Totally agree. In this case, it's plain NIMBYism, but we should make sure to avoid the classic mistake of ignoring any downsides of the new and shiny thing.

The two UCC references they list:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201#1-201b37

"Signed" includes using any symbol executed or adopted with present intention to adopt or accept a writing.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-304

§ 1-304. Obligation of Good Faith.

Every contract or duty within the Uniform Commercial Code imposes an obligation of good faith in its performance and enforcement.

From what I can understand of this mess, they're trying to buy a car, or otherwise enter a contract of some sort with Volkswagen. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure sections like § 1-304 only mean after you enter a contract, you're obligated to uphold it. If someone doesn't want to enter into a contract with you because they don't like the way you write your signature, it's their right to tell you to get bent.

Environmental destruction isn't limited to any particular ideology

Another good one is Glasgow -> Glaswegians. Here's a pretty interesting article about a few odd demonyms:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/demonyms-linguistics-nicknames

The demonym “Glaswegian” comes, linguists think, as an analogy of the Irish city of Galway. “Glasgow” and “Galway” are two fairly similar looking words. And Galway has long had its own analogy with another similar-looking word: Norway. Galway’s demonym is “Galwegian,” as an analogy of “Norwegian.” So “Glaswegian” is a sort of a photocopy-of-a-photocopy of Norwegian. Not something anyone could ever guess!

Is there a joke here beyond "farmer is improbably in a business meeting"? I couldn't find a meaning for sodbuster that added anything, nor did I see any common 90's business slang about farming.

What is !steamdeck@lemmy.world doing over with the red dots 🤔

I read that and was prepared to have my mind blown. Not really impressed, though. That article says this:

And you can literally say anything about North Korea, the most absurd thing you could imagine, and people would believe it.

That links to this article, which says:

The country has been in the news of late, as ongoing negotiations between the Trump and Kim Jong-un administrations appear to have soured. The chief casualty of this diplomatic failure, the New York Times (5/31/19) breathlessly reported, was Kim Jong-un’s negotiating team, with the vice chair of the North Korean Workers’ Party, Kim Yong-chol, being sent to a forced labor camp in “the latest example of how a senior North Korean official’s political fortune is made or broken at the whims of Kim Jong-un.”

The linked NYT article says this:

Now, he has suddenly become the latest example of how a senior North Korean official’s political fortune is made or broken at the whims of Kim Jong-un. This week, leading South Korean newspapers reported Kim Yong-chol’s fall from grace. One of them, the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo, went so far as to report that Mr. Kim had been banished to forced labor, with many of his negotiating team members either executed or sent to prison camps.

South Korean officials and analysts cautioned that it was too early to say with precision what was happening inside Kim Jong-un’s opaque regime. South Korean news media offered differing conjectures, including whether Kim Hyok-chol, the North’s special nuclear envoy to the United States, had been executed by firing squad in March, as the Chosun Ilbo reported, or was still under interrogation.

But they all agree on one thing: Kim Yong-chol and his negotiating team, which had driven Kim Jong-un’s diplomatic outreach toward Washington, have been sidelined, as the North Korean leader sought a scapegoat to blame for his disastrous second summit meeting with Mr. Trump, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February.

That seems pretty reasonable? It says that the official has found disfavor, says what one other paper reported with language of "went so far as to report", and also notes that it's hard to say for sure because North Korea is very opaque.

The FAIR article then says:

There was one problem: Kim Yong-chol appeared only a few days later at a high profile art performance alongside Kim Jong-un.

Yeah, that's hard evidence he wasn't executed, but that's about it. Situations like this can change on a whim in a dictatorship. Maybe Kim Jong-un had a good breakfast and decided that the official's forced labor could be done.

FAIR also says this in that article:

North Korea is also a favorite location for wacky and easily disprovable stories. The BBC (3/28/14) originally reported that all men were required to wear their hair like Kim Jong-un, with other haircuts banned.

The BBC article has a correction that it's university students and not all men (which is missing from the FAIR article), so is that true? And it's weird to say that stuff like that is wacky when stuff like this apparently happens:

A second, and unprecedented, TV series this winter showed hidden-camera style video of "long-haired" men in various locations throughout Pyongyang.

In a break with North Korean TV's usual approach, the programme gave their names and addresses, and challenged the fashion victims directly over their appearance.

