The Current Events Thread

[DarkSurfer]

That subreddit has to do something actually wrong other than having a poltical side, and I mean REAL wrong. It took the ages to get rid of subreddits like coontown, candidfashionpolice, the myriad of jailbait subreddits and such.

[Noffletoff]

Politics can drive people to do some pretty crazy stuff. Idk, apparently there was a leaked chat from the reddit admins on them planning on how to take it down.

[Great Eyewarp]

Holy shit, these nominations keep getting worse. Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos as secretary of education. She has no experience in the education system. She also supports the pro-child labor Acton Institute. Can we go back to the "pyramids stored grain" guy? Somehow he seems less scary.

[TheStranger]

Nope, you voted for him, you can deal with all the shit he comes up with. You deserve whatever you get for picking the worst goddamn choice. But hey, it'll be fun in another four years when Trump, (who's a dead ringer for atleast THREE apocalypse fiction presidents by the way) has turned the U.S and most of the world into a glowing parking lot. I always knew you childish idiots would be the death of us.

[Riku]

Did you miss the part where there was only one person in this thread who voted for him? He technically lost the popular vote, according to the more recent counts. Stop addressing everyone the same way.

Quit being a childish little shit. It only makes you look just as stupid as whoever the fuck you're yelling at.

[TheStranger]

Did you miss the part where there was only one person in this thread who voted for him? He technically lost the popular vote, according to the more recent counts. Stop addressing everyone the same way.

Quit being a childish little shit. It only makes you look just as stupid as whoever the fuck you're yelling at.

It's your daisies system! Almost every other democracy on the planet uses a parliament system! If you have one guy representing you and the system is designed to NOT favor the popular vote, and no one has bothered to change it in 200 FUCKING YEARS, dont bitch when people adress YOU in general. You'll notice no one does that to the British or French anymore, but DOES do it to Russia and China.

[Airra]

People have been trying to get rid of the Electoral College since forever; however, the people in power generally don't let the lesser people get their way, and the nature of modern military technology would make a revolution/civil war nothing short of a suicidal death march.

The only thing to do is complain and try to get the rules rewritten for a modern society. The current rules probably made sense a couple of centuries ago, but there's no reason it should be in place during the the current age of easily-accessed information and technology. Despite all of the things we've gained in moving forward, there's too many relics of the past that are obsolete.

The common people didn't choose this system. They were born into it, and proper change has been refused time and time again. The current level of outrage will just have to be made to work, somehow. The only thing to do is to follow American tradition and protest things until it changes and hope for the best.

Really though, I don't know stuff, so I'm no good source of information. But I do see when things aren't working.

[TheStranger]

On a note unrelated to Donald Trump, Fidel Castro has finally died

[Great Eyewarp]

Came here to bring up that Castro had finally kicked the bucket, only to see that Stranger beat me to it…and also threw another tantrum at people who neither voted for Trump nor created the system that got him elected. Most (if not all) of the people in this thread aren't even old enough to hold office outside of the local level, so voting is pretty much the most we can do. We hate this system, but there's not really anything more we're currently capable of doing about it. Like Riku said, Stranger, there's only one person in this thread who actually voted for that anthropomorphic dumpster fire. Quit spitting your venom at everyone else.

[DarkSurfer]

Did you miss the part where there was only one person in this thread who voted for him? He technically lost the popular vote, according to the more recent counts. Stop addressing everyone the same way.

Quit being a childish little shit. It only makes you look just as stupid as whoever the fuck you're yelling at.

It's your daisies system! Almost every other democracy on the planet uses a parliament system! If you have one guy representing you and the system is designed to NOT favor the popular vote, and no one has bothered to change it in 200 FUCKING YEARS, dont bitch when people adress YOU in general. You'll notice no one does that to the British or French anymore, but DOES do it to Russia and China.

Enough with your childish tantrums. The US system is specifically designed so you DONT use a general you when saying someone was eleceted. Not only that, but him losing the popular vote, the eelctoral college being so split AND the current vote audits mean o, you do not generalize everyone for having voted him in. Final. I'm tired of seeing you come in here screaming at people and berating about it. This thread is on thin ice and this is the third time youve done this. Keep it uip and warnings and thread locks are in the future. Harsh? Thats the price of this thread turning into Taboo Topics v2.

