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[Dunamisdeos]

I'm sure it was all in fun, like mermaid harvesting.  But a Big Bang Theory reference?  For shame.

+1

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Is my trial still going on? I missed it because I was being exploited by capitalist dogs, who will get what they deserve on their day of reckoning.

You were found "Severely Overheated" in abstentia.

It was only 80 today, Moderately Overheated at best.

Neoliberalism strikes again

[Dunamisdeos]

Is my trial still going on? I missed it because I was being exploited by capitalist dogs, who will get what they deserve on their day of reckoning.

You were found "Severely Overheated" in abstentia.

It was only 80 today, Moderately Overheated at best.

Neoliberalism strikes again

Sounds like climate change is a hoax to me.

#liberalwarming

[Trekkin]

I just lost a little respect for Bay12 as we made fun of an oppressed Venezuelan for realistically assessing his phone charging situation.

Even sarcastically, that was a bit much for me.

Sure, and it will be until it's your day to do something equally facile or worse. Ultimately we all just vacillate between too-cool-for-school Neitzche-wannabe shitposting, LessWrong levels of fallacy fallacy, ultracrepidarianism and sanctimony. It's what people become when you let them be pseudonymous and bounce off each other until all the paint wears off.

We're all Pathos, and it was inevitable.

[Dunamisdeos]

I just lost a little respect for Bay12 as we made fun of an oppressed Venezuelan for realistically assessing his phone charging situation.

Even sarcastically, that was a bit much for me.

Sure, and it will be until it's your day to do something equally facile or worse. Ultimately we all just vacillate between too-cool-for-school Neitzche-wannabe shitposting, LessWrong levels of fallacy fallacy, ultracrepidarianism and sanctimony. It's what people become when you let them be pseudonymous and bounce off each other until all the paint wears off.

We're all Pathos, and it was inevitable.

Speak for yourself, I guess.

[Egan_BW]

Yeah, I only do that first one.

[Magistrum]

I just lost a little respect for Bay12 as we made fun of an oppressed Venezuelan for realistically assessing his phone charging situation.

Even sarcastically, that was a bit much for me.

Worry not Haslanda. Went three days without power in south Brazil last year for dumb reasons, power outages aren't a heavy subject for jokes, and this is the internet. Nothing is sacred and saying otherwise is plowing the sea.

Yo Baal, now that ya are back(I assume, if you get to reading this), which time slot did your area end up in the energy rationing?

Unrelated, but also related: Imagine some fucker saying this to you with a straight face.

[smjjames]

I just lost a little respect for Bay12 as we made fun of an oppressed Venezuelan for realistically assessing his phone charging situation.

Even sarcastically, that was a bit much for me.

Worry not Haslanda. Went three days without power in south Brazil last year for dumb reasons, power outages aren't a heavy subject for jokes, and this is the internet. Nothing is sacred and saying otherwise is plowing the sea.

Yo Baal, now that ya are back(I assume, if you get to reading this), which time slot did your area end up in the energy rationing?

Unrelated, but also related: Imagine some fucker saying this to you with a straight face.

I'd get why he would blame Colombia since they and Venezuela have had... history..., but I don't get the beef with Chile.

Anyways, *Trump flail*

He should just go full chainsaw to jugular and put Stephen Miller in DHS via recess appointment. If one of the most hardcore of hardcore immigration hawks out there can't make DHS do what Trump wants, nothing can.

[thompson]

I just lost a little respect for Bay12 as we made fun of an oppressed Venezuelan for realistically assessing his phone charging situation.

Even sarcastically, that was a bit much for me.

Sure, and it will be until it's your day to do something equally facile or worse. Ultimately we all just vacillate between too-cool-for-school Neitzche-wannabe shitposting, LessWrong levels of fallacy fallacy, ultracrepidarianism and sanctimony. It's what people become when you let them be pseudonymous and bounce off each other until all the paint wears off.

We're all Pathos, and it was inevitable.

*sigh* guilty as charged. Maybe one day I'll grow up.

As for the whole communism/capitalism thing, the issue really boils down to an elite class exploiting their social power. Regulation can remedy this in capitalist societies, and there are many successful examples. Jury's still out on how communism can manage this long term, but the examples we do have are poor. If someone else wants to volunteer their country for another trial...

[wierd]

Here's my take on the capitalism/communism thing.

Capitalism fails because it embraces the fuck out of the tragedy of the commons.  It's how you get TCE in the drinking water, and end up with anthropogenic climate change-- with radical income disparity, and copyrights that last until the heat-death of the universe.

Communism fails because it does not acknowledge that some degree of self-interest seeking is necessary for ambition to push humanity forward;  What real incentive is there to take a huge risk for a possibly large return, if the potential for that large return is denied before the horse even leaves the stable.  It tries to get around this by demanding (with threat of law enforcement, and potentially military might) that these kinds of tasks be performed, but this has lackluster results, and only promotes a class divide between those with command of enforcement might, and those that do not. (EG, this is how you end up with gulags and shit; the demanding and enforcement of certain tasks being performed. The eventual 'comfort' with that use of force only makes that class divide deeper and deeper, and ends up making the ruling class complacent and megalomaniacal.)

The obvious road to take is one that navigates between those two.  This is more what modern Euro-Socialism attempts to do.  It ensures that the needs and rights of the citizens are met and protected, while also permitting personal wealth seeking in exchange for taking personal risks to try new things, or start a new business.

