Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the community-convos dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is from an anonymous commenter, responding to someone who described the Capitol Hill insurrection as a "kerfuffle":

You are another one of the fuckers who are trying to minimize what happened on 1/6.

Trumpists violently attacked the capitol, the capitol police, and DC metro police. There are numerous videos and 1st hand accounts of Trumpists beating cops with American / Trump flag poles. There is video of numerous violent attacks against the officers trying to defend the capitol and the congress.

To claim that it was just a "kerfuffle" and "100% based on politics." is to be a fucking asshole that doesn't deserve the freedoms that we have in this country.

If you really think that people yelling "Hang Mike Pense" and having a god damn gallows built outside the capitol is just a "kerfuffle", then you're a fucking asshole.

Sorry, do I sound angry about you calling it a "kerfuffle", You fucking bet your ass I am angry.

It was a violent attack, instigated by Trump and his fucking sycophants, and people fucking died because of it. It wasn't a "kerfuffle" you fucking imbecile!

In second place, it's JMT responding to a complaint about "elements of the executive branch" who "were working against Trump":

Some say "working against Trump, some call it "following the law".

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from sumgai responding to the perennial description of social media as "the new public space":

No, it's not. It's a shared private space, an entirely different thing altogether. If you insist on mixing up those two concepts, then you have only yourself to blame for all the Toll/Spam/Abuse clicks you keep getting.\

(Actually, social media is made up of many different private spaces, each of which has some degree of sharing. The control of the sharing varies from one private space to the next.)

Next, it's Bloof with a comment about the successes of community broadband:

Blindsided by this triumph of socialist communist Marxist community broadband, the big telcos redoubled their efforts, vowing to crush the red menace by building new infrastructure, cutting prices and upgrading their networks to prove the free market always wins in the end... No wait, they'll just buy enough state senators to ban community broadband state by state.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is wshuff with a comment about Trump's extremely stupid lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube:

If he opens a theme park at Mar-A-Lago, can he avoid paying attorney fees?

In second place, it's an anonymous comment about cops playing copyrighted music to disrupt citizen recordings:

Where's ASCAP in this?

Cops deliberately playing songs in public for Internet streaming without a performance license? ASCAP should be all over the cops not paying up.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start with an anonymous response to a list of complaints about Facebook:

"FB will allow convicted felons,"

Yeah, Dinesh D'Souza is still there.

"2020 rioters,"

I think most of the Boogaloo Bois moved to Parler.

"and probably even some pedophiles."

Trump has been banned from Facebook until at least 2023...

And finally, we've got K'Tetch with a comment about Ubisoft's latest DRM disaster:

Ubisoft is registered with the Ferengi Commerce Authority, and all complaints should be sent care of the FCA

... where they'll send it back and charge you for reading it, quoting the following rules of Acquisition

1 - Once you have their Money, you never give it back

17 - A contract is a contract... but only between ferengi

239 - Never be afraid to mislabel a product

299 - After you've exploited someone, it never hurts to thank them. That way, it's easier to exploit them next time

(Personally, I think we could use more Rules of Acquisition jokes in life.)

That's all for this week, folks!

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Reader Comments

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  1. icon
    justok (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 12:34pm

    Are there

    Are there rules of acquisition for acquisition of the Rules of Acquisition?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    sumgai (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 1:08pm

    Chief Ferengi here...

    Sorry, but you must first pay your bill for reading your question, before we can answer it. And you might as well send in double that amount, so we don't have to bill you again for the answer.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2021 @ 1:22pm

    Re: Chief Ferengi here...

    I read your entire comment and have thus assessed a reading fee to your account, along with an inconvenience fee and any and old government-mandated taxes. 20% gratuity is also applied automatically to all comments longer than two words.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Samuel Abram (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 1:25pm

    Re: Re: Chief Ferengi here...

    Who do you think you are, Ticketmaster?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2021 @ 2:35pm

    Re: Re: Re: Chief Ferengi here...

    No, IT&T

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    ECA (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 3:10pm

    Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    Once you gave up the regs and laws for corporations and conglomerates, you gave up your power to control them.
    They can do Anything that want, and YOU SAID SO, by not doing the RIGHT thing Long ago.
    Capitalism has flaws, socialism has flaws, democracies have flaws.
    But capitalism is based on taking advantage of Others systems and flaws. Its a giant game.
    I dont think we are much democratic in recent history. The 2 groups have NOT asked us what we want. They dont cares, its Their agenda.
    All the money the politicians get Came from us, but we dont get any representation for it. And the corps keep taking our money.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Jeff Green (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 4:31pm

    Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    Just remember you get the lizards you voted for.

