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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

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Comments

  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Oh, and actually, I know of a left-wing American conspiracy theory: that the conservatives in the government deliberately push ATF (the federal agency in charge of gun control) into various blunders to smear the entire gun control movement by association. That's about the kind of conspiracy theory I had in mind when asking for it.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/world/europe/poland-lgbt-free-krasnik.html

    tl;dr Polish man fights cultural marxism, becomes regional embarrassment
  • Hey gck, fourteenwings has some Eastern Europe related drama that he things you may be interested about:
    So the Belarusian government has been under fire since late last year from protesters who want... I dunno, I have no idea what it's about
    Anyways, Belarus' representative for Eurovision last year, VAL, who performed a kind of killer cool song called Da Vidna, showed support for those protests
    and so the broadcaster who picks the Belarusian act (state sponsored of course) pulled her potential re-entry
    (most of the acts from the cancelled 2020 show are due to perform in 2021)
    Instead, they picked a pro-government song
    With (translated) lyrics such as;
    Take a look at the meaty vegetables
    Rejoice, even if you feel angry
    Dream of new bells and whistles
    By the way, you can take them on credit

    Which is like
    yeah man we get it you really like the government
    In addition the performers were just like... not great?

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/ya-nauchu-tebya-ill-teach-you.html Lyrics
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_nauchu_tebya_(I%27ll_Teach_You)#Controversy Wikipedia
    Anyways I don't think the Eurovision board made a good decision because even if the song sucks and the lyrics are secretly patriotic if you don't know anything about Belarus and Belarusian politics you wouldn't know what the heck was going on and it'd just be one of those funny mediocre Eurovision songs
    Like clearly the Eurovision board claims the song is "political" whereas if you listen to it and watch it it's not actually political except if you know the specifics basically they've chosen to undo the will of the Belarusian government which certain people in Belarus might not like but like... it's still the government? They can enter a patriotic song if they want?
    Plus the first year I watched this postmodern (read: bad) song won the whole thing on the basis that it was a political anti-Soviet-therefore-anti-Russia (in modern context) song
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_(song)
    "The song was also released amid renewed repression of Crimean Tatars following the Russian annexation of Crimea, since most Crimean Tatars refuse to accept the annexation."
    tl;dr of Belarus: six-term president versus globalists
    Ah, politics, where there are no heroes
    The second time around it seems the Eurovision board just didn't want Belarus at all because the entered what appears to be a folk song
    The second song is just
    "The hare ran merrily, singing a song. The crowns swayed merrily in the wind Mood - OK, no pressure I dreamed and fell into a fox hole." According to Google translate
    "x, bunny, you are still a boy, Learn the mind-mind from the chickens. Eh, fox, you are my sister, And what the song is about, I myself do not understand."
    so yeah that's what happened
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Don't know much about Eurovision songs, but the organizers've already been overtly political for a while, you know, what with being openly pro-gay.

    As for Belarusian protesters, whether or not you have an idea what they're about depends on whether you believe people there would like democratic rule for a change, or that it surely must be some sort of plot by nefarious foreign agents. If you hold the latter opinion, then I can't help you, I can only give you a list of people or organizations you might want to accuse and from there you will have to figure it out on your own.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    My Black Son Sold “N-Word Passes” to His White Friends
    His sister thinks he’s made almost $1,000.
    My 7-Year-Old Niece Says She’s Friends With the Devil and Tries to Raise Her Toys From the Dead
    She also asks how I’d like to die. What should I, uh, do?

    Yeah, I spent some time browsing Questions & Answers section on slate.com and looks like folks are going through some sitcom-level shit.

    Also, some weird woke shit. You can always count on that.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Yahoo is gonna take down Yahoo Answers soon, I heard.

    I guess you've found the replacement?
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    May their crops grow as my respect for them just did.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    More commentary on transit, because I just ran across a video that made me feel something. FYI, it's from before the 2020 election.



    I'd like to add a follow-up comment to this video:

    Basically, "cities" have grown, geographically. By which I mean "cities" in the sense of "here's where the economic hub is", rather than just the population density. The "city", in this sense, is where the stuff happens, and now, a ton of the stuff that happens happens in smaller cities/towns with suburban settings, generally surrounding a traditional city center. Old transit plans were built with the idea of serving the economic hub. At first, things like streetcars got people around in the city itself. Later, things like bus and light rail lines were built to transport people from the suburbs outside the city into the city core, because the latter was where the jobs were. But now the jobs are more spread out geographically, which can be interpreted as the "hub" growing in geographic size.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I'm not sure whether this belongs here, or in the silly geographical comments thread, or in the pictures thread.

