My premise is that people are sometimes corrupt and that power corrupts. There are democrats in power.

Are you really so much in a cult that you can’t believe that your side could possibly be anything less than pure?

It’s a laptop, do you really need 7 USB C / Thunderbolt ports on a laptop? You can always plug in a dock and get multiple other ports when you’re set up at a desk.

When I’m not at a desk I rarely have anything at all plugged in. Maybe power if I’m going for a long time, but the Pro has its own power adapter. Maybe a USB stick for a minute or two.I can’t imagine having 3 things, in addition to power and headphones, plugged in while I’m not at a desk. At a desk it’s probably more convenient to have a dock so you can have a bunch of things permanently plugged into the dock (keyboard, mouse, screens) that require just 1 plug to the laptop before they’re ready to go.

Wow, you’re like some kind of cultist. Any criticism that might apply to democrats and you come out swinging.

My premise is that we don’t know what ethics violations have been suppressed by either party. We know that both Republicans and Democrats have been found to have violated ethics, but we don’t know whether it’s the majority that have been exposed or if it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If it turns out that the Democrats have never suppressed an ethics violation then maybe they do live up to your mental image of them and are pure as the driven snow. But, it’s also possible that the democrats have protected some members.

That doesn’t mean that Republicans are better than Democrats or something, it just means that politics is politics and sometimes people in power get away with things. But really dude, you should cut back on the hero worship. These are just politicians, they shouldn’t be your whole identity.

We know of some democratic lawmakers who have been held accountable, and a very small number of republicans. But, really we don’t know whether what we’re seeing is the norm, or if it’s just a tiny fraction being held accountable. It’s possible that there are more democrats that are committing unethical acts, but that they’re better at hiding it and/or have more complicity in covering it up. But, I think most sane people would say that everybody’s ethics violations should be public information. Even if it means hundreds of congresspeople losing their jobs and massive uncertainty in who will hold power. Ethics violations should be something voters get to know about.

Even if the democrats weren’t actually holding their members accountable, it should be done. So what if dozens of politicians, both R and D get expelled as a result. Nobody should be upset that people who had bad ethics reports get expelled.

It’s worse than that.

Blockchain Capital LLC was co-founded by Steve Bannon pal Brock Pierce, a major crypto advocate, perennial presidential candidate, and close friend of Eric Adams. Pierce has dozens of other shady MAGA/Russia ties as well.

https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476797192400901

Dorsey’s already out, the people running the project are from the TESCREAL gang.

A feature that makes it easier for their users to migrate to a competitor? Blockchain Capital invests $15M in BlueSky. Insert that Anakin / Padme meme:

Anakin: Now that we’ve invested, let’s make that federation feature priority 0
Padme: As in highest priority, right?
Anakin:
Padme: As in highest priority, right?

Almost everything in any religion is a “telephone game” retelling of things. These days they’re the same to most people which is what really matters.

Luce means light in Italian. Lucifer means “light bringer” and the mythos is about trying to steal the light (luce) of god. It doesn’t mean “luce” is bad.

I guess the Catholic church overestimated the education of its followers.

“Luz” is an incredibly common name in Spanish speaking countries. It means light. “Luce” means light in Italian, but seems to be less common as a name. Lucifer means “Light-bringer”, and the myth of the light-bringer is much, much older than Christianity.

Old religions thought things in the sky were gods. Venus orbits closer to the sun than the Earth, which means light reflecting from it is extremely bright, but that light is only visible near sunrise and sunset. During the rest of the day the brightness of the sun overwhelms the reflected light from Venus, and during the rest of the night it’s not visible because it’s near the sun, so it’s behind the earth. So, old religions talked about the brightest “god” in the sky, who disappeared when it got too bright or too dark. That led to the myth of the god who tried to be the brightest light and was cast down. That, of course, led to Satan, A.K.A. Lucifer.

I guess the Catholic church was giving its followers too much credit in their understanding of words.

It is. It’s that plus an important process for living organisms rather than just burning something.

What makes you think there’s a threshold?

It’s pretty interesting how “concentration camp” used to just mean “a camp where people were grouped together”. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but in many cases it was effectively a relatively nice prison. Then, it became a euphemism for an extermination camp. The Nazis pretended they were just grouping people together in a camp, when in reality the aim was to kill everyone there. That euphemism tainted the original meaning, so now when people hear “concentration camp” they think of the Nazi extermination camps.

Technically, Guantanamo Bay probably qualifies as a concentration camp, but I bet they are very careful not to ever use that term.

“B” has never even been considered. That’s a bogeyman that the Republicans are trying to invent.

The US is constantly enforcing immigration laws. That’s not going to change. The issue is that laws that used to work, like asylum, no longer do.

And even if there were, First Past The Post means a vote for anybody but D or R means you’re taking a vote away from your preferred D or R candidate. A smart “I” voter would only vote for an “I” party (if one existed) in cases where the more preferred D or R candidate was already basically guaranteed to win, so their third-party vote wouldn’t affect the D or R result.

Not really. For immigration, someone might think that only the best of the best should be allowed to immigrate. They think that includes them, but doesn’t include a lot of the people who do it illegally. And, to a certain extent, they’re probably right. It’s pretty hard to immigrate legally to the US as a menial labourer, but that’s what a lot of illegal immigrants do. They work in restaurants, slaughterhouses, on farms, etc. doing extremely hard work, but work that doesn’t require any education. Meanwhile a lot of legal immigration slots are only available to people with “extraordinary ability”.

