LukeZaz's recent activity

  1. Comment on Patagonia sues drag queen Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement in ~lgbt

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Really? Rewriting my own joke to be funnier, right in front of my crab rangoons? Why, I oughta sue you for a dollar, plus legal fees!

    Really? Rewriting my own joke to be funnier, right in front of my crab rangoons? Why, I oughta sue you for a dollar, plus legal fees!

    14 votes

  2. Comment on Patagonia sues drag queen Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement in ~lgbt

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Much as the suit is justified, I can't help but laugh a bit when it comes to stuff like this: Reads like such a tongue twister. "How much Patagonia would Pattie Gonia gonia if Pattie Gonia could...

    Much as the suit is justified, I can't help but laugh a bit when it comes to stuff like this:

    In early 2025, after seeing Pattie Gonia selling PATTIE GONIA-branded apparel on Pattie Gonia’s pattiegoniamerch.com website, Patagonia again asked that Defendants stop commercial use of the PATTIE GONIA name

    Reads like such a tongue twister. "How much Patagonia would Pattie Gonia gonia if Pattie Gonia could Patagonia?"

    14 votes

  3. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 25 in ~society

    LukeZaz
    (edited )
    Link
    Can't find any good articles on it right now, but a video's been posted that shows a protester at Delaney Hall getting their leg run over and broken by an 18-wheeler after ICE shoved them against...

    Can't find any good articles on it right now, but a video's been posted that shows a protester at Delaney Hall getting their leg run over and broken by an 18-wheeler after ICE shoved them against the vehicle while it was moving. I'm linking directly since it's not a very graphic video (you can barely see the leg at all), but nevertheless, viewer discretion and all that: https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3mmv6laq3j22h

    For some context, Delaney Hall is the camp where a hunger strike is ongoing inside to protest inhumane conditions. The former protest was started in solidarity after ICE began to move the leaders of the hunger strike to other locations.

    Personally, I'm most disturbed by the fact that the protester being attacked hasn't gotten any news coverage that I can tell. I expect ICE to be brutal, but I'd hoped it'd at least not get ignored.
    Edited to clarify last paragraph, as Delaney Hall's hunger strike has in fact received media attention

    7 votes

  4. Comment on Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says in ~society

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    When it comes to absurd voter manipulation like this, it only needs to work once, and suddenly someone owns the whole town.

    When it comes to absurd voter manipulation like this, it only needs to work once, and suddenly someone owns the whole town.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on The Enhanced Games are Sunday. Here's what to know about the controversial event. in ~sports

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    It being philosophy, there's never a correct answer, and rarely ever an easy one, but I'd like to think that "Society should not require you to die early to have nice things" is still a good...

    It being philosophy, there's never a correct answer, and rarely ever an easy one, but I'd like to think that "Society should not require you to die early to have nice things" is still a good approximate goal to be aimed for. It applies just as well to manual labor as it does to competitive sports, and I'd say that these drug games take us farther from it.

    Of course, it being philosophy, I should head off the obvious counter of "What's 'early'? What're 'nice things'?" These are valid questions because my "goal" is still vague. But no real good is likely to come from me defining everything that rigorously; language is always going to be reductive, and I'm just trying for "good enough to fill in the blanks with personal values." Consider those questions to be left as tasks for the reader.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on The Enhanced Games are Sunday. Here's what to know about the controversial event. in ~sports

    LukeZaz
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I think your first point has a lot of issues. First, it's assuming that a kid who's naive about ordinary sports wouldn't also be just as naive about drug games too. Second, I think saying it's...

    I think your first point has a lot of issues. First, it's assuming that a kid who's naive about ordinary sports wouldn't also be just as naive about drug games too. Second, I think saying it's "impossible to catch up" is unfair given that this event has already had several athletes win who never used drugs to begin with. And most importantly for third, if it's kids you're worried about, I'd think the "advertising drugs to children" part might be more important? Because for any kids watching it, this event is functionally doing that.

    As for your second point, yeah, that's more salient, but I think there are way better ways to handle openness for the sake of health. If someone's the kinda person to have a drug problem, it's best they get rehab without also being deliberately encouraged to keep using by a sport. Put another way: It'd be better to have a safe space to come clean without that space also telling them that it might give them a trophy if they dope some more.

  7. Comment on Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union in ~transport

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Sure does. I'm not sure if it'll be enough though. We've had those before, and frankly I'd feel safer with more thorough, systemic change, since otherwise this'll be a battle that'll just keep...

    Sure does. I'm not sure if it'll be enough though. We've had those before, and frankly I'd feel safer with more thorough, systemic change, since otherwise this'll be a battle that'll just keep happening.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Memphis is "under full-blown occupation" by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Here's why you may not know that. in ~society

    LukeZaz
    Link
    From the article: (Several examples are given, but I'm skipping them here in the interest of not copy-pasting the entire article.) [...]

    From the article:

    There’s a massive immigration operation in Memphis right now, but you may not have heard about it. It certainly hasn’t gotten as much attention as past surges in Chicago or Minneapolis—even though it’s been going on since September.

    Hunter Demster, who runs a soup kitchen in the city, has been trying to get the word out. He often drives around with his phone, looking for officers to film as they arrest immigrants. There are more than 2,700 officers stationed in the city as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force; some are from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); others are from other law enforcement agencies and the National Guard. None particularly want to be photographed.

    Which means that Demster is facing blowback for trying to document them. So are other community members doing the same thing. Officers have taunted them, shined bright lights at them, and followed them in their cars. One community member was assaulted and jailed for trying to film. Now, they’re suing, with help from the ACLU, which argues that agents are engaged in a pattern of intimidation and retaliation that hampers their First Amendment rights to record the police.

    (Several examples are given, but I'm skipping them here in the interest of not copy-pasting the entire article.)

    The case in Memphis also challenges Tennessee’s Halo Law, which criminalizes anyone who gets within 25 feet of an officer after they’ve been warned to step away. Task force agents are invoking the law against observers who are not interfering, and sometimes forcing them back even farther than required so they can no longer see or hear. “It unconstitutionally burdens people’s ability to engage in gathering information and recording what task force agents are doing,” ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim told me.

    [...]

    The surge has not gotten much national attention in part because Tennessee’s Republican governor supports it—he has said it will continue indefinitely. And the Trump administration has framed it not as an immigration crackdown, which would get a lot of press coverage, but as a crime crackdown. (Task force officers from other agencies are arresting people primarily for traffic violations and crimes, but they call DHS officers when they encounter immigrants.)

    16 votes

  10. Comment on Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union in ~transport

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Lack of political will. Besides, this is the kinda thing that needs to be solved first, not post-hoc.

    I don't see why that can't happen here.

    Lack of political will.

    Besides, this is the kinda thing that needs to be solved first, not post-hoc.

    6 votes

  11. Comment on Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union in ~transport

    LukeZaz
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Normally I'd agree with you, because self-driving cars are a technology that is – to my understanding – approaching the "safe enough to use" milestone, at least in common scenarios. And...

    Normally I'd agree with you, because self-driving cars are a technology that is – to my understanding – approaching the "safe enough to use" milestone, at least in common scenarios. And theoretically, once it's there, it'll be way safer than people because a machine doesn't really get distracted or angry.

    Problem is, LLMs have reframed this problem for me, in that they've made me internalize just how much our society is dependent on having a lot of jobs to work. Mass automation like this, under capitalism, is very much a threat. Google/Waymo's not about to start pushing for UBI for the gig workers, after all. Nobody's gonna catch them, and many of them will not be able to find other jobs they can survive on. I don't think this is acceptable without solving for that.1

    1. Secondarily though I also think it's a bad answer, because while it would be better if this problem were solved for, I still strongly believe it's just "worse trains" again. Walkable cities would be an even better solution.

    6 votes

  12. Comment on The Enhanced Games are Sunday. Here's what to know about the controversial event. in ~sports

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    I'm not talking statistics. I'm talking about how the games are laid out from the start. Say what you will for how the Olympics and the culture surrounding it is broken. I won't argue with you on...