    BuUKP3aIQAEnQun.png

    tumblr_pdu0rzYFuV1qb317o_640.png
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    In terms of weird sh...tuff from here, we've had the party state media shill some guy they sent to Eurovision. They shill him and shill how good he is and so on. Then he fails to get into the finals. And what? They keep quiet. Like, so far they've been informing how Eurovision is coming, how good he is, so on, and that they're going to air that Fire Saga movie (a comedy about campy Eurovision contestants). But once he's out, it's like, move along, citizen, nothing to see here, even the movie was replaced without a single warning.
  • I can't seem to find it, but I remember a side-by-side comparison between Olympics broadcasts in the US and elsewhere; when the US athlete was performing, as you'd expect both focused on what she was doing, but when a non-US athlete was performing the non-US media focused on what the athlete was doing and the US media focused on the US athlete's reaction to the performance, completely missing it.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Yeah, it's kinda like that, except with more state propaganda and cringe.

    Which brings me to a certain conclusion. Would you agree that authoritarianism comes with an obliviousness towards the concept of cringe? Like, conspiracy theorism, bullshit stories about deceased leaders visiting you as a bird, macho man posturing, or when you lack manliness, throwing a tantrum over a musical campfest.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I can't seem to find it, but I remember a side-by-side comparison between Olympics broadcasts in the US and elsewhere; when the US athlete was performing, as you'd expect both focused on what she was doing, but when a non-US athlete was performing the non-US media focused on what the athlete was doing and the US media focused on the US athlete's reaction to the performance, completely missing it.
    This is indeed accurate. Well, for single-contestant performance events at least; it's less prominent for events with multiple contestants but still somewhat present (e.g. I think they avoid showing early rounds where no contestants of interest competed).

    There's also a certain celebrity-fication (celebrification?) of athletes, not just US athletes. Sometimes they'll seize on one high-profile athlete (easier since they often know the results beforehand) and make a big deal about her/him, even if he/she isn't US American, e.g. Usain Bolt.

    FWIW, by "US media" here we basically just mean NBC, since they have an exclusive contract to broadcast the Olympics, if I recall correctly.

    Also the event is pre-recorded and then rebroadcast at a time suitable to US audiences, which is I guess not as objectionable.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Hey Glenn, since you seem to have personal experience on top of general interest in government proceedings, what it is exactly that you do when you take part in the jury in court and how do you end up in one?
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I think there's a database of everyone who lives in an area, probably based on driver's license records and such, and then people get randomly selected to serve on juries, in the places where they live. The idea is that trials should be decided by juries of one's peers, hence selecting random people in the area to do jury duty.

    They then non-randomly get selected and/or select themselves off juries, though. So you're not supposed to be able to get out of jury duty, but when you get placed in a jury pool, the attorneys get to question you to see if you're biased and then object to you being on there. Some people speak of intentionally acting stupid and/or biased in order to get out jury duty, though I haven't done this.

    I was called for jury duty once but they didn't pick me. So I spent a day sitting in a waiting area in the courthouse building.
  • I know about the "juries are full of people too dumb to know how to get out of jury duty" joke, but I find it very interesting, it's something I'd like to participate (at least once), learn from the inside how it's done, etc.
    Certainly less dull than regular job day(s) #5238+.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Huh, I thought this is more of a universal experience. Or more common, would be better to call it. As to Glenn in particular, I imagined you as a regular, you know, you being an administration geek. (Or what's the best way to describe it. Citizen geek, perhaps?) So, more like, were you stupid, I'd have expected you'd be the one to act smart to get in, rather than the other way.

    Mind you, it's kind of pity that you Americans started out all so invested in government process, and now it seems you need to be either a geek or sleazy corrupt politico/amoral attorney.

    By the way, I was already vaguely aware that attorneys get to question the jury, because I remembered it was a minor plot point in Devil's Advocate. Yay for us all living in America, heh.
  • edited 2021-05-26 17:00:13
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I was actually called for jury duty when I was unemployed, and so I was hoping to actually serve so I'd start getting a bit of money every day. Alas, I wasn't chosen, though I didn't do anything special to affect the outcome. And it would have been enlightening to see how the process works, first-hand, so I was interested in doing it for my own personal curiosity as well.

    I haven't studied this but I think it is something of a common practice that people try to get out of having to do jury duty, presumably because it's disruptive of their schedule and takes them out of dealing with things in their lives.



    American cynicism about government is a separate topic which I'll probably write about later. I have other comments on that lol.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Alas, I wasn't chosen, though I didn't do anything special to affect the outcome.

