I just wish we would consolidate on 5 letter words ending with EL and LE as to what the order should be.

Why is it “table” and “label”? They’re basically the same word minus the first letter, but the spellings are different. I hate it.

As an example, the lawsuit alleged that Faust and other white, male farmers are charged a $100 “administration fee” to participate in one program that exempts women and minority farmers from paying the same fee. In another example, Faust “participates in a USDA program that guarantees 90% of the value of loans to white farmers, but 95% to women and racial minorities,” according to the report.

While I’m not exactly sympathetic to the “plight of the white man,” it is a little weird (if true) that the USDA can have a “white men only fee” for some programs.

My understanding was that most DEI initiatives were built around breaking up old-boys-clubs by requiring preference for minority businesses when all other factors are considered equal. The above doesn’t really feel like that.

Sure, I agree that it’s a stupid idea from an effort vs reward perspective. It’s at best unnecessary.

But your initial position was that it couldn’t be done without being easy to prove that it was a fabrication, and I think you’re wrong about that.

I think that they are more than capable of doing it in such a way that it’s wholly word-vs-word, with no forensic evidence pointing to it being doctored. And the idea that they would do that is outlandish enough that most reasonable people would assume the post was legitimate and that the “offender” was lying about it to try and deflect blame.

It’s the classic, "No, I didn’t post that list of porn search terms to my Twitter! I was hacked!! Totally somebody hacked me and did that. Wasn’t me at all!!” But in this case it’d be something that was a pretext for the government to arrest them.

Sure, but then it’s a question of narrative not proof, right?

Because the response from X would just be, “we aren’t sure why Mr so-and-so didn’t/couldn’t immediately delete the post, but we froze it in short order because we believe the fact he would post such a thing is a matter of public interest, and we refuse to let him sweep it under the rug.”

Yeah, he could say that he posted something completely different and X changed it, but how do you prove it? Everyone would just assume it to be a lie trying to cover their ass after posting something terrible.

Not saying this is at all likely. Just that it’s possible.

And this assumes they notice it was doctored immediately anyway. Most people don’t verify that the post is correct after hitting “submit.” A good 90+% of people would probably never notice if the text was changed post upload.

You could just replace the text of a post as it gets submitted. Keep all metadata otherwise unchanged. Lock the account from being able to make edits.

It kind of depends on the facts and your jurisdiction. With the button, maybe? With a death note book, almost certainly not.

When proving the elements of attempted murder (or any non-statutory crime), the state has to prove both “mens rea” and “actus rea” (that you intended to do the thing and that you tried to do the thing), but when you’re being charged for something “attempted” you have the defense of “impossibility,” when the actions you are trying to take couldn’t have possibly worked.

Now, that doesn’t cover cases where you were only wrong in point of fact. For instance, buying fake drugs from a cop. But it does cover instances like using a voodoo doll.

There’s more detail on all the above in the illustrated guide to law, which is a pretty solid resource for stuff like this. Here are the relevant sections:

Actus Rea Explanation: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=261

Attempted Crimes: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=344

Impossibly Defense: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=416

Do they still make Warheads? Those were the sour candy when I was growing up, lol.

Tbf, the bill targets “retail stores,” not specifically Walmart.

The real infuriating thing in this picture is the order of the books.

Putting them out 1, 2, 5, 4, 3 should be an actual crime. Like, straight to jail.

So the mentally ill have no agency? A person with autism is no better than an animal, unable to rise above their condition in any way?

It seems to me that proclivity is an explanation, not an excuse. The same way that upbringing or bad influences are an explanation, not an excuse.

Why is some who’s “demanding respect they don’t deserve” an asshole as opposed to just someone who’s suffering from mental problems that make them act that way?

How would you differentiate “someone with mental problems” from “someone who behaves in a way that is opposed to what I believe is ‘right’”?

That all sounds like it sucks, but I don’t think it’s as hopeless as I’m sure it feels.

Obviously this is just a snapshot into your life, and I’m sure there are more details under the hood, like what exact “adult responsibilities” and stuff you’ve got going on. That said, even in this text I think you’ve outlined a good bit of good stuff you’ve got going on.

First, I don’t know why you think conflict deescalation isn’t an absolutely in demand skill. Every job under the sun has conflict, and being able to manage that is huge. Even within Engineering, you could put that to huge use as a Sales Engineer or some other customer facing technical role.

Second, you got your bachelor’s in an engineering discipline. You can poo-poo your grades all you want, but at the end of the day you succeeded. No mean feat my man. That’s worth celebrating.

