Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I assume that conversation did not go well.

That stuff's a mess in the contingency world. After settlement, first firm and second firm go to war over fees.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

After the 3rd bankruptcy, who was a vendor to Donald Trump that didn't require getting paid upfront? Probably your partner.

LessinMostar, Boznia i Herzegovina

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Hi Hank, here's a book you might like. I haven't read it.

Martin Gurri
 

I'm guessing a lot of people here have heard of this. It's a cult classic in tech circles, supposedly.

But it is worth pimping, because it is fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public.../dp/B07K6Y6KGZ

Gurri is an ex-CIA media analyst. Book was done in 2014, and pretty much predicted the "populist" surge that followed since 2016. He's since updated it with a lengthy chapter addressing Brexit, Trump, etc.

It's quite insightful. His assessments are not political, but technical. His main thesis is that govt is not longer truly in control because it has lost a monopoly on information and narrative creation. The "public" as he defines it is not in control either. It is, however, armed with tons of information, able to delegitimize the govt (or "elites," as he states somewhat sarcastically) at every turn. The problem is this "public" has no set of plans for a replacement of the current institutions. All it can do, from Occupy, to the Arab Spring, to Italy's Five Star party, is negate whoever is in charge, throw them out of office and replace them with another incompetent regime.

His final point is that the public is unrealistic -- it expects too much from govt and is impatient when it doesn't receive its Utopian desires. He sees a future in which local communities dominate more, are more connected and yet atomized, and in which information flattens hierarchies. The "pyramid of power" currently in place won't disappear, as bureaucrats and politicians and corporate actors have too much invested in it to allows its disintegration. But de facto, it will have less and less power.

Or, alternatively, he sees the possibility of the "elite" structures stamping down on the public via repression. But he sees that as unlikely, as information and distrust - even among members of the governing classes - has made that kind of coordinated action nearly impossible.

The book is highly engaging and a very easy read. The guy's humility despite his obviously enormous knowledge and powers of insight also makes him eminently likeable. If you dig Ian Bremmer, his voice is similar.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

I'll put it on my list, but first i have to read about the kinds of roses George Orwell and Elton John raised, respectively, and why.....

Re: Martin Gurri
 

The government has never had a monopoly on information or narrative creation, so whatever it lost, that's not it.

IMO, governments lost a lot of legitimacy after the 2008 financial crisis. There were no consequences for rich people who did shady things, and they got bail-outs. There were a lot of consequences for ordinary people, and no bail-outs.

Conservatives have given up on the idea that the government can do anything other than beat on other people (other countries, immigrants, people who disagree with the police). The progressive left is primarily focused on culture-war issues that are not immediate concerns for other people. Moderate Democrats will only act cautiously in a way calculated not to really solve any problem. None of them have any promise to really change anything. All of this is at least partly true in a lot of other industrialized countries, too.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

Have any of you thought about how I am really the only one that rises about the problems you mention? If we reassemble the broad geographic LT team, we have people now in positions of influence across the country. WE can make ME the next president. Can I count on your support?

Re: Martin Gurri
 

Are you using "progressive left" to distinguish from socialist left? But the lefties I see are pretty focused on health care.

It's also a little weird how little attention is paid to the very real possibility that all parents will soon have access to childcare that won't bankrupt them. Which is probably because Dems aren't fighting with each other about it.

Around these parts policing has been a major issue, with the progressive left trying to do something that is an immediate concern for a lot of people but also left a lot of room for the status quo to fear monger other people into saying no.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

His argument is that the govt had more control of a smaller media (a few networks and papers from which everyone got their news) that acted as gatekeepers and narrative creators.

He touches on this, but not directly. His assessment is that this sort of thing (2008 bailouts) could have been gotten away with in a pre-Internet age. Post-Internet, however, the govt can't bullshit the public with some story about how the bailouts were equitable or morally defensible. The "public," as he describes the people in opposition to the govt and hierarchical institutions generally, can easily find information online to debunk such govt and industry spin, and then they can package counter-arguments which go viral. The result is a loss of control by authorities. This includes what you cite -- a loss of credibility and moral validity.

He's not a conservative. His admitted aim is to save democracy. He sees authoritarian creep and nihilism among both the masses and the "elites." He thinks the problem is that the public believes - delusionally - that it can demand and receive "fixes" for complex problems from the govt. The Trump voter thinks protectionism will bring back jobs. The progressive believes we can fix inequality and poverty other than at the margins by simply throwing money and govt intervention at them.

These things can be attempted, sure, but they will not succeed all or even a small fraction of the time. Gurri argues that govt has been lying to a credulous public about how much it can do for a long time and thus given the public unrealistic expectations of its capabilities. This creates an angry public that operates like George Steinbrenner - throwing out the Manager every four years when it doesn't get everything it wants.

Gurri thinks this is abetted by "Intellectuals Yet Idiots" (policy wonks who think in the abstract but fail in the practical and concrete) who populate a lot of govt and institutions. These people can never admit being wrong or having limitations because their brand is being right about everything (smartest guys in the room syndrome). Secondly, politicians generally can't admit being fallible because the deluded public - again, unrealistically - will not accept that. No one can tell the truth: "This is a policy we think will work, but there's a chance it will fail."

