Comment by TechDebtDevin
Comment by TechDebtDevin 17 hours ago
[flagged]
Comment by TechDebtDevin 17 hours ago
[flagged]
Yes? They stayed and did not leave. Confucius asking the woman did not create that option. It was always there.
My personal thought would also be that one has significantly higher chances to succeed against a tiger than a government, including much more control over whether a tiger attacks in the first place (for example, fences or not going out alone would already improve your chances significantly, which would do nothing against government officials).
nosianu says "one has significantly higher chances to succeed against a tiger than a government"
I don't think so! A tiger will kill you in the blink of an eye.
As for fences: while clearing land for the British railway lines in India, it was sometimes necessary to bring in skilled tiger hunters to eradicate these beasts. In one attack, for example, a tiger jumped a high fence (intended to keep tigers out) around a human encampment, seized a victim, jumped over the fence again carrying his prey and ran away with the meal.
孔子過泰山側，有婦人哭於墓者而哀，夫子式而聽之。使子貢問之曰：「子之哭也，壹似重有憂者。」而曰：「然，昔者吾舅死於虎，吾夫又死焉，今吾子又死焉。」夫子曰：「何為不去也？」曰：「無苛政。」夫子曰：「小子識之，苛政猛於虎也。」
...and that was in 1938, when there was no such thing as an AI panopticon.
This isn't a new thing. Orwell was pretty clear about it in 1984. The people who don't have much to take get mostly left alone.
There's no money to be made, no wealth to be captured, by running a dystopian government in Haiti, or whatever. So nobody does it.
> I dont want to live in a technocratic police state
Unfortunately the police state mentality is spreading.
The attacks on encryption and the "need" to crackdown on terrorism and CP gives wet dreams to a lot of government officials who won't be satisfied until there is a camera in every home and your phone snooping on you 24/7 and reporting back to the cops all your crimes alleged or otherwise.
No government is immune. France, Australia, the UK, The EU, they are all coming for our privacy and freedom of speech and they will get them sooner or later.
They say history does not repeat but it often rhymes. I think a lot of people have forgotten/never experienced what it's like to live in a police state and the 2030s may just bring back these memories for some and potentially introduce these concepts to a new generation entirely.
This seems like as good a spot as any to drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Come on over to the Dominican Republic. I’ve been here for 15 years, and I’ve had no problems running several projects from here. In the Cibao region you’ll find IMHO the best culture, and Santiago has a little of everything, though it takes some looking to find the gems. I prefer the mountains between Santiago and Puerto Plata, close to everything but not in the middle of anything. Above 1000m elevation the weather is cool nights, warm days.
If you get here HMU if you want to talk about the third industrial revolution and what we’re working on to make it a better ride for humans.
I spent a month there working for a client at "caso de campo". I really enjoyed the month. What was weird, I stayed at a town outside (I'm not elite enough to stay at caso de campo :P) forget the name but the whole town was just filled with Italian expats. It has been on my list of potential places.
However, the one thing I didn't like though was all Haitian workers, I actually witnessed some pretty awful stuff (like literal bloody fights over water bottles) inside caso de campo where they virtually had Haitian slaves. I'm talking guys standing behind me at dinner waiting to refill my water, and that was their entire existence. Probably better than living Haiti, but it made me feel uncomfortable. Not sure if the rest of the DR is like that though, I didn't really leave that area.
Ive not seen that kind of mistreatment of people, but I’m sure it happens especially in situations of extreme class disparity.
Where I live it’s extremely laid back- it’s rural, 50 minutes from Santiago and an hour from puerto plata.
We have a coffee plantation that I pretend to run, but I spend most of my time working on tech and improving our micro-grid and water micro-utility systems.
Lots of avocado and fruit trees, cacao, etc. there are several houses and a bunch of cabanas we have built here since 2018, a couple of parks, a lounge, trails etc. we moved a whole project here during Covid, so we built out the campus a little bit to accommodate that. It’s a very campo vibe, but with modern conveniences and systems.
If you come by this way, let me know.
Where is casa del campo located? Was the town Sosua? I’ve always thought of Sosúa as being mostly German expats, but TBH I typically avoid those kinds of places in favor of the Latino culture, so I wouldn’t really know.
There’s island culture and Latino culture here, as well as enclaves and barrios of a lot of nationalities. Santiago has some very euro feeling neighborhoods - but that’s immigrant communities, not expats.
Unfortunately a lot of expats prefer spend their time commiserating with other expats about whatever isn’t the same as it is back in their country lol, so I tend to avoid that scene and mostly associate with more established families and people.
I like the Cibao area, more of a Castilian vibe, Spanish colonial, and not so much island culture. It’s not that island culture is bad, it’s just that it centers around hospitality, entertainment and tourism, so a white guy often isn’t looked at as a person so much as an opportunity.
I think that’s pretty universal across where I’ve been all over the world, port towns and tourist hotspots all have that same vibe.
> I dont want to worry about a white van pulling up in front of my house because I said something sarcastic online.
I find it fascinating that people will genuinely worry about this happening to them, despite it not happening, and then openly prefer a place they describe as “a lil dangerous” and “a degree of lawlessness”
This is the kind of thinking that happens when you build your entire worldview around exaggerated headlines and online fear mongering. When you go somewhere that isn’t in the headlines all of the time, you have to build your worldview around what you see and the vibes you sense instead of the fear mongering headlines. When a place described with words like dangerous and lawless starts to sound like the safer alternative than a country that is demonstrably safer, you’re probably getting too much of your information from internet sources designed to trigger your senses of fear and rage for engagement.
