Joe Rogan, is that you?

You have to be careful not to go too far in the other direction as well. We may be blameless for atrocities that were committed by our ancestors but we do bear some responsibility to address the lasting effects of those atrocities and to oppose the continued settler-colonial project of which we are still part.

And don’t take this the wrong way, responsibility does not equal guilt. Every US citizen is not guilty of invading Iraq, for example, but every US citizen does bear some responsibility to oppose the systems of power that allowed such a thing to be done in our name.

I don’t know enough about the history of Australian colonization to speak authoritatively about it. If I had to guess I’d say that those who found themselves on the wrong side of the British empire’s laws were given some kind of choice and found the option of being sent to settle Australia preferable to whatever alternative was presented. In that sense they could be considered settlers, but it could possibly have been a choice made under duress.

That being said it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to hear that they were similarly brutal towards the aborigines as settlers in America were towards the native Americans. History is complicated and there is no black and white, but there are rights and wrongs and it’s important to recognize that while genocide can be explained, it cannot be excused.

It might surprise you that the prisoners weren’t the ones in charge of any so-called prison colonies.

As a white American descendant of colonial settlers, they’re not entirely wrong, it’s just that their anger is misdirected. It should be directed at those in power rather than regular people. It’s unreasonable to expect all descendants of colonial settlers to leave, but it’s not unreasonable to ask them to be aware of their history and how the systems of power and control that were put in place then are still going strong today.

Given I can’t see your original comment they were responding to I’ll reserve judgement regarding whether what they said is reasonable.

In all fairness that was probably necessary to make it to the presidency with her head still firmly attached to her body.

You can’t take back what’s already been given, so you just learn and move on. Whether to keep their art or throw it out is your choice, just don’t support them in the future.

For example, I own a painting by Salvador Dali. Salvador Dali - if you don’t know - is a fascist. I inherited the painting, and even the previous owner likely purchased the painting after Salvador Dali was dead. My owning the painting does not support Salvador Dali in any way, and the painting has nothing to do with his fascist views. Most people would not recognize that it is a Salvador Dali painting and even fewer would know about his political leanings. It doesn’t bother me to hang the painting on my wall, and in the right context and company it can even make a good conversation piece.

Or you could do that by default while very selectively supporting specific artists. That way you can both stay within your means and exercise moral discretion over who you support.

It’s easy to talk out of your ass about how you would have done a better job, but you clearly have no idea what the circumstances were that the prosecution team was dealing with. This particular piece of evidence for example was attempted to be admitted but was denied by the judge for being “irrelevant to the case.” The prosecution was fighting a court stacked against them and you would have had a hard time as well.

Accountability for actions that effect people other than yourself is necessary for a healthy democracy. Your problem is mistaking accountability for persecution.

The real estate tycoons who lease out the office buildings are the reason for the return to office push by the media. They must continue to justify their existence at all costs.

Whose propaganda did you suck down blindly?

Chill out a bit, my comment could not have possibly given you the impression that I’m a supporter of capitalism if you had read it carefully. I began my comment by putting forward the capitalist argument for copyright - a steel-man argument - and ended it by debunking it.

Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain

You said yourself that copyright establishes art as private property (or “intellectual property” if we’re being more precise). That does the opposite of fostering and improving the commons and public domain.

If copyright was not tradeable or transferable

Then it wouldn’t be copyright. Copyright is a capitalist construct, not a public good corrupted by capital.

And, after enough time, I’ve come to know Harris enough to trust her.

Keep your guard up, pal. Election years are mentally exhausting and when the dust clears you might start seeing things more clearly.

At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.

It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they’ve had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.

But why? That’s a very hard sell and a very inefficient use of your time. At best you could convince some anarchists of the harm reduction argument, but you could never convince anarchists to be enthusiastic about voting for Kamala, which is what those very absurd memes seem to be trying to do.

Edit: And very ineffectively I might add. I still can’t make heads or tails of what those memes are trying to say.

My issue with ground news is it doesn’t give any weight to funding sources when making its’ bias ratings, which makes it easy for billionaire-funded media conglomerates with a “neutral and unbiased” front to fly under the radar.

It’s because they’re strange. The message they’re communicating is inscrutable.

Wtf

Didn’t the MCU movies make a point to say it only matters if the person is worthy by Odin’s standards? I guess it just means Magneto meets Odin’s standards, whatever they are.