    I'm not talking statistics. I'm talking about how the games are laid out from the start.

    Say what you will for how the Olympics and the culture surrounding it is broken. I won't argue with you on that, because you're right. But what I'm saying is that no matter how bad it is, creating a competition where doping is literally the point is going to be even worse.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on The Enhanced Games are Sunday. Here's what to know about the controversial event. in ~sports

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    I mean yeah, but that doesn't mean the incentives are to the same degree. There's a huge difference between "failing to effectively combat something, even to a negligent degree" and "actively...

    the NFL and NBA (and Hollywood!) already exist

    I mean yeah, but that doesn't mean the incentives are to the same degree. There's a huge difference between "failing to effectively combat something, even to a negligent degree" and "actively encouraging it."

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 18 in ~society

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Good to see more pushback against this, but I'm a little confused at how this specifically requires "targeting" by Democrat institutions, as the lawsuit claims. I checked the settlement doc...

    Good to see more pushback against this, but I'm a little confused at how this specifically requires "targeting" by Democrat institutions, as the lawsuit claims. I checked the settlement doc myself, and the only time the word "Democrat" appears is here (emphasis mine):

    II. RECITALS

    [...]
    C. The conduct alleged in the Case and in the Pending Agency Claims is representative of the sustained use of the levers of government power by Democrat elected officials, political and career federal employees, contractors, and agents in order to target individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons ("Lawfare" and "Weaponization"). Other well-known examples of Lawfare and Weaponization include the Biden Administration's abuse of the FACE Act, the Biden Administration's wrongful labeling of certain parents as domestic terrorists, and the IRS's targeting of groups based on improper ideological criteria.

    "Lawfare" and "Weaponization" appear throughout the document, and depending on how this works legally and how it's interpreted, I could see a case for saying that this excludes anyone targeted by Trump's admin by way of including everything I bolded rather than only up to where it says "in order to," but I'm not sure that'd hold? If anyone here's got a better grasp of how this all works than me (easy to do, I'm no lawyer), please chime in.

    Personally, what caught me hard was a bit later in the settlement (4B, for those interested) that determines the headcount and duration of appointment for the committee that oversees the fund. Apparently, anyone in that committee can be removed by Trump completely arbitrarily whenever he wants, thus giving functionally-absolute authority over the fund to the person who benefits most from it. Fucking absurd.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Public backlash after Utah county approves 62 sq miles of development sites for data center in ~tech

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    I think that given the kinds of sizes we're talking about here, the opposition would be justified even if the project were an eighth the size of what's being proposed. So it doesn't really matter...

    I think that given the kinds of sizes we're talking about here, the opposition would be justified even if the project were an eighth the size of what's being proposed. So it doesn't really matter if they're not planning to actually build that much or not; it's terrible regardless. And that's before considering the many problems datacenters bring when they aren't enormous.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on The banal horror of Jimmy Fallon in ~tv

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    It sounds like your quote is directly contradicting this? They were proud of being on the list.

    started judging each other.

    It sounds like your quote is directly contradicting this? They were proud of being on the list.

    5 votes

  17. Comment on A Dialogue on Freedom in ~humanities

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    I think you're over-focusing on land when it was given as a prime example of property writ large, but even after that: Land is absolutely still important. I think you've forgotten that unused land...

    I think you're over-focusing on land when it was given as a prime example of property writ large, but even after that: Land is absolutely still important. I think you've forgotten that unused land is still owned.

    Shit, before I was a leftist, I liked Georgism,1 and this was it's whole thing. Turns out, land is three things: 1) A limited resource, 2) a kind of wealth, and 3) a very safe investment.

    It's a limited resource since there's only so much Earth to exist on, so there's hardly any supply. Property is usually inherited, so that doesn't make up for much. And as for selling, well — unless you're willing to pay a pretty penny, you'll have a hard time. Land is unusually likely to go up in value, as any nearby local development makes it more appealing. Abandoned areas are the only thing left, and that's a small consolation given how that land is only available due to both poor quality and a poor future.

