There are so many amazing things going on politically at the moment — amazing good, amazing bad, just plain gobstopping — that I figured, hey, let’s do an open thread before we’re all blown up in World War III or something.
No trolls!
Categories
Politics Open Thread! Special Election O’Reilly Downfall Wandering Aircraft Carrier Edition
@ jenora
I still find atomic clocks mind boggling. That the most random process we know about leads to the most accurate time keeping. The only way I could vaguely get my head around it was when someone compared it to Asimov’s psychohistory.
And the fact GPS sats have to adjust for two relativistic effects is just fantastic (in every sense) as far as I’m concerned.
One of the many things I find intriguing about cosmology is the combination of the smallest shortest events we know about directly feeding into the biggest and longest. I spend a lot of time gazing at the night sky almost grasping what it’s all about, like something on the tip of your tongue, but then getting completely overwhelmed. Its that ‘total perspective vortex’ thing.
I love all this sort of thing though, so your posts are very much appreciated.
@dreemr
I’m in a bit of an anti Sanders tizzy atm, so please forgive my bluntness. Not aimed at you 🙂
He and his supporters have been running this shit for the last year plus. He probably couldn’t spell ‘intersectionality’ with a dictionary in his hands. There’s a reason brown folks didn’t vote for him in the primary. There’s a reason women turned on him. If it came down to him v Trump (or any R), he woulda gotten my vote. In a heartbeat. But his nonsense ain’t at all new…
He’s not a monster. But he is an old white dude living in Vermont. Only so much can be reasonably expected of him. Which is why I hate this pandering we’re all meant to be doing to him. Like he’s the savior who can fix the Democrats (even tho he isn’t one, and refuses to become one). Fuck that. The last thing anyone needs is another brocialist centered while minority voices are denigrated as ‘identity politics’ or ‘shilling’
Wouldn’t rule it out, but Occam’s razor says this isn’t particularly out of character for a group of mostly white men who hero worship another white man. They tend to be like that *shrugs*
@dreemr, Dalillama:
Of course, even during the election cycle people were noting certain levels of ‘brogressive’ in Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Income inequality was the one true problem that needed to be dealt with, and we’re just going to ignore for now other structural problems faced by women, black people, et cetera until we deal with this and then everything will be great!
There’s a reason why a certain strain of (white, male) ‘progressive’ seemed to find Trump a shorter jump from Sanders than Clinton. It wasn’t just misogyny, it was the whole ‘your problems are the most important problems’ aspect.
@Alan:
The thing is, quantum effects aren’t just about randomness. They’re also about particles acting like waves. (Warning: gross oversimplification ahead.) Just like a string bound at both ends will tend to vibrate at specific frequencies, an electron bound around an atom also has specific frequencies it will resonate at. ‘Electron shells’ happen because the electrons have to be at one of the harmonics of that base frequency, combined with the rule that two electrons can’t be in exactly the same state. Lasers and masers work for much the same reason as you can get one string to start vibrating without touching it by putting another vibrating string with the same frequency near it.
Actually, one of the more mind-blowing cases of quantum effects allowing more accurate measurements involved radio astronomy and VLBI, in Australia. There’s a part of the Outback with what is almost certainly the longest stretch of perfectly straight railway track in the world.
You’re familiar with the classic double-slit experiments, and the way waves interact as they go through the pair of slits? In the quantum double-slit experiment, if you can tell which slit the particle/wave went through, you don’t see an interference pattern. You only get interference if it is possible for the wave to go through both at once.
Well, somebody decided to use a pair of radio telescopes on railway cars as their ‘slits’. The idea was that the smaller a star looks in the sky, the more accurately we know which direction the light from it came from, so the less uncertainty there is in its momentum. Which means more uncertainty in its position. But if we turn that around, stars that look larger have more uncertainty in momentum of the light coming from them, and thus less uncertainty in position. If the uncertainty in the position of a given photon is greater than the distance between the two ‘slits’, it can hit both at once and form interference patterns.
With certain stars that took up measurable amounts of space in the sky, they found that once they rolled the telescopes too far apart… the interference patterns between the two telescopes vanished. They could actually measure the size of a star in the sky by how far apart the telescopes could get while still showing interference.
So a method relying on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle actually allowed for more accurate measurements of stellar angular diameter than any other method.
@ jenora
That’s yet another amazing thing (loving this). When I was a kid it was axiomatic that even with the most powerful telescopes stars would always be point sources (well, with one local exception). The idea that we can now observe diameter, optically and radio, is wonderful. As is all the extra solar planet work.
The double slit experiment and the whole wave particle duality thing has also boggled me since first encountering it. But that’s my general attitude to quantum stuff anyway “But how do the particles know?”
I still can’t figure out how you can still get interference effects even doing one particle at a time. I like the idea that it’s an interaction with particles in parallel universes. (I’m assuming particles in parallel universes have goatee beards and are evil).
Yeah, so, that election.
I’m 420ing my ass into thick fog. I hear I got an excuse what with weed week and all, so fuck the outside world for now.
I’m fucking scared.