    (See Douglas Adams' So Long and Thanks for All the Fish for details)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    shane, 11 Jul 2021 @ 5:52pm

    Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    "capitalism is based on taking advantage of Others systems and flaws" What? No it isn't? It is about doing business, profit, jobs, competition, doing it better cheaper and making a profit while leading the progress to the next step up.....have you seen SPACE X? A private company leading the world to space..... at half the price of a national government program? And yeah a guy getting rich doing it, funding it, putting his wealth on the line for it........Oh what? That is capitalism! A guy putting stuff in space for half the price and getting rich....and OH? Saving me tax dollars to a government to do the same thing at triple the price? He is "capitalizing" on what he can do that our government can't, he wins and so do we!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    ECA (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 6:17pm

    Re: Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    erase Competition and jobs.
    Im talking Full blown Capitalism.
    Have you seen NASA? Who wants to do Allot more but cant get the money except from the Gov? And Why? Because the military Loves placing LARGE things in space.
    And that anyone that couldnt Prove they could get into space SAFELY, was Either stopped or arrested? We have had allot of people trying, just no money from Anyone to help, and if discovered. They would loose all of the goods they created.

    Capitalism is the idea of finding what a group wants/needs, finding it, and selling it to them at a profit. Then if possible finding a Product Everyone wants, and over charging for it until sales drop, lower the price and Sell it again at a high price until sales lower/stop, then Sell it at a fair price until it runs out. THEN make Version 2. And repeat.
    AND if you are very good at this. YOU CREATE A MARKET for the product, that no one Knows they need/want.
    Its a great way to kill off a country, Take all their money, and they have to print more.
    Right now it takes 3-5 people, to design a product, ship the idea to china to see how much it will cost, OK the product, have it shipped, and then have the Distribution systems Pick it up, and send to the stores. So, What jobs?
    Do you realize that the corps can restrict products in the USA? THEY wont buy them, nor sell certain products. AND because the corp Purchases them at high prices, they can control the price of the product IF' its ever in this country. Your cable box, a TV recorder system, and a few other things. Also consider where they come from. NOT American made 99% of the time.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 11 Jul 2021 @ 7:23pm

    "capitalism is based on taking advantage of Others systems and flaws" What? No it isn't?

    Capitalism, at its core, is about capitalists⁠—that is, the people who own the monetary capital⁠—exploiting the labor of the lesser classes in the pursuit of more wealth (i.e., capital). Jeff Bezos may not have been whipping his warehouse workers to make them work faster, but he sure as shit wasn’t making Amazon pay those workers even a fraction of what he makes in a year. If you’re not at the top of the ladder, you’re being exploited by someone higher up the ladder than you.

    What makes capitalism more insidious these days is that we don’t temper it with a stronger social safety net and we don’t tax the fuck out of the wealthy. Wealth and poverty both compound⁠—so we need a social safety net to keep poverty from killing the same people who carry out the actual work that keeps companies like Amazon in business.

    No “pure” economic system can ever work because it will ultimately result in an untold number of deaths of the lower/working classes. Capitalism, socialism, bitcoinism, whatever⁠—“pure” versions of them are bullshit. The ideal approach, from where I’m sitting, is capitalism tempered with facets of socialism: We create a broader social safety net paid for by taxing the everloving goddamned fuck out of the rich, but still allow the rich to obtain wealth through capitalist practices.

    Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral. If they don’t want to get taxed all the way to hell, they should stop making/hoarding so much goddamn money and pay the working class more. (A minimum wage is meaningless without a maximum wage, after all.)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2021 @ 8:25pm

    Re: Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    kinda proved the point of the first line with the rest of it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2021 @ 8:53pm

    Re: Are there

    The unwritten rule: When no appropriate rule applies, make one up.

    Rule #208: Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a question is an answer.

    And most importantly, Rule #59: Free advice is seldom cheap.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2021 @ 9:41pm

    Re: Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    It is about doing business, profit, jobs, competition, doing it better cheaper and making a profit while leading the progress to the next step up.....have you seen SPACE X?

    Have you seen the state of US broadband industry? The industry that keeps screaming about resisting government intervention and letting them do their job? How'd that turn out again? Oh, right... after years of siphoning off taxpayer money and government subsidies all they can do is jack up prices while claiming that anybody who needs a stable Internet connection must be doing it for copyright infringement.

    Expecting capitalism to be this savior of society is a pretty fucking blind perspective to have. Seriously, rich people are doing fine as they are. They don't need you to simp for them.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 12:22am

    Re:

    "Capitalism, at its core, is about capitalists⁠—that is, the people who own the monetary capital⁠—exploiting the labor of the lesser classes in the pursuit of more wealth (i.e., capital)."

    You forgot the part where enlightened self-interest is supposed to make the people owning the capital act in such a way so as to emphasize the desirability of handing them money. i.e. the customer is supposed to be King according to that theory, with the consumer's enlightened self-interest acting as the opposite weight on that scale.

