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In SoylentNews' continuing coverage of the aftershocks of the US Presidential election, it appears that tech will factor large in a Trump administration:
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel is putting together a brain trust of Silicon Valley insiders to share ideas with the transition team for President-elect Donald Trump. But he's having trouble finding takers.
For the full story, consult the Washington Post article.
Some further tidbits:
Thiel, a libertarian who was shunned by his tech industry peers for being a Trump supporter, is pitching his personal network of entrepreneurs on the opportunity to influence an incoming administration that is somewhat of a blank slate when it comes to technology policy. Because Trump had so few ties to the world of tech, Thiel will have an unusually powerful influence on the new administration, the people familiar with his thinking said.
This much we already knew. Real estate development is ancient tech. Heck, Emperor Nero of Rome did it when he let Rome burn so he could build new condos! But there is resistance in the Valley of Silicon.
But in the liberal bastion of Silicon Valley — where Trump is despised and even admitting you're a Republican can hurt your candidacy for a job – that coveted opportunity has been fraught with challenges. And some people have turned him down altogether. Thiel declined to comment.
We may have reached the corporate defined limits of fair use, so I encourage one and all to read the complete WaPo article. I have not heard anything about an offer being made to The Mighty Buzzard yet, but it is in the range of possibility!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 28 2016, @03:00PM
Thiel, a libertarian who was shunned by his tech industry peers for being a Trump supporter
Part of the hatred he attracts is he's gay and the fake news sites (CNN, CBS, huffpo, buzzfeed, etc) are going insane with anti-trump fake news about how Trump is going to put all the gays in camps and ovens and all the usual stuff. That results in a massive cognitive dissonance headaches when gay folks like Thiel or Milo support Trump, and the massive cognitive dissonance headache gets psychologically transferred such that the SJW types might hate Trump but they despise Thiel even worse because he's ground zero of their headache.
You'd think that eventually if someones mental map doesn't cooperate well with observations of reality that they'd just cave in and operate under a new mental map, something more alt-right and less commie, but a substantial fraction of the countries lefties are basically having a public mental breakdown instead, and part of that is lashing out, so Thiel is getting tons of inbound hate, all from temporarily mentally ill people. Its moderately fun to watch although I suspect its no fun for Thiel himself to personally experience.
Thiel's politics are a little behind the times in that libertarians are just alt-right who haven't "woke" yet. Its probably easier to get outed as gay than get outed as alt-right so maybe he shitposts all day long on /pol/ secretly in the closet, who knows.
I have this weird feeling Thiel is going to end up as the first publicly gay US president, or maybe veep. I'm pretty sure its not going to be that McMuffin guy who ran in Utah, and someone like Milo isn't really a leader as much as a pot-stir-er
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @03:42PM
Examples of gay CEOs include David Geffen (movies) and Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone). Both came out long late in their careers, and both had a reputation of being brutal bosses. I suspect the same is true of Thiel.
(Score: 1) by DannyB on Monday November 28 2016, @04:48PM
Obviously, Apple is a company not noteworthy enough to mention its CEO. So I won't mention it here.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 28 2016, @04:12PM
Part of the hatred he attracts is he's gay and the fake news sites (CNN, CBS, huffpo, buzzfeed, etc) are going insane with anti-trump fake news about how Trump is going to put all the gays in camps and ovens and all the usual stuff. That results in a massive cognitive dissonance headaches when gay folks like Thiel or Milo support Trump, and the massive cognitive dissonance headache gets psychologically transferred such that the SJW types might hate Trump but they despise Thiel even worse because he's ground zero of their headache.
Wow, you really set yourself up some hoops to jump through there, didn't you?
Did it occur to you that maybe the "SJW types" just dislike him because he supports Trump? That certainly sounds like a simpler hypothesis. Do you really believe that "SJW types" are so simplistic that they place all their like / dislike in someone based solely on whether they are part of some minority or not? If so, I think you need to get out more and meet some actual people.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday November 28 2016, @04:49PM
based solely on whether they are part of some minority or not?
Well identity politics is THE basis of Progressive politics, is it not? And there is plenty of precedent for special hate for traitors to their 'identity group'. Look at the hatred and the most vile abuse not only heaped on black conservatives, the total lack of concern by all the usual people who pretend to be outraged for a living. Justice Thomas is a perfect example but ask any black in the Tea Party what their email and social media look like. Raise yer hand if you would volunteer to presort the inbox of Diamond and Silk, the two black ladies who made all those pro Trump YouTube videos. Or look at women who refuse to salute smartly and follow their 'leaders' in the feminist movement. Examples range from the late Phyllis Schlafly to Gov Palin for a recent one. Why is it hard to believe Mr. Thiel is getting an extra helping of shit for being a gay man who rejects identity politics.
Personally I think it sucks for the individuals who must endure the hazing, but it is great in one very important way for the Right. We do not have many minorities on the Right but because of the extreme social pressure the ones who do break through the line and join tend to be the best and brightest. When they break to the right they tend to actually know WHY they are supporting the positions they take and they believe it strongly enough to act on it despite the price they know they will pay with family and former friends.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 28 2016, @07:35PM
No.
