Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons

May this be the one time I use this phrase

Check your bloody privilege. The Southern Poverty Law Center? Seriously?

In the real world which you, and, I and every person here HAS to operate - slippery slopes will exist because there are many local optima we HAVE to work with.

Here is one YOU have to work with. Your last name is STUCCHIO! Last I checked it is ITALIAN, via SICILY!

Which means the image in this article is totally relevant to you

http://www.seidawriter.tk/white-girl-talks-about-race/

http://seidawriter.tk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Italian-300...

Or the fact the writer is of the same background as you, and brings up that one of the largest mass lynchings was of Sicilians, in New Orleans, 1891.

Or how about this notice from the 1930s, asking Italians, Germans, and Japanese to register:

https://graphicandmaybe.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/notice.j...

So the Germans and Italians were just white enough in the US to avoid Internment Camps in the US?

Do you want to go back to that era so badly with your last name?

Meanwhile, the SPLC took in about $3.75 million in donations in 2015 - most of which was not through grants and not through funds - those are labeled differently in their audited statement here https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/splc-fs-10-31-... (the "wealthy" donors you talk of are almost always giving investments and many of those gifts have restrictions SPLC cannot go willy-nilly file lawsuits)

And do you want to know why they got the money?

https://mic.com/articles/145105/coincidence-detector-the-goo...

(and other people who are "anti-white"/not white enough)

So while you are now white enough to get any job you want, including mathematician, barber, miner, engineer, whathaveyou, and you have the luxury of having the first name of Christian, these people don't. And there are plenty of people here with first/last names that appear here, or variant spellings - and they may not even be Jewish.

https://gitlab.com/therightstuff/public/blob/30118b9db78fd87...

That's why people donate to them. People want to know they can walk around apply for a job, and speak freely, without worrying that their name, or the color of their skin, of who they love will cause them harm. Now what they said (which you complain about), Or if they are logically consistent enough.

Get over yourself and your need for everyone to be logically consistent 100% of the time. Unless you are ready to stand up and say you ant to go back to a world where it is ok for people to discriminate against you with no one who care out there on the basis of you being Italian.

As a general heuristic, your interests are aligned with those of your community. Whether this is bad or good depends on context, usually depending on whether you've thought about the issue yourself from first principals and come to your own conclusion. Every field probably has wrongheaded ideas about something.

In engineering this alignment may be mostly pragmatic e.g. what works, what doesn't, but in some industries e.g. Hollywood, the Media, anything social, there's a different sort of pragmatism where you're expected to believe in some general themes about the world that need have no basis in reality. Being up to date with these 'stories' e.g. what beliefs about transgender bathrooms a proper person should have, is basically a peacocks tail feathers. It's pointless but shows you're a member of the tribe. You're talking of informed opinion, but again, from the perspective of an outsider, this all looks like the same thing. The tribe can hang together either because it makes sense or because they punish those who are outliers.

> On the "endgame" question, it's worth noting that Gawker's new backer is one of the world's 100 richest people, with an estimated $9.8 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Thiel checks in at just $2 billion or so.

This isn't about money any more. Or laws.

> If both billionaires want to keep battling, this case could rattle around in a lot of different courts for a long time. We may not know yet who ultimately wins/loses.

Oh we may be sure Nick Denton loses. To be a fly on the wall when Garry Kasparov heard about this!

Again, valid argument (though this case is a bad example). But your quibble is with the legal system, not with Hogan or Thiel.

You will also need to weigh fairness in tying damages to "ability to pay", as well as "news-worthiness" (e.g., not a sex tape).