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Thread: Not The News

  1. #451
    Member
    Registered: May 2004
    Location: Canuckistan GWN
    Quote Originally Posted by mxleader View Post
    M&M's aren't fuckable? Dafuq you say, mang?
    Totally! Until teh libz made her ditch the sexy pumps and wear sensible flats instead. Now she looks like a librarian. A hot, Rubenesque, green librarian.

    Damn it. These grievance-culture wars are giving me a headache and a hardon.

  2. #452
    Member
    Registered: May 2004
    Location: Canuckistan GWN
    Quote Originally Posted by RippedPhreak View Post
    The only way to stop libs from stirring up outrage mobs, is to stir up outrage mobs against libs. If they want to play hardball, they can't cry when someone hits back.
    Yeah! Fucking LIBZ and their outrage!!!


  3. #453
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry
    Quote Originally Posted by SD View Post
    As a person of Irish and Jewish descent, two other peoples the European powers did a bloody good job of trying to wipe out, I am perfectly happy for any one of you to culturally appropriate the shit out of shamrocks, shillelaghs, yarmulkes, dreidels, blintz, borscht and boxty. Culture belongs to everyone.

    (not gonna lie though, I raised an eyebrow when I came across a cafe selling bacon and cream cheese bagels, breaking not one, but two kosher laws at once)
    The Germans are nice enough not to keep rubbing the Holocaust in your faces. They don't have two national holidays to celebrate the start of the Third Reich. They didn't grow up running around with toy guns playing shoot the Jews. They don't dress up as Rabbis for fun on Halloween. They didn't make movies and TV shows glorifying it. That's the kind of stuff we do to the decedents of the native nations we wiped out. We should know better, but we're assholes.

  4. #454
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry

  5. #455
    Member
    Registered: May 2004
    Location: Canuckistan GWN
    Culture belongs to everyone.
    Every group that identifies as a group, has a culture but that doesn't make those cultures interchangeable or historically equivalent. Everyone has an asshole too, but don't borrow someone else's to take a dump, especially on a third party.

  6. #456
    The Necromancer
    Registered: Aug 2009
    Location: thiefgold.com
    Denmark outlaws burning the Quran

    Offenders now face a fine or up to two years in jail after a 94-77 vote.

    It follows a series of burnings of Islam's holy book that led to uproar in Muslim countries.

    Denmark and neighbouring Sweden have recently seen a number of street protests over such incidents, raising security concerns in Scandinavia.
    ....

    Back in August, when the government was proposing the changes, ministers said they wanted to send a signal to the world after witnessing over a few weeks 170 demonstrations, including Quran burnings in front of foreign embassies.

    At the time, Denmark's PET intelligence service warned that such incidents had increased the terrorist threat.

    Sweden has also seen a series of Quran burnings, and its security service has warned of a worsening security situation. In July, the Swedish embassy in Iraq was set alight by protesters.

  7. #457
    Member
    Registered: Feb 2002
    Location: In the flesh.
    Well that was a spineless pussout on their values.

  8. #458
    Liberal democracies always bow to the most violent mob. What is the lesson for far-right folks here then...?

  9. #459
    Member
    Registered: Feb 2002
    Location: In the flesh.
    Hitler. Oh you mean just this incident? Ask them about bible burning being not banned?

  10. #460
    The Necromancer
    Registered: Aug 2009
    Location: thiefgold.com
    Basically:

    "We're facing threats from violent far right religious extremists. Let's cater to their wants, instead of fighting them".

    What a world we live in.

  11. #461
    Member
    Registered: Apr 2003
    Location: Mossad Time Machine
    I love the last line of that BBC article: "Both Denmark and Sweden have abolished blasphemy laws."

    Yep, and now they're imposing new ones.

  12. #462
    Member
    Registered: Dec 2020
    Video on Milei's economic policies for Argentina



    The focus on inflation, and the idea of abolishing the central bank to end it, got me thinking that this is clearly treating the symptoms and not the core issue.

    Why is there inflation? It's because there's more money supply compared to the goods that the money can buy.

    This imbalance fundamentally isn't because they're "printing too much money" but because the economy consumes more value of goods than are produced.

