politics cw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

ilzolende:

socialjusticemunchkin:

wirehead-wannabe:

psybersecurity:

wirehead-wannabe:

Carson + Paul is obviously the best choice. Heal the world + never worry about being sick or getting STDs + end the drug war. Only downside is spending three hours a day praying, which is honestly the easiest downside to deal with.

Also I think Paul’s running mate bonus is supposed to say “decriminalization” in the last paragraph.

Taken from /u/annextasia at https://www.reddit.com/r/makeyourchoice/comments/4gtu83/2016_gop_nomination_cyoa_oc/

Kasich is better than Carson I think. If you have a legion of 11 million loyal followers willing to heed your beck and call you could do pretty much anything and it would be a lot more fun than standing around all day touching people and feeling guilty every second that you’re doing anything else

I’m trying to figure out why Ted’s running mate bonus is supposed to be a good thing lol

I mean you could probably earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a day curing AIDS and cancer if you really just wanted to use it on yourself. Which is arguably just as good if not better than having 11 million loyal followers.

Or you could tax the ohioans just a few dollars a day each to earn a hundred times more.

Assuming “Ohio” means the legal state of Ohio, and not “the territory which currently forms the state of Ohio”, Kasich/Paul is totally OP and broken.

First, I legalize individuals and communities choosing which state to belong to democratically. The other states may whine, but governance only with the consent of the governed doesn’t violate basic rights, so with Paul I can totally do it.

Then I end the drug war. In Ohio, because I’ve legalized states setting their own drug laws.

I decriminalize states setting their own immigration rules, and open the borders in Ohio, defining ohioans as “anyone present in Ohio, or who announces their decision to join Ohio, or who has previously fulfilled either condition and has not renounced their ohioanness” (thus, making me immune to assassinations as anyone who would try to do it would have to travel to Ohio, become ohioan, and stop wanting to assassinate me and start wanting to protect me instead).

Then I implement a basic income in Ohio (for those who have been ohioans for a sufficient amount of time, as I have previously suggested). And all the other cool stuff, in Ohio.

Everyone would give anything for the cause, so I ask the people to be excellent to each other, and otherwise be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t deprive others of the same right (but if they wish to give to charity they really should prioritize EA instead of Make-a-Wish). Crime in Ohio plummets to zero, and so does poverty, deprivation, and coercion. The economy gets an immense boom from the immigrants, and the abolition of zero-sum and negative-sum bullshit games, and all people working together for their prosperity, like a weird libertarian (or, in fact, full-blown anarchist in all but name) version of North Korea’s propaganda films come true.

The obvious consequence is that a lot of people would want to be a part of Ohio. Just as planned. It won’t take long until Ohio has a population of approximately 200 million and covers a vast fractal shape encompassing most of the major cities.

Then I become the president of the US in the most overwhelming election since Washington, seize control of all brances of the government, and turn my Paul powers to international law instead. Rinse repeat with a bit more restraint to not provoke a nuclear war, and I’ll soon have acquired most of the Americas, the major liberal cities of Europe, and vast swathes of territory in Africa as well (I’m deliberately not touching Russia or China because that way lies armageddon), in this only-nominally-stateful community of freedom and dignity.

It’s immune to invasions because open borders mind control magic, it’s immune to terrorism because surely you wouldn’t want to hurt your fellow ohioans, it’s immune to pretty much everything except ICBMs. For ICBMs my policy will be a clear and ruthless MAD if attacked, but otherwise non-interference in the affairs of the other superpower and the little regional Shitholistan with a superiority complex propped up by its ridiculous nuclear arsenal. In fact, I can afford a comparably submissive foreign policy, letting Russia pick the arctic oil and China get whatever gas fields it wants because our anarchist regime is too rich to care about such slim pickings.

We’re going to outer space instead. All the labor and ingenuity currently wasted in pointless things will be redirected in a program of technology and space colonization (and AI research but I’m assuming no FAI because it kind of cuts everything short and turns things boring). We’re going to cure all the diseases, conquer the Moon, Mars, and everywhere. We’re going to win.

A wise man once asked: “Why does everything always end in world domination with you guys?”

The rationalist answered: “Have you ever tried giving us a scenario that did not have world domination built in?”

To the US I came seeking fortune
But they’re making me work til I’m dead
The congressmen have it so easy
The bankers put gold on their bread
The people of the world are so hungry
But think what a feast there could be
If we could create an anarchist state
That cared for the people like me: 

I am the man who arranges the blocks
That descend upon me from up above.
They come down and I spin them around
Til they fit in the ground like hand in glove.
Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine
And the lines will be formed as they fall –
Then I see that I have misjudged it!
I should not have nudged it after all.

Can I have a long one please?
Why must these infernal blocks tease?

