I guess I'm out of touch. I don't know anything about that. — frank

Search around for long enough to get the algorithm going and you will be flooded with zealot influencers popping up everywhere. He bought Twitter and it's become his own town square, not the public's. He's shouting in there and getting feedback from his crowd.

I wonder if dictator military marches on town squares work for the symbolic town squares of public online spaces? :chin: It would be an apt visual image to how he's being reviewed at the moment.

Oh. I don't go on Twitter or whatever it's called.

Oh. I don't go on Twitter or whatever it's called. — frank

Don't... it's like a bottomless maelstrom for ships of rational people to drown in.

Don't... it's like a bottomless maelstrom for ships of rational people to drown in. — Christoffer

I have a friend who tells me it went to shit after Musk bought it.

I have a friend who tells me it went to shit after Musk bought it. — frank

I don't even know why people are still there. Why it's still used as some official channel for many officials and celebrities. There's been a surge towards BlueSky instead, so hopefully people go there eventually. If people really need it at all.

Take a deep breath, and maybe have a stiff drink at hand.

Limits to growth came up in the climate change thread recently. Here is the US trying to overshoot the limits as described some math dude trying to reason with politicians.

Alas, spending the suffering of future lives for our present pleasure is the morality we oossians have decided to bathe in.

And here is some more detail. This is a bit long, sorry. But worth your time, I think. The comparison with the decline of the British Empire is particularly telling.

As long as society promotes and values stupidity over expertise and knowledge, we will have this kind of world.

The internet eventually formed the best way for the stupid to be louder than the wise, and they are constantly loud because they have time for it as they do not engage with knowledge with the time and care that the wise are. So the wise aren't heard, the few who speaks are drowned out by the mass of the stupid people who flock online as its the only place they get the feedback they crave for.

Stupid people have always craved the attention they emotionally feel is unfairly given to the wise, but previously, you had to be wise and know a lot in order to be heard. No one would invite a stupid person into a news studio in order to comment on a serious matter. But the internet didn't have such gate keepers.

And even the most stupid person will find their audience; like emotional gravity clustering together people into bubbles.

My prediction is that there's going to be a collapse in society, but I believe it will be these bubbles that collapse. At some point, the stupidity will become such a singularity that it collapse in on itself and then we will have the remaining stupid people craving for guidance by the wise. Making it a virtue again to be educated, wise and an intellectual.

Especially since the stupid masses drive away these educated people, at some point those stupid masses will only have one of their own guiding themselves. And we're somewhat seeing this with Trump and his political allies. And we see that many of the people who voted for him are now suffering the consequences. -How soon will they crave a wiser person to guide them, to understand they are too stupid to govern themselves?

The fall into deeper and deeper stupidity will not go on forever. The stupid are doomed to shoot themselves in the foot. The question is what world that comes after; what principles and morals.

Will there be an increased intolerance against the stupid? A rejection of equality based on it? A new form of intellectual class division landscape in which society is portioned up by intellectual ability?

While in the light of how the word is today, that sounds much better, it's obvious how such a society easily spirals down into oppression.

Regardless, any historical polarization ends in some form of large conflict that lifts up the intellectuals who tries to form a new paradigm for society. When and how that conflict appears is unknown, but since the internet is borderless... it will be borderless.

Maybe the next world war, is a civil war for the entire planet. No nations, but the gathered polarized masses of the entire world. A non-patriotic war, based on imagined narratives that clustered together through emotional gravity and bias. Until enough people die to wake people up.

The internet eventually formed the best way for the stupid to be louder than the wise, and they are constantly loud because they have time for it as they do not engage with knowledge with the time and care that the wise are. — Christoffer

I agree. A similar thing happened with the invention of the printing press, which played a major role in a Europe wide witch hunt over the course of the following century or so.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/social-sciences/printing-press-witch-trials/

We seem to have somewhat adapted or learned the pitfalls of printed matter; perhaps we will eventually adapt to the internet. Or is it that the internet is exactly that witchcraft that the ancients were so afraid of? :scream:

We seem to have somewhat adapted or learned the pitfalls of printed matter; perhaps we will eventually adapt to the internet. — unenlightened

The printing press had people of power misuse it and people in power eventually gets overruled by history and the people. Internet has no ruler or power above, so the only way to keep the stupids from continuously spreading misinformation and disinformation is to either regulate what can be expressed online, similar to what can be spread through normal media (press ethics) and what can be uttered in the street (law), and that the consequences of breaking it is as severe as to make the people self-govern their expression.

