patrick.net

I don't know, lol! I don't use Windows myself so it's hard to even test on it.

Hi @anonymous I did remove that thread. Insulting the site is insulting me, therefore out of bounds.

If you have constructive comments, I'd love to see them, but simply hating on the site is not doing anyone any good.

Maybe you could try to reach people and figure out why they feel the way they do. Joe Simitian did this brilliantly in his interviews with people who voted for Obama and then for Trump. The answer was that they really didn't want Hillary, especially after she knifed Bernie, and all other considerations were secondary. Simitian was kind of surprised, but it seems pretty obvious to me now.

Feux Follets says

If debt is slavery, we are all slaves given the national and ever expanding debt

Yes, we are all slaves to the national debt.

Even if you won't borrow money yourself, they borrow it in your name and tax you to pay the interest.

France defaulted multiple times in the 18th and 19th Century and contested the top 3 spots until WW1, and still is a G8 country today.

It'll hurt the Chinese pretty bad though, all those Treasuries they hold.

Feux Follets says

Steve Jobs was a Republican

Actually, all of his political donations were to Democrats, and Apple employees tend to favor Democrats by a huge margin.

It's all about forcing people to labor for the benefit of the top 0.001%.

The British were having a hard time getting East African pastoralists to be obedient servants in the 1800's until they imposed a tax on all of them, payable in British silver coins only. Where were cow herders going to get British silver coins? Only by working for their British masters.

We basically have the same thing today. Everyone needs Federal Reserve Notes to pay taxes of various kinds. The only source of these Notes is the Fed. Therefore, everyone indirectly works for the Fed, which is a private corporation, not the government.

marcus says

online ugliness promoted by Russian trolls some of which possibly occur as comments here on Patrick.net by people (I ignore) posing as programmers.

Here is a partial list of examples of online ugliness promoted on PatNet by a person posing as a math teacher. Is that a Russian troll?

joshuatrio says

7-2, and Yahoo called it a "narrow" ruling"... LOL. Great agenda MSM.

The term "narrow" applies to the opinion itself, not the vote count:

"The case seemed to set up a direct clash between Phillips's religious and free-speech rights, and the enforcement of Colorado's law. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court majority on Monday, threaded the needle far more narrowly. Kennedy said it is "unexceptional" that Colorado law "can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions that are offered to other members of the public," but at the same time, "the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion."

In this case, Kennedy concluded, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's consideration of Phillips's case was "compromised" by the comments of one of seven commissioners at a public hearing — comments that Kennedy said disparaged Phillips's faith as "despicable," and comparable to comments made by those who sought to justify slavery on religious grounds. Moreover, the state law at the time afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline creating specific messages they considered offensive, and the Colorado commission had previously allowed three different bakers to refuse to put an anti-gay message on a cake."

Huh, that should never happen.

It does set a new password when you get that link set and display a message like this:

Your password is ${ password } and you are now logged in

Did you use the new password?

Which thread do you mean? You should be able to edit the title of any thread you created.

Patrick says

My politics have already been hijacked by reality. I used to be a leftist true believer who just could not understand how the right was so easily manipulated. Then I started understanding the fundamental self-interest and fears which drive the surface rationalizations on both sides

#MeToo. I remember even signaling virtue by approving of Red Ken's Muslim schools in London, mainly because Margaret Thatcher opposed them. I see now she was right about them.

Many years ago, there was a saying that the further a person is from events, the more likely he is to believe the press coverage; conversely, the nearer to events, the more likely he is to see the errors in the press coverage. I tried to find the exact quotation, but it is buried now under a haystack of recent articles about fake news. BTW, Scott Adams had a really good comment on fake news, balancing outright falsehoods that fool small audiences vs mainstream presentations that are cherry-picked and spun to mislead mass audiences.

In the USA, major parties function similarly to TV networks, aggregating audiences and selling them to corporate sponsors. If you watch the evening "news," you can see a series of misleading stories promoted by public relations firms, interspersed with advertisements for products that would probably make you worse off.

An interesting documentary on the global arms industry included an interview with an arms dealer who said politicians are mostly mid-level sales executives for arms manufacturers. During the Obama administration, a commerce department official proclaimed himself proud that America had 60% of the global arms export market.

Personally, I am either blessed or cursed with a sharp memory. I remember candidate Obama campaigning against "Hillary's Plan," now called Obamacare. I remember Democrats voting against that plan, and voting for him instead. Then, I remember seeing Democrats spin 180 degrees to embrace "Hillary's Plan," now called Obamacare, or Obamneycare, since even President Obama admitted it was the same thing as Romneycare. The Romneycare data disproved all the Democrats' promises about what Obamacare would do: Democrats promised insurance premiums would go down due to fewer emergency hospitalizations, but Romneycare showed both premiums and emergency hospitalizations went up. (Medicare data show most of Medicare's emergency hospitalizations result from Rx drugs, and a PatNet user recounted his own experience going to a hospital emergency room due to a prescribed SSRI.) As I saw Democrats spin 180 degrees, saying the opposite of what they had said just a year before, I saw partisan identity persuaded people much more than obective reality, no matter how thoroughly proved.

