brandon

joined 2 days ago
[–] brandon@piefed.social 25 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I don't know how they could implement this across the private sector, but the State of California has a quarter million employees for which they could probably stop sending tax withholdings to the feds.

According to this random site I found Googling, it's around $230M every month.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 9 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I am saying that:

  1. the vast majority of violence perpetrated at these demonstrations is done by law enforcement
  2. if cops wanted people to stop throwing water bottles at them they would stop trampling people with horses and shooting reporters with rubber bullets
  3. framing these demonstrations as "violent" only serves the narrative of the right
[–] brandon@piefed.social 8 points 11 hours ago

It's textbook manufacturing of consent

[–] brandon@piefed.social 12 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

They will say that regardless of how much violence protesters actually do. Purity testing demonstrations only makes the situation worse by allowing the right the ability to dictate the narrative.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 27 points 12 hours ago (8 children)

As an additional point to add to yours, every single political protest movement in history has included violent elements. It's unavoidable. When these political "moderates" start pearl clutching about some windows being broken or whatever it is an attempt to de-legitimize the entire movement, and draw the focus away from the actual source of the majority of violence, the cops (including ICE).

[–] brandon@piefed.social 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Protestors should start bringing packs of Crayola to lure them across the line.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 4 points 13 hours ago

I empathize with the hope that the national guard would side with protesters in violation of their orders, but is there any historical precedent for that?

On the other hand, there have been plenty of historical confrontations where the national guard has engaged in violence against demonstrators.

Maybe it can be different this time, but I don't know.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 27 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Typically this position is referred to as 'Lieutenant Governor', and every state I know of has one.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Careful how you phrase this. The right wing anti-woke crusaders will retort "oh, so you're saying this level of CO2 is natural after all?"

[–] brandon@piefed.social 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's hardly surprising that these people are out of touch when they're constantly surrounded in a bubble of yes-men, cultish AI sycophants, VC investors and other "dark enlightenment" enthusiasts.

It's a pathology, really. A kind of shared delusion in service of global capital.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They are referring to some fringe "tax protester" conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification

Suffice it to say, these 'theories' have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

They already do. ("They" meaning AI generally, I don't know about Claude or ChatGPT's bots specifically). There are a number of tools server admins can use to help deal with this.

See also:

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