However, our fearless leaders have convinced the public that anything with any kind of safety net on it is "RED MENACE!" (queue stock footage of Stalin and gulags), and so here we are.

[Kagus]

And if it's any help, Norway has managed to convince itself of the same thing. The current government is now hard at work privatising the public transport and health care sectors, and we're also trying to do green energy in the most exploitative way possible.

In other news, some dingus has a boner for inner-city toll roads, because the gov needs more money to facilitate the privatization of public sectors, and that's obviously the best way of doing it.

[LordBaal]

I'm back! Our dear leader Maduro had mercy and allowed me to have electric power again.

My block is basically whenever they feel like it, IF they feel like it AND there's enough electric juice at the moment. Otherwise is back to medieval Sims san the magic. Although you could argue is magic to "mediocrely" feed a family of 3 under this conditions.

Honestly I'm going crazy trying to find a pattern, beyond the power lasting roughly 12 hours since is back, except when it doesn't which is like half of time, I have nothing.

Don't worry about it, Venezuelans have very little "sacred" in the sense of... you know when people says: "you'll laugh at this someday on the future"? Venezuelans laugh, before it happens, while it happens and long after it happened. Rigth now whe are making jokes and cracking witty phrases about our predicament to each other in the streets while sharing tips about surviving. Granted, not as much as before but still.

It helps that there's a lot of people that came from rural communities and are still alive to remember life without electricity (or at least a steady supply of it).

As for blaming Chile... at this point they are saying a sharpshooter knocked off the power of an entire country with a single shoot.... they just are out for any excuse and the new power minister of the mafia cabinet already said, in his inaguratuon speech that the situation can last 30 days, or 60 days,  or 90 days, or a year... not making it up, you can just google it.

What the fuck did that rifle shoot? Space Marine electric demon infected bolts???

As for the TBBT reference, I regret nothing!

[thompson]

Here's my take on the capitalism/communism thing.

Capitalism fails because it embraces the fuck out of the tragedy of the commons.  It's how you get TCE in the drinking water, and end up with anthropogenic climate change-- with radical income disparity, and copyrights that last until the heat-death of the universe.

Communism fails because it does not acknowledge that some degree of self-interest seeking is necessary for ambition to push humanity forward;  What real incentive is there to take a huge risk for a possibly large return, if the potential for that large return is denied before the horse even leaves the stable.  It tries to get around this by demanding (with threat of law enforcement, and potentially military might) that these kinds of tasks be performed, but this has lackluster results, and only promotes a class divide between those with command of enforcement might, and those that do not. (EG, this is how you end up with gulags and shit; the demanding and enforcement of certain tasks being performed. The eventual 'comfort' with that use of force only makes that class divide deeper and deeper, and ends up making the ruling class complacent and megalomaniacal.)

The obvious road to take is one that navigates between those two.  This is more what modern Euro-Socialism attempts to do.  It ensures that the needs and rights of the citizens are met and protected, while also permitting personal wealth seeking in exchange for taking personal risks to try new things, or start a new business.

However, our fearless leaders have convinced the public that anything with any kind of safety net on it is "RED MENACE!" (queue stock footage of Stalin and gulags), and so here we are.

I think the real problem here is that we're discussing social progress in terms of ideologies (they're the words with -ism at the end) and expecting results. It's about as absurd as asking whether Catholicism or Protestantism would make for a better social framework. Each approach may have its advantages, but why the hell are we framing it that way? Rather, we should look at actual problems (say, self-regulating industries putting industry interests ahead of other stakeholders), determine what we want to achieve (equal representation of all stakeholders), the price we're willing to pay (modest increase to taxation), and explore the solutions that meet those requirements (government-run independent regulator). Pretty soon you'll find yourself actually making sense.

Edit: I'm not a big fan of the word 'Socialism". It's much like Fascism in that the word has become irredeemably tainted with its association with some rather nasty regimes, while simultaneously becoming terribly ill-defined outside an academic context due to overuse as an insult. It differs from Fascism in that Fascism has precisely no redeeming features, but that's a low bar to beat. Surely there's a less ambiguous more socially acceptable term for public policy aimed at alleviating poverty and facilitating public services for the masses. The Romans had publicly funded sewerage, so the idea isn't even modern.

Note: Example is for illustrative purposes only.

Hoping all is well in Venezuela, or at least as well as can be expected under the circumstances.

[Frumple]

What the fuck did that rifle shoot? Space Marine electric demon infected bolts???

It doesn't actually take much if your power grid's designed badly enough. Hit the right transformer or whatev' and you can wreck a pretty wide area. If stuff's bottlenecked through single installations or sufficiently unhardened/non-redundant you can hit something and cause a cascade failure, all it takes is messing up like one box to see it all drop, and it doesn't take daemon bolts to manage that much.

One of the myriad annoying things about all this shite is claims like a single sharpshooter dropping most or all of the country is more plausible than it should be

[Egan_BW]

Killing an entire nation's electrical grid with a single rifle bullet may be theoretically possible under very specific circumstances, but I'm guessing the claim is somewhere between exaggerated and made up.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the outages are partially due to sabotage, possibly even sabotage done using rifles. Possibly, to narrowly remain within the thread's topic, american rifles.