    The problem being that this theory does not work as it supposes an enlightened consumer base. Libertarians are idiot for believing greed alone is enough to build and maintain a society.
    Not as big morons as communists who pitch their faith in the altruism of the consumer, but both these extremes are broken.

    "The ideal approach, from where I’m sitting, is capitalism tempered with facets of socialism"

    Which is what every functioning nation in the world currently practices, to some degree. And the US more so than most. The main difference is where the tax burden is primarily placed - usually the middle class, alas, the wealthy often abusing every loophole in the system, even in many social democrat countries.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    justok (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 2:18am

    Re: Chief Ferengi here...

    Feel free to bill me once you have paid the fee for billing me. And assuming you've paid the fee for applying to bill me.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    Nonanymous, 12 Jul 2021 @ 6:03am

    Re: Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    So your example of capitalism is a guy that got tons of IP for free (from, you know, government) and is subsidized by government. That's cute.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. icon
    ECA (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 10:36am

    Re: Re: Re: Public and private, and SEPARATE.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2021 @ 3:05pm

    Where were you guys when the Senate was invaded by hundreds of violent protesters during the Kavanaugh hearings? The aims of those protesters was to interrupt the proceedings of the Senate, to intimidate the attending legislators, and to halt the appointment of a member of a co-equal branch.

    It didn't even make the news the day after, and you don't care because you are all hypocrites.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 3:11pm

    the Senate was invaded by hundreds of violent protesters during the Kavanaugh hearings

    [citation needed]

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2021 @ 3:29pm

    Re:

    when the Senate was invaded by hundreds of violent protesters during the Kavanaugh hearings?

    Care to share any links to credible news sources that describe this invasion?

    Until then, pics or didn't happen.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2021 @ 3:37pm

    Re: Re:

    I guess I will answer myself:

    USA TODAY could find no reference to those protesters damaging the Supreme Court or Capitol, which was open to the public in 2018. During the Jan. 6 riot, though, the Capitol and its visitors center were closed to the public, including tours led by members of Congress and their staff, according to a security notice sent to all members of Congress.

    Re: Jan 6 insurrection:

    “These individuals actively attacked United States Capitol Police Officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and took up other weapons against our officers. They were determined to enter into the Capitol Building by causing great damage,” now-former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said in a prepared statement.

    Conclusion:

    ... equating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to 2018 demonstrations against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research, because without additional information it could be misleading. Photos in the post authentically represent the 2018 protests, but the text leaves out key differences between the demonstrations, including violence during the Jan. 6 riot that resulted in the death of a U.S. Capitol Police officer and a demonstrator. Protesters also did not enter the Supreme Court in 2018, as the post claims. The Capitol was open to the public in 2018, but closed during the Jan. 6 riot.

    Source: Fact check: Post comparing Capitol riot to 2018 Kavanaugh protests lacks context

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. icon
    Samuel Abram (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 5:09pm

    Re:

    Did the Kavanaugh protesters bring pipe bombs to blow up the Capitol? If not, STFU.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  23. icon
    Toom1275 (profile), 12 Jul 2021 @ 5:16pm

    Re:

    Where were you guys

    Wait. I thought we were already living rent-free in your head*

    *AKA, the only place where your "hundreds of violent protestoes during the Kavanaugh hearings" hallucination happened

    link to this | view in thread ]

  24. icon
    GreedyHerring (profile), 15 Jul 2021 @ 5:06am

    Review

    Capitalism is the idea of finding what a group wants/needs, finding it, and selling it to them at a profit. Then if possible finding a Product Everyone wants, and over charging for it until sales drop, lower the price and Sell it again at a high price until sales lower/stop, then Sell it at a fair price until it runs out. THEN make Version 2. And repeat. https://www.greatpeople-me.me/

    AND if you are very good at this. YOU CREATE A MARKET for the product, that no one Knows they need/want.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  25. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jul 2021 @ 11:41am

    As usual, Techdirt loves unarmed White mothers getting shot in the neck by federal thugs. Typical anti-White Techdirt and (((Masnick)))’s degenerate sycophants cheering on White people being murdered.

    Worst of all, Mrs Babbitt was a mother (bringing White children into the world is the greatest crime) and one of those icky blue-collar rurals who prefer not to let male perverts in dresses groom their kids, and didn’t work in one of occupations Techdirters consider noble (grievance studies, pornography, lawyering, ‘journalism’, drag shows, politics, anti-White activism like ADL/SPLC/BLM or anti-American activism like ACLU).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  26. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 23 Nov 2021 @ 9:55pm

    Re:

    You realize Trump had his own personal army of lawyers, right?

    link to this | view in thread ]


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