He argues that what we need most from our leaders is humility. And what we need most from the public is circumspect thinking, tolerance for failure, and maturity.

He writes on this problem. But if you really want to see someone attack this issue in a comprehensive manner, Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit is the book for you. Sandel asserts that merit is becoming a back door into which something like an old school English class system, aiding exclusively the upper middle to affluent classes, is infecting American society, masked as defensible and just based on arbitrary metrics, a crooked education system, and legacy hierarchies (industry and govt) in which the same people with the same badges hand each other positions.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

It was not just the “status quo” (whatever that means in this case) that was deeply concerned about the ballot amendment to defund the police. (This is an oversimplification of the ballot amendment, but it will do for now.) The ballot amendment deeply split the black and economically-challenged neighborhoods that are actually the ones most likely to be affected by the amendment, because these neighborhoods are not only the most likely to be victims of abusive policing, but also the most likely to be affected by mobile drug dealing, gang violence, etc., etc. The City Council was (rightly, in my opinion) harshly criticized for rallying behind empty “defund” rhetoric without having done the hard work of figuring out what that meant or how they would would keep the most vulnerable neighborhoods safe once they defunded the police and, most egregiously, without seeking any meaningful input from black community leaders in these neighborhoods. It did not help when the City Council president went on CNN and, when asked what people were supposed to when their house was being broken into, responded that this question came from a place of privilege, immediately making her a cartoon meme of the fear-mongering right. It also did not help that she lived in a neighborhood in South Minneapolis far less likely to actually be impacted by home invasions and other violent crime than the city’s north side.

“The debate has also played out among racial and geographical lines — with many Black residents of north Minneapolis accusing liberal White residents of south Minneapolis of supporting ‘an experiment’ that could prove harmful to Black residents as they are trying to be better allies in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ot-initiative/

Re: Martin Gurri
 

Whoops, gotta stop you right there as defunding the police was not on the ballot. (yes, I saw your parenthetical).


So, there are two frustrating things about this very common take. First, it does not acknowledge the years of work from city staff, including a detailed analysis of 911 calls and the resources necessary to respond to them, and the various non-police resources being stood up across 7 city departments. They absolutely have been doing the work. They just don't have the final org chart for the proposed department of public safety because the city attorney told them they couldn't (and they do no currently have the power to create one anyway, that's what the amendment was for).

Second, nobody defunded, or was about to defund, anything. We had a whole giant flip out over an amendment that amounted to nothing more than a reorganization of city departments (yes, with the potential for fewer police in the long run).

It's super fun to credit white progressives with the longstanding work of groups like Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

Fine, if you want to fight over semantics despite my disclaimer, here is the actual wording on the ballot:

“Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to remove the Police Department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety that employs a comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions by the Department of Public Safety, with those specific functions to be determined by the Mayor and City Council by ordinance; which will not be subject to exclusive mayoral power over its establishment, maintenance, and command; and which could include licensed peace officers (police officers), if necessary, to fulfill its responsibilities for public safety, with the general nature of the amendments being briefly indicated in the explanatory note below, which is made a part of this ballot?”

I’m not saying no work was done, but to argue that we were just an org chart away from a functioning plan as to how this new Department of Public Safety was going to effectively replace the Police Department seems hopelessly naive to me.

The fact that there were minority groups that have long been trying to defund (or reorganize or abolish or whatever word you want to choose) is not something that I disputed. The point of the quote that I pulled out of the article was that many black people from the north side, including many vocal longstanding black community leaders, felt disenfranchised from this movement that was supposedly in large part about helping them. And whether you agree that they were or not, the fact that many of them felt this way was a huge problem. Which was probably why the wards on north side actually voted AGAINST the amendment.

https://www.minnpost.com/elections/2...lot-questions/

And this was the point I was addressing. The frustrating and very common take that the ballot amendment was defeated because of fear mongering by the status quo (and there was certainly plenty of right-wing fear mongering), ignores all of the above problems.

There was a moment in the wake of the Floyd murder where there could have been real change to address the horrific and ongoing history of abusive police practices in the Twin Cities, including due to the fact that we had (and have) a black police chief who at least appears to want widespread systemic change within the department. And I am not saying how that change should have occurred. Maybe it was to replace the Police Department, maybe it was to reign in a corrupt police union, maybe it was to work within the existing system, maybe it was some combination of the above. But I’m afraid the whole thing was horribly botched and the moment may have been lost.

Re: Martin Gurri
 

Re: Martin Gurri
 

They did, but in nowhere near the proportion of the no vote in the Golden Crescent (or whatever you want to call it).

Meanwhile, the strongest support was in the diverse communities of the central city (and on campus). The racial politics on this were complex.

But wait, our re-elected Mayor has sworn he's for real reform?? (He's not, so you're right to lament missing the opportunity).

I'm honestly not clear where that appearance comes from or, if it is an accurate description of what's in his heart, that he actually has any power to create that kind of change.

There is no reigning in the police department while the charter ensures them full employment, while they are immune from city council policymaking because they can credibly threaten the mayor's reelection. If we're being honest, there may be no doing it anyway.

That said, it's a bit amazing the mayor got reelected amid a sick out and work slowdown.

I'd be OK with replacing
 

all or part of the CLE system with a version of the Squid Game. https://www.slashfilm.com/img/galler...1636401869.jpg