Open Thread - Friday, August 16, 2019

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I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
- Jean-Paul Sartre -

Welcome to another nearly content free edition of Funk Friday. The Internet, DSL, and land line both died right after producing last week's Funk Friday, so I broke down and made a service appointment. It appears to be fixed. So much for autonomy and a positive outlook.

A contractor installing fiber optic damaged the phone lines.

I think I will switch to fiber optic.

For now, I will have to stick with DSL. Take an encore Matt.

I should be able to join the Friday morning scrum.

Have a great weekend! The thread is OPEN.

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lotlizard's picture

(1) the Americans you trust and think of as your mentors and friends today are the ones who are going to overthrow your native government and replace your native people with workers from abroad tomorrow,

and

(2) the American national leader everyone loves and you yourself probably even voted for today is going to be the one who will send you and your children, or your friends and their children, to a concentration camp in the desert tomorrow.

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NCTim's picture

@lotlizard to get really ugly. Exploit or be exploited. Funking fascists.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Pluto's Republic's picture

...carpe Starlink, baby.

Elon Musk expects Starlink to be available in some parts the US in late 2019, and in a few years to cover the rest of the globe. Current satellite Internet slow because it works from too high an orbit — it's future space junk. But the thousands of low-orbit Starlink satellites form a super-fast laser grid. When they stop working, they drop out of the grid and-burn themselves up, leaving behind no junk. The object of Starlink is to bring very cheap, zero-latency Internet to all humans on the planet — no cable, no wires, no lag. So everybody can finally hook up and help each other get civilized.

Actually, I've been following this project from the beginning, and if you can hold out a bit longer, it will come to you. Broadband is already finished. It is ancient tech as far as these cyberspace scientists and AI cowboys are concerned. And, as you might expect, Starlink is on a major hiring spree.

.
The "Intergalactic Internet" that serves the distant space colonies is what's happening now — and there seems to be plenty of commercial competition. These wealthy visionaries don't pay much attention to the psychopaths and morons who are mis-leading the world today. From a futurist perspective, those pre-technology dunces are already dead and their remains were shot into space a long time ago.

I find that attitude comforting.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
NCTim's picture

@Pluto's Republic Phone line fix was temporary. The cable, laid across the street, failed by mid-evening.

I thought land line phones were considered critical infrastructure. Land line is designed to work without the power company, and typically required to operate under all but the most extreme conditions. It took four days from submitting the service request until service call, and it still isn’t fixed.

Cellphone hotspot to C99.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

enhydra lutris's picture

@NCTim
critical infrastructure. It is deemed to b such an has been declared to be such. There is one minor detail lacking, government ownership. Entrusting critical infrastructure to for profit private corporations guarantees that it will be no more robust that is necessary in order for some company rep to assert that "oh yasss, we got landline out there for everybody who wants it" even while they push powered phones that must be plugged into a wall socket as well as a phone line and alternatives like cable, fiber and sat. Pretty sure I ditched out old rotary phone a few years ago.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pluto's Republic's picture

@enhydra lutris

There is one minor detail lacking, government ownership.

...about monopolies and pubic utilities. We used to invest in the best possible society — educated and healthy and informed. We benefitting from the civilization that we inherited from the people who came before us. We worked to enhance it further and protect it for the next generation. We all worked hard and benefitted together, and our lives continued to improve.

But, then our nation got hit by a Stupid Ray from outer space.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
lotlizard's picture

“Brand safety” consultants . . . oh, brother.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/advertisers-blacklisting-news-ot...

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NCTim's picture

@lotlizard When I don’t phone in the Friday Funk, I will have to riff on electronic footprints. Big Brother is watching.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Raggedy Ann's picture

Big brother is definitely watching and has set up a system in which we can no longer hide. Even in my remote part of the world, I know they are on to me.

Heading south this weekend for a mineral springs soak. Ahhhhh ~ can’t wait.

Have a peaceful day and weekend, folks! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

enhydra lutris's picture

isn't that important as long as you don't forget to boogie.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/technology/india-kashmir-internet.html

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the rapid adoption of the internet, particularly on smartphones, to modernize India and bring it out of poverty, the country is also the world leader in shutting down the internet.

The country has increasingly deployed communications and internet stoppages to suppress potential protests, prevent rumors from spreading on WhatsApp, conduct elections and even stop students from cheating on exams. Last year, India blocked the internet 134 times, compared with 12 shutdowns in Pakistan, the No. 2 country, according to Access Now, a global digital rights group, which said its data understates the number of occurrences.

“Shutting down the internet has become the first go-to the moment the police think there will be any kind of disturbance,” said Mishi Choudhary, founder of SFLC.in, a legal advocacy group in New Delhi that has tracked the sharp rise in web shutdowns in India since 2012.

 
Also, Arundhati Roy weighs in with her assessment of the situation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/opinion/sunday/kashmir-siege-modi.html

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you are supposed to believe this

TOM STEYER: I have a simple message, and it's this. We have a broken government. There's been a hostile corporate takeover of our government and I'm here to return to government of, by, and for the people. I've been an outsider for ten years, organizing coalitions of ordinary American citizens to take on unchecked corporate power. For ten years we've been beating those corporations and winning. And that is my message. That is job one, to take back the government from the corporate -- the corporations who bought it.

WILLIE GEIST, MSNBC: And it's a similar message, as you know, Tom, to someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders who have been railing against corporations and corporate money in politics. How will you be different from them?

TOM STEYER: Well, I think that the big difference is this, that I'm an outsider. That I have been doing it from the outside successfully for ten years. If you look at the other people who are running for this nomination, they're overwhelmingly insiders. The top four people are all senators or former senators who have more than 70 years combined in the Congress and the Senate of the United States.

So a billionaire hedge fund manager and former Goldman Sachs banker, is "taking on corporate power".

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@gjohnsit The 1% have their own definition of outsider, apparently.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.