The process involves numerous steps, including tests of physical coordination; checking the driver’s blood pressure and pulse; squeezing the driver’s limbs to determine if the muscle tone is “normal” or not; and examining pupil size and eye movements.

Steps not mentioned:

• is the suspect Black?
• does the suspect fail to defer to you as an infallible authority?
• have you hit your quota of arrests/citations today?

Nobody who is mad at this situation thinks that taking inspiration, riffing on, or referencing other people’s work is the problem when a human being does it. When a person writes, there is intention behind it.

The issue is when a business, owned by those people you think ‘demonised’ inspiration, take the works of authors and mulch them into something they lovingly named “The Pile”, in order to create derivative slop off the backs of creatives.

When you, as a “professional”, ask AI to write you a novel, who is being inspired? Who is making the connections between themes? Who is carefully crafting the text to pay loving reference to another authors work? Not you. Not the algorithm that is guessing what word to shit out next based on math.

These businesses have tricked you into thinking that what they are doing is noble.

No I don’t, but we’re not talking about a single copy of one book, and it is grovellingly insidious to imply that we are.

We are talking about a company taking the work of an author, of thousands of authors, and using it as the backbone of a machine that’s goal is to make those authors obsolete.

When the people who own the slop-machine are making millions of dollars off the back of stolen works, they can very much afford to pay those authors. If you can’t afford to run your business without STEALING, then your business is a pile of flaming shit that deserves to fail.

You’re right, each of the 5 million books’ authors should agree to less payment for their work, to make the poor criminals feel better.

If I steal $100 from a thousand people and spend it all on hookers and blow, do I get out of paying that back because I don’t have the funds? Should the victims agree to get $20 back instead because that’s more within my budget?

It’s like trying to reclaim the red cap though, it’s almost too far gone at this point. There was a period where people were wearing ironic red caps with anti-trump slogans on them as a way to take some of the power out of the symbol.

It only ended up causing stress to people who didn’t want to wait to find out if the hat-wearer was going to call them a slur.

If I saw a loud crowd marching down the street brandishing American flags, I would also not want to hang around to find out if they are fascists or not.

I also feel like flying the flag of the oppressive fascists government that is trying to deport and kill your friends and family sends the wrong message.

Sure, there is the idea of reclaiming the symbol of the flag, but on short notice, a march that is against the deportation of Mexican immigrants probably doesn’t call for the US flag.

“Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” “Israeli and US support”

My nose started bleeding, trying to unify these concepts in my mind. Its like the “Bird and Small Mammal Support Foundation”, run by house cats.

I’m sorry, let’s all be quiet about the murders happening at peaceful protests; the man who is attempting to install himself as god-king of the western world; the knee that this god-king is bending to Russia; and all the human rights violations occurring daily across the country so that you can keep living in your whack country in peace.

A person doesn’t need to have an answer to a systemic clusterfuck in order to call it out, and calling it out reminds us that none of this is normal. If we stop calling the US whack, then people start accepting the whack-ness as the new normal.

Get this conspiracy shit outta here. Looks like the guys about to tell me that there’s a Walmart under the pyramids.

Christine married into the family, inherited her wealth when her spouse passed, and is not involved in the running of Walmart. She has previously donated to anti-trump groups.

Could she be doing more with her billions? Definitely. Is she the head of a corporate conspiracy to oppress the American people by funding a single ad in one newspaper? Highly unlikely.

You just got your answer: Because it is agreed that it helps all of us.

Don’t want to pay taxes? Stop drinking tap water. Don’t turn on your lights. Stop driving on the roads. Don’t seek any medical care ever. Don’t catch the bus. Don’t even look at a public park.

If everybody pays a fraction of their income, these things can be funded. If we all went it alone, do you have the money or skills to maintain the roads you drive on? If you don’t, do you think the other guy is going to do it for free? Or cheap, knowing that he has skills you don’t?

EDIT: it can be argued about the proper use of tax funds in any particular country, eg an excessive ‘defence’ budget in the US.

If Joe Bloggs next door agrees with war crimes, he’s just an arsehole.

If the head of the United Nations General Assembly agrees with war crimes, I think there’s a case to be made…