Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 526174)

So you can admit that you sometimes err about what should be shared, but can you finally admit you were wrong about what should not be allowed?

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 526168)

This thread on the prosecutor's closing argument in the Roger Stone trial is worth reading, especially the bit where Stone calls candidate Trump while in a car with Gates, Trump hands up and reports that there is more hacked information coming.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526165)

I would describe him as very capable and managerial in his style and progressive but incrementalist in his policies. Dukakis but not as fun as Dukakis.

I had thought he had passed over the race because he felt he needed more backing from Obama. He and Obama go way back together - they have a personal relationship, not just a political one. And remember, here in Massachusetts Liz Warren was really completely an Obama creation in politics - she was an academic with no local political history and Obama cleared the field for her Senate run because he wanted her in the Senate. So the local Obama team here has pretty much been all Warren in this election.

My understanding is he's got some significant financial backing for the run. But let's face it, he should have gotten in 6 to 12 months ago, and many, many people who might have supported him have long since been committed elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526176)

If this doesn't make you smile, then, well, whatever, never mind.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 526179)

This makes me happy.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 526179)

This makes me happy.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526182)

Ruhle destroys the media narratives...

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526183)

Et tu?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526184)

Not sure in what direction that's aimed. But Swisher is becoming my new favorite podcast. And Ruhle really surprised me.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526185)

I was reacting to the way you used "destroys," which is its own sort of click-baity cliche.

I don't know Ruhle. Working in Silicon Valley, I have known Swisher's stuff for a long time, and she is excellent. I want to like podcasts, but I don't have space in my life to listen to them. This morning I was driving to work alone, which is uncommon, so I listed to a bit of Preet Bharara's podcast -- I think he is quite good.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526186)

Trying to catch up on the news today, is Meth a Gateway Drug to Fracking or the other way around?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526187)

I’m not one to defend Zuckerberg, either, but she made a great point that he’s not at fault. He’s doing what a CEO is supposed to do, and if the narrative crafting machines of the media hadn’t failed, hadn’t been clearly acting in the interests of the institutions that spend advertising dollars with them, people would not have so willingly accepted FB as a valid news alternative. So I lazily used destroy. But it fits.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526189)

I would like to talk about whatever you are talking about here, but I haven't heard the podcast, so maybe you could explain to me what the point about Zuckerberg is?



Yes, he's good. Friend of a good friend, too.



My problem with them is that I prefer text to audio. That's about me, not them.

Podcasts are part of a broader trend in media we have discussed before, which is that the costs of the equipment needed to publish have come way, way down.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526190)

Ruble was challenging the argument that Zuckerberg had a duty to police content. She argued it’s not his responsibility unless regulation or law makes it so, so rather than beat him on him, pass a law (likely unconstitutional) or shut up.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526191)

That's bullshit. If you run a supermarket in a residential neighborhood, and your neighbors complain about the noise from trucks making deliveries at your store in the middle of the night, do you say, if you don't like it, sue me under the law of nuisance or take it to the city council, or do you say, OK, we want to be a responsible member of the community, we'll try to find a way to operate without waking people up?

And people are beating on Zuckerberg and Facebook lately because they choose to police content for commercial speech, but decline to do it for political speech. That's his choice -- why shouldn't the rest of us talk about it?

If she doesn't like that people are complaining about Zuckerberg, she should try to amend the First Amendment to make it illegal or shut up.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526192)

Zuckerberg’s duty is to his employees and shareholders. Is it wise to placate others? Of course. But does anyone have a right to complain that allows free speech on a platform for it in a country where it’s a constitutional right? Yes! And he has a right to ignore them. Which is a passive aggressive corporate form of telling them to shut up.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526186)

Trying to catch up on the news today, is Meth a Gateway Drug to Fracking or the other way around?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526190)

Ruble was challenging the argument that Zuckerberg had a duty to police content. She argued it’s not his responsibility unless regulation or law makes it so, so rather than beat him on him, pass a law (likely unconstitutional) or shut up.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526192)

Right wing loons like Brent Bozell tried that with boycotts and letters to advertisers in the 80s and 90s. Today, “cancel culture” offers the same thing.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526195)

You don't punish the bullhorn manufacturer for the ramblings of maniac using it to scream awful things on the street corner.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526195)

I hear your point. He should ignore both sides.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 526188)

Does ANYONE believe the gateway drug theory anymore?

Hell, I had a very awkward conversation with my suddenly curious parents about the various cannabinoids and their benefits and the various ways to take them. "Do you HAVE to smoke it?" My mom is now a CBD devotee, and Graham volunteered to help should they decide to go further into THC territory. Amazing how aches and pains will open minds.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526195)

I hear your point. He should ignore both sides.



So does everyone. But ignoring can go both ways here, and would provide an elegant solution. The right and left can whine at FB, and then it can ignore them instead of whining about them whining about FB. Everybody is ignored and people can be left to sort out what is and isn't true on FB, as informed adult users of the site should be compelled to do.



I do. He should not be regulating anything. He has terms of service that ban certain things (the ludicrous ban on display of female nipples comes to mind). But if he wishes to call himself a platform, he cannot start sifting content for truth and banning what he deems untruthful. That's a journalist's job.



I hear this from the left and right. The right says he is somehow burying conservative content. How, I have no idea. The left says he's allowing Russian bots to flood FB with untrue content about Democratic candidates.