    Put those together, and land can end up very expensive for no good reason at all. It becomes a huge vector by which wealth inequality occurs, as the most moneyed classes can buy it up on the cheap and hold for as long as it takes to make a profit, all while frequently doing nothing with it. This gets worse with housing, as not only do you have the problem of affording the land itself, but one of the best ways to make money off a house is to rent it rather than sell. This creates a strong incentive against anyone who isn't a landlord from ever owning their own home. Build all the houses you want, this problem will come right back.

    And if you're stuck with a slumlord, well... that's an awful lot like having a Property Monster of your very own.

    1. Watch out folks, this one's a gateway drug!

    2 votes

  18. Comment on A Dialogue on Freedom in ~humanities

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    It's worth emphasizing that "freedom" in this context is referring to free markets. The idea as I see it is that this kind of "freedom" is good because it leads to positive outcomes for all...

    It's worth emphasizing that "freedom" in this context is referring to free markets. The idea as I see it is that this kind of "freedom" is good because it leads to positive outcomes for all involved in some fashion or another; the appeal could come from raw, literal freedom ("My trading is restricted only by my means") or from a belief that it will result in some indirect positive like innovation. Or maybe some folks just see gigantic tax codes and want things to be simpler.

    I don't really like any of that though.1 Free markets lead to wealth pooling in the hands of the few, and once that's happened, "my means" becomes one hell of a restriction, while innovation as a strategy gets outperformed by buying/sabotaging all your competitors.

    1. Except the tax codes thing, but we don't need free markets to do that.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on A Dialogue on Freedom in ~humanities

    LukeZaz
    Link Parent
    Late response, sorry, but I've been busy! I appreciate the question, though. A couple things, really! When I first read it years back, I saw it as a convincing argument against free market...

    Late response, sorry, but I've been busy! I appreciate the question, though.

    A couple things, really! When I first read it years back, I saw it as a convincing argument against free market ideologies. I still feel that it is, but at the time, I don't think I spent very long noticing the last couple panels. These days I have, and so I now find the argument against absurd thought experiments more compelling, though that may just be because it's a newer realization for me.

    I think we already agree on the latter, as it's rather plainly more useful to compare arguments to the world in which we live than it is to compare them to the philoso-spherical cow, as it were.

    For the former, it was a convincing way of laying bare some inequalities that I saw as inherent to free-market ideologies. After all, what use is applying the term "free" to a market if that freedom is 1) based on ignoring leverage imbalances, and 2) the erstwhile freedom is self-destructive, as each trade further worsens the issue of leverage? Sure, the Property Monster will never exist, but we've still got Elon Musk, don't we? Even if we restrict our thinking to the U.S., wealth inequality today is rampant, and that is at least in part due to the fact that free markets grant large companies better trades than the poor.

    I have other critiques against free markets, of course, but – much like the question of what the solution is – they're out-of-scope here.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Public backlash after Utah county approves 62 sq miles of development sites for data center in ~tech

    LukeZaz
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.

    Last week, the project was approved by the county’s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah residents. Environmentalists have warned that Stratos could imperil the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, including a critical migratory bird habitat, which is already under severe stress.

    The lake is shrinking due to water diverted for agriculture and the impact of the climate crisis, placing inhabitants of the nearby Salt Lake City at possible risk of toxic dust clouds as the lake bed dries up.

    [...]

    The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.

    [...]

    “Instead of speaking with us, Kevin O’Leary went on social media saying we were out-of-state, paid protesters, and we don’t want people from out-of-state making decisions for us,” said Brenna Williams, lead sponsor of the referendum push. “The only thing he’s right about is that we don’t want him, an out-of-state billionaire, making decisions for us.”

    Last week, there was a further twist when the developers withdrew their application to divert 1,900 acre-feet of water from ranching to the project. However, Stratos “fully intends to move forward” with a new application set to be lodged with state regulators, according to the developers.

    This new process will invalidate the objections already raised by Utahns and require each person to pay $15 to file a new complaint. Opponents claim this move is aimed at skirting public disapproval of the project.

    22 votes