That looks legit, with footage on youtube. Is there any reason to think that's fake? That certainly confirms my mental model of North Korea as a wacky dictatorship if it's true.

EDIT: FAIR's other statements in that article are dunking on the worst possible interpretations of what people say, which just makes FAIR seem like it has a chip on its shoulder about North Korea for some reason. I'd take what they say about North Korea with a grain of salt.

we believe revolution is the solution

Yes, that's the issue.

smug liberal enlightened centrist argument

That's on you for assuming that just because you don't like an argument it must be those smug libs.

tankies of being bootlickers and what not: we

I didn't call you a tankie, you self-identified as one

Do I see smug pricks like yourself going around calling his ass a cultist? No!

I call out silliness when I see it, but most lib stuff that I come across is of the bland, inoffensive variety. I haven't been checking this entire thread for everyone that's wrong, I've spent enough time on this already.

The easiness of the solution isn't how much work is involved. By "neat and easy" I mean, "The root of all evil is capitalism and we solve that with revolution".

Black and white thinking pops up again. Why do you think I think socialist states are evil? Why do you think I think everything America does is reasonable?

It's another cult-like behavior that is rampant with tankies. "This person thinks this, so I will assign these other views to them as well, so that I may dunk on them".

So here's the thing. Hexbear has some smart people on it. @PugJesus@lemmy.world wrote a good comment over here that talks about how it's good that they can see injustices in the world and get pissed off: https://lemmy.world/comment/12220633

But cults suck in smart people, and they're very skilled at this. They feed off of righteous anger at the state of the world, and promise neat, easy solutions. And the issue is that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, especially people that suffer from black and white thinking. You can't talk about how the world doesn't neatly fit into tidy categories, because that's not as comforting as what the cult offers. The only thing you can really do is reinforce that they've fallen into a broken system of thinking, and encourage them to want to reason themselves out of their current position. Once that desire is there, they'll accomplish it all on their own.

The term is “dialectic”. Are you sure you are familiar with the topic you are being condescending about?

This is a great example of the hyperfocus on irrelevant details that plagues these comments. It was intentional, but even if it wasn't, so what? "Your argument has a typo, therefore you're dunked!"?

You’re meant to ask why.

The issue is that the comment is pablum. It doesn't actual say anything, it's not informative. It's hoping you'll infer something yourself and then waste time assuming what they meant. As mentioned in a previous comment, I realize that one of the things it's trying to get you to infer is that decadent western media is bad or whatever, but it's not limited to that. Arguing that there's only one thing it's trying to communicate is a great example of the black and white thinking that plagues tankies.

"You’re meant to ask why" is so embarrassingly vapid that I'm surprised you're defending it. Of course people will focus on big issues like "let's try to make sure this country continues to exist" over "let's try to help this country improve itself". There will hopefully be time for more of that later after Putin's invasion fails. I mean come on, this is pretty basic stuff. Do you think I'd be arguing in good faith if I said "Yeah, what's happening in Palestine is bad, but have you seen their LGBTQ record"? It's also again, not saying something, it's just JAQing off.

Right so some sarcastic little jokes. The kind of thing all over Lemmy.

I was told there'd be informative comments with sources. There were not. The vast majority of the comments didn't even try to be substantive, just pigs wallowing in mud.

A sentiment found nowhere in the statement you quoted

I elided some of the comment that makes it more clear:

After getting teased and given the run around for decades he slowly wised up to the game. Putin realized by 2014 they wouldn’t let him be a European but until late 2023 he still didn’t understand that the west could never be trusted.

This is imperialist sympathizing, and the OP should feel ashamed. "Putin just had to invade Ukraine because of those other meanie imperialists that didn't want him in their club!"

Also "crypto fascists who run NATO will never forgive the Slavic peoples for destroying the third reich" is just straight facepalm material.

Apparently a reference to this series of beer commercials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLK4MxAiF7c

I wouldn't put it so aggressively, but I stopped arguing with one of them recently, because I realized that I was punching down. I'm not going to try and diagnose, but some sort of neurodivergence that leads to hyperfocusing on irrelevant details, and black and white thinking.

I don't think the answer is insulting them, that just validates their ingroup/outgroup mentality. The best thing to do is to just encourage them to keep on trying to improve themselves, and try to work on their maturity for when they become adults.

