1,431 karma · joined May 25, 2010
Alex Jones is a severely damaged man and a known liar. His story about his father has changed radically over the years and within days of his telling, each time mythologizing his Dad by way of making Jones himself special, or from special people. Was Jones’ grandmother psychic? Is he himself? Does God give him downloads of information over chicken sandwiches and in the middle of the night with clock time ‘proofs’? Why did Jones receive the download to go rescue Gene Hackman and then just not do so, if the battle against the Actual Devil is so important?
> So as he is quoted at the top "Something I talked about like 15 times, six, seven, eight years ago." This appears to be true when he said it, judging from the rest of the site's content.
I haven’t reviewed the site but Jones was the head of a whole media operation that knowingly defamed these people in a bitter time, and to sell dick pills. The depositions for these things are public and you can watch them yourself. Jones himself admits in these depositions his role behind the scenes, sending Halbig on his mad journey and what not.
The $1B judgement is startling but it’s based entirely on Jones’ own statement of impact in the depositions. If you’re being sued for the profit you made from lies, maybe don’t claim the majority of humanity tunes into your show and website every day.
Also, Jones has already set up a new media company he totally doesn’t own, no sir. He’ll move his operation when he finally loses InfoWars.
But, more importantly, there's an underlying assumption to your question: the sharp end of the law only strikes people that have done wrong _and_ the laws won't shift to put you on the wrong side of it. Authoritarian governments redefine legality at whim. Compliance is a moving target: think of all the law abiding Japanese folks that were suddenly in internment camps in 1942.
In the United States we have historically accepted the dictum that the best government is that which governs the least. For a good, pragmatic reason: the concentration of power is corrupting to those that wield it and the actions of a government of the corrupt will not be square to the will of the people. Limiting what the government can do, especially those parts that seek to act in secret, is in the service of liberty for all.
Relwen's excellent. Sturdy clothes with utility -- my concern -- good looking for a variety of semi-casual to formal occasions. I wear their hunting jacket as a general purpose blazer.
I dunno, if I were paying for a particular quality-of-service I'd want my requests authenticated so I can make claims if that QoS is breached. Relying on public pulls negates that.
Making sure you can hold your suppliers to contract terms is basic due diligence.
Some years later Facebook did a lot of work to improve the speed of mercurial but the ship had sailed. Interesting idea though.
Go for instance bills itself as a systems language and that's true for domains where bounded, predictable memory consumption / CPU trade-offs are not necessary _because_ the runtime GC is bundled and non-negotiable. Its behavior also shifts with releases. A systems program relying on an allocator alone can choose to ignore the allocator until it's a problem and swap the implementation out for one -- perhaps custom made -- that tailors to the domain.
Melville bought many things with debt: his farm, his rare books, clothes. I don’t find it unimaginable that he paid for the grand tour with debt spending either.
Point being, had Melville continued writing south pacific adventure novels he probably would not be remembered today but might have died a well-off man.
Even granting this premise, which I don't, the interpretation you are operating under -- all but the 1% or 10% or whatever get get crushed -- is not realistic. Folks live happy, contented lives today in community with others. Many species other than human care for the elderly or their sick and long-term disabled. Keeping with the evolutionary model why would altruism continually evolve into species without utility?
I guess, on a personal note, I hope things improve for you.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#Reactions
Strictly speaking, I'm not sure that the US is founded on doing what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law but I do think that's an increasingly common understanding. A nation state does have some stake in maintaining the basic health of its people, whether you agree that's desirable or, if it is, to what degree.
I would also challenge your implicit notion here that there is a binary pass/fail solution to societal levels of drug addiction. Like any seriously hard problem there are policies that have been proposed and implemented around that world that have some positive outcomes in some regards and negatives in others. Incarceration (the Drug War) theoretically makes serious drug addiction absent from public life, a positive, but with the result of growing the police state, a negative. Vice versa for Oregon’s policy, now that it’s run for a while. I think we’re recently finding that Portugal’s approach which Oregon based their policy on also does not have better than expected outcomes, although the data is early yet.