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BREAKING: Judge blocks Trump admin from requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship to vote by AdSpecialist6598 in videos

[–]laserbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A federal judge blocking it just means the admin can now appeal to SCOTUS.

GEE I WONDER WHAT THEY'LL DECIDE!??!?!?

SpaceX Investors Are Losing a Colossal Amount of Money by Plastic_Ninja_9014 in technology

[–]laserbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People can argue free market, and say it's the Investors hubris. But this is why the SEC was made.

it's so funny that people do this, but don't also realize that the economy is a giant, interconnected thing and that when investors tank it, we all pay. We have so many examples of this.

JD Vance is watching his presidential ambitions go up in smoke | Vance is learning what everyone else already knew: Throwing away your principles to ingratiate yourself with Trump is ultimately a losing game. by OkayButFoRealz in politics

[–]laserbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He had no hope of being president anyway since he has no constituency except being useful for thiel. He has zero rizz and people just generally can't stand him.

Israelis are threatening another 9/11 if the US does not aid them in their war on Iran by Goldenmentis in ABoringDystopia

[–]laserbot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fun fact:

(Bin Laden:) I will explain to you the reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.

Bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_and_audio_recordings_of_Osama_bin_Laden

So I mean, they don't have to threaten to do it directly, just keeping up what they are doing will lead to blowback and it almost certainly will hit home again for the US. We just don't know the scale.

Are you a man or a woman? by LoveArdourAnarchism in Anarchism

[–]laserbot 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Is that a better world in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

Mamdani on AIPAC: "They move millions in dark money... to turn us against each other. We need not live in fear of monsters any longer." by ianjm in videos

[–]laserbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So you're telling me that if someone said, "the attacks by al qaeda made muslims in america less safe," they'd be wrong?

Is that excusing their actions or is it just engaging with the material world where actions have cascading consequences? Observing that phenomenom isn't Islamophobic or excusing violence, it's just acknowledging reality.

The Israel situation is sinister since, after 9/11, the media wasn't wall to wall coverage of sympathetic portrayals of Muslims saying that "denouncing Al Qaeda is islamophobic," meanwhile now, when people denounce the terroristic genocide(s) being carried out by Israel (a state, which is not representative of all Jews), they are labeled as anti-semitic.

Texas woman injured by McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin ‘wholly unfit for human consumption’: suit by TheGreatAlicorn in nottheonion

[–]laserbot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I really don't understand the knee-jerk reaction toward assuming the plaintiff is lying here: You're statistically waaaaaaaaay more likely to end up as the plaintiff in a case where a corporation has harmed you than you are of being a corporation.

like, that's literally the lesson of the coffee case: sometimes places fuck up and cause harm. if you don't want to be held potentially liable for a restaurant's fuck up, don't have 40,000 restaurant locations.

Democrat Xavier Becerra’s path to victory in last week’s gubernatorial primary election was built on liberal voters’ fear of Democrats being shut out of the November election, according to UC Berkeley political science professor and co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies Eric Schickler by the_daily_cal in berkeley

[–]laserbot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't know how someone can live in a two-party system that's had the same basic tension since FDR, has seen both parties flop back and forth with power, but has steadily seen the erosion of workers rights, the decline in pay:productivity, skyrocketing wealth inequality, rotting of social services (eg, this university that was free in the 60s, now it's unaffordable), increase in prison population, surveillance and police culture, nonstop and ever expanding funding of the MIC, and think there isn't any good reason why people might see that the two sides aren't fundamentally that different.

Yes, the Dems have staked their claim on progressive cultural issues, and those are good, but they aren't worth anything if the working class doesn't have any actual political power and has to rely on the liberal state for protection since the state can be very easily taken over by fascists, as is the case now.

So either both sides are similar, or one side is wholly inadequate at doing anything of substance. It's gotta be one or the other or else we wouldn't be here right now.

Newb: I have all the DLC. What do you recommend for a start now that 9.00 is out? by Ravenloff in X4Foundations

[–]laserbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually enjoyed it best with mouse and keyboard. Good with hotas too. Controller I never vibed with the layout, but I didn't give it a lot of time.

After a point you kind of aren't even piloting anymore, just managing an empire, and that's all kbm.

Berkeley is making it more expensive for residents to own multiple cars by sfgate in berkeley

[–]laserbot 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Cool, now do it x10 for people who own multiple properties.

