The All Things Political Topic - Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

I don't think Australia has any kind of "tracking system" of its people. The closest thing would be the bank knowing most of what you do as more and more stuff becomes payable by plastic card only. You literally become your bank account no. But then, you can have multiple accounts

That was a culture shock when you come from Denmark, where you get assigned a literal serial no. when you are born and it follows you throughout your life. Every transaction, every doctors visit, every traffic fine and the address your currently reside at is known to the governments big database.

The number is called CPR Nummer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identification_number_(Denmark)

The government database is the Folkeregisteret http://www.folkeregister.dk/

The system is/was so effective, the last 4 years I lived in Denmark, I didn't need to do tax returns, as the tax department already knew everything.

Same here, just that it is also the SVR, our version of the social security number. In addition we have a passport number that is issued when you get a passport (or citizen ID, but passports are universally accepted throughout the world, while the latter is only accepted in the EU and associated nations like Norway and Switzerland), and we also have to register our primary place of residence. There is no need to register for voting or anything of the sort, that happens automatically, you just get a notification in your mail that you bring to voting, along with an ID. Said notification also tells you when and where you need to go to vote.

Tax returns are automated as well. The only reason to manually do your taxes is when you have deductable expenses or incomes that are currently not tracked automatically, but the list grows ever shorter.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

With Plantir Technologies Peter Theil already has access to all of my info and is selling it to the government(s), (other) big businesses, and probably the scammers who bombard me with fake calls/texts. If the US government already has so much on us on file, the least they can do is use it in a way that's beneficial or makes interacting with them less of a headache instead of providing wank material to feds. There's something deeply American about having the awful parts of a cyberpunk dystopia married with the bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence of a government that can't do anything but send guns halfway across the world.

[xzar_monty]

1 minute ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

With Plantir Technologies Peter Theil already has access to all of my info and is selling it to the government(s), (other) big businesses, and probably the scammers who bombard me with fake calls/texts.

Wow. That's interesting. Was "bombard" hyperbole, or is the situation really that bad? It's fascinating to note that the Northern European model is, in the US, sometimes labelled Socialist or whatever, and it's said that people over here are way too controlled and placed under surveillance and so on and so forth, but I wonder if the opposite is more true, at least when it comes to the US[*]. I mean, being a Nordic citizen, the state has an awful lot of information on me and ever since I was born I've had a similar Social Security Code to what people have been referring to -- but I never get fake calls or texts and I'm not bothered at all by advertisers or salesfolks or people of that sort. (Well, in fact, the last time I was in San Francisco I noticed how often I was intruded upon by someone who wanted my co-operation with their particular commercial interest, and by about the second day I stopped even looking at them[**]. It doesn't happen here.)

Yes, I recognize you're talking about Peter Theil and not your government as such. And this is slightly tangential in other ways, too, but never mind.

 

[*] Ha. This reminds me: I once had to do some work concerning the soccer player Megan Rapinoe, and she pointed out how Americans are "more free" than us Europeans. Interestingly, not one single example of how this manifests itself was forthcoming. Not one.

[**] My sense is that as far as psychology goes, the necessity of this kind of defense is likely to produce despair in North America. I could be wrong, of course. But it would, in me, if I lived there.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Was "bombard" hyperbole, or is the situation really that bad?

It's that bad. Because of my job I frequently call or take calls from numbers I do not recognize, roughly 2/3rds of them end up being some kind of scams that bypass the "scam likely" filter. It's nearly inescapable and can happen at all hours of the day, a call at 2am claiming to be an emergency is not a great thing to wake up to.

11 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Yes, I recognize you're talking about Peter Theil and not your government as such.

I was talking about both, as the biggest clients of Plantir Technologies are governments. It's a distinction not worth a difference whether a government pays a firm to do something or if a government does something directly.

[xzar_monty]

11 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

It's that bad. Because of my job I frequently call or take calls from numbers I do not recognize, roughly 2/3rds of them end up being some kind of scams that bypass the "scam likely" filter. It's nearly inescapable and can happen at all hours of the day, a call at 2am claiming to be an emergency is not a great thing to wake up to.

Holy hell, that's awful. I can't even remember when I last had a call of that kind. Must be years ago, seriously. And I think I have only ever received one fake text message.

[Amentep]

19 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Yeah, I mean I thought this was all pretty obvious when Betsy DeVos got her time in the spotlight. Rich people really need to get better hobbies.

Since unlimited growth is impossible, the only way to continue to grow (and thus bring value to investors) is to take over other industries.  When you run out of industries (or are locked out by bigger players), you have to begin destroying the services the government provides so you can expand into those territories.  Education and the Post Office are just the 'low hanging fruit' of this endeavor.

[Zoraptor]

Palantir, not Plantir.

Named, of course, after the dangerous and foolish to use seeing stones of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings that drove John Noble to eat some chicken very messily and made Christopher Lee fail his greenhouse gas emission targets spectacularly. It's one of those names where you wonder if Mr Thiel knew about the connotations beforehand or just googled for stuff that would let you see into the future.

Fun fact: Mr Thiel bought New Zealand citizenship and is one of the guys who has built a doomsday bunker here.

 

[xzar_monty]

49 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Palantir, not Plantir.

Fun fact: Mr Thiel bought New Zealand citizenship and is one of the guys who has built a doomsday bunker here.

Yeah, I checked the company and noticed the typo, too. I also wondered immediately whether the name was properly researched. I mean, it does sound remarkably stupid if you've more than glimpsed at your Tolkien. (I'd hate to think that the company bosses would liken themselves to earlier-age Middle Earth characters who could properly use the then uncorrupted seeing stones, as described in Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.)

Unfun fact not intended to annoy: it just so happens that one of the strands in Ms Catton's new novel really is a doomsday bunker in New Zealand.

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

that drove John Noble to eat some chicken very messily

 

The eating of the chicken was fine, it was the cherry tomatoes that gave me pause.

[ShadySands]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Fun fact: Mr Thiel bought New Zealand citizenship and is one of the guys who has built a doomsday bunker here.

Hope it's on a fault line

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

Hope it's on a fault line

What if it's on a ley line? 

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

What if it's on a ley line? 

There be dragons then...

[Gromnir]

23 minutes ago, Gorth said:

There be dragons then...

you missed a william f. buckley opportunity. 

hic sunt dracones.

'course is impossible to post with an accent which evokes william f. buckley (george sanders and ralph richardson would also be ideal,) so perhaps is not worth the effort?

HA! Good Fun!

[Zoraptor]

Good news: the entirety of New Zealand is fault lines, and we're due for a Big One. Now we just need a global calamity that would get Pete into his hideaway so Mt Earnslaw can fall on his head.

[xzar_monty]

"Due" in plate tectonics, though, can be quite different from "due" on a human timescale.

Edited November 16, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

"Due" in plate tectonics, though, can be quite different from "due" on a human timescale.

I *think* it's due in statistical terms. Just based on memory, one of the locals told me while I was living there, the Wellington fault line caused major earthquakes on average every 150 years. It's possible to miss it in a lifetime, but I wouldn't make long term investments in property

 

Bold face by me...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Fault

"The Wellington Fault is also capable of producing earthquakes of up to magnitude-8.[1] While a major rupture on the Wellington Fault can be expected anytime in the next 500 years, a significant earthquake on other faults in the Wellington area have a shorter 150 year return time.[3]"

 

I always found walking down Lambdon Quay a bit unsettling, with all the brass plaques saying 'shoreline 1840', because this shopping mall in the city centre was the old waterfront before an earthquake rearranged local geography. I sort of did the math while living there... 1840 + average 150 = approx 1990, so the next chance of become part of some earthquake statistic was 30 years overdue. I almost felt a bit of relief when moving to a geographically stable area

 

 

 

Edit: That should probably read 10-15 years overdue, as I moved to Wellington in 2003

 

Edit2: They didn't mention that in the job interview

[xzar_monty]

Ok, that's very interesting and I didn't know or at least remember that. So thanks! I did read a bit on the fault lines while I was in New Zealand, but that was a while ago already.

[Zoraptor]

The Alpine Fault has a 75% chance of rupturing in the next 50 years with a magnitude of 8+. The last Big One was ~1720, and the longest projected interval between them is 350 years. The longer it goes the bigger it's likely to be as well.

IIRC Peter Thiel's bunker is near Queenstown, so it'd be the Alpine Fault that would effect it.

[Keyrock]

Make Argentina Great Again 

[uuuhhii]

isn't argentina another massive food exporter

looks like food price have more room to rise

[HoonDing]

At least Silverland can be completely ignored

[Keyrock]

I didn't know anything about Javier Milei until a couple of days ago. He's being compared to Trump, and I can see it, he's got that same big schlong energy and ranting style as The Donald. I believe he's the first libertarian ever elected head of state. I consider myself a libertarian but this guy is faaaar more hardline a libertarian going by the admittedly little detail I've seen of his political views. Sounds like he wants to privatize everything. I think that's going just a tad too far, but, umm, well, I guess we'll see. He's certainly a character, that's for sure. No guarantee this will be a successful experiment, but it will almost certainly be an interesting one.

And now, for no reason whatsoever, Boris Yeltsin dancing.

The clap under the leg is my favorite of his moves. *chef kiss*

Edited November 23, 2023 by Keyrock

[HoonDing]

He looks exactly like evil Bilbo Baggins.

[uuuhhii]

global warming is breaking critical warning threshold

whatever that means

time to panic seems long past

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

global warming is breaking critical warning threshold

whatever that means

time to panic seems long past

Do you believe in global warming that is influenced by the actions of humans, I do