The kinds of jobs that illegal immigrants do are the ones that US citizens would only do if they were really desperate. Meanwhile, the kinds of jobs that legal immigrants do are often the ones that very few US citizens can do, so that the companies need to hire from outside the country to fill the position.

Being against student loan forgiveness is also a pretty reasonable position, whether or not you paid yours off, or you never went to university.

It’s pretty interesting how we’re all running basically the same hardware, but there are major software differences.

I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I ‘know’ what they sound like, and my brain keeps the beat with the song, but I’m not hearing it.

That’s just weird. You’re aware there’s a song stuck in your head, but you can’t actually hear it? I wonder if that’s more or less frustrating than a song stuck in your head that you can hear.

Can you taste or smell things that aren’t around?

Yes, but if normal experience of a taste or smell is a 10/10 in sensation, imagining a taste or smell is like a 1/10. Like, imagining smelling salts which are just overwhelming in reality barely rate a tickle in imagination. Same idea with taste. I can imagine biting into a lime, which in reality would be an almost painful experience in reality, but in the imagination it’s barely noticeable. I imagine that when I’m imagining a situation, all the body sensations are there: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, even proprioception. But, I think everything is muted compared to reality, sight might be at a 3/10 compared to reality, sound maybe at a 2/10, and the others are lower, probably even below 1/10. I can only manage a 1/10 for something that would be an overwhelming sensation in reality.

I think the name comparison I mentioned is probably the best I can think of. When you see a person you know, how do you remember their name?

I remember their name as just a fact associated with the person. However, I can’t imagine remembering someone’s name without also trying to picture their face. So, I guess it’s more like remembering the name of someone who’s like a pen pal or something. Someone I’ve never met face to face.

I was just thinking about this, and thought of podcasters that I listen to, whose faces I’ve never seen. With them, I don’t picture a face because I’ve never seen one. But, I can “hear” the sound of their voices. I’m guessing you don’t do that either?

A stop sign is a hexagon, red, with STOP in the middle.

It’s actually an octagon. But, I assume that if you see a stop sign you don’t have to count the sides, you just recognize it immediately?

What’s interesting to me is that if I read a book, part of the pleasure is that the author is describing things in a way that allows me to picture them. It seems to me like not having the ability to picture things would make the book much less interesting. Like watching a movie that didn’t have any soundtrack, just sound effects and dialogue. I guess you don’t have anything to compare it to. But, I wonder if people who have aphantasia are less likely to enjoy books and more likely to enjoy movies?

and I’m super unclear what seeing things in your mind is supposed to be like.

It’s hard to describe, but it’s not replacing your eyesight. If I close my eyes I see black, or if there’s some bright light I see red. But, it’s like there’s another visual channel going into your brain other than the one from your eyes. Most of the time, that channel is either off, or it’s drowned out by the actual visual information which is so much more dominant. But, if your eyes are closed the fact there’s no real information coming on the “real” visual channel means you’re able to notice what the “virtual” visual channel is showing.

It’s sometimes described as your “mind’s eye”, but for me, at least, it’s not really like another eye because it’s not detailed enough for that, but it’s still as if there’s an additional visual stream of information that goes from my memory to the visual processing part of my brain. For me, it’s blurry and lacking in detail. It would be like using a slightly out of focus projector on a white wall in a well lit room. There are shapes and colours there, but they’re hard to see. But, like an image from an out-of-focus projector, if you try harder you can make out more of what it’s showing, and if you reduce other visual stimulus (like turn off the lights) you can notice more.

So for the ball example, I’d know the ball is “small, about the size of a plum, solid pink somewhere between neon and intense salmon, smooth matte texture, looks like it might be foam”.

Does this happen instantaneously for you? If I tried to come up with a description like that it would take several seconds, whether I’m doing it while actually actively looking at the object, or with my eyes closed working based on a memory of the image my eyes saw.

If you close your eyes and intentionally picture something other than the ball

Something real, or something I’m inventing with my imagination?

would you then be unable to tell me what color it was in your example?

Like, translate the image to a word? I can tell you a word, but the metal image will come first. I think I do need the visual representation to know the object. Like, if someone gives me a description of something, I’ll build a mental image based on that description. If someone asked me to describe it later, I’d probably use different words because I’d be going based on the image not on remembering the words.

In your case, if you have a memory of something that is “small, about the size of a plum, solid pink somewhere between neon and intense salmon, smooth matte texture, looks like it might be foam”, how easy is it for you to change the words you’d use to describe it? Like, say someone asked you to describe it but not to use any words related to living things, could you swap out “plum” and “salmon” without effort? Do you think you’re storing those actual words, or are you storing a concept? For example, if you’re remembering a white rock, is it “rock” you’re remembering, or is it the concept of a rock, which can match similar words like “pebble”, “stone”, etc.?

Also, I wonder how this affects your ability to remember descriptions of things that are not physically possible in our 3d world, like a Klein bottle or a hypercube. I wonder if, for you, there’s no real difference in difficulty remembering the details of a cube vs. a hypercube because you can’t picture either of them. Whereas for me, I can easily remember / picture a cube, but for a hypercube it’s hard because it’s not something I can get a real visual representation of.