Cut the histrionics. Americans aren't being massacred. They are only asked to go to some minor inconvenience to uphold their country's democracy.
The distance between Chicago and Las Vegas is greater than between Berlin and the Russian front line in Ukraine. Are Germans supposed to feel pity for you poor darlings?
The murder of political enemies by the Nazis is usually not considered part of the Holocaust.
The Nazis created concentration camps to detain people immediately after they assumed power. The death camps in which millions were gassed were its own thing within that system.
The detainment concentration camps were for leftists and democrats. Then also people from the margins of society. The so-called "work-shy"; meaning people who had for whatever reason troubles functioning. It would have included Hitler if he hadn't succeeded with that politics grift. Gay people, of course. Jehovah's Witnesses because they were conscientious objectors. Of course, people were tortured and maltreated in these camps, too. But how bad it was very much depended on the status of the prisoner.
The first Holocaust killings are usually said to be the hospital patients who were victims of the Aktion T4 in September 1939 when the war started. Disabled people who needed care were murdered to free up resources for the war effort. One method was locking them in an idling truck and suffocating them with exhaust fumes.
I companies are training models on photos and texts posted only for your friends
Can you give me an example or two of such a model?
And yes of course I believe in intellectual property and copyright, if that was your question. They’re there for a reason,
Thanks for bringing us back there. That's the classical conservative argument. It's not wrong.
One thing you said earlier was: You can have limits on inequality by implementing rules.
So, how do such reforms stack up against your conservatism?
stealing.
Stealing is something you do with property. It's not something you do with privacy.
So what do you mean by "personal privacy"? Most would consider stuff intentionally made public to be explicitly not private. What actually is the problem?
Mostly, they can't. Businesses like Walmart have margins of around 3-4% or so. If the cost goes up an extra 10% or more, that's it.
Besides, I don't see why they would prop up a guy who's ruining them, anyway. Even if it didn't require gifting billions to customers.
You obviously have strong feelings on intellectual property. What actually are your views on that?
Privatschulen gibt's ja schon. So hat man sich in den USA auch gewehrt. Gegen die Abschaffung der Rassentrennung hat die weiße Zivilgesellschaft Widerstand geleistet, in dem der Privatisierung von öffentlichen Einrichtungen Vorschub geleistet wurde. Die Schwarzen dürfen ins öffentliche Schwimmbad? Weg damit.
You can have limits on inequality by implementing rules.
Ok. And how would these rules fare against your convictions on property?
Again, don't treat me like an idiot. Lemmy is full of threads where people cheer on big corporations like Disney when they go to court. I get that you only care about your ideology and not whether Disney, Adobe, or any other of them profits. But that's how it goes. Either you change your ideology or you accept what kind of world you are fighting for.
Erster Gedanke: Ziemliche Irritation.
Zweiter Gedanke: Moment. Das heißt, dass migrantische SuS nicht mehr an irgendwelche "Brennpunkt-Schulen" abgeschoben werden können. Vielleicht doch nicht schlecht?
Erinnert ein bisschen an das "Busing" früher in den USA. Aus den Erfahrungen kann sicher lernen. Ich denke, sobald den wahlberechtigten Eltern klar wird, dass ihre Wunderkinder dann mehr migrantischem Hintergrund ausgesetzt sind, ist das weg.
List order may not reflect order of importance.
Tweet by Laura Loomer reading:
Alligator lives matter.
The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we gt started now.
Yesterday I heard a kid use "trending" to mean popular. This was at a carnival, referring to a ride "trending" in the sense of having a long line. Feel like this is the modern version of LOL and OMG escaping into conversation.
by Zach Weinersmith at https://bsky.app/profile/zachweinersmith.bsky.social/post/3lsr2cs55jc2h
cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/215505
Here’s a fun corporate governance puzzle for you. Suppose you’re a foreign company trying to buy an American steel producer. The previous administration blocked your deal. The current president promised during his campaign to block it too, saying he’d stop it “instantaneously. Absolutely.” How do you get the deal approved?