Finally, if you’re simply looking for a way out, there are institutions that are always looking for technical people. Obviously this is gonna vary a lot by country, so ymmv, but the government/military is always in need of people in technical roles, and rarely are able to fill them. It probably doesn’t pay nearly what a “normal” engineering job would, but it’d be more than an internship, and it would give you some of that structured camaraderie that you previously felt the lack of when trying to leave.

All that to say, don’t give up hope my guy. I know I’m just some schmuck on Lemmy of all places, but I think you’re capable of breaking out and getting to a better place.

You got this!

Genuine question, why not just walk away?

Like, it doesn’t solve the mental issues you’re already dealing with because of the years of trauma, but like, it seems like step one of healing would be to remove yourself from the situation, no?

Like, tell your dad he should probably get out, because you’re not gonna be there to play witness to keep him out of jail anymore, and then pop deuces?

Of course there’s nuance. Of course every set of jokes fall on a spectrum from universal to heinous.

And obviously a lot of factors go in to deciding if something is truly unacceptable, up to and including if the person truly believes what they’re joking about.

I’m not really arguing against any of that, and I think we’re in fact largely in agreement on that score.

The point I’m actually fighting is one of introspection. To what degree is your opinion on whether a joke is okay or not dependant on your personal political leanings?

How much are you using things like “whether they meant it or not” as a post-justification to make you feel less biased about why you took the position you did? If I provided a hundred different jokes by a hundred different comedians, would your “this is acceptable” vs “this is not” graph more align with a graph of how much they meant what they said, or with how left or right leaning the joke was?

And maybe for you, it wouldn’t be politically skewed at all. Maybe you truly hold an objective metric that can be applied across the board, without a bias towards accepting more things that align to your own beliefs. But you must admit, if so, that it would make you an overwhelming outnumbered minority.

And furthermore, surely you would admit, that most people who do have the “it was a joke against my candidate, and therefore it’s unacceptable, but it’s fine if the joke was about the enemy,” mindset, are quick to argue that they are in fact the most objective person on earth and only make decisions about acceptability based on cool hard logic and rules, not partisanship.

So, is there any set of jokes a comedian could make that are filled with enough punching down or hateful rhetoric that you would condemn, even if the comedian was adamant they were just jokes and that he doesn’t believe anything that’s actually racist/sexist/transphobic/pro-genocide/etc?

Or is it a “no true Scotsman” thing where, if the jokes are bad enough, you just decide that he must actually mean them for real, and therefore you can condemn them out of hand?

If Kyle Gass came out and said, “I meant what I said, I’d have been and would be very pleased if he was killed,” would you consider the reaction justified?

If Chappelle came out and said, “I absolutely don’t wish harm on any trans people. It’s all just part of the act,” would you find his jokes acceptable?

Okay, to be clear, are you arguing that the dichotomy we are choosing between is Notch becoming a billionaire or a corporation reaping the benefits of his labor? I think if those are the options, I prefer the universe where Notch is a billionaire, lol.

I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but I’ll admit I’ve read your comment a few times, and couldn’t really latch on to what you point was.

But to just free associate off of what you said, I think there’s a lot of value to many in the safety of a job vs the life of an entrepreneur. I’m in that situation myself. I know I could easily make 1.5-2x my current salary if I just stood up and LLC and did all my work as a 1099 employee. I’d be able to keep all my current clients and basically nothing would change. I could set my own hours and not have a boss to answer to. But it comes with a lot fewer safety nets, and it means that all the unpleasantness and risk of “running a business” would all fall on me.

Am I running the risk that I could build a billion dollar product and giving all that surplus capital to my company? Sure. But the odds of that are terribly low, and honestly, it’s a gamble I’m more than willing to take to avoid having to deal with the overhead and risk of striking out on my own with no top cover.

The issue is that becoming a billionaire has more to do with being lucky than it does with direct exploitation.

If everyone in the US chipped 5 dollars into a pool, and it was randomly given to one person, that person would be a billionaire.

And yes, they have a huge concentration of other people’s labor represented in that cash. But the person who won the pool isn’t a bad person because of that. They didn’t exploit anyone themselves. Just because someone somewhere at some point under capitalism was exploited, that doesn’t lay the moral condemnation at the feet of the lottery winner.

Sure, but that argument is specious as hell, right? Like, if everyone in the United States decided to give you a $5 bill, does that instantly make you a bad person who exploited labor to get where you are?

“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is simply a rhetorical device to outline the flaws in the system. It completely breaks down when used as justification to villainize someone.

Your position could be equally stated as, “anyone who has more money than me is a worse person than me, and anyone with less money than me is a better person than me.” It’s a misuse of the “no ethical consumption” idea on its face.