    I kind of have that mental image of you jumping in your seat like a kid invited to a dinosaur factory and the suits turning you down after having misunderstood that as suspicious. Sorry man. It'll pass in a while, what can I say.

    On a more serious note, did you know what sort of case you would have been in, or is it a thing that you only learn on the spot? 'Cause I can imagine, like, a very opinionated fella who would not want to issue judgement in a case where the outcome might be a weight on conscience. (Like feeling responsible for sending someone to the gallows, or sending someone to jail for an otherwise harmless amount of a drug proven beyond doubt.)
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    In the US justice system, we don't currently use gallows anymore, I think, but more importantly, the sentencing process is separate from the trial process, and I don't think a jury is used for the sentencing. (I may be wrong.)

    I don't know what case I would have been involved in, and I think that's by design. This way I can't come into it with any biases.
    I kind of have that mental image of you jumping in your seat like a kid invited to a dinosaur factory and the suits turning you down after having misunderstood that as suspicious. Sorry man. It'll pass in a while, what can I say.
    This mental image is certainly more interesting than what happened.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    In the US justice system, we don't currently use gallows anymore, I think, but more importantly, the sentencing process is separate from the trial process, and I don't think a jury is used for the sentencing. (I may be wrong.)

    Yeah, exactly, I just meant a situation where (in this example) the accused has a very real chance of ending up on the death row, and wondered whether jury would feel responsible if the guilty verdict that they gave led to that. A for the gallows, it was metaphorical, although I don't think it'd be actually worse than poison.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Capital punishment is the subject of current debate in the US, in general, and exactly what forms of execution are ethically allowable or should be legal is a part of that thorny debate.

    But my point was that the jury is only tasked with deciding whether the defendant is guilty of the charge(s) brought by the prosecution, even if it is something like murder in the first degree. Sentencing comes later, and generally has some range of legally-allowed options.

    That said, I would guess jurors would have connected the dots well enough to see some degree of causation between the verdict and the potential sentences. I don't know and I have really never thought of what goes through jurors' minds with regards to this question.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Unrelated to the topic, but I found this article: https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6bb

    Sounds interesting.
  • I get the feeling the dumb-jurors joke has lived on more due to being witty/funny than due to reflecting reality.
  • edited 2021-05-29 18:48:45
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Another question. How does this majored in/minored in stuff works? Around here, you pick an area of study the university offers, like, for example, physics or mechanical engineering or law or medicine. If you feel you can handle it (and you are admitted), you can do the same again and study both at the same time. (Some people do even more, because nothing technically prevents you from, but I have no idea how.) I have a few friends with two Masters' degrees, and a few more (me included) who tried to pull it off, but dropped out of the second due to lack of time or something for both. Like, picture you work two jobs. That's twice the, uh, work, but (potentially) twice the gain. But the way it is described in the media, sounds like in America, it's somehow institutionalized that you can have a "major" and a "minor".
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    note to self, answer this when i get back to my comouter
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    In U.S. universities, as far as I know, it's common to have the following setup:

    * To graduate with a bachelor's degree, you need to complete certain basic requirements that all students must complete, regardless of their major. Most of these are required classes -- for example, math, science, and language arts classes that provide a basic level of competency for adulthood and preparing a student for pretty much any career. At least, that's the intent.
    * Generally speaking, you also need to complete a major course of study. This means picking a field of study and completing a list of requirements according to that specific course of study.
    * Undergrad students (i.e. those going for a bachelor's degree) tend to not a declar their major until some time after they've matriculated -- typically, in their sophomore (second) year. And while it's typical for people to settle into their field, it's not that uncommon to change one's major during one's undergraduate career. In contrast, graduate students generally apply to a specific department and thus have a "major" immediately when they matriculate, and (particularly for doctoral students) are more likely to drop out of a program than switch out (which might involve very unusual circumstances and paperwork); their field of study is typically not called a "major" but is just appended to the title of the degree they're working toward (e.g. "I was a comp sci major in college" vs. "I was a comp sci grad student").

    Doing a major pretty much always means taking a certain set of required classes. The number of classes required varies from major to major, and some will give you choices to some extent. Also, some majors require a major research paper, called a thesis, but not all do. For those that don't, you may be able to get away with just pretty much taking classes to check off boxes, provided you're able to pass those classes.

    A single academic department may offer more than one major. For example, a chemical engineering department might offer both a traditional chemical engineering major and a version of the major that focuses more on biotech stuff (such as pharmaceuticals, as opposed to, say, petrochemicals).

