blockmarker (u/blockmarker)

blockmarker commented on Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal blog.akamai-mpulse.com/bl... · Posted by u/ghoshbinayak

sillyfluke · 4 months ago

> All my money is electronic

Yes, one positive aspect of these types of events is that the hazing against the cash-first minority worldwide has ebbed slightly. Sweden seems to be backtracking from their cashless push due to the threat of Russian cyberattacks as well.

In related news, high-speed trains appear to have been sabotaged in Spain today, causing transportation chaos again. This happened while they have not been able to conclusively determine the cause of the blackout.

The plot thickens...or gets sidetracked, depending on what the truth turns out to be.

blockmarker · 4 months ago

It is not at all certain that there was any sabotage. Supposedly it was sabotage because important wires were stolen, but wire has been stolen by criminals for decades to sell for the materials. And for the last few years there has been an increase of delays, breakdowns and failures in the whole railway network. It is far more likely that common theft on a decaying system caused the problems, but that would pin the blame on the government for this decay. As such they prefer to blame anyone else, including shadowy enemies sabotaging the country.

blockmarker commented on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting bbc.com/news/live/c625ex2... · Posted by u/yakkomajuri

gambiting · 6 months ago

Because if it provided the resources that were requested from the start Russian offensive would have been pushed out of the country 2 years ago. America(and most European countries too, to be fair) sat on their hands for ages before approving actual military aid. Famous thing about Germany sending helmets while other countries were sending tanks etc.

But also because if JD Vance wasn't such insufferable prick without an ounce of tact there's a good chance the agreement yesterday would have been signed. That is not Ukrainian fault, it's 100% the fault of current American administration.

blockmarker · 6 months ago

Letting your interests always go last, and letting people who depend on you and have worked against you(remember Zelenski campaigned against Trump), demand things and reproach you in public, is not tact. The one who lacked tact was Zelenski, not Vance. As Trump said, "You're in no position to dictate what we're gonna feel."

As for aid, the arrogance in assuming the aid was mandatory and failing to give what you want the way you want is wrong and evil, does not endear people to aid you. And besides, any delays in aid had a much lesser effect than the EU countries buying russian gas at exorbitant prices. The sanctions imposed were immediately sabotaged by buying russian gas.

blockmarker commented on Trump wins presidency for second time thehill.com/homenews/camp... · Posted by u/koolba

komali2 · 10 months ago

I would genuinely like to see your thought process on this:

Trump promised to deport all the undocumented migrants. All of them. That's roughly 10 million people.

How would you, within 4 years (he is famously a man of his word and we can count on him to accomplish his campaign promises within his presidency), find and then move 10 million people, and to where would you move them?

What does it look like to move 10 million people against their will? What mechanisms would allow for this?

I have an idea, but I'm curious your alternatives:

First, to find them, you could create a federal bounty program. Rat out illegals, get 100$ a head. Well, that might lead to rampant suspicion and neighborly misbehavior... somewhat exploitable too since you can get ICE to kick your annoying neighbor's door down by claiming they're harboring an illegal... not ideal. Maybe instead give NSA blanket wiretapping access to root them all out? Well, now they're listening to everything everyone says, but hey, anything in the name of freedom!

Regardless, awesome, now we've got ICE kicking down doors and dragging screaming families into the street. Part 1 accomplished. They load them into paddywagons and take them to local jails. Oops, those filled up within the first five days of the program. Now what? Stadiums? We're using those. Walmart parking lots with UNICEF tents? Sure, but what's to stop them from simply running away? Fences. We need lots of fences, and lots of UNICEF tents. Cut in some latrines (jobs!), run some plumbing, done. We've got some great staging areas.

Obviously, we should centralize these, right? We don't want to just take over every walmart parking lot in the country. Instead, while we negotiate with mexico and some other countries about how we're going to dump 10 million people over the border, we'll park them in several centralized locations, preferably out in the middle of nowhere because nobody wants a concentra--- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area, in the middle of their town!

That's a lot of people to move, 10 million. A greyhound bus fits, what, 30 people? 50? That's too many busses. We need trains. We can build the undocumented migrant staging area in remote areas with train access, just add an offramp straight into the camp- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area. Fix up some cattle cars, jam the people in there, gorgeous!

Oops, mexico told us to fuck off and won't take these migrants, now what? We can't just let them loose after having stuffed them up in there for a couple months, can we? I guess we can just keep them in there a bit longer while we try to negotiate with a couple other countries...

This sounds like the good version of America, right? With the screaming families being dragged onto mass transit and shoved into unicef tents? The alternative (aka, status quo for decades) is just lawlessness.

blockmarker · 10 months ago

The argument that mass deportations are some impossible ordeal is only defended by those that are deeply invested in that they don't happen.