If you guessed “write the president’s name directly into your corporate charter and give him personal veto power over your business decisions,” congratulations! You understand modern American capitalism.
That is, more or less, what happened with Nippon Steel’s acquisition of US Steel. The company has filed amended corporate documents with the SEC that contain what might be the most extraordinary governance provision in corporate history: a section that literally names “Donald J. Trump” and grants him veto power over everything from plant closures to pricing strategies to executive compensation.
Initial reporting described this as a “golden share” arrangement with the US government, but that turns out to be wrong in an important way.
Historically, when governments privatized state-owned companies, they sometimes kept what’s called a “golden share”—a special ownership stake that gives the government veto power over certain decisions even though they no longer run the company day-to-day or even have a direct economic stake in the company. The idea was “we’re selling this to private investors, but we still care about some strategic decisions.”
More recently, golden shares have become associated with China’s approach to tech companies. Beijing lets companies operate with private investment but maintains golden share arrangements that give the government control over key decisions. Indeed, supporters of a TikTok ban often point to the supposed “golden share” that the Chinese government holds in the company (something TikTok kinda denies, by suggesting it only applies to the Douyin subsidiary, and not ByteDance proper or international TikTok).
To simplify: golden shares are a way for countries to pretend they have privatized industries that are actually nationalized. You know: the kind of thing MAGA Republicans used to call socialism or communism.
Trump supporters hated such things just a few weeks ago. Senator Lindsey Graham recently promised legislation to “remove any existing company that has a golden share structure from any American exchange.” Apparently, that principled stance expires when the golden share goes to Trump personally.
That’s a tweet from Lindsey Graham, just months ago, claiming:
I will soon introduce legislation with my Senate colleagues that prevents any company that has a “Chinese golden share” from being listed on any American exchange and further, remove any existing company that has a golden share structure from any American exchange.
Which makes it pretty wild that the US has now created its own version, except weirder: instead of “the government” having control, Donald Trump personally has control.
The SEC filing contains what may be the most extraordinary corporate governance provision ever written:
ARTICLE VI
1. The Corporation shall not, either directly or indirectly by amendment, merger, consolidation or otherwise, without (in addition to any other vote required by law or this Certificate of Incorporation) (i) at any time when Donald J. Trump is serving as President of the United States of America, the written consent of Donald J. Trump or President Trump’s Designee*, or (ii) at any other time, the written consent of the CMAs (as parties to the NSA) (and any such act or transaction entered into without such consent or vote shall be null and void ab initio, ultra vires and of no force or effect):*
(a) alter, amend, repeal or waive any provision of this Certificate of Incorporation, except as contemplated by Article XII of the NSA;
(b) change the Corporation’s name from “United States Steel Corporation”, change the Corporation’s headquarters from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or change the Corporation’s domicile to a jurisdiction other than a state, commonwealth, district or territory of the United States;
(c) reduce, waive or delay any Capital Investment (as defined in Schedule 2 to this Certificate of Incorporation), subject to receipt of necessary approvals and permits on an expedited basis;
(d) (A) prior to June 18, 2027, close, idle or sell the Corporation’s Granite City Works or (B) prior to June 18, 2035, close, idle or sell any other Production Location, except, in each case of (A) and (B), any Temporary Idling or in response to, or as a result of, a Force Majeure Event;
(e) fail to follow the recommendation of the CMAs (as parties to the NSA) with respect to Trade Actions;
(f) effect any material acquisition of a business that is domiciled in the United States that competes with the Corporation or its suppliers;
(g) implement pricing of the Corporation’s average spot sales price during any rolling six (6)-month period below eighty-five percent (85%) of the corresponding six (6)-month average for that applicable steel product as publicly published by the U.S. Midwest Domestic Hot-Rolled Coil Steel Index (i.e., Hot-rolled, Cold-rolled, and Coated steel); provided, that, for the avoidance of doubt, the average spot sales price will be calculated monthly and will be based on the average spot price for the applicable steel product for each individual customer transaction in the United States;
(h) accept direct financial assistance from the Japanese government, excluding (a) financing obtained from Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) or other equivalent Japanese government related financial institutions on commercially reasonable terms and (b) financial assistance for research and development in Japan;
(i) prior to June 18, 2030, reduce the base salary of employees of the Corporation; and
(j) make material changes to the Corporation’s existing raw materials and steel sourcing strategy in the United States, unless such changes are intended to benefit the Corporation, its operations or customers, which changes, among others, include: to the extent steel making raw materials or inputs are or become inadequate in quantity or quality; and initial imports to the Corporation to accelerate the transfer of technology or commissioning or qualification of facilities committed to being built in the United States (e.g., grain oriented electrical steel).