If that is too much for free speech absolutists, it may be that people get fed up with the trash pile that these stupid people create. The absolute pile of garbage that gets bigger and bigger with each idiot who spews their bs onto it, and the bots perpetuating and exponentially making it bigger. So people will migrate away from any online sphere that cannot regulate this type of behavior, eventually maturing into online spheres that are able to regulate in a similar manner as society outside of internet operates.

The latter is most likely. We're already seeing people trying to find some other existence online than the regular Facebooks, TikToks and X. Bluesky is an example of an attempt at something opposite to X.

But I think that the endgame would be to create actual public service social networks globally. My concept for that would be a UN-funded (by international funding from all democratic nations), social media which incorporates a number of services that operate like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok etc. but doing so through a collaboration against disinformation and misinformation that is more extensive than the billionaires are able to. Since it will operate as a non-profit, it will not drive algorithms for that profit and don't pull people into addictive attention economies that fuel ragebait and hate content.

Such a site would probably function using a sophisticated AI that is used to interpret hate speech, misinformation and disinformation in real-time and if spotted freeze the content for more in-depth analysis. The running of these social medias and the continuous cleanup of bullshit will be the main focus of the non-profit company and funded by all free and normally functioning nations of the world with the aim to battle against services which operate on the previous type of capitalist gaining ideas and political manipulation of elections.

Such a service would essentially create a divide between the free market versions (like the regular Facebook, X and TikTok), and this new non-profit version. As governments will promote these over the older types, it will get into the hands of young people faster and be more of a service to society than operating on profit and the market. It will feature no marketing content.

Governments could then also band traditional market-driven social media, especially for young people and only enable these non-profit social medias to younger people. As they grow older and are given the choice to move over to other more profit-driven services, I believe that the ease of use, the known standards of the non-profit system and the disdain for marketing material being blasted everywhere on the older type social medias, will eventually strangle out the older actors in this field and remove them from society.

A way of dismantling social media and how it looks today without creating a void of no social media at all. It may be that when older generations die, we will see more of this as more technical understanding generations get into more societal power.

But I may be too much of an optimist. However, any crisis of society and civilisation leads to people trying to build something better. When the bad actors swing and hang, there's a responsibility for the survivors to learn from the mistakes made.

This is certainly the heart of the challenges that we face. And this site faces, for example here.

But the threat to decency and wisdom is at every level, from UN to government to every social group to each individual. 'Flood the zone' disrupts every agency as can be seen. I don't think it can be resisted until 'stupid' learns the hard way. I know that sounds pessimistic, but that is what I see - that the world has gone mad from top to bottom, and most of us will be dead before it comes to its senses. Like WW1, but worse.

Totally wild - not unexpected

Want to be very clear, that 'trans' isn't relevant to why I think this is wild. But it is somewhat relevant to why I think its unexpected, inb4 'BIGOT'. This IS wild. However you look at it.

Wolff is fantastic.

Imagine if the present would have been a nice box of tulips! — javi2541997

Imagine if she was aware of the origin of tulips. How likely would you say/guess?
Wonder where the Turks got their original bulbs from? Probably Central Asia where every exotic ( to Europe) vegetable came from via other countries. Only a slight exaggeration.

smile

NA tests show that British Celts had matriarchal societies prior to the Roman invasion.. Wow! — frank

Surprised? You mustn't have had much to do with old Scots and Irish families. Matriarchs are still their backbone in many families and it is expected and accepted as normal by family members of all sexes. Not saying all S&I families though, there's been dilution with out-marrying and some notable variance within social classes of S&I families, anecdotally speaking.

