511–520 of 996 posts
I find a small joy/comfort in knowing the non violent drug dealers/users got a pardon from a president... well you can fill in the rest. (US drug laws need to change!)
Otherwise, I'm sick to my stomach.
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You asked for an example, so I gave a particularly egregious example of exactly what you asked for. You suddenly switch your position to "nearly every example" and do not address the very specific and relevant example I gave at all. /shrug
I was very clear elsewhere what it would take to convince me that there is something to this nonsense. One guy using it in a courtroom ain't it. Did anyone interview him about it? Ask what it was, where he heard about it, what our who he was trying to signal, if he was? Or, did the journalist make up the association on their own?
Come on. Does it really need to be speculated on? That "one guy" is a white supremacist who killed 50+ people - I think it's pretty clear what his intentions were. On top of that, his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes and winks to those in the know, b) released on either 8chan or 4chan itself. So it is clear he would know the origins and was playing it up
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When I go to a country to get a result, I don't say "hey wait a minute, you're quite a bit more extreme than prior leaders and a lot of your citizens don't want to associate with you at all!" I just go to the mixers and try to get as much influence as possible and I'm glad to hang out in those circles. Like I said, EFF and ACLU are a waste of our energy because they failed to do that. The White House has published a…
Yes, for this administration it's a manual. Did you read the list? Mobsters, corrupted politicians, etc.. The ACLU and EFF should also find a way to give Trump money / favors under the table to get pardons too in the name of the ends justify the means?
The world thinks our ideas are just memes with quizzical effect on the real world, and they're right.
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This seems naive at best. The goal of studying history is not to be paralyzed and constrained by it, but to learn from it. Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across centuries, there is much to gain from understanding past mistakes. Nor is every goal of our existence is about “building stuff”, it can also be about just living a just and considered life. These types of boorish egotistical statements from…
> Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across centuries, there is much to gain from understanding past mistakes. It strikes me that this an argument for the uselessness of reading history. People are basically the same as they always have been and just as you can’t simply explain to a teenager that they’ll feel differently about the world when they’re thirty, every generation has to figure life out for i…
And you came to this conclusion without reading any history? This is too absolutist a statement. Sure, some things need to be relearned through experience, but there are also plenty of cases where you don't want to waste time reinventing the wheel.
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I wonder how all the Trump supporters on HNs (maybe 30% or so of commenters, no idea about lurkers) are reacting to this. Levadowski pardon, the spy, the swamp, etc.
I voted for Trump because his policies more closely align with my beliefs than any other candidate on my ballot. I am very disappointed in his response to the election results after it was clear there wasn't proof of enough fraud to change the result, and I'm very disappointed in the pardons.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-...
No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged that could happen... Instead it’s just more and more corruption.
Why WOULD Trump pardon assange or snowden?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-reportedl...
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He pardoned a literal spy who was convicted of espionage of state secrets but he did not pardon Assange. Incredible.
I think people on the right and the left are perhaps skipping over just how much McConnell was manipulating the admin not just over the last four years, but esp since Jan 6th. I am fairly confident that even if Trump had specifically wanted to pardon Assange or Snowden he could not have. Edit: lol, this will have been the most successful lie by the media and GOP... getting people to believe the GOP and Trump were fri…
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/mitch-mcconnell-riot...
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Pay attention to that list, each pardon has a list of people who supported each pardon. Nobody from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU is on that list. We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those organizations. Let them stick to filing Amicus Briefs in courts, but they clearly have no pull or influence or backchannel despite our tech scene thinking they do.
you're saying because Trump's pardons weren't influenced by the EFF or ACLU, nobody should support those organizations?
For example, Peter Theil risked ostracizing himself from the broader tech community to gain massive leverage and influence, and it worked and continues to work.
We should be supporting more flexible and crafty organizations to turn our memes into reality.
I have to say there is quite a lot to learn from Levandowski.[0] I am not a fan of corruption but it's undeniable that he played whatever cards he had in life and played them hard. He'll probably be a shadowy billionaire quite soon. One quote stood out to me at the very end of the article: “The only thing that matters is the future,” he told me after the civil trial was settled. “I don’t even know why we study histor…