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1. Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 17-Feb-2022 14:38:13 UTC Charles U. Farley

   All cryptocurrency transactions are supposedly illegal in China. But MicroBT makes ASIC miners in Shenzhen and sells them for Bitcoin. So what’s happening to that Bitcoin? Do they get special dispensation as long as they sell it outside China? Are they selling it to the government for Renminbi?

   • Sean Tilley (sean@social.deadsuperhero.com)'s status on Thursday, 17-Feb-2022 14:38:12 UTC Sean Tilley

     in reply to
     @freakazoid Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Chinese government also do a fair bit of Bitcoin mining themselves?
   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 17-Feb-2022 14:38:12 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @sean @freakazoid
     I think china has a unique definition of "illegal".

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   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 17-Feb-2022 14:38:25 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @sean I have never read anything that said the government was doing any mining, but it's pretty much impossible to distinguish between government and private industry in China since they're so firmly in bed with one another.

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   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:41 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle

     @cjd Trump sees rule of law as a threat. He wants to throw it out and return us to rule of men, like China and Russia.

     While Bush, Clinton, and Reagan were certainly responsible for many evil things, trying to end democracy was not among their crimes.

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   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:42 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle

     @cjd Trump left Puerto Rico out in the cold because they're brown. I don't have mixed feelings about him.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:42 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle

     @cjd He also used legislation as a weapon against states that didn't support him. And he contested the results of the 2020 election with no evidence and caused a huge riot at the capitol that got a bunch of people killed, then never took responsibility for it. He's unequivocally a monster.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:42 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle

     @cjd Trump has kept in touch with exactly one foreign leader since leaving office: Kim Jong Un. He is unequivocally a monster.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:43 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     Incarceration grew massively under Clinton, all of these people are monsters. This is why I have mixed opinions about Trump, he's a lot of things but he's not them.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:44 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean 16 countries have recognized the Holodomor as genocide.

     Doing some further searching, I have discovered that apparently Scotland had the blight far worse than Ireland yet suffered far fewer deaths. The Irish appear to have been neglected because they were Irish and Catholic.

     But if we're going to call that a genocide I think there's a lot more we should be calling genocide. Like the US's mass imprisonment of Black people.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:44 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     I would, and I would. Also don't forget the Bush family's crack epidemic.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:44 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean Also Nancy Reagan's War on People Who Use Certain Kinds of Drugs.

     Not that this is just a Republican problem; Clinton brought us mandatory minimums.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:45 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean Indeed, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and as far as I can tell there isn't even ordinary evidence that it was a deliberate attempt at genocide.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:45 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     Does Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainians pass your test of what is considered deliberate ?

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:46 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @sean @cjd My great grandfather on my mom’s side always insisted that he was pure blood English, but he was a redhead and my mom suspects he was half Irish.

     The genocide claim seems a bit dodgy to me. It appears to have little credence in Ireland. https://whistlinginthewind.org/2013/03/05/was-the-irish-famine-genocide/

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:46 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     Winners write history. I think even the Armenian genocide remains disputed by Turkey.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:47 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     These days Irish are very accepted, but wasn't always like that. My great grandfather was a refugee from a famine which turned out to be intentional genocide. They also had to train themselves to speak w/o Irish accent to avoid discrimination in the US. I may be considered "white" by many people, but I'm under no illusion that I'm the same blood as British aristocracy.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:48 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @sean @cjd One can say things like “people behave lawfully when they expect others to do the same”.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:48 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     I pity anyone who thinks they have to hate themselves otherwise they're a white supremacist, what a terrible way to live life. But I'm Irish, so in the House of Whiteness I'm only a guest.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:48 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean I have never had my Irishness impact me in any negative way, so I don’t think that way about myself.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:49 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean (it will take enforcing them consistently for a couple of generations).

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:49 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     You make a good point. Seeing the problems with one's own country is a sort of national pastime in the West. And we're all better off for it.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:49 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean Absolutely! Though I think there’s a big risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water, because acknowledging the existence of the baby can feel like white nationalism. Which shouldn’t be too surprising since white nationalists have started talking about culture rather than race. But there is a huge space between cultural relativism and nationalism.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:50 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     It is true that judges in the West have an impressive amount of integrity. If there's one thing that gets us through these times, it'll be people like them. Everyone else, and yes, across the whole political spectrum, seems to see things based on their politics.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:50 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean I think it goes well beyond that, though. I think there's a tendency among left-leaning white dudes to underestimate how law-abiding Westerners are compared to most of the world, but living with rule of law for a long time has a HUGE impact on culture. In Russia, for example, people enter into contracts and then just ignore them. Getting people to abide by contracts there will take more than just enforcing them.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:51 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     I think that's a bit of a simplification, it's more like:
     Law is where all of the powers that be find common ground, but every one of them will try to corrupt that law as much as they possibly can to their own interest. Unfortunately the West is not significantly different, just perhaps not quite so overt about it.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:51 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean I could not disagree more that the West is not significantly different on this. Yes, we pass laws that are excessively specific, and yes, we have laws that are selectively enforced, but in China they just make up violations on a regular basis, and it's standard practice to investigate and jail your political opponents on vague charges of "corruption."

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:52 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean If by that you mean they have multiple sets of laws, the laws that apply to regular people and the laws that apply to people who are in bed with the government, I agree.

   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:52 UTC Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     • Sean Tilley

     @freakazoid @sean
     More like 1 law, but in infinitely variable gradient of likelihood whether that law will be applied based on many circumstances.

   • Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Feb-2022 06:26:52 UTC Charles U. Farley

     in reply to

     • Caleb James DeLisle
     • Sean Tilley

     @cjd @sean Which is the very definition of "rule of men" as opposed to "rule of law." In China, the law exists solely as a tool of the Party.