bearl (u/bearl) - Readit News

bearl commented on Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims apnews.com/article/domini... · Posted by u/throw0101a

RajT88 · 6 months ago

Jeanine Pirro likes to talk about Treason for example.

When Trump is accused of it, her background as a lawyer kicks in and she can correctly articulate the reasons why Trump has not committed Treason.

However, in any other case she will accuse all manner of folks of committing treason and request they face harsh consequences.

Fox News is lies and rage bait.

bearl · 6 months ago

National television news will always be what it is. The business model is ad sales, from that all else inevitably follows. A news corporation is a corporation first and foremost. That said, there wasn’t anything anomalous about the 2020 election that can’t be claimed of other elections so there’s that.

bearl commented on Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims apnews.com/article/domini... · Posted by u/throw0101a

Zigurd · 6 months ago

The left of the Democrats are the people focusing on economic issues. I'm not just saying that to be contrary. The relevant economic issues are things like the decline of unionization and the divergence of wages from productivity and profit. Big money donors don't want you touching that.

bearl · 6 months ago

If the left were really the left they wouldn’t be the left though. The NBC left is the problem, the Democracy Now left is not. The left doesn’t want Bernie, Chomsky or Amy Goodman they want The View. Turns out young men don’t want The View, so the left is stuck now much like the American right because there is no ideological coherence, just aesthetic and hatred for the other team however they are imagined (e.g. “tax and spend republicans”).

bearl commented on IQ tests results for AI trackingai.org/home... · Posted by u/stared

nialse · 6 months ago

Just to clarify: the prevailing notion in many context were that genetics does not matter and thus given the necessary social and educational interventions every human would prosper. Sadly, this is not the case. We are limited by our biology AND the extend we and our environment manages us to fulfill our potential.

bearl · 6 months ago

But we are not limited by our biology. With tools and technology we can change our limits. From pharmaceutical tools like adderal to neurolink style brain implants to ai assistants to genetic engineering, the limitations in our cognitive capacity are becoming less salient every day. The importance of g in the future asymptotically approaches 0 the farther out you go, at least in terms of economic outcomes. It will always be important for moral reasoning as I’m frequently reminded. But I would guess that openness to experience and/or conscientiousness will eventually displace g as predictors of economic success, if they haven’t already. G is useful when everyone does paperwork in offices, but when everyone is on UBI and/or living in government camps g won’t matter as much, again aside from the capacity for moral reasoning but that can be offset with a stricter and more draconian legal system.

bearl commented on IQ tests results for AI trackingai.org/home... · Posted by u/stared

judofyr · 6 months ago

Your first link (Wikipedia) directly contradicts your examples:

> Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities in IQ between groups have a genetic basis[18][19][20][21]. The scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain average differences in IQ test performance between racial groups.[22][23][24][25][26][27].

bearl · 6 months ago

Specifically, as well stated by [23] there is no such thing as “race.” The premise of racial group differences is not possible; we can’t have racial differences if race is not real. Sadly, a lot of people very much believe in race, especially the ones that shouldn’t!

bearl commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

atonse · 6 months ago

Maybe I'm not creative enough but I've tried this thought exercise with friends and it's a fun one.

The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.

So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.

And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.

I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.

At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?

bearl · 6 months ago

It seems like a lot then I think about how California’s EDD department gave 50 billion to criminals in 2020/2021 and then it feels less ginormous.

My answer because I don’t see it: climate change research. A billion isn’t much but if it can help save the planet that would be worth it to me personally.

bearl commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

deeg · 6 months ago

I debated with myself on whether to use "naive" but it seems the most appropriate description. I barely know Woz outside of a 3-hour lecture but it appears that Jobs took advantage of his naivete, lying to him on multiple occasions. It worked out (financially) for Woz and he seems to have a great attitude about it, one of the reasons I admire him. He seems to successfully walk the line of not caring if people take advantage of him while not getting wrecked. I think it fair to consider that a facet of being naive.

bearl · 6 months ago

It’s not being unaware (naive) but rather a lack of cynicism. I think that’s an important distinction to make. It takes an extra dose of intelligence to avoid cynicism when you are at that level. Cynicism isn’t wisdom, and its absence isn’t naïveté.

bearl commented on US national debt reaches a record $37T, the Treasury Department reports apnews.com/article/treasu... · Posted by u/atombender

_DeadFred_ · 6 months ago

When an argument is defeated by facts switch to attacking individuals!

bearl · 6 months ago

Not sure if you’re joking. The parent mentioned Clinton’s surplus so I referenced Clinton’s famous welfare queen reforms.

If I wanted to attack the character of William Jefferson Clinton, I would have plenty of facts to draw from there as well, like sexually assaulting an intern in the Oval Office and lying to us with “it depends on what your definition of is is”[0], which I’d note our non-biased hard-hitting media elites collectively shrugged off. Or I might allude to Jennifer Flowers, or Epstein, or a really long list of other ghoulish Clintonian acts.

[0] One can easily see this as the approximate moment the executive became unaccountable, a trend that’s continued (slippery slopes are real) and which many are now fallatiosly calling factism. It’s not, it’s just unaccountability in the same vein as Clinton’s sexusl assault.

bearl commented on Do You Need to Own a House? Many Older Americans Decide They Don't wsj.com/real-estate/luxur... · Posted by u/lxm

antisthenes · 6 months ago

The trick in this country is that affordable housing is just housing that was built 50-80 years ago.

It's affordable because it has accumulated a lot of infrastructure debt, for example things like: insulation, roof, plumbing, electric. etc. etc.

bearl · 6 months ago

The trick is, or was, demographics. The boomers outvoted other groups, because they have larger numbers. Why build housing that diminishes the boomers (ie voters) property values? Also, why limit demand for the hoarded housing by enforcing immigration laws, not undercutting local labor with exploitative practices like h1b abuse, or by creating reasonable legislation like other nations have that protects real estate from foreign speculation oand domestic market manipulation by monopolistic and predatory corporations like blackrock and blackstone? Because the boomers had the numbers and the real estate, and democracy is mostly about winning elections.

bearl commented on When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army jackpoulson.substack.com/... · Posted by u/OgsyedIE

chrisco255 · 6 months ago

The left used to be more individualist in the U.S. (circa 90s most definitely) but it developed a toxic groupthink as it came to dominate pop culture and media in the 00s and 10s, and began to leverage that to employ censorship, deplatforming, doxxing, etc and it became incredibly dogmatic and if anyone diverged from a particular narrative (ie skeptical covid came from wet market), they would be ridiculed, shouted down, laughed off, shamed, kicked off social media platforms, ostracized, etc which is cult like behavior.

The left of the 90s would have never stood for that. They were the die hards for free speech then. Something shifted.

bearl · 6 months ago

The boomers got old. They were flawed but the heavy anti-authoritarian vibe of the old left was largely carried over from the 60s. Imagine a zoomer lefty burning their covid card the way hippies burned their draft cards. Nope! The thing that shifted was authoritarianism; the terminal end-stage of socialist ideology.

bearl commented on US national debt reaches a record $37T, the Treasury Department reports apnews.com/article/treasu... · Posted by u/atombender

hypeatei · 6 months ago

Constantly posting "both sides!!" lacks nuance and is unhelpful. The last budget surplus was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Generally, Democrats have to fix the fallout of Republican fiscal policy and get blamed for it since the effects can start to show years later (like Trumps tax cuts)

bearl · 6 months ago

Chris Hitchens used to like to remind people that Clinton was actually a conservative whose political success was due largely to the longevity of the appeal of the “southern democrat” to certain segments of society. His granting of MFN trade status to China is relevant to “his” budget surplus, as is the fact that the internet happened and the unipolar moment began while he was president. Clinton didn’t invent the internet himself; Al Gore did. He didn’t bring down the Berlin Wall either.

What did Clinton do? Clinton did save us all from “Welfare Queens”, which also seems very relevant here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_...