    And the way that inflation deals with that, is that inflation devalues previous work, compared to current work. So if you made money mowing a lawn 1 year ago, that money is devalued, in favor of someone who's going to mow a lawn tomorrow.

    So fundamentally, it's about resource allocation, and by favoring current work over old work, it maintains the level of employment.

    So yeah, inflation sucks. But look what happens when you try and ban inflation. That's actually what happened in Soviet Russia. They put price-controls in place in the 1970s to deal with rising inflation, and that lead to the famous empty shelves in stores, and a growing black market (the true value of good was higher than the store ruble-value). it was after that, that the Soviets felt the need to limit how much each person could buy. That's when you got the long queues.

    If you look at the 2020 "toilet paper crisis" it's the same deal. Stores didn't want to be seen as profit-gouging on something like toilet paper, so they didn't put the price up, despite the massive rush to buy it. So for weeks in some places, you literally couldn't buy toilet paper. People panicked further and started hoarding toilet paper. It was then that stores started implementing limits on how much a person could buy. There ended up being empty shelves and even queues. The same as the footage from Russia.

    Venezuela: again, the same thing, trying to "outlaw" inflation ends up with empty shelves and rationing, because if there's more demand than supply but you won't let the price rise, then you need SOME mechanism to decide who gets what.

    Inflation sucks, sure, but it's a corrective mechanism, not the root problem.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Back to Argentina, by trying to end the inflation through dollarization, they'd be (relatively) prioritizing people who have saved money, i.e. did work previously, over people who are doing work NOW. There won't be any more actual goods and services to go around, but the value of consumed goods and services will shift to retirees and the wealthy from people who are actively employed.

    Models that can be look at, for how this would play out are Greece (who switched to the Euro) and Ecuador (who switched to the dollar).

    https://link.springer.com/chapter/10...031-34256-1_41

    Dollarization generates cyclical growth periods in Ecuador and high volatility in GDP variation rates. As for the trade balance, the analyzed results show that the country’s international economic relations require encouraging national exports with the intention of achieving a favorable balance of the trade balance for the country.
    Basically, because Dollarization would prioritize "old" labor over "new" labor, there would need to be pay cuts all round. Inflation in fact helps deal with the trade imbalance Argentina has, an actual underlying problem, since it means "old" labor/money is not competing in the marketplace to buy the new goods.

    So without the relative devaluation of previous labor, which is what inflation represents, then the real amount of everything that is consumed needs to drop, to align with the value of exports, or they need to boost exports. Both those things would be achieved by paycuts (in the real value of the paycheck) and sacking workers.

    In the immediate term, that could look like companies merely letting people go because now they have to pay in dollars, and they just don't have any dollars to pay with, so they jettison as many employees as possible to strip down to bare-bones operations, while cutting wages for anyone who's left.
    Last edited by Cipheron; 10th Dec 2023 at 12:36.

  13. #463
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry
    I guess we should expect huge public sector job losses, a recession, a whole lot of protesting, and then he'll be booted out like Bolsonaro. As I understand it, most people's savings are valued in dollars and it's SOP to convert your pesos as soon as you can. A lot of the economy was already dollarized, especially the black market. So the currency change might not be felt as hard as the layoffs.

  14. #464
    Member
    Registered: Dec 2020
    Iowa Republicans who supported the state's Republican-pushed school voucher program stunned when their kid's school immediately raises tuition prices by about the same value of the vouchers.

    https://www.kcrg.com/2023/12/07/iowa...ion-increases/

    That's literally how supply and demand works. That money is coming out of your taxes, too.

    EDIT

    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/11/t...unt/index.html

    Musk on Sunday also elevated [Alex] Jones’ newly restored profile, which had 1.6 million followers as of Monday, by engaging with him in a live streamed interview on X. They were joined by Andrew Tate, the self-proclaimed misogynistic internet personality who earlier this year was indicted on human trafficking and rape charges in Romania although he denies the claims, far-right conspiracy theorist [b]Jack Posobiec[b], “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
    What a selection of upstanding members of the community. Musk is clearly leaning in to just hanging with controversial idiots now to try and drum up traffic on Twitter. It's more sad that worrying. Laura Loomer, ffs.
    Last edited by Cipheron; 12th Dec 2023 at 14:23.