Just an observation of how we come from diverse backgrounds

smile

This is a partizan channel. And here is a Canadian politician talking to anyone who cares to listen, and at the end directly to the US government. Words are not being minced, and economies of truth are not being made.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/young-women-now-earn-more-than-men-as-gender-pay-gap-reverses/ar-AA1A6Gwu?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=e3bc660083b1439abdd6362a4f0927a8&ei=4

That's sorted, I guess :rofl: (yes, I am kidding).

Do women make more doing the same jobs? Or do they just have better jobs?

Almost certainly neither. These discussions are ridiculous and don't account for almost any relevant calibrator.
In this case, it's more than likely that higher unemployment among young men is causing it inter alia. Additional issue is the fact that men are not encouraged to achieve very highly and haven't been for some time (though, this is canvassed in the article.. What can be said for it is up in the air).

Increase in pace of radicalisation amongst young, white males. Notable changes re age and profile.

‘It is about vulnerable guys’: violent far-right groups in Sweden recruit boys as young as 10.
Validated by Trump, Musk and the manosphere, far-right extremists pull in boys online and use bodybuilding and fight clubs to further their white supremacist agenda.

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, after which the US president’s top adviser and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, gave two fascist-style salutes, there has been a rise in children using the Nazi salute in schools in Värmland [...]

Far-right extremism has long been present in Sweden, but – as in other parts of Europe and the US – the last few years have seen a dramatic shift in the dominant groups, their structure, activities and recruitment.

The number of active groups in the Swedish far right are at their highest level since 2008, according to a new report by Expo, a Swedish anti-racism institute. After several years in decline, last year saw an increase in the number of groups “attracting a new generation of young men who have lost faith in democracy”. Violence, it reports, plays an increasingly important role – “both rhetorically and in actual acts of violence” [...]

Stiernelöf, who works for Agera Värmland, a group that helps people to leave violent extremism, says one of the most notable changes is how the age of those being pulled in has plummeted. Some of the boys being recruited, he says, are now as young as 10.

The other notable change is the profile of the types of people who are attracted. “Ten to 15 years ago, it was about the strong, expressive guys who wanted to be seen,” he says. “Today, it is about young, vulnerable guys who often spend their time online and maybe miss social contact. That is a very big difference.” [...]

“It is white young men. They talk a lot about the ‘white genocide’, ‘white lives matter’. They see a threat to the white man’s power,” he says. Role models include figures from the manosphere such as Andrew Tate and Marcus Follin, a Swedish white-nationalist YouTuber known as “the golden one”, whose Instagram feed is full of bodybuilding pictures.

As well as racism, hatred in these far-right groups is also directed at LGBTQ+ people and women [...]

In its most recent annual report, Säpo, the Swedish security service, paints a worrying picture of how the overlap of active clubs and online radicalisation could result in increasing violence in the future.

It warned that terrorist groups are using digital platforms and gaming environment to reach younger target groups in order to radicalise and mobilise them at an accelerating pace.
— The Guardian - The violent far right

We had a rise in neo-nazis in the 80s and 90s as well. Right now it's being catalyzed by social media, which is a catalyst for everything. I usually look at fiction to see when society begins to wake up. We've had the trend of "down with the billionaire bad guys" for a few years, but now we've seen the Netflix series "Adolescence", which deals with exactly this self-radicalization among young boys that's the foundation for this behavior. This means that the public is starting to take note of what's going on to the point it becomes part of the official discussion through fiction.

I've said it before, I think we're witnessing a culmination of the problems with social media and the right-wing extremes rising. These kinds of trends will start to drop once the public realize the problems have moved into their own homes.

@Ciceronianus @Hanover @Maw

Curious how you look at the Paul Weiss deal and the broader subject of the EEOC letters that have been sent. See for instance this revocable resignation letter from Rachel Cohen, the time period that will lapse tomorrow:

https://abovethelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2025/03/Rachel-Cohen-Skadden-Defense-of-the-Legal-Profession-Letter.pdf

So far Skadden hasn't reacted and disabled company wide e-mails, which in itself is an example of pathethically weak leadership if I ever saw it. Even if you disagree with Cohen's position, limiting employees to discuss what apparently a significant group of them finds important and not providing any transparancy on the company position is just asking for having a crappy work environment.

I haven't been here for some time. I forgot (if I ever knew) that I'd be sent an email if I was mentioned. I thought I'd respond in this case. I am responding.

I should say first I don't like large law firms. Skadden is very large. I was once associated with a much smaller "large" firm, with over a hundred lawyers. It was a snake pit. Happily, my experience in opposing large firms has been good. This has been gratifying. Their litigators, at least, are unimpressive in my experience.

Regardless, it must be understood that ultimately, they're devoted to making money, and nothing else. Even their "pro bono" work is done for marketing purposes. They generally have departments devoted to soliciting work from politicians and lobbyists. They're not strangers to the world of politics and its peculiarities.

That said, I feel as Cohen does. I suspect Paul Weiss made a decision it thought was best based on monetary considerations. I suspect Skadden will as well. If they conclude defying the contemptable conduct of this regime won't significantly effect their profits and book of business, they may do so. If not, they'll comply, possibly hoping they'll outlast the regime and have the opportunity to do what's right in the future.

I share in @Ciceronianus sentiments, and I don't cry for big law or expect big law to do anything other than maximize profits. The work environment at big law is crappy regardless of how you cut it. It's about deciding how much of your life you're willing to give away to make obscene money. That they left for ideological reasons is less impressive to me than had they left for family reasons or something that is actually important to me.

The DEI thing had gotten out of hand and this backlash was predictable. At my office, we were trying to get work from a large corporation and they sent us their diversity form. It was a spreadsheet we were supposed to fill out that asked we provide the number of blacks, whites, hispanics, gays, transsexuals, and every category you could think of that worked at our firm, were in management, and had equity. I wasn't going to go around the office and ask each person how they identified, who they liked to fuck, and ask Mr. Hernandez how much hispanic blood he still had in his veins.

My office is diverse, largely because the county I live in is very diverse, so it just reflects the labor market. I don't know what those in Maine or New Hampshire do. Maybe they import diversity from other regions.

I get being fair, and growing up in the south, I know first hand the troubles of racism, but seeing major pushback to these initiatives isn't something I'm bothered by terribly. It had lost it's way. Things aren't ok when you're making a hiring decision and someone points out it's time we hire a lesbian because we're low in that category. And like how am I supposed to know who is who and what is what without falling back on stereotypes?

As to whether it was weak leadership to block the emails, that likely has nothing to do with trying to control gossip. Everyone has cell phones with text, personal email accounts, whatsapp, and whatever else. Keeping it off the company accounts sounds like they're just trying to be sure there is no official company challenge within the firm that might be discovered one day.

Reading how far it goes in the US does make a backlash predictable. The level of detail is unnecessary. Here in the EU it's about awareness and trying to remove bias from hiring decisions. Only quota based rules are about gender in higher management and that's at least 1/3 should be women and then there still is a "comply or explain" exception possible.

Reviewing how your work-force looks like (age, gender, religion, cultural background etc.) can result in an indication of bias and could be reason to look at hiring practises or training within the organisation. At the same time, we're in essence a software developer and women are still underrepresented. But that starts in bloody university so there's only so much that you can do.

Reviewing how your work-force looks like (age, gender, religion, cultural background etc.) can result in an indication of bias and could be reason to look at hiring practises or training within the organisation. At the same time, we're in essence a software developer and women are still underrepresented. But that starts in bloody university so there's only so much that you can do. — Benkei

I do agree that if you find yourself in a community that is 30% African American and you business is 100% white, then maybe you need to look within.

There are interesting stats about gender, particularly in the trades. Plumbers, for example, I saw were over 95% male. There are instances where women just don't want the jobs. As to software, perhaps it is bias at the universities, but we shouldn't be so politically correct to just assume there isn't a genetic component to aptitude. Maybe men would feel inadequte or strange as a kindergarten teacher, for example, and that explains why there are so few, or it could be that sort of thing doesn't appeal to most men for reasons beyond environmental.

I know this is a whole different conversation, but I have reservations about the whole men and women are the same but for a few anatomical differences argument.