Scott Adams wrote about that too, predicting President Trump would change people's perceptions of reality itself. He wrote that people are not evolved to perceive objective reality; people are evolved to believe whatever illusions enable them to survive and reproduce, and those tend to involve agreeing with the tribe.

After seeing through the Democrats' suddenly changed position on health care, I started to see other problems too, e.g. Democrats' support for Islam. Hillary Clinton started the "tradition" of White House iftar dinners, around the same time the Clinton administration bombed America's Serbian allies on behalf of KSA and other Petrodollar states. Russians tried to point out that the Serbians had been allies of the USA during WWII, while the Bozniaks had joined the Nazi SS, but Petrodollars talk louder than history. The Serbs got bombed and prosecuted as war criminals, Islam retained its European territory, and the Clintons and their foundation received tens of million$ of Petrodollars from KSA. Spreading Islam is 180 degrees opposite to everything "liberal" Democrats claim to believe in, and yet it is the policy of the Democratic party.

But now even President Trump, possibly the first President to speak candidly about Islam since John Quincy Adams, celebrated an iftar dinner.

In 1968, at the height of the illegal war in Viet Nam, Gore Vidal said there was no difference between the two major parties because they both get their money from the same sources. At this point, Democrats are more likely to identify as "liberal", and Republicans are more likely to identify as "conservative", but both parties seem neither liberal nor conservative. Two Presidents in a row have doubled the national debt, and the current incumbent seems likely to do the same if he can. Republicans increased federal power with the "Patriot Act", and Democrats went even further with Obamacare. Both parties agree on what matters most to them: consolidate their own power, including especially in the form of revenue/spending.

@marcus, I wondered whether even to reply to your comment below, but I will reply here rather than push your dishonest thread that you admit was another example of you trolling:

marcus says

Actually, I have to admit that curius2 is right about one thing, that it was a troll. I thought I would try your technique (what you constantly with the word liberals) with Trump supporters. If I understand your response, is it to defend that the protesters aren't neo nazis ?

But yeah the connection to Trump supporters was a total troll. I don't remember the last time I posted a total troll post, it was probably years ago.. Hell, even my regular comments aren't that frequent anymore.

curious2 says

show an emotional obsession with attention/ignorance

I see you can't miss a chance after all these years to spew your hate and inability to forgive me for the couple times I politely corrected intellectual mistakes you made. Sad. But thank you for at least not constantly stalking me like you used to. At least you've learned to control those impulses a little.

I would really appreciate seeing even one example where you "politely corrected intellectual mistakes" that I supposedly made. To the contrary, your comments on PatNet including in this very thread show that you have repeatedly exploded emotionally with baseless insults, profanity, and lies, and demonstrated a failure to comprehend math and logic for example the rules governing ordinal numbers and significant figures. Nobody would bother stalking you, and I have not, but you have repeated that lie for years, even as you used a separate browser to follow my comments while pretending to ignore me. If you can find an example of what you claim, please re-post it.

curious2 says

people are not evolved to perceive objective reality; people are evolved to believe whatever illusions enable them to survive and reproduce, and those tend to involve agreeing with the tribe.

Great quote. Had not seen that one before, but it gets to the center of politics.

curious2 says

In the USA, major parties function similarly to TV networks, aggregating audiences and selling them to corporate sponsors. If you watch the evening "news," you can see a series of misleading stories promoted by public relations firms, interspersed with advertisements for products that would probably make you worse off.

Another great insight. To a large degree, public opinion is created by PR firms, which themselves are very careful to hide in the background. Since there is so little independent journalism these days, it's pretty easy for them to hide.

And it's not just the evening news. Sadly, the NY Times, WaPo, and NPR are also full of stories that our owners want made into "truth", like the deliberately fabricated Russia story. And there is almost complete silence on stories that our owners don't want us to see, like Saudi and Qatari sponsorship of worldwide Islamic terrorism.

Patrick says

Great quote. Had not seen that one before, but it gets to the center of politics.

Scott Adams wrote it a few different ways in his Dilbert blog, before he switched to vlogging (which I don't watch).

"In a rational world it would be obvious that Trump supporters include lots of brilliant and well-informed people. That fact – as obvious as it would seem – is invisible to the folks who can’t even imagine a world in which their powers of perception could be so wrong. To reconcile their world, they have to imagine all Trump supporters as defective in some moral or cognitive way, or both.