The majority of responses are of this ilk:

WHAT ABOUT ISM MUCH!!!111?!?1;1!?;1!1?1!1!11?1?1?!1!1?1?1?1!1!!1!1!1?1?1??1!1!1!11!?1?1!1?1?1

<custom ukraine flag emoji> had no business being nazi fucks murdering their own people and working for <custom us flag emoji> to provoke Russia

Obomba had no business overthrowing the democratically elected Viktor Yakunovich

They're not detailed, sourced, or coherent, they're just bandwagoning. They're pigs wallowing in the mud, enjoying getting others muddy.

One response has images like this and links to news articles:

It is sourced, I'll give you that. It doesn't try to actually make any argument though, it's just hoping you'll see the headlines that think "ukraine == nazis", without stating that outright. It's oddly similar to Young Earth Creationists.

Here's another response that's the sort of thing you write when you first learn "omg capitalism is bad you guys!" and view all of the world's ills through that lens. much dialect wow:

Anyone who had a look at Lenin’s “Imperialism: highest stage of capitalism” and took it seriously, knew that there would be war in Europe as soon as they realized that the means of production of the former USSR were auctioned in a corrupt fashion, and their structure of ownership went not to western hands, but to national interests that collide with those of the US. Since that moment, it was just a matter of time that there would be conflict.

Poor oppressed Putin!

Putin tried really had to be taken into the fold imperialism. He assisted the west in its looting of Russia. He tried to join NATO but the crypto fascists who run NATO will never forgive the Slavic peoples for destroying the third reich

I've waded through the responses now to make sure I'm not missing something worthwhile, and it was a waste of my time. The one thing of value any of these responses has is hopefully one day making the posters feel self cringe when they've matured.

“Ukraine isn’t a utopia, therefore it’s a dystopia”.

That collection of news headlines are trying to imply "Ukraine isn't perfect, therefore Putin's invasion is justified because Ukraine is full Nazi and also the western media is trying to cover it up!". It's an immature view of the world, where something being imperfect means it's literally hitler. It's something you get past as you grow up, for the most part. I know some adult tankies IRL so it's not a given that people grow out of it, but each and every single one of them suffers from black and white thinking that negatively impacts their life in many ways.

Let's agree that Putin wanting to bring back the USSR is silly. I'm not really defending OP, but calling the responses in that thread "detailed replies" is... oof. They're detailed in the same way Time Cube is detailed. OP wandered into the pig sty and got muddy, but at least he's not one of the pigs wallowing in the mud.

Those replies are terrible. The one with all the news headlines is peak hexbear. "Ukraine isn't a utopia, therefore it's a dystopia". It's a classic example of black and white thinking, while they conveniently ignore all of the Zwastikas on the side they're cheering for.

Those aren't good responses. The narrative of "poor Putin just had to invade Ukraine, don't you see?" is bollocks.

Their weird insistence that anyone that doesn't agree with them is a "lib" that needs "dunking on" is tiring. If you don't show full-throated support for authoritarian regimes that they happen to like, then you clearly support Israel and genocide. They need to mature a bit, and realize that the world isn't black and white, and it doesn't neatly fall into convenient categories that can be nicely labelled.

It's not just you. Like many people that get sucked into cults, you don't want to directly engage with them. Just nicely encourage them to deprogram themselves, and focus on maturing and becoming an adult. They really don't like get called out like that, based on my interactions with them.

I don't like "3 strikes" laws, but man... you should not have any access to a car after 5 DUIs.

https://www.supermegacomics.com/

There's some good ones in there, and also a lot where the author was way too high

It would not surprise me to find out 50%+ of Reddit activity is bots at this point

mods can suck, admins can suck, but you can go off and start your own instance, with blackjack and hookers.

I also like that I can see that someone is posting from hexbear, and I can disregard their comment. It saves time.

Here's some good reading on L-systems, written by the guy they're named after:

http://www.algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.pdf

Is the difference now that AIPAC learned the same lesson and made sure that wouldn't happen again?

The article doesn't really differentiate them:

“In Minnesota, we know that healthy communities don’t happen by accident – they are created by thoughtful policies and programs led by people who consider the diversity of our great state. [...] Civic Health Month is an acknowledgement of the critical role our health care providers and advocacy organizations play in keeping our communities strong.”

The research they cite is a little more involved:

Findings: The authors find institutions that promote political accountability are associated with lower infant mortality across the states, while those that promote checks and balances are associated with longer life expectancy. They also find that policy liberalism is associated with better health outcomes.