I am the man who arranges the blocks
That continue to fall from up above.
Come Ohioan! To the every last one!
An individualist regime of peace and love.
I work so hard in arranging the blocks
But the landlord and taxman bleed me dry
But Ohio will rise! We will not compromise
For we know that the old regime must die.

Long live freedom, burn the flags!
We salute the orange and black!

I am the man who arranges the blocks
That continue to fall from up above.
The food on your plate no concern of the state
An individualist regime of peace and love.
I have my choice in arranging the blocks
Under promethean rule, what you say goes.
The rule of the game is our rights are the same
And my blocks can make my own-shaped rows.

Long live Ohio! It loves you!
Sing these words, you know what it’ll do…

I am the man who arranges the blocks
That are made by the men from Shitholistan.
They came two weeks ago and back there they won’t go
Now they’re working to our world conquest plan.
I am the man who arranges the nukes
That will make all the Putin keep away
The hopes have come back, and ‘Murica is Black!
Let us point all our dollars at EA.

We shall live forever more!
We can start an altruism war!

I am the man who arranges the blocks
That are building a highly secret base.
Hip hip hurray for the AS of A!
We are sending our men to outer space.

This is #amazing, you are #amazing, 10/10.

Note to self: Sing this when I have microphone access.

Also, orange-and-black is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory), yes?

“Every single man, woman, child, and animal in Ohio” (emphasis added)

See the loophole?

That’s right, folks: nonbinary assassins.

(Furthermore, if we’re going to play with definitions as much as “Ohio” has been played with, perhaps the resistance could have elaborate coming-of-age rituals, without which one is not considered to be truly adult, and then deliberately keep binary people in a liminal state where they are old enough not to be children*, but since they haven’t completed the rituals they’re not men/women yet.)

(Might also be able to get some stuff done through gender abolitionism, which I seem to recall Promethea favours? So there could still be some benefit in this from their perspective depending on the resistance’s methods.)

(But nonbinary assassins would still be the quickest and easiest method, because we already have some nonbinary adults readily available and wouldn’t need to spend precious time training people out of old thought patterns regarding the meaning of adulthood and/or gender.)

*For obvious reasons, the definition of “child” should be made as narrow as possible.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #fun with loopholes #choice games

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Went to check my email and saw that Harper’s been ousted!

*cheers*

(I’m not sure I want to reveal my riding in a public post, so I’ll leave it at that.)

Tags:

#riding-specific version of reaction post available if I know you well enough #wi-ith gloooowing hearts #we seeee thee rise #the true north strong and free #from far and wide #o Canada #we stand on gua-ard for theeee #oh look an original post #our home and cherished land #it’s quite possible there’s already stuff on my dash about this #but I wrote this before catching up on Tumblr

New law makes Canadian Jews second-class citizens | Toronto Star

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

nuclearspaceheater:

ayellowbirds:

quasi-normalcy:

So here’s a terrifying implication of Canada’s new citizenship law that I’ve not heard anyone mention before.

I expected this when I heard about the standards of the new law :

Can a Jew formally renounce their Right of Return in a way that Israel would consider binding?

IDK, maybe Israel would be willing to accept some conditional renunciation of the right? Probably not, though.

This seems like a mess.

to hell with Judaism I’m American

I thought I was safe the day I took the oath

“Welcome home,” they said

(we’ll see what “they will consider expanding“ means)

Tags:

#the people in this riding are ever so polite #they are kind and they do not insult you to your face #they may even believe on some level that they like me #but they’re going to elect *him* again #oh I’ll do my part to fight it #I’ll cast the vote he didn’t think I should have #and it’s not going to work #I see those blue signs all over town and I think of every proudly xenophobic message he’s had placed in our mailbox over the years #one time he talked about asylum seekers from the European Union #he said it was suspicious #as if anyone from such an advanced place could *possibly* need asylum #(I don’t think he used ‘advanced’ but that was basically the implication) #he said this a couple weeks after I saw news about a mob in Hungary trying to lynch a Romany family #to this day it is what I think of when I think of him #our home and cherished land #(it says it in every post I make about Canada) #(the elephant in the room) #(the unspoken word) #(*native*) #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

heartnell:

i wonder what effect wide-spread/public vampirism would have on the evolution of language

 

heartnell:

like i mean obviously i havent slept properly in like two days but seriously how does it evolve without the assistance of former generations dying out. do people use the words “grisbittyng” and “yolo” in the same sentence. are there parts of big cities where its like walking into a different century like are there neighbourhoods in chicago where people literally speak old english and the teachers at the schools use old english and like the people who live two blocks away speak a creole of ge’ez and polish and like. dude i want cultural implications of vampirism that go beyond bloodbanks i want linguistics and politics and medical science and history and religion, i want hypovolemic vampires who speak akkadian in the home and are devout worshippers of inanna and have a home care nurse to help with making sure the picc line theyre getting lactated ringers solution via isnt partially occluded!!! help