As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads. Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough."

Adams links to Donald Hoffman's theorem on why humans are not evolved to perceive reality:

"Given an arbitrary world and arbitrary fitness functions, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but that is just tuned to fitness."

For example, Muslims tend to have more children than atheists. Muslims are neither more intelligent (statistics say they are on average less intelligent) nor better at perceiving reality, but Islam tunes them to evolutionary fitness (reproduction and killing rivals). The western welfare state is particularly vulnerable to getting taken over by such demographics, because the disadvantages of Islamic dysfunction become less relevant.

curious2 says

Scott Adams wrote it a few different ways in his Dilbert blog, before he switched to vlogging (which I don't watch).

"In a rational world it would be obvious that Trump supporters include lots of brilliant and well-informed people. That fact – as obvious as it would seem – is invisible to the folks who can’t even imagine a world in which their powers of perception could be so wrong. To reconcile their world, they have to imagine all Trump supporters as defective in some moral or cognitive way, or both.

As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads. Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough."

Wow, the Scott Adams post is so excellent I'm going to create a thread quoting it.

tatupu70 says

embassy after he came on the promise of getting a marriage license....

@tatupu70 / LeonDurham / JoeyJoeJoeJr, where did you read that Jamal Khashoggi went to the KSA embassy to get a marriage license? He was not in the embassy, and KSA had not promised him a marriage license, so I am curious where you got your misinformation.

curious2 says

@tatupu70 / LeonDurham / JoeyJoeJoeJr, where did you read that Jamal Khashoggi went to the KSA embassy to get a marriage license? He was not in the embassy, and KSA had not promised him a marriage license, so I am curious where you got your misinformation.

lol--I went back and edited the post to say Consulate rather than Embassy and "papers so he could obtain a marriage license" instead of marriage license.

tatupu70 says

"papers so he could obtain a marriage license"

Khashoggi wanted papers confirming he had divorced his wife in KSA, where Islamic law allows men a unilateral right to divorce paying only 130 days of spousal support.

curious2 says

where Islamic law allows men a unilateral right to divorce paying only 130 days of spousal support.

Hey that's something worthwhile adopting from over there for once ;)

mell says

curious2 says

where Islamic law allows men a unilateral right to divorce paying only 130 days of spousal support.

Hey that's something worthwhile adopting from over there for once ;)

I have commented previously that we should really encourage certain people to praise Islam. The guy convicted of sexual assault at Stanford? He should convert to Islam, which would have required 4 witnesses to convict him. There were only 2 witnesses, so he should demand acquittal saying his conviction violates his right to religious freedom. Even the President could talk about how much $$$ he would have saved if he could have divorced his wives the Islamic way: 130 days of spousal support, then nothing. Let TDS do the rest: OrangeManBad praised Islam? Islam must be bad!

tatupu70 says

lol--I went back and edited the post to say Consulate rather than Embassy and "papers so he could obtain a marriage license" instead of marriage license.

Speaking of the Chinese, I know who will really be donating to the Dems going forward!

I'm an avid newshound but totally missed this.

New York: Arab driver gets out of car to assault elderly Jew crossing street, screams Allah Akbar.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6276297/Livery-cab-driver-kept-shouting-Allah-beat-Brooklyn-Jewish-man-way-synagogue.html

Still on Twitter and Paypal has not refused service to twitter, either.

This is the Judeo-Bolshevik that edits the Forward, the dirty Red Witch.

Did you miss this one? I sure did:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/photographer-dies-6-months-after-taking-beating-in-alleged-racial-attack-prosecutors

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Did you miss this one? I sure did:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/photographer-dies-6-months-after-taking-beating-in-alleged-racial-attack-prosecutors

Amazing. MSM is quoted to prove that MSM doesn't cover a news story.

tatupu70 says

Amazing. MSM is quoted to prove that MSM doesn't cover a news story.

Funny, I don't remember CNN or MSNBC saying "Rabid Anti-Semitism in America: Hassidic Man Brutally Beaten by Middle Easterner" and making it top news.

Bad for the narrative.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Funny, I don't remember CNN or MSNBC saying "Rabid Anti-Semitism in America: Hassidic Man Brutally Beaten by Middle Easterner" and making it top news.

Bad for the narrative.

Have you watched every story on MSNBC and CNN? Do you remember every one?

I imagine there is a lot you don't remember....

tatupu70 says

Have you watched every story on MSNBC and CNN? Do you remember every one?

I imagine there is a lot you don't remember....

So, there's a hate crime in broad daylight and it's barely reported? Pretty odd, eh?

We all know if it was a White Dude beating a Jew, it would be the story of the week at least. And blamed on Trump to boot.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

So, there's a hate crime in broad daylight and it's barely reported? Pretty odd, eh?