FWIW I consider myself a minarchist, but most minarchists think I want too much government. I'm definitely NOT a Libertarian. But most progressives have many goals, and don't consider sexual orientation important. They *do* tend to defend minorities in a way that I consider excessive, but my reasons for thinking it excessive is that I don't like giving the government that much power. If the government is going to have the power anyway for other reasons, then I think it should be used to level the playing field.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:37PM
Do you have a special pronoun you'd like us to use?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @09:48PM
> Well identity politics is THE basis of Progressive politics, is it not?
Identity is the basis of all politics. If you don't think non-progressive politics aren't all about identity, then you just can't see it because its the majoritarian identity and you are so immersed in it that you think its just the natural state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @10:32PM
We do not have many minorities on the Right but because of the extreme social pressure the ones who do break through the line and join tend to be the best and brightest.
You meant "the most mercenary and avaricious"? Better to be a Black Republican than a big fish in a large ocean, I always say! (Say Hi! to Justice Thomas's wife for me!)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Monday November 28 2016, @07:50PM
From what I've seen, that's exactly what they do. Maybe YOU need to get out and meet some of these people yourself.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 28 2016, @10:32PM
Well, I'm still not sure the "SJW" actually exists. As far as I can tell it's just another faddy label dreamed up by some right-wing website or thinktank somewhere that can be slapped onto anybody they disagree with, in lieu of having to actually present an argument. If I ever do meet a real one though, I suspect I will find them to be as complex and nuanced as any other human being, and not the one-dimensional strawman stereotype that it is convenient for some people to reduce their political opponents to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @01:43AM
>I'm still not sure the "SJW" actually exists.
Read the guardian sometime, they exist. They seem to have gutted the left too, makes me smh to be honest fam, identity politics is a distraction, its not about identity, its about class, identity politics has only divided the left, the fight should be between the 1% and the rest of us, instead its about who is the biggest victim, we have been divided and we have been conquered.
These days I see no solution, the left has no answers and the answers from the right make me want to vomit.
So it goes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:26AM
>I'm still not sure the "SJW" actually exists.
Read the guardian sometime, they exist.
No, they do not. SJWs are like th boogey man for alt-right types. They need to define themselves as something other than a bunch of racist misogynist homophobic gays, so they invented the SJW. It is under their beds. It is opposing them at all levels. There are SJWs in the State Department, and Tailgunner Joe has a list! In other words, they do not exist. (Except, we are everywhere, we surround you. We are watching you. Especially jmorris, though I do not know why.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @07:23AM
I see what you did there.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 29 2016, @07:32PM
From what I've seen, that's exactly what they do. Maybe YOU need to get out and meet some of these people yourself.
So, "SJWs" should like Thiel, since he's a minority, but they don't. Hypothesis disproved.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday November 29 2016, @08:12PM
They absolutely hate Thiel and people like him - people that refuse to fit into the world as they define it.
One of the funnier videos of them has a whole mob of what appear to be mostly affluent, privileged, white college students stridently arguing with an older, black police officer. At first they respond to his skin color and try to appeal to his presumed solidarity, but when he disagrees with them they wind up dismissing his opinions and experiences and trying to lecture him on what racism means!
So what I see with them is a very strict, very naïve set of definitions and dogmas, essentially a creed, that they memorize and chant and drill into themselves. This removes all the doubt from their life, surely one of the reasons it's attractive to converts, and it's based on completely embracing identity politics, to the point that they deny that any other sort of politics is *even possible.*
Now if all politics is identity politics, then 'legitimate disagreements' aren't really possible. The only way someone could disagree with them on anything substantial would be by identifying with the oppressor rather than the oppressed. A black (or gay) conservative isn't just a human being with a right to make up his own mind on issues who has a habit of doing so in ways you have a habit of disagreeing with. No, he's a traitor to his own identity, he's a 'self-hating' $whatever, a danger to his community (isn't that the standard for getting the police involved?) and probably literally Hitler.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @12:50AM
You mean the people who stubbornly cling to identity politics even after being point-blank told by their own candidates that it cost them the elections?
The people who think "You're a white male" is a self-explanatory counter-argument to anything they hear from someone that they perceive to be a white male?
Yes, I think they're a little preoccupied with whether or not someone is part of a minority.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday November 28 2016, @04:59PM
"You'd think that eventually if someones mental map doesn't cooperate well with observations of reality that they'd just cave in and operate under a new mental map"
On this very site a die-hard anti-Trump lesbian told me to "take your [personal sexual assault experience] and shove it up your grandmother's ass." because "I don't speak for sexual assault victims" even though I am one.
It was not enlightening to me, as I have been ridiculed and lambasted by, funnily enough, more lesbians about that experience more than I have been by straight white men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:03PM
As a straight White Man I don't find your experience - of which I have no details of - funny in the least. SJWs are sick people who drove me from the left simply by me observing their behavior, there is no cure for them.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday November 28 2016, @06:20PM
The cure for them is the same as their counterparts/progenitors on the right: IGNORE THEM. Understand they're a mirror image of the "Children of the Sun" types; same pathology, opposite polarity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @11:14PM
On this very site a die-hard anti-Trump lesbian told me to "take your [personal sexual assault experience] and shove it up your grandmother's ass."