The article does say it doesn't stop at just voting near the end:

As we celebrate Civic Health Month, it’s important to recognize that our health and democracy are deeply interconnected. Engaging in civic life is not just about fulfilling a civic duty; it’s about contributing to the collective well-being of our communities. When we vote, we take an active role in shaping the policies that impact our health, our families, and our future.

It would be nice to see that be more than a footnote at the end. Here's one of the authors, so maybe it's more of a "baby steps first" approach:

Ben Ruxin serves as Chief Operating Officer of A Healthier Democracy, a national nonprofit dedicated to the intersection of healthcare and civic engagement.

You can and they did.

I hope you and the other commenter both someday achieve the maturity to look back on this conversation and be embarrassed. I further hope you'll move beyond embarrassment and realize that it's part of growing up to make mistakes like that.

Wonder why they didn't just keep everything on one site and only show stuff marked safe unless you toggle a switch? Maintaining two whole different sites that sync seems like more work for them

Why not just invest in battery tech? I get that there's shortcomings atm for power density, but if we're talking about cutting edge research (what I assume you mean by "I hope the can figure out methenol synthesis"), I'd personally prefer to be investing time and money into battery tech.

Some backstory on this comic:

He was proud of his skill in drawing that sort of mouth. Here's him being happy about drawing a horse's mouth like that:

I hate to recommend it, but facebook has some groups for finding commune-minded people. "Intentional community" would be a good search term

Inks said he knows the department morale has improved based on the feedback he gets from his leadership team

Yeah, hopefully he's just trying to not air dirty laundry or whatever, but this quote isn't exactly inspiring. Him asking his leadership team how things are going has strong obama medal vibes:

you are now dismissively declaring it impossible

I mean that I can't read your mind, and it doesn't enhance discussion for me to assume what you meant.

There is a parallel in the state violence I’m referring to

Wait, so you are comparing the two, contradicting your previous comment?

tangent stuff

Feel free to argue about it with someone else. I have no interest in arguing about what Dems in general are doing, I'm answering specific claims about Walz.

One can also take a topic and completely miss the important factors because they have arrived at a false, simple answer.

Yes, this is exactly what you've done, due to black and white thinking.

Looking at how the cops and national guard behaved

You're confused about the situation. I don't think we're getting anywhere, so let's agree on "Fuck MPD". If you or anyone else is interested, Wikipedia has a pretty good list of police violence during the protests. It's long, but includes lots of incidents outside of the Twin Cities as well. It can be hard to tell who exactly is responsible for which actions, because a lot of reporting just says "police", without delineating between MPD vs the National Guard vs other forces. I don't like cops, but blaming Walz for the MPD doesn't make sense. Blame this weasel or this piece of shit.

Interestingly, the most objectionable thing that I remember (the "light 'em up" thing) may have been people unaffiliated with the police or National Guard:

And it's unclear which agency the officers in the video are from. Both Minnesota National Guard spokesperson Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé and Minneapolis Police Department spokesperson Garrett Parten told USA TODAY the men in the video were not part of their organizations.

Of course, you have to balance that against the very real possibility of them lying about it.

Anyways, you ignored about 2/3 of what I said. Why is that?

I was picking the most relevant bits, as otherwise conversation tends to explode in size exponentially.

EDIT: If you want to do a better job of representing hexbear to the wider fediverse, read this and self-crit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Words do matter. I suspect you're not from the area and was sardonically calling you out for hyperbole that you're repeating on the internet.

I expect the people that had Black Lives Matter signs in their windows and a shred of sympathy for Palestinian kids to recognize the inconsistency when it is pointed out [...]

I have no idea how you're not comparing those two, but trying to argue what you meant is pointless. It certainly looks like you're trivializing actual genocide by mentioning it at all in this context.

Such as? If there are a lot I would have expected you to name at least one.

Whatever Dems in general are up to. I'm just saying I'm not interested in arguing about any of that, regardless of how much I agree with you or not.