Was it barely reported?

It was probably a false flag anyway. Did you check the guy's twitter account?

tatupu70 says

It was probably a false flag anyway. Did you check the guy's twitter account?

I wish Slate would. They read all Bowers tweets but ignored the ones where he damned Trump (and his supporters, as well as "Q") as a Jew Stooge.

But somehow they "Forgot" to mention that in their hit piece.

Tim Aurora says

I am a never Trumper for the simple reason that he is a uncivil, stupid and a liar . The main reason is that he is stupid.

@Tim Aurora, you posted this in a thread about a different topic, but I wanted to ask you about it, so I am replying here. IRL, a friend who can't stand being contradicted keeps calling the President an "idiot," and I can't understand why. Perhaps you could explain? What makes you believe the President of the United States, who earned a degree from Wharton and succeeded in almost everything he ever set out to do, including beating more than a dozen candidates for the Presidency who were mostly desperate to win, is (in your opinion) "stupid"?

APHAman says

Did he intend to go bankrupt running casinos and investing in Manhattan Real Estate?

Did he go bankrupt?

HEYYOU says

@HEY YOU, I am trying to understand your use of this meme in the context of your recent comment history. Little help?

curious2 says

a friend who can't stand being contradicted keeps calling the President an "idiot," and I can't understand why. Perhaps you could explain?

Can verify. Trump is kinda dim. Genial, shrewd, and has a big personality, but not really intelligent. If you don't think Papa Fred got him into all those fancy pants schools then you're fooling yourself.

Look, he's certainly not stupid, and it's not like he has Downs Syndrome, but at some point his 'successes' have clearly transcended his level of intelligence. And that's actually fine: it's perfectly acceptable to not be terribly bright and still be in charge of a large institution or corporation, it happens all the time. I'd wager George W. was a good deal dumber than Trump. Reagan was not only an academic lightweight but was probably putting his daily briefing in the White House refrigerator for the last two years of his presidency. Obama is a pretty smart guy and I know how many of you feel about him, but he still ran the show for 8 years and look, we're still here. Clinton is actually brilliant- a Rhodes Scholar- and things seemed to generally be run the way any democratic president would run things. Meh.

Point being, your academic abilities, while helpful, really only mean so much. The presidency is a lot more than that, plus it's equally important who surrounds and supports you in the administration.

But yeah, Trump isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Have lots of friends from Apprentice that could back that up.

Evan F. says

Trump is kinda dim. Genial, shrewd, and has a big personality, but not really intelligent.

Can you distinguish between "shrewd" and "intelligent" for me?

First definition I found says shrewd is "Characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence, and often a sense of the practical."

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Did you miss this one? I sure did:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/photographer-dies-6-months-after-taking-beating-in-alleged-racial-attack-prosecutors

I did miss that one.

Let's see, Muslim black man murders Jewish white man. (Assuming Muslim from the name Jamil and the Mohammedesque beard.)

Muslim gets a point, black gets a point, man loses a point: net +1
Jewish gets a point, white loses a point, man loses a point: net -1

By the liberal math of victimhood, such a story must be relegated to a small article on the back pages if reported at all.

Evan F. says

Can verify. Trump [is] shrewd....

Look, he's certainly not stupid.... I'd wager George W. was a good deal dumber than Trump.

BTW, W holds degrees from Yale and Harvard. You can say he got help getting in, but he had better grades at Yale than John Kerry. If you didn't graduate from Oxford, Cambridge, or MIT, then I don't see how you could call him dumb.

I don't understand why some people insist on calling other people "stupid," "idiots" (IQ below 26), "dimbulbs," or "retarded" when those labels are plainly false. Marcus calls almost everyone he disagrees with a dimbulb, including @CBOETrader, who succeeded in the exact profession where Marcus admitted having failed. (Full disclosure: Marcus has also called me "retarded", and deleted a whole thread where I had proved him wrong about a rule of math, which he claims to teach.) It seems to reflect a sort of willful ignorance, stubbornly refusing to consider the possibility that intelligent people can disagree and even be wrong.

I think it harms debate and public discourse, because people retreat into their echo chambers where the "other" side is always "stupid" instead of having anything worthwhile to say. It becomes an excuse for people to shout slogans at each other instead of trying to reason together.

curious2 says

Yale than John Kerry.

Both John Kerry and Al Gore Jr are morons. Gore, after Harvard undergrad, flunked out of Vanderbilt Law.

Calling Trump stupid is just another form of "orange man bad".

And what we should care about is results and Trump has been more effective at getting good results than any other president in our lifetimes.

The reduction in nuclear tension with N. Korea alone is a major accomplishment which has made us all safer. Every American should be grateful for that at the very least.