The practical effect is that Donald Trump now has personal veto power over US Steel’s pricing, plant closures, executive compensation, acquisitions, and corporate governance changes. The company literally cannot make major strategic decisions without Trump’s written consent.
There’s something genuinely novel here. American corporations do not typically write individual politicians into their governance documents. Some might even argue it looks quite corrupt.
Many people have claimed that this is nationalizing US steel and embracing socialism (some claiming this is good, many others more correctly being horrified by it).
That latter link, by trade expert Scott Lincicome, points out how absolutely ridiculous this is:
As we’ve already discussed (twice), there is no reason for the U.S. government to be involved in what is inarguably a small transaction involving two publicly traded companies that are both eager to seal the deal on mutually acceptable terms. The “national security” arguments for blocking or amending those terms are bogus: As I explained in December, “the U.S. military needs a tiny amount of domestic steel output and gets none of it from U.S. Steel,” and security experts across the political spectrum—including officials in both the Trump 1.0 and Biden administrations—saw no serious concerns. The government’s involvement was and remains about politics, and the whole drama serves as a serious black mark on U.S. international economic policy (and Biden’s time in office).
But calling this “nationalization” doesn’t quite capture what’s happening. Nationalization suggests the government taking control of strategically important industries for policy reasons. This is more like… “Trumpalization”? The personal capture of corporate governance by an individual politician.
The structure makes this clear. When Trump is president, he controls US Steel directly. When he’s not, control transfers to Treasury and Commerce—the “CFIUS Monitoring Agencies” referenced in the documents.
This dual structure—Trump when in office, federal agencies otherwise—makes it impossible to defend this as standard CFIUS oversight. Normal foreign investment reviews don’t write specific politicians into corporate charters. They create institutional safeguards, not personal fiefdoms. If this were really about national security oversight, the control would run through established government agencies with expertise and continuity, no matter who was President.
This seems unprecedented, and not in a good way. A private corporation has voluntarily surrendered key governance decisions to Donald Trump personally, apparently as payment for his approval of their deal. It’s the kind of arrangement you’d expect to see in a kleptocracy, not a constitutional democracy.
And somehow we’re supposed to pretend this is normal corporate governance.
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Hattip Carl Quintanilla. https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lrykqtmtu22l
Other goodies:
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lrykxridh22l
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lrykwlw5ps2l
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lryknme2wc2l
Ok. You can't give an actual example, so you use emotional blackmail to discourage disagreement. Noted.
It's called Chesterton's fence.
To cut right to the chase. The problem is your intellectual dishonesty. First, it's privacy, then it's intellectual property, then privacy again. You try the spiel about sticking it to the corporations. When that is debunked, inequality is fine. Now it's about "intellectual workers", as if any of the higher-ups would share the loot.
You don't give a fuck about logic or reason. You're just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. You're working through a list of talking points without ever engaging your brain. A third world guy will do that for a dollar an hour.
And don't tell me that you're doing this for free. Doing free labor for billionaires so that billionaires can get some free money from the rest of us is the stupidest thing I ever heard of. Ahh. But I have heard of it.