 

eighthdoctor:

ok i have no excuse for this but

i just got my drivers license renewed and can you imagine the dol dealing with ‘what is your birthdate’ ‘august 27 1662′ ‘what’

but everyone else too, all the bureaucracy’s gonna be fucked

‘bloodtype?’ ‘no preference,just fresh’

‘sir are you a senior’ ‘i was born in the fifteenth century, i should hope so’ ‘sir i’ll need to see id’

and like—how do you deal with a population that’s collecting social security while being functionally 15 or 28 or 50 what do you do about them when they don’t die what does it mean to have a group whose physical ability is unchanging, is there a vampire draft, is there a separate database for vampire SSNs because they draw social security for different reasons what is going on with that

how do term limits work, is there a mandatory down period, or are vampires bound to the same term limits as mortals and if so are there protests about this

 

heartnell:

afa social security goes i would assume in this setting it would be based on physical ability rather than necessarily age for vampires, which is very similar to what it is for humans: you can get benefits if youre 65+ OR if you physically cannot work, id assume for vampires its just the latter or else “yeah ive been on retirement for 400 years” “you’re the size of a seven-year-old” “yeah and”

hypovolemia DOES NOT count if youre a vampire, some people seem to forget that. there’s IV saline as an adtl to blood, bc quite honestly vampires are wimps and “have you ever tried to drink blood that has half a cup of salt in it?? it’s disgusting”

oh dear god IDs the big question is ofc do they show up in photographs bc if not there is a big market for photo-realistic artists in the govt and in most big companies, bc IDs with descriptions are… pretty easy to bypass, especially when you’re immortal. i’ll bet some places have fun with it, like a lot of art students’ university IDs will be ridiculously stylised, possibly like cubist or some shit.

i assume there are systems in place to keep someone from being head of state for 700 years.

murder???? how do you solve a vampire’s murder how do you identify the victim is it like “so i found this pile of ashes, and this person went missing near here recently, i guess this is our person??” does no one even bother to investigate? i feel like vamps wouldnt put up with that

 

aromantic-eight:

……Forensic scientists specializing in ash analysis.

 

aromantic-eight:

Would vampires have to get special, like, carbon-nitrogen profiles done? Stuff that would stay in the ashes? “We did a molecular ratio test on the ash pile and the profile matches the following individuals quite closely.”

 

heartnell:

thats FASCINATING ngl, although like i wonder how the community feels abt it, like on one hand if someone gets murdered and theres no way to identify the remains ppl are gonna get pissed, if you mandate fancy tests ppl are gonna get pissed (like how they dont want to be fingerprinted since they “arent a criminal”, u know?), its all a mess

 

secretallie:

Okay, but guys: POLITICS. I mean okay, let’s be optimistic that effectively immortal people would willingly step down from power after a number of years in office. Given how addictive power can be, it’s questionable, but like I said, optimism, because otherwise everything is basically fucked and there will never ever be social or political change whatsoever with a monarch/president still subscribing to rigid old timey values.

But still. Imagine a UN convention where a representative of one country still has visceral firsthand memories of how that dude across the room once served as a general in the war that tore his country apart. Or a Congress where former slaves and slave owners have to sit next to each other. Or a forward-thinking president trying to pass a law about gender equality when a significant segment of the population were raised in an era where women were considered property. HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK???

 

ajcrawly:

coto524 old-manrupee armoredhost queenie-bex

 

cosmictuesdays:

My guess is that, because they’d have a greater understanding of what constitutes a long-term impact, vampires would be deeply committed environmentalists. Lobbying for more stringent industrial regulations, strengthening the existing laws for clean air and safe drinking water, increasing EPA funding and collaborating with the Department of Agriculture to fight against corporate lobbyists, that sort of thing. They remember what it was like before the Industrial Revolution kicked in, they know what they’re talking about.

…and besides, would you want to eat something sick and diseased?

Tags:

#vampires #story ideas I will never write

New Hampshire elected its first transgender state representative

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/982833-469/with-state-representive-win-laughton-states-first.html }}

inflatablefilth:

lovewallace:

glamor-pants:

ceasesilence:

WE HAVE A TRANS* WOMAN IN THE HOUSE. YES. HELL YES.

“She said advocating for the homeless and people with mental illness and physical disabilities and strengthening public schools will be her top priorities.”

ahhhh wow what a boss lady *w*

I’m in a puddle of trans feelings

Yay! What an awesome woman!

So I hear Obamacare passed.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

harpalyce:

thingsareswinging:

And a whole load of Republicans are threatening to move to Canada in light of this?

Should- should somebody tell them?

No, no, no. Let’s let it be a surprise.

They…what? Really? Seriously?

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Tags:

#hahahahahaha #ahahahaha #our home and cherished land #there was this one time my mom’s cornea was quite possibly detaching #so she went to get it checked out #cost: $15 in parking fees #(turned out she was fine) #(but now we know)