  15. #465
    Member
    Registered: Aug 2004
    For the 2023-2024 school year, tuition before vouchers or any other discounts at Summit is $8,090. In the 2024-2025 school year, the cost will be $14,350.
    Cripes.

  16. #466
    The Necromancer
    Registered: Aug 2009
    Location: thiefgold.com
    Russia tries out AI to solve a murder case. It went as well as you'd expect

    Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

    Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago
    ...

    According to several news sources, despite the mountain of evidence exonerating Tsvetkov in this murder case, Russian authorities chose to trust software powered by artificial intelligence. It had found that the hydrologist’s appearance matched that of the wanted killer about 55%, which was apparently enough to warrant his imprisonment

  17. #467
    Member
    Registered: Dec 2020
    The 'Libertarian' mask slips already:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...cy-devaluation

    ‘Prison or bullet’: new Argentina government promises harsh response to protest

    ...

    Human rights groups and opposition legislators expressed concern at the rules which they said would essentially criminalise legitimate protests.

    “Under the promise of order [the government] seeks to suppress public protest against the effects of official measures,” said the Centre of Legal Studies (CELS) in a statement. “The measures attack the right to protest and criminalize those who demonstrate and persecute social and political organizations.”

    José Luis Espert, a legislator with Milei’s party, Liberty Advances, replied with a three-word phrase: “Prison or bullet.”

    ...

    “Bullrich announced that the government will punish the participation of girls, boys and adolescents in the protests. In this way, it criminalizes mothers and fathers who demand better conditions for their families and excludes those in charge of their care,” said the CELS in its statement.

    Television newscaster Mario Massaccesi of the TN news channel recalled that Bullrich herself blockaded downtown streets in Buenos Aires when protesting against Covid lockdowns. “What authority does she have now to tell others they can’t protest?” asked the newscaster.

    Protests are expected in response to the massive wage cuts and transport and tariff hikes announced as part of Milei’s “chainsaw” economic programme.

  18. #468
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry
    Well, that was no surprise at all. Politicians claiming to be libertarian are all turning out to be phonies, pretty much without exception. True libertarians don't want to govern others, and don't believe that most problems are solved by government, so they tend not to be interested in office. Another hard lesson from the last few years is that the politicians that talk the most about freedom are often the most eager to take some away.

  19. #469
    Leftist "protests" are done to punish the people for voting non-Leftists into office. Basically, "you voted against us, so now you get to deal with mobs of assholes blocking the roads, throwing molotovs into buildings and so forth for the next few years." It's a threat against the normal people. Vote the Left back into power and the pain ends (until they want something more).

    These protests are not genuine but astroturfed bullshit. The Left can't handle being out of power so they throw tantrums in the streets. Milei’s administration would be justified in shutting them down hard.

  20. #470
    Member
    Registered: Aug 2002
    Location: Maupertuis
    Shoo. You're posting in the wrong thread.
    Last edited by Anarchic Fox; 18th Dec 2023 at 22:19.

  21. #471
    Quote Originally Posted by Anarchic Fox View Post
    Posting to this thread stressed me out so much I stayed away from TTLG for a week, in which time the thread grew by three pages. Thank you to anyone who supported me, but I'm not reading that. Hopefully in the future I'll remember I'm not cut out for political argument.
    Take your own advice.

  22. #472
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry
    Currency devaluation was unavoidable and Argentinians seem to understand that. The issue is combining a contracting money supply with shrinking government at the same time, instead of using monetary and fiscal policy in complementary ways. If Milei really does what he said he's going to do and ends up with 25% unemployment, what do you expect all those unemployed people do with their free time?

  23. #473
    Instead of merely keeping chairs warm in government offices, maybe they could do some work that actually generates economic value.

  24. #474
    Member
    Registered: Sep 2001
    Location: The other Derry
    People can't generate economic value if they can't find a job or start a business.

  25. #475
    It's a little early to just blanket declare that Milei's changes will render Argentinians unable to start businesses or find jobs. I mean at least give it a year.

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