    It is common to regard certain majors as more or less "useful" or expected-to-be-lucrative -- for example, "English major" and "philosophy major" are commonly-mocked majors, while there's often a general meme (which may be true to varying extents) that tech-related majors may get people jobs easily. But ultimately, all departments want to find ways to prepare their students effectively to succeed by arming them with useful skillsets, and they're aided in this regard by careers offices at each school which do anything from resume and interview coaching to organizing career fairs.

    And, of course, majors don't necessarily line up with actual jobs or industries.

    Optional features:
    * You may declare a second major, and even a third major and beyond. This works differently depending on the school, but in general this means that you need to do the requirements for both majors. If they overlap, this makes it more convenient.
    * Some majors may be "interdiscplinary", meaning that they are meant to blend expertise from multiple fields of study. For example, "environmental science and public policy".
    * You may declare a minor. It's basically like a major but with much fewer requirements, intended to give you a...minor amount of specialty expertise in that field.

    Classes taken that are neither general requirements nor major requirements are called "electives". Schools generally offer some degree of choice even amongst general requirements, though, but major requirements are often specific courses.
  • edited 2021-06-02 03:40:08
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I kinda half-realized I just sorta prattled on and didn't address some details.

    Master's degrees are sorta freeform. I'm not sure how to explain this without explaining something else first: Bachelor's degrees generally presume that students will (1) go for them fresh out of high/secondary school (or maybe at most a few years after that) and (2) will take four years to complete. It's not common to get multiple bachelor's degrees one after another. Some places even say that they don't offer bachelor's degrees to people who already have bachelor's degrees. So a bachelor's degree is meant as the "college" in "I'm going off to college". In contrast, not as many people choose to take master's degrees, which generally require that applicants have (or will complete) a bachelor's degree first. Some master's students are people who've stuck around beyond their bachelor's degree, often to do more advanced research, or have applied to another school for this purpose. There's also been a recent rise in "professional" master's degree programs, ones that are often structured to be completed within a year or two, which are aimed less at people fresh out of college and more at people who want to gain some extra skills to boost their career. The Master's of Business Administration (MBA) is probably the poster-child of this but there are many others nowadays, and I suspect some schools offer them as a way to raise money for other stuff lol.

    But, especially with these professional-style master's degree programs, you could potentially take as many of them as you want -- as long as you have the money, since I think they often don't provide financial aid -- as opposed to bachelor's programs which are seen as pretty much required for young people to be able to get jobs these days, and doctoral programs which often run on some combination of research grants and paying students to teach undergrads. If you're the more "traditional" sort of master's student, you could still take two master's degrees at the same time too, and I presume it'd probably work similarly to doing a double-major at the undergrad level. I know someone who was working on dual master's degrees, in civil and mechanical engineering, but then dropped out of both to take a job in industry.

    The archetypal progression is bachelor's -> master's -> doctorate. A doctoral (i.e. PhD) is where you're expected to produce original research, at a level higher than that of a master's, and it's not uncommon for doctoral students to take "until you finish" long as opposed to a set amount of time. And also, a doctorate is considered a "terminal degree", i.e. you're not expected to go for another degree after that. (You can, but it's rare. Also "postdocs" are a thing where you might stick around to do research even beyond your doctorate, but aren't an actual degree.)

    You can skip a master's and go straight into a doctorate. This is not uncommon, but depends on your field and your background (to be fair any doctoral application does). Some departments may have options for a smoother transition from undergrad to master's or doctorate in the same department. But the doctorate is still considered terminal.

    Law school and med school are weird in this regard.

    Law school is something you only "major in" after a bachelor's degree. It's a terminal degree, a Juris Doctor (JD, or doctor of laws), and there's no master's degree in this progression, and there's not really any bachelor's degree analogue to it. However, you can do a master's degree after it, which is the master of laws (or LLM) degree, which is only available after a JD. Also you apply to law schools separately, and law schools are more like specialized trade schools, with even their own standardized entrance and exit exams as well as (I think) commonly requiring students to gain practical experience (e.g. working for a law firm or clerking for a judge).

    Med school is even funkier. Medical schools, which produce the medical doctor Medicinae Doctor (or MD) degree, also don't have a bachelor's degree analogue, but tend to require a bunch of prerequisites, such as in the biological sciences. As a result, it's common for undergrads who want to do med school to already start tailoring their studies toward a med school program; these people are called "premeds", even though they also have an actual major. Med schools also have their own standardized entrance and exit exams, and also (I think) often require practical experience in the form of residency. So, again, they're like very specialized trade schools.

    Most terminal degrees are doctorates, but I've heard that a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) is a terminal degree. I don't know much about that field though.
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