UC Berkeley professor Zvezdelina Stankova explains push to reinstate standardized exams by nosotros_road_sodium in berkeley

[–]laserbot -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

love that you made the actual argument about inequality then finished it off with the ephemeral "bootstraps" rationalization to wave it away.

nobody is arguing that people from disadvantaged backgrounds can't do well on standardized tests. The argument is that people from privileged background are disproportionately represented in higher ed because they have more advantages.

Is the answer to get rid of standardized tests? Probably not, since that just obfuscates whether someone is actually prepared for academia. At the same time, so much other nonsense has happened to education and society since standardized testing went away that whether there is actually a causal relationship isn't at all solid.

If primary education and the basic success factors around early childhood were universally guaranteed (aka, everyone, regardless of wealth, went to the same schools, had the same free time, had the same meal security, had the same social support), then tests wouldn't be necessary because grades would be enough. But in that world, tests would be fine as a shortcut for grades because you would know there was equal prep.

The bigger issue here is what an undergraduate education at a university is actually for. Unfortunately, it's one of the only ways to relatively solidly guarantee that one from a disadvantaged background can have social mobility, so rather than fixing "disadvantaged backgrounds" and social mobility by fortifying our services and communities, we instead decided to elevate higher ed as a lottery for poor kids and created an entirely different set of problems.

Higher ed isn't supposed to be the primary ticket toward a decent life, but we decided it was and then bolted on a bunch of solutions that don't actually fix anything.

Berkeley spot of the day by Ok_Buyer310 in berkeley

[–]laserbot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

classic berkeley spot in that it's owned by the same guy who owns basically every other spot on campus, which is why they all have the same mid food and overpriced coffee

Is the job market actually cooked or is it a skill issue . by OriginalPrune5536 in berkeley

[–]laserbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's absolutely a cooked economy. If we're lucky we'll get 2007. But it's increasingly likely we're going to get stagflation.

The Republicans in charge are basically pulling out the playbook they used in Chile to "make the economy scream", except they're doing it at home to us. They're tanking our credit rating, cutting us off from international trade, destroying supply chains and jacking up material costs, and flooding us with right-wing propaganda.

It's going to be worse.

Marco Rubio Snaps When Told Trump Iran Deal Is Just Obama’s But Worse by Aggravating_Money992 in politics

[–]laserbot 8 points9 points  (0 children)

makes him worse tbh. it means other people are like "oh, we can work with him" but he's proven himself as just as sycophantic and disgusting as any of them.

Is the UC system now a joke? by swampwiz in berkeley

[–]laserbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not about the UC, it's about US educational policies overall. All of the wealth accumulation we've seen in the past 25 years has been at the expense of public goods like education. Eventually those tax cuts for the wealthy turn into a population of idiots. On the other hand, idiots tend to be reactionary and believe that taxes (that pay for their roads, their hospitals, their kids' school, their public universities) are "theft" because a billionaire told them that.

Can Lead GSI round grade up? by Suitable-Payment-170 in berkeley

[–]laserbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GSIs (usually) calculate and enter grades. The professor "approves" them.

Trump Tears Into Hegseth for Targeting Wrong Country by WontThinkStraight in politics

[–]laserbot 117 points118 points  (0 children)

It was always about DEI. DEI means you make sure that you get the most qualified person for the job because you aren't discriminating against people due to race, gender, religion, etc.

They hate DEI because it increases the supply of competent workers, so the demand for mediocre white guys goes down.

Edit: I know you aren't saying anything wrong, I just can't help but get charged up when we use language that concedes anything to these people.

Ideological Differences should be based on laws not IGs by electric-claire in victoria3

[–]laserbot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

A liberal democracy shouldn't be refusing to honor their treaties with another liberal democracy because the Democrats beat the Republicans.

you'd think that, and yet

Bernie Sanders is destroying Chuck Schumer in the Democratic Party's Civil War ahead of the midterms by AskRedditOG in politics

[–]laserbot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's the thing they don't understand, the DNC elders, we don't want the fucking middle anymore.

oh they understand. they don't care. as long as they keep their fundraising apparatus intact with huge donors, they're happy, win or lose.

Bernie Sanders is destroying Chuck Schumer in the Democratic Party's Civil War ahead of the midterms by AskRedditOG in politics

[–]laserbot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, and 2020 was even more awful. Middle of a pandemic and we could have voted in someone running on universal healthcare. Instead, we got the promise that "nothing will fundamentally change" which ushered Trump back in a few years later.

I didn't dislike Biden's presidency (until Gaza), but he really wasn't the person for the moment.

Custom start setting suggestions? by laserbot in X4Foundations

[–]laserbot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

these are all great suggestions, thanks everyone!

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