GreenBeard

Can someone that hasn't been brain-poisoned by the AI hype machine take this portfolio? No one is comfortable with a corporate kool-aid fountain running a government department.

Is such a thing done? No. Can such a thing be done? Yes, but at what cost.

My brother in Christ, goon not too close to the sun(chip), for this way madness lies.

Why would Americans care? This happens every other week down there. Here, one is a national tragedy, there it's just a Wednesday. This is the what happens when people soak their brains in the American social media BS too much.

More of us elders need to step up and set the example. It's easy for the young folk to get disillusioned with the painfully slow process of building a movement, but the only way to force change is logistics, organization, and tenacity.

He's trying to encourage disbelief in germ theory. He'd like to encourage a return to cornflakes and Graham crackers to rebalance the humors.

It's the whole "surviving long enough to look back" part that people worry about.

You missed that the wax only "boils" (I would have said vaporizes, but as you said, boils is close enough) at the center of the flame where it is drawn up by the wick. Otherwise, this is correct.

Fun bonus detail, visible flames are usually burning gas. Burning solids look like hot embers. The flames from a wood fire are usually burning smoke. You can actually re-light a candle by smothering the flame and quickly lighting it's smoke tail on fire.

Oh, they do. Depending on the context, there's a whole host of ways to imply sarcasm without depending on intonation. Body language, context, double entendre, formality shifts, etc.

The question may not be inherently stupid, although it does contain a false premise. You really should follow the news before you start claiming the news channels aren't reporting a story. It's been front page news on literally every publication for 3 days now. I have to assume then that this question is actually rhetorical. If there's a statement you're looking to make you should probably just make it.

When you have no values to speak of, someone showing theirs is a threat.

they act in a different way from the other, which they very much do. The basis of their power comes from different roots, and because of that, they have different interests, different goals, different avenues of action, different preferences in compromise with wider society.

I firmly disagree. There is no meaningful difference in motivation or expected outcome. The behaviour is functionally identical. In neither case is there any commitment to compromise with society, both Aristocracy and Plutocracy leverage economic factors to control and contain the wider community, to arbitrary and capricious ends; frequently little more than the further consolidation of power. The terminology is different, it sounds different, but it does not behave different in any meaningful way. Any social contract is entirely grounded in what we choose to demand as a society, not intrinsic to the flavour of elite class.

It's the same motive, the same tools, and the same outcome, just re-branded and with a fresh coat of paint. Plutocracy in this era leverages scientific and evidence based psychological conditioning, social control, and new communication mediums to play on a variety of fundamental cognitive biases and limitations instead of leveraging religion alone as the primary means of containment of the governed, nothing more. As I said, it's Aristocracy with a business degree. If you want to get specific it's Aristocracy with a business degree and a marketing team instead of just the clergy.

The point is that the basis of aristocratic power comes (in part) from a position of extraordinary legal privilege, not simply being able to escape consequences for crimes.

We're so very close but we're not quite getting that last point. What I'm saying is it's a distinction with very little meaningful difference. It's interesting from an academic point of view, but that's it. How they rationalize their privilege and sell their legitimacy to people makes no difference.