I don't think we're going to convince each other on the issue over the internet, but IMO you have a marginally less black-and-white view of what happened than the Fall of Minneapolis people. If you insist on saying that the situation was black, then you're wrong. It wasn't white either, but that's just because your worldview can't handle the nuance. As one example of the nuance, yes journalists got arrested, but that was not with Walz's approval:

Following the arrest of a CNN crew on live television by police on Friday, an apologetic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz promised that journalists would not be interfered with in reporting on violent protests following the death of George Floyd. [...] At a later news conference, Walz said that “I take full responsibility. There is absolutely no reason something like that should happen ... This is a very public apology to that team.”

https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-journalism-arrests-mn-state-wire-us-news-eadfe65c7ce593d04c0aef7eb0276e22

I'm not saying he was perfect, but I would go so far as to say that I bet you wouldn't have done better in his shoes.

There is actually less nuance, it’s just full-blown support for state violence against protesters against racial oppression and genocide.

Do you live in the Twin Cities? I remember the National Guard coming in well. What exactly did they do that you find objectionable? I'm not claiming that everything was peachy, but calling what happened "state violence against protesters against racial oppression and genocide" is easy to do on the internet where words don't matter.

You've got a lot of tangents in your comment that aren't really related to Walz, but comparing what happened with the MN National Guard to what's happening in Palestine is absurd. I'd expect someone from hexbear to realize how fucked up it is to trivialize that genocide.

IMO it's more nuanced than that. Has he actually claimed anything about cracking skulls? I don't think it's bad to respond to someone yelling "he did nothing!" with "actually I did". What do you think he did wrong vs what principles?

Wonder why St. Paul is rising. I was really hoping that we'd see change in 2020, but people were working against that, like delaying the ballot initiative in 2020 :

https://apnews.com/article/47cc373752ffab4c983077e6bc90ab13

This is interesting, but the post is very inaccurate. The first picture is Portrait of a Moor by Jan Mostaert, and there's no indication that it's a portrait of Reasonable Blackman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_an_African_Man

The second picture was drawn by a modern person, and isn't even supposed to be Blackman, that's what the artist thinks Edward Swarthye might've looked like:

https://www.historyextra.com/membership/black-faces-of-tudor-england/

All that aside, here's what the book Black Tudors has to say about him:

A surname alone cannot confirm a person’s ethnicity. Although Reasonable’s surname would seem to indicate the colour of his skin, it is in fact an old English surname, derived from the Old English Blaec mann, as are ‘Black’, ‘Blackmore’, ‘Moor/More’ and ‘Morris’. It could also be spelt Blakeman, Blakman, Blackmon or Blackmun. A John Blakman was living in England in 1206 and the name was fairly common until the thirteenth century. By the Tudor period, the name was found in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, Fowey, Cornwall, and Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire. Henry VI had a chaplain named John Blacman, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. A different John Blackeman was buried at Grey Friars Church, London, in July 1511. A third man of the same name was a benefactor of St John’s Hospital, Coventry. None of these men was African.

‘Blackman’ may have originated in reference to a dark complexion, but by the sixteenth century it cannot be assumed to signify African ethnicity. As William Camden noted in 1586, ‘surnames began to be taken up ... in England about the time of the Conquest, or else a very little before’. Theoretically, a man called More in 1566 could have had a Moorish ancestor from five hundred years before, but it is a rather remote possibility. We cannot even assume that ‘Blackman’, or names like ‘Moor’ or ‘Niger’, were originally assigned to men of African origin. Wilfred Niger was nicknamed Niger or ‘the Black’ in around 1080, after he painted his face with charcoal to go unrecognised amongst his enemies at night. The names could also refer to dark hair (Black), or to someone who came from a place called Moore (in Cheshire), More (in Shropshire), Blackmore (Essex), Blackmoor (Hampshire, Somerset) or Blakemere (Herefordshire), or even to someone who lived on or near a moor. In Scotland, the surnames ‘Muir, Mure, Moor, Moore, More’ referred to ancient ‘residence beside a moor or heath’.

It is only because Reasonable Blackman was also described as ‘blackmor’ and ‘a blackmore’ that we know he was African. ‘Blackamoor’ or its variants was the most popular term Englishmen used to describe Africans, appearing in some 40% of references to individuals in the archives, and in literature from at least 1525.

Taira says she and her family donated $100,000 before she came to America in 2000 and $10,000 per year since—or, by my back-of-napkin math, about $340,000 over roughly 40 years. She was almost apologetic when she told me these numbers, as if $340K is a modest sum.

Man, making money is easy if you don't care about ethics

That's not a policy of neutrality, that's picking a side. Especially given the past divestments