Hey Cornel West how do you feel about genocide in Ukraine?

“Yeah we cool”

I feel a little weird about being your dancing monkey in terms of answering this question just because you singled me out and told me to, but sure:

The platform is a pretty good start; there's a lot in there about economic inequality and working on climate change which are two key priorities.

Most urgent things I would add to that:

• Peacekeeping in Israel + Palestine backed up by force of US troops and/or UN peacekeepers. Y'all (meaning Israel) have had your chance at running things and you failed. Be thankful you're not in the dock in the Hague, now get the fuck out of Gaza; we start shooting in 6 hours if you're still here
• Attempts to tamper with the ability of people to vote, or for their vote to count like it's supposed to (meaning having an impact in an unbiased and reasonable fashion), is a felony. Doesn't matter if you were a guy with a gun outside a drop box, a congressperson trying to pass a law, or a Supreme Court justice.
• Speaking of which, there are some justices we should be impeaching. If we win enough of congress we can put them on trial at least; we may not be able to remove them but fuckin' hassle them. Absolutely nonstop. Make it a priority to make people's lives miserable if they're trying to destroy democracy. That is a dead serious statement.
• Use the pre-Thatcher British solution for high rents: The government buys up a huge amount of property, rents it out at reasonable rates, which pierces the bubble so the rates from private landlords have to reduce also to stay competitive.

There are some other big things but that all is the most urgent I think. Even that is a pretty fuckin big list to be able to do.

Maybe something about internet propaganda, but I honestly don't see a real clear government-involved solution to that that I have any confidence in, is the only reason it's not on the list.

What the fuck is damn straight…

Brain: Hey I’m gonna use this time to rearrange wires. You don’t want to be around for this because the wires are you; we have a whole system to keep you out of the picture

Dude: I’m gonna do a hack so I can be in the picture

Brain: I don’t think that is a good idea

And lo and behold, it was not

I would like to bring back into fashion the idea of writing it into the statutes which people it were that fucked up

“Everyone can do what they want, just remember, don’t break the law. Jefferson County: Hang back for a second, I want to talk to you a little more. Everyone else, I’ll see you next time.”

I mean I won't say you're wrong in the abstract or don't have a point, but NASA management's consistent history of making dogshit decisions as regards safety is also a highly relevant factor here.

Generally in civilian aviation, if you're on the one on the plane, you get to make the decisions, because ultimately it's your ass on the line. In emergency situations nobody gets to override you and say you have to do it this other way instead even if you don't like it. Even if NASA management makes a perfect decision based on the information available to them at the time, and something goes wrong and the astronauts die, that's still a bothersome outcome to me. Like, it's their life. Let them have the responsibility. Hopefully there's one overall probably-right answer, and management and the astronauts would both evaluate the same information and come to the same conclusion anyway, but even so I still feel like it'd be a better situation if it was the astronauts deciding about their own life and death. Then if something does go wrong, everyone's hands are clean and there's no second guessing.

Pop quiz! What was cumulative inflation for the last 4 years, and what was the change in working class wages?

Basically what I’m asking is, did people get more poor, or less poor? Were there any specific government actions that led to this outcome?

Ask me whether or not it happened in the one jurisdiction I’m aware of (and where the cops are generally perfectly professional in all interactions I’ve had with them)

(*) may not apply in elections where the Republican wants to start a profit-conflagarating civil war

How many of them were involved in overriding the engineers as regarded launching the Challenger?

(I would recommend "Riding Rockets" as a pretty good book to read for a general overview of the safety culture in NASA management and the reasons I don't trust them to make this decision. Honestly, for all I know, things have changed radically since then -- but given that NASA management were the ones that sent them up on a Boeing spacecraft in the first place when years ago I was already able to see that Boeing was no longer capable of doing safe engineering of even civilian commercial air travel, I kind of doubt it.)

There is a way to solve this problem. Britain had it in action and it worked fantastically well, until Thatcher fucked it up.

The government buys a bunch of property and rents it out at reasonable rates, popping the bubble. No one has to have communistic laws limiting their ability to charge rent on the still-over-inflated-value property they purchased. The government gets paid. Housing is cheap. Literally everyone wins except for people who were holding onto properties to rent them, who all of a sudden have to find something to do that is productive to society. Which is also a win.

Of course, because it is sensible, and rich people would lose value on their investments, it could never get past congress 🥲

Incorrect

Administrator Bill Nelson and other top officials will meet Saturday. An announcement is expected from Houston once the meeting ends.

Engineers are evaluating a new computer model for the Starliner thrusters and how they might perform as the capsule descends out of orbit for a touchdown in the U.S. Western desert. The results, including updated risk analyses, will factor into the final decision, NASA said.

The article makes a specific point about “top officials” being the ones at the meeting, and makes a distinction between those engineers and “NASA” who is the one making the decision.

My situation is not normal, but I was able to find a market with no/little competition by creating a foothold before anyone else did, and make a good living with it.

As any good communist would do

And now, like any good communist would be, you’re super upset that a central authority wants to take more than 37% of what you produced for yourself (since you have enough) and allocate it somewhere else, where there might not be enough. You’re saying you need to keep it for yourself, so you can keep doing communism with it.

This is like communism 101, I feel bad for ever suspecting you of dishonesty