Because fuck the surveillance state.

What's behind the US birth rate decline?

The Trump administration wants people to have more children.

Curiously enough, the latter points to the answer to the former.

It's not just that Trump wants Americans to have more children - all the psychopaths in power do. Because to them, people are just resources to be used up and discarded, which means they need a steady supply of replacements.

And not surprisingly, people - being actual people with hopes and dreams and fears and doubts and loves and joys and heartbreaks and losses - just aren't interested in having children who are just going to end up being resources to be exploited by a handful of fabulously wealthy shitbags.

So basically, the reason that the billionaire fuckwads want people to have more children is also the reason that people don't want to have them.

Nazi works, but if he'd prefer something else, "technofascist" and "neo-feudalist" are both arguably even more accurate.

Or we could go a different way - "psychopathic douchebag" has a nice ring to it, or maybe "delusional fuckhead."

Since he swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, what he's saying is that he doesn't "know" if he's not supposed to commit perjury.

And since it was already established with Clinton that perjury is an impeachable offense, what he's saying is that he doesn't grasp a very basic and straightforward legal reality of his office.

Which means he's not of sound mind, and doesn't even need to be impeached - he's unfit for office and should be removed immediately.

Right - it has nothing to do with the fact that Israel has been trying to goad Syria into a war for years now - the nation of minority oppressors is suddenly all worried about someone else's oppressed minority. Uh huh.

If only it was that simple...

Democrats are even more scared of people learning the truth about Israel and Palestine than Republicans are.

It's really a very simple matter - Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is indefensible. That's okay for Republicans, since they aren't going to bother defending them - they and their base revel in bigotry and hatred and violence, so Israeli bigotry and hatred and violence is fine by them. But Democrats have to at least pretend to be opposed to bigotry and hatred and violence, so they can't defend Israel from legitimate criticism. So their only hope is to protect them from it by hiding the truth.

At the least, some considerable part of the problem is that angry, stupid bigots who used to be mostly limited to cringey drunken solo rants are now able to network with each other and cheer on each other's anger and stupidity and bigotry.

I was with you right up until the end.

Hillary's gender is a weak excuse that the DNC and the establishment Dems trot out to try to duck the blame for sabotaging a sincere progressive in order to run a neolib weasel who gives paid speeches to international bankers and idolizes Kissinger.

As I've said repeatedly - there are going to be mass graves in the US before this is all over.

This is just another, albeit particularly notable, step along the way.

That thread is creepy.

Trump not only promised to bring down prices, but promised to do so "on day one." In fact, in the final days of the campaign, that was likely the promise he repeated the most.

So not only is he somewhere between delusional and dishonest (which I already knew), but every single person who responded to insist rising prices is indeed what they signed up for is also somewhere between delusional and dishonest.

Why? What compels them? What do they expect to gain?

I'm beginning to suspect that there's some environmental factor or something in the US that makes people delusional, angry and stupid, because this has gone way beyond anything that can be explained by political partisanship alone.

This is a dumbass article.

First, it self-evidently doesn't understand what the laws of robotics actually are and how they interrelate. You can't just tack on an unrelated fourth one - the current three are a mutually dependent set.

And second, it self-evidently doesn't understand that current "AI" isn't actually intelligence in any way, shape or form and possesses no self-awareness of any form, and therefore cannot be made subject to laws at all.

Laws can only meaningfully be applied to the people who use the current "AIs," since they're the ones who actually possess agency and self-awareness.

If you want to argue for something to stem the tide of deepfakes, that's the thing to argue for - straightforward criminal penalties for the people who employ "AIs" to make them.

Discworld, no contest.

Waaah! Wikipedia won't let people include lies! They're censoring the right!

such as failure to address foreign influence operations.

lol

When historical analyses are written of the era in which a raving lunatic with orange makeup and a bad combover conned millions of gung-ho pro-American credulous morons on the right into supporting him as he brazenly destroyed everything that ever made America great, much attention is going to be paid specifically to his penchant for projection.

Republicans are primed to believe misinformation, since much of their ideology is founded on it.

That's also the reason that they take issue with Wikipedia, much of the mainstream media, universities and most forums - because in an environment in which truth matters and falsehood is generally exposed and/or stifled, they necessarily see and can repeat fewer of the comforting lies that form the basis for their ideology.

In fact the central pillar of conservatism is inevitably a lie - they wish to maintain some present or recreate some past that does not and never did actuslly exist. Then they just pile on the lies from there.

So necessarily, already, all that's relevant to them is whether or not a claim fits into the web of lies they already believe. So all anyone so inclined has to do is present them with something that fits with the lies they already believe, and they'll not only believe it, but accuse anyone who treats it as a lie of trying to censor them.

And present it with enough all-caps EMPHASIS and EXCLAMATION POINTS that they KNOW that it's the TRUTH!!

He probably meant to.

Broadly, yeah. I suspect that more or less what it boils down to is that the US, even before Trump, was and is so warped by greed and corruption and built around so many lies that it's effectively insane, and that's reflected in its political leadership.

This is the thing that most astonishes me about this timeline.

Even setting aside all the other issues - politics, ideology, constitutionality, the rule of law, integrity, whatever - Trump is so obviously a raving lunatic that I sincerely have no idea how anyone can possibly fail to see it. There's nothing at all aubtle or obscure about it - he's bludgeoningly obviously unhinged.

Do people actually not see that? How? Or do they see it and ignore it? Again, how?

if people are not taught media ecology and the menace of unreality / alternate reality thinking.

At least this is an improvement on condemning them for not automaticallyvalready knowing what it is or how to deal with it.

But you're srill neatly avoiding mention of the individual actors who are responsible for the social conditions in whic this menace thrives.

Confident, contented people don't buy snake oil - only unhappy, frightened, desperate people do.