@Dalillama, @Axecalibur, @jenora
Thanks for clarifying for me, I wasn’t sure if it might be just me or if it was a widespread kind of thing. What with my age group, region, and demographic, far more of my social media contacts fell into Drumpf and Hilary camps than into Sanders, and the few Sanders people I did have weren’t people I actually knew very well.
I am running across them more and more now because I have joined more resistance groups that obviously have more people that I don’t know IRL.
Surprisingly, it’s been about evenly split between men and women so far, and though I haven’t seen GREAT numbers, there’ve been enough and they’ve been hero-worshippy enough to give me quite a bit of pause. I never jumped on the Sanders train for the plain fact that I just didn’t think he’d be able to win. As I said, though, if he’d won the primary, I’d have happily supported him anyway.
But the few I’ve seen so far really do go so far as to label him a hero and a savior, using that language. It’s really over-the-top, for a staid midwesterner like me. I’ll admit I get a bit suspicious when I see that kind of passion for a politician. I mean, it’s a politician. That kind of blind loyalty, whether it’s for Drumpf or Sanders or hell, even for Jesus, kinda gives me pause.
@Axe comments policy notwithstanding, I’ll take a ‘fuck you’ from an establishment shill as a badge of honour.
Sanders is far from perfect, that tweet you linked to is a good example, as a prochoice politician he must challenge that candidate on their antichoice views.
What worries me most is Sanders’ foreign policy positions which are pretty much establishment though not as hawkish as others like Hilary Clinton.
I am a big fan though of Sanders ‘ consistent opposition to neoliberal economics that the Dems still stick to.
Anybody who uses the meaningless buzz phrase “Establishment shill” immediately loses any and all right to participate in political discussion. It’s barely a step above “SJW” or “Cuck.”
Besides, there’s nothing more “Establishment” than old cishet white men who value money over oppressed groups’ lives. Which is why I believe that Hillary was the true anti-establishment candidate, and is why the establishment handed the presidency to the fucknut even though he thoroughly lost the election.
Well, that and Putin. Edit timer.
@Turtle
?
I’m telling ya, @dreemr, since Day 1 with this stuff. It’s like a reflex for these people…
*finger guns* My far is much farther than your far, but I’ll take it. Reaching across the aisle, as it were
If he does, it’ll be cos of the outpouring of disgust from the neoliberal women in the establishment Dem base
Not sure what the following has to do with anything, but OK:
Sanders doesn’t have a foreign policy. Or, at least, not much beyond ‘war is bad, use guise’. It’s another area, like ‘identity politics’, he seems to see as a distraction from the for real fight against the bourgeois
Uh huh… Now, if he would only bring that same consistency of opposition to the neoliberal (and fuckin fascist) economic, social, foreign, etc policy of Trump and the Gang, we’d be all set…
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
I agree. A “shill” of any flavor is not necessarily irrational in thier persuasive intensity or focus (including corporate shills, there should be evidence that the affiliation and money affects reasoning). It’s a convenient means of dismissing based on group affiliation alone. Things are still wrong or harmful for reasons*.
*I have not followed the whole dissagreement in here. Just making a general point.
It’s an absolute tragedy that Clinton that lost the electoral college vote to Trump. Trump being in power instead of Clinton has made millions of people of many identities lives worse.
But the Dems lost a huge opportunity to go against the neoliberal orthodoxy that has strangled it for years to go with a candidate Clinton who, far from being antiestablishment would have served as yet another servant of capitalism just like Obama. The fact that Sanders is an old cishet white dude doesn’t negate that in my view.
I’m a young cishet white dude, maybe the privilege that identity gives me has blinded me, but that’s the truth as I see it.
Breaking News! Sanders finally endorses (sorta) Jon Ossoff
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/finally-bernie-sanders-says-he-hopes-jon-ossoff-wins_us_58fa47b3e4b018a9ce5b033f
Yeah alright, Bern, good enough. Coulda been more useful weeks ago, just sayin…
@scented and @brony possibly I’m being precious but is it seriously acceptable in your view that I be told ‘fuck you’ for writing a pro Bern comment but my use of shill is beyond the pale? I’ll drop using pejoratives like shill in future, I do hope I can spoken to with a modicum of respect too.
It’s not “Beyond the pale,” it just makes you look like a clueless buzzword-spewing dumbass with all the political insight of a dead quail. Or like every other BernieBro. Same thing, really.
I have no time for tone-policing fainting-couch theatrics even when I haven’t had the stomach flu for three days. Drop the clutched pearls before I puke on your shoes.
@Turtle
What @SFHC said
But also…
Breh, your comment contained 5 clauses, none of which especially pro Bern rather than anti anti Bern:
1)etablishing clause stating your topic
2)schadenfreude about the frustrations of ‘apologists’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean)
3)poll mentioned without commentary
4)rhetorical wake up call to party
5)finger wag at party
Now, assuming ‘apologists’ means us, why shouldn’t I be cross with you? And, if I’m justified in my crossness, why shouldn’t I be vulgar?
@Axecalibur, @SFHC
I appreciate the further delving into the world of Sanders support.