First, if you'll let FB posts inform your voting decisions, I have no time for you. You're an idiot who should be removed from the gene pool. But putting that aside, FB is simply a connective device. You don't punish the bullhorn manufacturer for the ramblings of maniac using it to scream awful things on the street corner.



He does. But you're asking him to play "god of content." What criteria shall he use to determine what's true and what's not? Real, actual media can barely do that effectively. FB is supposed to sift through billions of posts and eliminate that which it deems lies? There's a Flat Earth Society on FB. Should that be banned because it's clearly untrue? How about creationists? What about gold bugs predicting economic collapse?

What about politicians who lie? Shall we ban Warren's FB ads promising student loan forgiveness because we know she can't seriously think she can actually deliver it -- that it's clearly just an empty promise?

The suggestion there are 37 genders which exists on FB is untrue. It's scientifically unserious. Should that be banned? Some doctors think fibromyalgia is a made up disease. Ban that? Aspergers has been removed from the DSM-IV. Remove all references to it?

What about Pluto? Should Zuck decide if it's really a planet?

And more broadly, how should he deal with opinion pieces? Should he establish spheres of deviance that he likes and ban opinions that he deems to be based on sketchy facts or misunderstanding of facts?

Next time there's a murder trial involving clear guilt of an alleged perpetrator, should FB remove all stories offered by defenders of the accused? During the next OJ-like fiasco, should FB side with the overwhelming facts and declare anyone accusing the police of a frame-up to be trafficking in lies? Because if you're going to ban lies, you're going to ban a whole lot of what we call 'advocacy."



TV runs ads filled with lies all the time. If I had to list all of the snake oil pitches one sees on TV, I'd need a room full of servers to hold them all.



It taught me that there are arrogant people in the country with the temerity to say the following:

I think it's unfair that a lousy candidate lost an election because dumb people were manipulated. I think we should put safeguards in place to make sure dumb people cannot be manipulated, and I think my view of what is and isn't worthy of voters' eyes should be used as the measuring stick.

Channeling Hitchens in reply to a ludicrously arrogant critic (and I've seen him do this in the flesh): "To that, sir... Uh, fuck you. Fuck you."

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526200)

My 17 year old aspiring medical researcher told me that there are certain drugs like opioids that can lead you to crave stronger opioids and you could call those gateway drugs but that if Biden's concern is that he thinks someone who has tried pot might try other things the only way that would work is if trying pot made them more likely to think drug laws made so sense and ignore all of them, so the best way to deal with it is to legalize them.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526200)

My 17 year old aspiring medical researcher told me that there are certain drugs like opioids that can lead you to crave stronger opioids and you could call those gateway drugs but that if Biden's concern is that he thinks someone who has tried pot might try other things the only way that would work is if trying pot made them more likely to think drug laws made so sense and ignore all of them, so the best way to deal with it is to legalize them.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526195)

Because if you're going to ban lies, you're going to ban a whole lot of what we call 'advocacy."

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 526202)

The uproar about this shit is silly. He's clearly running to the right of most Democratic candidates. No matter how shitty a candidate everyone thinks (knows?) he is, it is still working. Seems to me his answer was fairly strategic and in line with his base, which is significant. But no one can tell me that he won't sign a bill that a Dem House and Senate pass as it relates to legalization if he becomes President.

This silly shit is why people convince themselves not to vote.

TM

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 526203)

Especially in states that have legalized it there is a stark uptick in cannabis induced psychosis. People eat massive doses and get as insane as anything that happens organically. It is pretty horrible to see it.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526206)

If I were King, I'd just be treating the stuff the same as any other drug - I'd look for FDA approval before marketing and I'd have the stuff subject to FDA inspection and oversight. I'd do the same with tobacco.

In this world where we seem to be given only two options, legalization or full criminalization classifying it in the same manner as heroin, we're going to get pretty bad shit both ways. Unfortunately, I have a nephew who ended up with some very bad what the docs believe are cannabis induced seizures. He may have had them whether or not the stuff got legalized, but I'm still happier we got him treated and off the stuff rather than having him drying out in the big house.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 526208)

It is legal here so I'm not advocating anything re. that.

But the full on "this shit cures all" drives me nuts. My CIP loved one spent years telling me he was "healing" himself by eating the massive doses. By the (hopefully) end of it he was telling me Donald Trump was calling him and appointing him the next official rapper for the United States. Fun times!

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 526201)

I don't know how many genders there are but I've been told you're a cuck.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 526203)

Especially in states that have legalized it there is a stark uptick in cannabis induced psychosis. People eat massive doses and get as insane as anything that happens organically. It is pretty horrible to see it.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 526199)

Then you learned the wrong thing. The real problem is not that some people in this country are arrogant. The problem is the people who were manipulated in various ways to vote for Trump. That is, unless you are more bothered by the arrogant people who voted for Clinton than the fact that Trump won, something you creep around but don't quite say.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 526212)

Edibles are a problem. But in vapor form it’s actually weaker than smoke. Smoke gets in some people’s heads way more intensely in part due to other organic compounds released from the burning.

Smoke a joint of certain sativa strains and you can get really jittery. Hit the same stuff from a pen or a volcano balloon and you’ll get a mildly peppy body buzz.

Edibles are impossible to predict. You can get pulverized, and it Just Keeps Going. The high is too long and unless you smoke a ton, way too strong. Edibles makers are fucking it up for everyone else.