Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@tripu

>"Still, isn’t is suspicious that there aren’t at least a bunch of long-lasting, functioning libertarian experiments where members voluntarily ditch outer courts and laws, shun subsidies and quotas of any kind, rely on an inner grey market to conceal income and wealth as much as possible, rely solely on voluntary agreements among them, etc?"

You mean like the Mexican drug cartel?

@stux

It's climate change.

@freemo @trinsec

>"Interesting. So to your ears what you were saying was identical to everyone else, but in reality it wasnt?"

Pretty much. But it isn't my ears, it's the parts of the brain that processes the information. I was able to discover "or" and "naive" by reading about the pronunciations and actually seeing the difference in print. Once I saw it in print, I could kind of discern the differences by sound, but it was not natural for me and I'm pretty sure that I still mispronounce them when I'm not thinking about it.

@freemo

If she directly threatened to make it public unless he paid her, then that's blackmail.

The way these things are usually worked out is that the woman shops her story around to tabloids in a manner so that the target will learn of it. Then the tabloid buys the exclusive rights to the story and it becomes an intellectual property deal and the tabloid then works it out with the target (like selling the rights to them). That's how they usually avoid blackmail law.

That's how Trump did it with another woman, Karen McDougal. (Maybe that's where the whole "Karen" meme started?)

A similar thing happened to David Letterman a couple of decades ago. A boyfriend of his mistress wrote a screenplay about a famous TV personality who had a mistress that exactly paralleled Letterman's situation. He then tried to sell the screenplay directly to Letterman.

Letterman turned the guy into the cops rather than paying the blackmail money and the story was made public.

@freemo @trinsec

I was born in the US and English is my first language. I have dyslexia (and social dyslexia), so the part of my brain that processes language and social information doesn't work properly, including phonetics.

I also found out a couple of years ago that I had been pronouncing the word "mitten" incorrectly.

Probably many others that I'm not aware of.

@Deglassco

A prolific director as well as an actor.

I remember when Roots first aired; it was really big deal. As a scifi fan, I know him mostly from ST:TNG.

Here's a short discussion about the choice to make him wear that silly visor (part of a longer thread)...

https://qoto.org/@Pat/107265433475710661

@freemo @trinsec

I just recently found out that I've been mispronouncing the word, "naive".

Also, the word, "or".

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People who use the phrase, "virtue signaling" are stupidity signaling.

#givingAshit

@stux

Is this video available on another platform? With all the ads, pop-ups and idiotic UI, videos on youtube are virtually unwatchable.

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The next time I hear someone use the phrase "post-covid", I'm going to breathe on them.

#COVID19 #pandemic #mask #respirator

@freemo

Woof!

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Some people like to talk about immigration into the the US, but they don't seem to want to talk about the millions of people who are leaving the US...

"According to a Gallup poll from January 2019, 16% of Americans, including 40% of women under the age of 30, would like to leave the United States."

(Wikipedia, Emigration from the United States; CC-BY-SA-3.0)

@freemo

Have you ever seen the movie American Graffiti (1973)? It came out at the height of unrest in the US toward the end of the Vietnam War protests. The primary propaganda purpose of that film was to instill in the population a disrespect for cops. (The film was targeted toward young people and mostly the poor and middle class.) They put out this propaganda for the reason I cited earlier -- to condition cops to be more likely to suppress a revolution rather than to join with it.

History repeats itself. I've seen it. I've lived it. It's happening again.

Regarding cops occasionally getting into trouble with the law when they are off duty, that would seem to counter your assertion that the law enforcement system is corrupt and that cops watch out for each other and let each other get away committing crimes.

Cops are no different than us -- they are the targets of a plutocratic system that is trying to turn people against each other in order to preserve the position of the wealthy and politically connected.

@freemo

>"... and generally more likely to be assholes in almost every other scenario too...."

Care to cite the study that you got that statistic from?

Jeff, you're a wealthy person, I think. You know that the wealthy are trying to sow disrespect for cops, to turn people against cops so that cops will be more willing to act to try to suppress a revolution when the wealthy call on them to do that. You know that, right?

@freemo

You say that youtube is not your lens, and then you go on about some guy on youtube filming cops.

I lived a long life and very early on I hung out with people who were not so law abiding. They didn't like cops and it gave me a certain impression. Later on I learned more and knew people who followed the law and the perspective was different, and the cops I met and knew personally were all very nice.

You should not base your views on what you see on youtube or the news.

Also, there is another driver at work to undermine respect for the police. Wealthy people feel that their elite position is being threatened right now by the democratizing effects of technology. One of the techniques that they are using to counter that effect is to try to make people who are not in elite positions to fight amongst themselves. They also want to ward off any revolutions. One way to do that is to try to get the more restive folks to hate police -- because the wealthy want the police to defend their elite position. If they get their enemies (poor people) to disrespect cops, then the cops will be less likely to join the revolution. The irony is that cops are one of the most abused tools of the wealthy, but they don't even know it.

@freemo

>"Your experience does not add up to reality."

Neither does yours. Everyone has their own lens on the world, but if youtube videos and the news is your lens, then you definitely have a more distorted view.

Also, if all or most of your interactions with police are during an incident that they are responding to, especially if they were called to respond to something that you're involved with, then that will seem negative right from the get-go.

If you want to get more objectivity, get to know a cop when she is off duty or ask to go on a ride-along with a cop for an entire shift or two. Then you will have a more objective view. (And no, reality shows about cops are definitely not an objective view.)

@freemo

Every cop I know, and every cop I have ever known, has been honest and law-abiding. (Except the one guy who cheated on wife; he was still a nice guy who was just thinking with wrong head).

People decide to become cops because they respect the law and they don't like bad guys.

It is very rare for a cop to be a criminal themselves. Occasionally a bad one will get into leadership and that can cause a problem with those who work under them, but that is really rare.

Remember, the news only reports the bad ones and the fact that it makes the news at all is an indication that it is different than the norm.

@timely_pace

Apparently the latter...

-muted user-

@freemo

I'm surprised to see you use the tag, "All Cops Are Bad".

I think that phrase and the anti-cop sentiment in general is part of an exogenous influence campaign to erode honesty and respect for the law, and to ultimately undermine civil order.

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Roasting your pets...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1780018856