@Turtle
Using words like “shill”, for those of us who keep tabs on fringe movements, it’s a dead giveaway that someone isn’t to be taken seriously in arguments. “Shill” is a dismissive term used pretty indiscriminately by many groups like anti-vaxxers (Pharma-shills), “clean-eating” advocates (Big Ag shills, Monsanto shills), alternative medicine quacks (again, Pharma-shills). It’s sole purpose is to smear and discredit the opponent and shut down an argument.
If you’ve been around the internet in the past 15 years, and I’m pretty sure you have, you know this, and acting like you don’t is disingenuous.
Also:
If it’s a tragedy, then why do you think it’s hilarious and why did you either vote for him or not vote at all?
@Turtle
A couple of issues. You will have to point out specific instances.
1) Was the “fuck you” in addition to or in place of a response to content?
2) Your sensitivity to profanity is your affair. I’m the sort of person that likes to grab onto them and pull out the meaning. “Fuck you” is like white noise to me and so general that I struggle to find offence.
3) When trying to change a culture fast intense dismissal and condemnation of things will be part of how change plays out (overt conscious bigotry for example will need people with such dismissals and people willing to get more specific. Both messages and means matter).
I may not care if it’s individually unfair outside of reasonable social goals and I won’t tell someone which they should choose because of how exhausting it gets dealing with the resistance from the perspective of the affected group of people.
@dreemr
I mean, #notall. But, like, fuck…
@Axe
Oh, no, of course not, I get it. And I don’t want to be divisive just for the sake of being divisive, either.
By FAR the bigger problem in my other resistance groups is intersectionality, and how white (also cishet) feminist women like me just cannot sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up when women of color (mostly, but also transwomen, bi and lesbian women) are telling us how badly we are overlooking and excluding them.
It would make you weep to see how shittily we white feminists react to this. What am I saying? Everyone here already KNOWS how shittily we react to it, THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE I LEARNED IT.
So I’m out there mostly trying to fight that particular fight and metaphorically smack my fellow white cishet feminist women upside the head to STFU and FUCKING LISTEN for a change. So this Sanders stuff kind of snuck up on me, but I’m trying to keep an eye on that as well. No sweeping judgements here, just a bit leery.
What the brocialist types don’t seem to get is that reproductive rights is also an economic issue. Having a child is extremely costly. Especially in the US where there is little in the way of social safety nets. This is why so many of the people that use government assistance are parents, often single mothers. Even for married middle class women having children is an economic impact because women do most of the child care. If someone quits or goes part time to do child care, it’s usually the women. If someone takes a day or part of a day off to deal with a child being sick or having a disciplinary issue at school or whatever, it’s usually the mother. This all negatively effects women’s earning potential and likelihood of winning promotions.
One of the reasons that reproductive rights are so important besides the obvious bodily autonomy issue is that having children is so expensive for women. Something so costly has to be an informed choice. When you force a woman to have a child against her will, you may very well be dooming her to a life of poverty. Anyone who cares about economic justice has to care about abortion rights and access to affordable contraception or they are giant hypocrites. Same goes for any other social justice issue. Jailing black men in droves to feed the prison industrial complex impoverishes black communities. If a trans person isn’t hired for a good job because the bosses are transphobic, that is an economic issue for that trans person. Etc. Etc.
So yeah, when you laugh at people for being concerned about social justice and call them apologist shills and handwave away the importance of abortion rights, you’re pretty goddamn privilege blind.
Thanks all for responses. I can see I’ve started off in bad faith here, apologies for that. With that in mind…
@scented fair enough if that’s how I’ve come across I must accept it. I hope you feel better soon but if you do puke on my shoes I’m sure I can deal with it.
I did not say it was hilarious, what I meant to convey was that I’m pleased Sanders continues to hold the establishment Dems to account, in my view. I am not a citizen and was not entitled to vote, but would have voted Sanders in primary and Clinton in general were I able to. Never in a million years would I vote for Trump.
@Axe on reflection I was much too sensitive re tone, I drop all such protestations and apologise. From what I’ve observed yes you are an apologist for mainstream Democrat party politics. I think apologists are holding back the party.
@dreemr I acknowledge my use of shill was never going to win anyone over, I withdraw it’s use.
@brony 1. It was in addition to. I was much too sensitive about it. 2. and 3 based on 1 I have no leg to stand on.
Lastly an open question to all, is there any part of Sanders campaign you think Clinton should have adopted? In my view Clinton said the right things but like Obama would have screwed the working class over in office in favour of the status quo. I think Sanders would have actually changed things which is why he would have gotten my primary vote.
@wwth – excellent points all around on the economic impacts of childbirth and child rearing. I will be incorporating them into my own arguments. Thank you, I always appreciate these new ways of looking at these issues.
@Turtle – I have to get going this morning but I will return to your question later when I have more time.
@Weirwood where did I laugh about people concerned with social justice? Considering I am a so called SJW I think you’re reading much more into my comments than is there.
Parenting is such hard work. Personally I think mums, or dad’s where they are primary carer, should be paid a wage.
I think the opposition to so called brocialists ignores the benefits to all working class people that would come from bringing down neoliberalism.