So, just curious, how did that work out for you? Or did you just decide not to try it?
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday November 28 2016, @05:57PM
I'm still in the process of being gobsmacked by the revelation that there is a gay lifestyle [advocate.com]!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday November 28 2016, @06:19PM
This is baffling to me too. How is who you love a culture or identity? Or is this mostly about gay men, not gay women?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:34PM
A gay friend told me that the main thing, once you realize you are gay, is: "To lisp, or not to lisp, THAT is the question!" Seemed, unlike the whole being gay thing, to be a matter of culture.
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Tuesday November 29 2016, @12:45AM
My head is spinning from that article. I think that might be deliberate. I'll need to go back a read it again to figure out what is going on there.
I guess the important distinction for me, is whenever we start dividing people into groups, you risk alienating one group in favor of another. I know it's simplistic, but do we have to be so divisive over every goddamn thing in this world? Can't the guys across the street from me, just be people? Can't my friend from college who transitioned a couple years ago, again just be a person? It's certainly how I think of and interact with them. Isn't that what every one deserves? I'm happy to be enlightened on this if I'm off the mark.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:20AM
I know it's simplistic, but do we have to be so divisive over every goddamn thing in this world?
We are talking about the Presidency of the United States of America, which, however much we wish it were not so, it a major world power.
Can't the guys across the street from me, just be people?
Do the guys across the street from you have billions of dollars to influence policy and support Trump? If so, I suggest either a pre-emptive first strike, or moving.
Can't my friend from college who transitioned a couple years ago, again just be a person? It's certainly how I think of and interact with them. Isn't that what every one deserves? I'm happy to be enlightened on this if I'm off the mark.
The entire "gay" thing is a rubber herring, something only used by heteros in their sick sexual activities. No, in fact, why do you think that jmorris and others bring this up? No one is hating on Thiel because he is gay. Some of my best Venture Capitalists are gay! See? No, what is hateful is that a very rich gay guy is supporting a president elect whose vice-president elect would throw him into hell for being gay, and since that is beyond human ability, perhaps throw him into a "homosexual cure" programs, except Peter has too much money. This is the hypocrisy that bothers the left, who tend to be bothered by hypocrisy even though it never seems to bother Republicans.
.
So, with the whole "gay" issue out of the way, what do you see coming from the fact that Thiel is picking the tech advisers for Trump? Good tech? Bad tech? Tech where there is a shitload of money to be made, whether you are gay or a former truck driver in Arkansas? That is the issue, where politics negatively affects tech, and this is where everyone with some expertise in tech ought to speak up, and rebel!
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Tuesday November 29 2016, @10:52PM
My reaction was only to the "Gay Culture" article in kurenai.tsubasa's reply.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @07:32AM
Oh my god, I—I think you broke my humor. Please help, I can't lol anymore!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 01 2016, @08:00AM
Oh my god, I—I think you broke my humor. Please help, I can't lol anymore!
OK, I can help! Apply direct pressure to your loss of humor! Once you have done that, just think: Reagan grew the Federal Deficit more than any administration before him. Republicans, party of small government. George W. Bush even more, trillions on "discretionary wars", yes, Republicans, the party of fiscal responsibility. I did not break your humor, the hypocrisy of the Republican Party did that , and they are about to do it even more with a Trump Presidency. Just watch. I suggest, that for the treatment of your broke humor, you seek solace in the wings of the Blighty Musstard, or Libertarianism as we know it. It is the only non-broken refuge for Conservatives these days. It is of course totally unrealistic, juvenile and Ayn Randy, but that is better than being a liar, a hypocrite, and a fool that believes liars and hypocrites. So, good luck with all that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @09:40AM
I'm not a republican or conservative. I think you missed the part where I was laughing at the left being bothered by hypocrisy.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 01 2016, @09:55AM
But I was laughing at you for laughing at that! Of course leftists are bothered by hypocrisy, just as they are bothered by oppression, discrimination, fraud, injustice, and Republicans! So if you laugh at leftists for this, you are not really not a Republican or Conservative. Could you be, possibly, a Nihilist? Just asking. . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @11:07AM
I'd say they're a little too bothered by oppression, discrimination and injustice; so much that some of them have to invent it when they can't find it anywhere. For example:
Not a nihilist. I don't know what I'd be 'cause I'm too lazy to research labels. I like ideas from both 'sides', but they also have a lot of religious zealots.
Wait! This is the internet. Aren't we supposed to be flinging poo at each other? Here, have a few glyphs on me: 💩💩💩
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:41PM
Yo did you use a program called owns.c to generate that sig? I'd really like it if you have it.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:33PM
Those sites don't run fake news. At worst they put out a steady stream of SJW bullshit op-ed pieces but trump appointed Pence as VP and nobody made him do that. Pence's record with gay policy is shit.
So it's fair that people would have apprehensions that he's going to shit on the gays. The existence of guys like Milo who happens to be gay doesn't prove anything. Milo is a high paid troll who just spouts contrarian opinions and stages publicity stunts.