[Noffletoff]

Lol at all the people and news sources saying that Castro was a great leader and revolutionary. Even Trudeau said he was a great leader, why did we have to get Trudeau.

[BurntToShreds]

The media's been getting its fair share of skewering since the election. Rightly so, in my opinion.

This piece from the magazine Jacobin gives a brief history of the commercialization of American media, commercialization that greatly aided Trump's election. Various protections that were instated during the New Deal era were dismantled, paving the way for a high amount of consolidation and for media companies to let the public interest take a back seat to profit.

This article from Fortune criticizes the post-election media sensationalism surrounding both "fake news" and Russia. Specifically, it picks apart a poorly-thought-out piece in the Washington Post that utilizes sources such as a conservative think tank with an axe to grind against Russia and an organization/site that practically popped up out of nowhere.

Both are worthwhile articles, in my opinion, for pointing out 1) A systemic problem with modern news and media that resulted from actions a ways back in the past and 2) Media going overboard after the election trying to figure out how somebody like Trump could get elected and possibly trying to pass the blame somewhere else that may or may not exist.

[BurntToShreds]

Yesterday, thanks to the U.S. Justice Department under Obama, the FBI gained more powers to more easily hack into people's computers. AT&T has ran and continues to run a huge mass surveillance regime for law enforcement. This will likely never be brought up during the hearing regarding AT&T's merger with Time Warner, which would make them one of the biggest, if not the biggest, media conglomerate ever.

What these two things have in common is how shockingly little media exposure they got. The changes to the FBI's Rule 41 got articles in the likes of USA Today, Gizmodo, and Engadget and Reuters in the day of December 1st and the day after, but I can't find much in the way of articles on these mainline news and tech news sites in the weeks and days leading up to December 1st. The AT&T Hemisphere program was uncovered in 2013, but the company has faced shockingly little backlash since then.

The amount of complacency and neglect that people show these issues both irritates and disturbs me. I think that a lot of average people thought that after SOPA was defeated, everything would be good from then on out and no steady amount of pressure or scrutiny would need to be maintained. People got over the Snowden Revelations stunningly fast. The only real wins that the public's gotten since then have been the net neutrality ruling in 2015 (and the subsequent court cases that have affirmed the FCC's power to uphold net neutrality rules) and the widespread coverage of the FBI trying to force Apple to break their own security (and to set a precedent that they could get other tech companies to do the same). Apparently people only care when you mess with their ability to easily stream Netflix or if you mess with their beloved multi-billion-dollar tech brands. Of course all of that will likely go out the window with our upcoming President. The only thing that he can't undo is the untethering of ICANN from the U.S. Commerce Department. Glad that got done before the election.

You'd think that with Trump being the President-elect, there would've been more widespread coverage of things that could have the potential to give him even more easily abuse-able power. The Justice Department just gave him a massive new power, and Obama, being the head of the Executive branch, could have easily stopped the go-ahead with the changes to Rule 41. But he didn't. And nobody seems to have really called him out on that or his other non-actions on issues pertaining to mass surveillance.

Complacency and apathy in all of their forms are the worst things for us to keep on with during these upcoming four years, especially in regard to policies that deal with the openness of the Internet and the ability for governments to mass-spy on their citizens.

[Kamak]

Because the focus is ON Donald Trump. And because things like this crop up every 3-6 months (or more regularly but causing smaller waves because smaller threats/less visible need for signal boosting), people get tired of it and tired of caring. After the 4th or 5th SOPA thing getting shot down people think that there's no chance that politicians are dumb enough to pass it this time or that it's not as big a deal as people make it out to be because we survived all the other things happening.

Look how long it took for the Sioux Falls thing to get in the news and NOW it's just being covered as a "Oh these people better move out of here and stop protesting because their lives are in danger from a blizzard, surely nothing is worth staying out in this blizzard when a deadline is coming up to start building."

It's not really shocking that this is happening honestly, at least to me.

[Great Eyewarp]

Finally some good news on the subject of the DAPL. However, I feel I should point out that this isn't over. The protesters have been subjected to utterly inhumane treatment, and those responsible need to face consequences for their actions. On top of that, we still need to be wary of where the pipeline will go and the threats it poses. And of course, I don't see any reason to trust that the Trump administration will honor this decision or give a daisies about what environmental threats the pipeline could pose.

EDIT: FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK