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If you bring up UBI, or other reforms, you'll inevitably get someone who brings up: "voting yourself someone else's money".

You could convince me, except that things have gotten to an absurd state.

I look at some graphs of wealth inequality and it is unimaginably shocking. I never dreamed it could be this bad. More than 50% of the US wealth is owned by 5% of the people. [1] 35% is owned by only 1% of the population.

This image from this article also tells the story.

I'm not going to argue how accurate those numbers are. Rather, I will extrapolate the trend.

Let's continue the current trend to its logical absurd conclusion. The entire planet is owned by one single person. You (and everyone else) are one of the wage slaves in the bottom 99.99999999 % of the population (at least 8 decimal places). [7.5 billion people, minus that one person who owns everything, then divided by 7.5 billion people.]

Naturally, we should respect property ownership. Somehow this one person deserves and "earned" the wealth of the entire planet through his hard and diligent efforts and deserves to own everything and everyone. It is absurd on its face.

At this logical endpoint, it clearly seems that the rest of the planet should seize the wealth of the one person.

Wealth transfer has already happened. And is still happening. Republicans are just fine with this as long as it is all trickling upward.

Yes, "voting yourself someone else's money" involves taking away some of the absurd amounts of wealth hoarded up by a few. Amounts of individual wealth that one person couldn't spend in a lifetime; then leaves to others, who themselves can't spend it in their lifetime.

Not as a proposal, but just to make a point, hypothetically, if all of these people who exceed this threshold had their net worth capped at $100 Million, they would still be just fine. Yes, really! They would still live in fabulous homes, drive fabulous cars, and eat whatever they wanted, travel wherever and whenever they wanted -- for the rest of their natural lives.

In case my "one man owns the world" didn't get the idea across, I'll be more blunt. Any time too few people have owned way, way too much, and too many had nothing, there is always an uprising. I'm not proposing an uprising. I'm merely warning it is inevitable. Hopefully not in my lifetime. Maybe it would be better to solve this peacefully where the wealthiest, while heavily taxed, still end up, after taxes, fabulously wealthy beyond the dreams of most everyone else. I'm not proposing reducing all the rich people's wealth to some cap. Just that they should pay their fair share. Why are they the ones who get the tax cuts?

The title of the article is "Another Unhinged Leftist Teacher Caught on Video Lecturing 13-Year-Old Student for 10 Minutes on Why Trump is Racist (VIDEO)"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/another-unhinged-leftist-teacher-caught-video-lecturing-13-year-old-student-10-minutes-trump-racist-video/
Better transcript-like account here https://mynorthwest.com/2258047/rantz-video-teacher-trump-racist-immigration/

Wow.
Another leftist teacher took time out to lecture a 13-year-old student for 10 minutes on why he should hate the president of the United States.
Unfortunately, for the teacher the student was recording the lecture and later posted it on the internet.

A 13-year-old student recorded his teacher as he tried to convince him to stop supporting President Donald Trump.

TRENDING: BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Text Messages Show VP Biden and His Wife Colluded to Suppress HUNTER'S ACTIONS WITH A CERTAIN MINOR

The teacher spent nearly ten minutes trying to get his student to agree the president’s immigration policy is a failure and that Trump is a racist.

It’s the latest in a long string of incidents where teachers bring their political bias into the remote learning environment. Had it not been for the precocious 8th grader, this would not have come to light. But the district claims the teacher didn’t do much wrong.

In light of another recent journal entry, some of you might think that I agree with bashing this teacher, as well.
https://soylentnews.org/~Runaway1956/journal/6159

However - I listened carefully to this "expose". Yes, Teach is a liberal, or at least he comes across as a liberal. I disagree with some of what Teacher says. But, this time, Teacher isn't terribly far off base.

The message I got from his speech was very similar to what Wikipedia will tell you. "You can't use the guy you are writing about as your primary source for information."

The kid seems to be old enough, and mature enough, to understand that when making a report, you should use multiple sources. It's fine to use Whitehouse.gov as one source, but you look further afield to find corroborating sources, or opposing sources.

Yeah, sure, I disagree with Seaman, pretty strongly. I think our border should be secure. SOME OF those people who cross our borders are terrorists - think MS-13. It is most certainly not "racist" to keep illegals out of the country, whether they be terrorists, or they be saints. Illegal is not a race.

So, I disagree with teacher. But, did teacher do "wrong" here? Not that I can see. Maybe if I could evaluate Teacher's interactions with the class for a few weeks, I could condemn him. Does he spend his teaching time belittling other students for supporting conservatives? Maybe not - he DID state pretty clearly that it would be just as wrong to make a report on Biden, using Biden's campaign site as a sole or primary source for information.

What do people think about this one? I think that Mr. Seaman may warrant a mild scolding from the administration - or not. He probably should be subjected to a bit of scrutiny, because no teacher should be indoctrinating students into his own political views.

On the other hand, teachers shouldn't have to shy away from controversial issues. The right leaning articles seem to be over reaction based on what I'm seeing here. This is not the sort of abusive conduct that I saw in the previous journal entry.

Δικαιοσύνη, such a fragile thing! ऋत (ṛta), a more general concept, is thought to obtain regardless of the plans of gods and humans. One consequence, however, of the disconnect between human and cosmic justice, is the imagination of compensatory realms, where the injustices of this world will be rectified. We humans have long sought to envisage the realm of Paradise, where the just, and the meek, and the cheesemakers will receive their just deserts. However, given human nature, much more energy has been expended in portraying the suffering of the wicked, especially those who escaped the fruit of their actions while alive. Welcome to Hell 101.

Plato tells of souls ensconced in the Acherusian lake, and how some are tossed into the two mighty Rivers of the Underworld, the Styx and the Pyriphlegethon, the one grey and bone-chillingly cold, the other a mass of flowing fire, and then swept into the abyss of Tarturus, subject to a planet-scale turbo-wash. And there are many other Greek imaginings of the torments of those who had it coming, Ixion and his wheel, Sysiphus and his stone, Tantalus with his tantalizing. But it really takes an Eastern genius to up the game. Chinese hellscapes are intriguing, and a bit too titillating, especially for Buddhists. But of course it is the Christians who make Hell a central part of their theology, and a major motif of art and literature. Which brings us to our topic: Trump is going to hell.

Our author here takes off on one of the great works of western literature, one usually never adequately studied, but famous enough that almost everyone understands references to it. I speak, of course, of the Divina Comedia of the immortal Dante. Ariel Dorfman has penned a revisiting of the Inferno, centered around the Fate of the Donald.

Sending Trump to Hell
Dante Alighieri Has Words for Donald J. Trump From the Other Side of Death

No doubt this will appeal to everyone's vicarious need for divine justice.

For some time now, I’ve wanted to send Donald Trump to Hell. I mean this literally, not as a figure of speech. I want him to inhabit the palpable, sensory Hell that religions have long conjured up with scenes of sulfur, damnation, and screams of perpetual pain from those who once caused grievous harm to their fellow humans.

The more Trump has abused his power and position in this world and the more he’s escaped any retribution for his crimes, the more obsessed I’ve become with visualizing ways for him to pay in some version of the afterlife.

As I mulled over the treatment he deserved for the havoc he continues to wreak on the lives of countless others here in the United States and across the globe, I turned almost automatically to the work of Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet whose Divina Commedia minutely recreated in a verse called terza rima what awaited the readers of his time once they died. Dante (1265-1321) laid out his otherworldly landscape in three volumes -- Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso -- that have rightly been considered among the towering and influential literary achievements of humanity.

There was nothing abstract about the Hell he created. Dante pictured himself personally taking a voyage into the hereafter to meet men and women, both of his time and from the past, who were being rewarded for their virtue or eternally castigated for their offenses. Of that journey through purgatorial fires and heavenly wonders, guided by his dead childhood sweetheart Beatrice, it was the Florentine writer’s descent into the saturated circles of Hell that most fascinated and enthralled readers throughout the centuries. We listen to stories of the wicked as they express their remorse and experience the excruciatingly sophisticated torments he dreamt up as suitable reprisals for the damage they did during their earthly existence.

Of course, I am not going to reproduce the entire piece here, you have to go look for yourself. But a few choice morsels, in a Tantalusian fashion?

Were you not the selfish embodiment of so many sins I dealt with in my Commedia? Lust and adultery, yes! Gluttony, yes; greed and avarice, oh yes; wrath and fury, certainly; violence, fraud, and usury, yes again! Divisiveness and treachery, even heresy -- you who did not believe in God and yet used the Bible as a prop -- yes, one more time!

Did you not practice all those iniquities, a slave to your loveless appetites? Do you not deserve to be called to account in ways I once envisioned: buffeted by vicious winds, drowning in storms of putrefaction, choking under gurgling waters of belligerence, immersed in the boiling blood that echoes rage, thirsting across a burning plain, steeped in the excrement of flattery and seduction, clawed to pieces by the night demons of corruption, or feeling that throat and tongue of yours that tore so many citizens apart mutilated and hacked to bits? Would it not be fair that, like other perjurers and impostors, you be bloated with disease? Would it not make sense that you be trapped in ice or flames, endlessly chewed by the jaws of eternity, like those who committed treason against country and friends in my time?

Easy to get carried away with this stuff, even as a horror genre, like Cube, or The Cell, or even What Dreams May Come or Constantine, but the important thing is mercy.

And yet, in the end, I rejected all of that. After all, I was selected not to repeat myself but because I was trusted to be creative and find an appropriately new reckoning for you -- something, said the authorities in charge of this place, less savage and fierce, more educational, even therapeutic. Thus have times changed since I wrote that poem of mine!

My mission, it seems, was not to insert you in rings of an already conceived Hell of terrifying revenge. So I began to seek inspiration from my fellow sufferers so many centuries later and there, indeed, they were -- your multitudes of victims, the ones who need to heal, the ones you never wanted to see or mourn, whose pain you never shared, who now want to greet you, sir, in a new way.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed yet, but I have. They’ve been lining up since the moment they arrived. Now, they’re here by my side, counting the days until your time is up and you must face them. And so I decided that they would be given a chance to do exactly that, one by one, through all eternity.

60 Minutes interviews, for eternity! Meeting Gold Star families with Covid-19, for ever! Mike Pence and Stephan Miller as your cellmates, interminably! As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in "No Exit",

Hell is other people

But actually, it is only a true mirror of the soul, having to face the emptiness of your own being. And in some cases, it is not something you want to watch, or even imagine. St. Thomas Aquinas allegedly said that one of the prime pleasures of Paradise is being able look down upon the torments of the damned. But like I said: Mirror.

There's a whole lot of "discussion" around here about what Americans think about issues of import.

The results of broad-based polling may surprise you.

A recent (23 October 2020) Fivethirtyeight.com piece discusses the results of such polling, both as differences *between* parties as well as within them:

So which issues divide Democrats, and which ones divide Republicans? Two polls released this week, one conducted by the New York Times and Siena College and the other by PRRI, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on the intersection of religion, culture and public policy, provide some fresh answers.

Issues that divide Democrats

• A national mandate for a coronavirus vaccine: 47 percent of Democrats supported a national mandate to take a COVID-19 vaccine if one is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and 48 percent opposed it, per the New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters, which was conducted Oct. 15 to 18. This is an unpopular idea with the broader American public — only 18 percent of Republicans voters and 32 percent of likely voters overall supported such a mandate, according to the poll.

• more liberal presidential nominee: About 45 percent of adults who identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents said that they had initially favored Sen. Bernie Sanders (31 percent) or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (14 percent) during the Democratic primary, per the PRRI survey, which was conducted Sept. 9-22
  [...]
  Democratic voters are firmly behind Biden in his race against Trump. But there is a sizeable bloc in the party who favored more liberal candidates, and divisions between this more liberal bloc and the party’s more centrist bloc are likely to emerge if Democrats have total control of Washington next year — or even if Democrats control the presidency and the House.

• Reparations: Exactly half of Democrats (50 percent) said they supported economically compensating African Americans who are the descendants of enslaved people, and almost exactly half (49 percent) opposed this idea, according to PRRI. This is an unpopular idea, more broadly — only 27 percent of Americans, including 5 percent of Republicans, supported reparations.

• Religion: 46 percent of Democrats said they felt that religion causes more problems in society than it solves, while 53 percent of Democrats disagreed with that sentiment. Only 38 percent of Americans overall said that religion creates more problems than it solves, compared to 61 percent who disagreed with that sentiment, including 79 percent of Republicans.

Issues that divide Republicans

• Trump’s speech and behavior: 46 percent of Republicans said they wished that Trump’s speech and behavior was “consistent with previous presidents,” compared to 53 percent who disagreed, per PRRI. That was a popular sentiment with the broader public — 68 percent of American adults and 84 percent of Democrats wished Trump acted more like his predecessors.

• A public health insurance option: 45 percent of Republicans supported a government-operated health insurance plan that all Americans could enroll in, while 47 percent opposed this idea, according to the New York Times/Siena poll. This was also a popular idea overall — 67 percent of Americans, including 87 percent of Democrats, supported a public option.

• State and local government policies to limit the spread of COVID-19, such as requirements to wear masks: 56 percent of Republicans said state and local governments are taking “reasonable steps to protect people,” while 43 percent said those moves are “unreasonable attempts to control people,” per PRRI. These policies were broadly popular — 76 percent of Americans, including 94 percent of Democrats, said state and local governments were taking reasonable steps.

• A mini-Green New Deal: 46 percent of Republicans opposed a “$2 trillion plan to increase the use of renewable energy and build energy-efficient infrastructure,” and 45 percent of Republicans supported it, according to the New York Times/Siena survey.
  [...]
  Sixty-six percent of Americans, including 89 percent of Democrats, supported this idea.

• Getting a COVID-19 vaccine: 54 percent of Republicans said they would “probably” or “definitely” get a vaccine for COVID-19 if it were approved by the FDA, and 40 percent said they “probably” or “definitely” would not get it, per the New York Times/Siena survey. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 69 percent of Democrats, said they would “probably” or “definitely” get the vaccine.

• The levels of discrimination Black and Hispanic Americans face: About half of Republicans (52 percent) said that Black Americans face “a lot” of discrimation, and about half (47 percent) said that they don’t, per PRRI. Forty-five percent of Republicans agreed that Hispanic Americans face a lot of discrimation, compared to 53 percent who disagreed. Most Americans overall (75 percent) and Democrats (92 percent) said that Black Americans face a lot of discrimination. The numbers were similar but slightly lower for discrimination against Hispanic Americans: 69 percent of Americans and 86 percent of Democrats said that they face a lot of discrimination.

• Immigration policy: Republicans are about equally split on allowing the separation of families at the border (45 percent supported, 53 percent opposed), protecting people who were brought to the U.S. as children but are not citizens from deportation (45 percent supported, 54 percent opposed) and creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (48 percent supported such a pathway, 38 percent said they should be deported, and 14 percent said they should be allowed to become legal residents but not become citizens). A clear majority of Americans overall opposed separating families at the border (76 percent) and supported a pathway to citizenship (64 percent), as well as granting legal resident status to immigrants who would benefit from either the DREAM Act or DACA, commonly referred to as “Dreamers” (66 percent).

• A universal basic income: 52 percent of Republicans supported guaranteeing all Americans a minimum income, compared to 48 percent who opposed such an idea, per PRRI. Seventy percent of Americans overall, including 88 percent of Democrats, supported a UBI.

I encourage everyone to read the piece in its entirety.

That said, I think it's clear that there isn't a lot of uniformity in either party, and that the practical divisions between us are smaller than the stuff that unites us.

Muh feeliez iz hurt!

AOC blasts GOP lawmakers for calling female colleagues by nicknames
By Kenneth GargerOctober 23, 2020 | 1:58am

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Republican lawmakers for calling female legislators by nicknames after President Trump twice referred to her as “AOC” in Thursday night’s debate.

“I wonder if Republicans understand how much they advertise their disrespect of women in debates when they consistently call women members of Congress by nicknames or first names while using titles & last names when referring to men of = stature,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted early Friday morning.

“Women notice. It conveys a lot,” she wrote.

The Queens-Bronx congresswoman said her popular nickname, “AOC”, was born out of the community and should be reserved for “the people.”

“Government colleagues referring to each other in a public or professional context (aka who don’t know me like that) should refer to their peers as “Congresswoman,” “Representative,” etc. Basic respect 101,” the lawmaker added on Twitter.

Trump, while answering a question about balancing climate change and the economy, used the term “AOC plus three” two times during the debate.

The “plus three” is an apparent reference to Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, whom Trump also routinely refers to by another nickname, “The Squad.”

https://nypost.com/2020/10/23/aoc-blasts-gop-lawmakers-for-calling-female-colleagues-by-nicknames/

The QOTD seems appropriate here:

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded. -- George Orwell

SpaceX Starlink internet seeks final approvals to serve Australia

SpaceX has begun applying for Starlink gateway licenses in at least four Australian cities – Broken Hill, Boorowa, Wagin, and Pimba – in one of the final steps needed before Starlink internet can begin operating on the continent.

[...] SpaceX must gain a final, more challenging regulatory approval by obtaining a spectrum license that will allow the Starlink satellites to communicate to ground stations that are based in Australia. The ACMA stated that SpaceX’s “inclusion in the determination does not confer a right on that entity to obtain a license, rather it is a prerequisite before a space apparatus license can be issued.” Carrier license thus in hand, a spectrum license is still needed to ensure that Starlink does not interfere with existing Australian communications services.

You don't think it was rushed or anything, do you? The timing is interesting. Could affect the vote. I'll let you guys try it out first

UPDATE:
Trump wants to use the military to distribute his vaccine. Evidently private industry is in a shambles and can't handle it...

Managed to get through a half hour before pulling the plug. Biden really is sleepy

(Updated post with additional information and better formatting.)

So, I've been tinkering with batch scripts and have noted it's a real pain to do calculations in batch. Especially, when you want to use fractions, take user input, etc.

I've mostly just used random internet sites to help me get unstuck / figure out what piece I want to do. At first it started out as me wanting to make a tiny calculation and has ballooned into some weird exercise. My little batch script has ballooned into a 3k line monster. I know I could be doing things a bit better, but now that I'm pretty much done with it, I'm not likely to go back and fix anything. (Yes, I could do it much quicker and simpler in Python or *insert random language*.)

Still, I'm curious, if anyone has a goto place for help with batch scripts?

Here's the place I got a good bit of helpful tips from: DosTips - The DOS Batch Guide

Exmaple code, if you're interested:

Why? Hell, I ain't really sure.

He can't sing.
He can't dance.
He hangs with women of ill repute.
Has probably done more drugs than Trump & Biden combined. (Probably not as much as Hunter though.)
Doesn't have a single plank in his platform.
The only platform he's ever seen was at the subway.
He has some kind of faith, and believes in God.
Not sure if he has ever held an honest job, or earned an honest dollar, but who cares?
Has never engaged in, or funded, a revolution that I'm aware of.
Hasn't been caught cheating on his taxes, that I'm aware of.
I don't think he kicks puppies. (He looks like someone who might rub a cat's fur backward though.)

I figure he's about as qualified as anyone else on the ballot.

Yeah, I said I'd probably vote for JoJo. Well, shit, there were like 80 or 90 people on the ballot for president. I fell asleep twice, scrolling toward the bottom. Literally half of the physical ballot was taken up listing presidential and VP candidates.

Maybe if the silly fuck wins, things will get better. It's not like things can get a lot worse than the Ds and Rs have done.