Most illegal immigrants are only in the US for economic reasons. Don't give them any welfare, make hiring them actually illegal and punish the companies that hire them. When this happens, many of them will just go back to their country.

Then if somehow their countries refused to take in their own citizens, they can just be sanctioned, or stop being given foreign aid by the US.

The only reason you believe that mass deportations are impossible and would cause an apocalyse, is because you really want it to be true.

blockmarker commented on British journalist held by police at Luton airport for five hours without arrest theguardian.com/media/202... · Posted by u/mindracer

polygamous_bat · 2 years ago

> The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.

In case you're unaware, the reason Europe has its current asylum standards largely because of what happened between 1933-1945. So would your proposed solution be:

1. Deny asylum to anyone and everyone, even those fleeing genocide ("Sorry that happened to you, we don't have room here!"), or

2. Implement a color chart a la Family Guy [1], so only the "right people" can come in?

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/family-guy-skin-color-chart

blockmarker · 2 years ago

The idea that we should allow our countries and our way of life to be ruined because of something that happened 70 years ago is absurd.

blockmarker commented on We’re in a productivity crisis, according to 52 years of data medium.com/accelerated-in... · Posted by u/Paul-Craft

qznc · 2 years ago

I wonder why the author considers war as negative to productivity when the ultra-productive century included two world wars. Isn’t destroying and rebuilding stuff good for GDP?

blockmarker · 2 years ago

You are not the first to think that. That is called the Broken Window Fallacy, obviously by people who disagree. But it makes sense to me that if you spend resources on repairing damages, or weapons which don't generate more wealth, you are not investing and growing. What happened to the US in WW2 is an anomaly.

blockmarker commented on Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats get into an occult battle (2016) openculture.com/2016/10/a... · Posted by u/GloomyBoots

b800h · 2 years ago

Absolutely! He's very entertaining.

As a committed materialist, what do you make of the Kalaam cosmological argument and others which make similar points? How can something come from nothing?

blockmarker · 2 years ago

I am not well-read enough to really have a reasoned answer, but mine is that we don't know. But just because there is something more, something we don't understand, doesn't mean that it's something greater. It's just something we don't understand.

Through the ages people tried to answer the great mysteries with great answers, but they didn't achieve anything. Truth should have predictive power, and understanding of great enigmas should help explain lesser ones, like the laws of gravity can calculate the fall of an object, but these answers haven't done something useful. But lesser questions have been answered with lesser and less interesting answers, and they successfully predicted stuff. Through answering many small questions, we now know why rain happens, why the seasons change, or how eels and flies come into existence. And the domain of the great mysteries was reduced, bit by bit.

Trying to answer the great mysteries, like the origin of existence, is building a house from the roof. Religious experiences and the numinous can be better explained by psychiatry and medicine than by theology.

There might still be something not more, but greater, than our understanding. It is probable, since our intuition and our senses are limited. But if there is, it would be equal to a colour we don't see due to lacking color cones. We might be unable to intuitively explain how it's like to see color to a colorblind person, but it's not divine or magical, greater than the material world and what we can measure and calculate; it's just greater than our eyes or our vocabulary.

That is at least my belief. It was hard to write somewhat concisely my beliefs, but I think I did a good enough job. I must say I'm not opposed to trying to answer the great mysteries, it's very similar to when the ancient greek philosophers tried to find the origin of matter. But I do not believe real truth can be obtained that way.

Also, I must say that your comments in this post were great. A perspective very different to the common HN point of view, thought-provoking and in-depth. I also learned the word numinous, which makes me happy as I have now a word to describe something I couldn't before.

blockmarker commented on Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats get into an occult battle (2016) openculture.com/2016/10/a... · Posted by u/GloomyBoots

b800h · 2 years ago

Crowley, and his forebear Eliphas Levi, are responsible for the stupid air of sulphur which hangs around a lot of modern esoterica.

AC has his apologists, and he was obviously clever, but he was unquestionably a complete turd, and created a religious system which was fundamentally Satanic, wrapped in enough layers of obfuscation that it can fascinate intelligent people, especially those who have received a substandard education in theology, which is practically everyone these days.

Someone asked why Crowley is perennially popular on HN. It's because his approach appeals to people who have experienced enough religion to understand that there is something there, but are struggling to reconcile it with our culture's dominant scientific materialism, because they're bright enough to want to try to. "The method of science, the aim of religion". A lot of HN matches that demographic.

There are better ways of squaring the circle, but they're less sexy.

blockmarker · 2 years ago

Crowley might have been a drug-addicted sophist and not a good source for seeking ultimate truths. But was he a good sophist? I am interested in occultism and symbology, but only as entertainment. I am certain of my materialistic beliefs. It might be that he is so popular here because he is clever and decadent, something shocking and thrilling if you don't take it as truth.

Also, was he actually a fun sophist? You seem to have read a lot so I would ask for your opinion. Is he worth reading for entertainment?