Every time there’s an anecdote with cognitive dissonance like this (describing the lawless, “lil dangerous” place as feeling safer) it comes down to getting perceptions of one community through vibes and the other community through news headlines. In this case, the description of the US as a technocratic police state where people get thrown into a white van for sarcastic online comments versus seeing some cops at a local bar one time.
> I find it fascinating that people will genuinely worry about this happening to them, despite it not happening
Oh, but it is. Lots of people are getting picked up for online speech, the government is letting "their guys" off the hook for open crimes, and it's escalating to talking openly about imprisoning the other party.
We're there, it's fascism happening openly, and America isn't what it never was anyways.
No US citizen has had a federal law enforcement abduct them for making a sarcastic comment online (unless it was a legal threat, which has never been tolerated).
The US residents and visa holders who it has happened to, such as Mahmoud Khalil, are largely out of detention and, in his case, in a position to file a tort claim against the government of $20M dollars.
The current administration is a threat to the rule of law and I have no doubt they wish they were not subject to it. But they are, they have not attempted an auto-golpe, and people harmed by the administration continue to have the ability to seek redress through the courts. We are a little over a year away from midterm elections, which will almost certainly bring congressional impediments to executive power as well, at the very least in the form of investigations.
We in a dangerous period in US history, but it is not unprecedented, and the outcome is not yet determined. We are not in a fascist dictatorship today and, fortune willing, we might not yet ever be.
"It's illegal and you can press charges" doesn't save you from being grabbed by a white van. It doesn't save you from being shipped to a prison in another country and the Trump Administration telling the courts "tough, we're not bringing them back". It doesn't save you from the cops "accidentally" killing or maiming you.
We are absolutely living under fascism right now.
Ive been a resident of two countries and am a citzen of the USA. 2 years Norway. 3 years Bahamas. Along with a lot of work in Europe and Asia. So Ive witnessed a wide spectrum of governments, and have been detained by all of these governments at some point for reasons Im not going to speak on.
Maybe its because im a citizen of the USA and they have the ultimate power over me, but i felt the most terrified when under their custody. Hell in the Bahamas the officials took me to Burger King (in handcuffs lol). To be clear im not a criminal I just have a wierd line of work that people question.
You make it sound like some 4D chess ploy to "own the libs". Everything I've seen is that it's just a natural consequence of electing an 80 year old half senile grandpa to arguably the most important role in the world.
How long will this "Nothing to see move on. He's just blustering" excuse is going to be used before people realize that this guy will try that even if it is illegal? With the what has happened to immigration and birthright citizen it doesn't seem far fetched. And it is frankly insulting to tell people that they are wasting time when they express real concern.
I also have spent 6 months in a USA jail for what ultimately resulted in my pleading to a misdemeanor, and never was a crime. My world view is likely a lot different than yours, and the white vans do exist. They are here RIGHT NOW.
I think your mistake is believing that the development of infrastructure for one purpose will be cleanly stopped at a well-demarcated point once the original purpose is served.
When you build the infrastructure for squads of goons to kidnap people, then pour gasoline on the fire by massively increasing their funding, suddenly, a whole lot more people become “deportable.”
I was jailed on a bullsh*t "hate speech" statute, because I said the f slur to a cop (who turned out to be gay, my PI proved this wasn't even true in my civil suit, but that didn't matter, they stuck me with this, along with some other cop related bs (said I coughed on him and tried to give him covid, assault on a police officer) This was the government trying to ruin my life because I hurt a cops feelings. You clearly haven't dealt with authorities much.
In my state there is no intent required, so if a word can have multiple meanings in different contexts, the government gets to decide how you intended to use that word and what meaning you meant. So sorry, you're so wrong. There isn't much difference from what i said to this very annoying cop, and what a lot of people say online. Also, this never would have happened if I had said it to a regular person and not a cop.
edit: So yes, I literally was jailed and forced to admit to a hate speech crime (alford plea) because of something I said to a cop. And you think this is all in my head??
I am manifestly certain it won't happen to me. I tick just about every box: straight, white, male, native-born US, healthy, moderately well off.
But I see it happening to others and that makes me upset. And my intention to fight that might some day make me a target, but that's not the core of it. The core is that it shouldn't happen to anyone.
I agree with everything that you said but it's a "better the devil you know" type of situation.
The vibe that many people have in the US is that things are constantly in flux and that we have less and less control over our lives and environments. Anything could happen.
Considering that, I could understand wanting to go somewhere where there's a known quantity of danger and a known set of rules for avoiding it.
tbh its wild you assumed my world view was curated by headlines. You probably have had the softest, easiest life and have never put your neck on the line in a way that might result in you being locked in a cage by a government official, so you welcome the white vans, because you don't take enough risk in life for it to ever matter to you.
Wild, and offensive. How do you like it when people make assumptions about you?
> tbh its wild you assumed my world view was curated by headlines. You probably have had the softest, easiest life and have never put your neck on the line
Ironic to make a comment about making assumptions and then go on to make some wild ad hominem assumptions.
The news headlines I was referring to was the article we’re in the comment section discussing.
Get out of here with "ad hominem", you know what you were saying. Go back to less-wrong.
> I find it fascinating that people will genuinely worry about this happening to them, despite it not happening
I mean, the "white van pulling up in front of a house" is happening on the daily now [1], the current administration has claimed they can suspend habeus corpus [2], they pick up US citizens and legal immigrants in these things [3], and they allegedly deny entry because of political reasons the administration doesn't like [4] (+allegedly [5]).
I don't think the fear of getting disappeared by an administration is unfounded, nor do I think we need to see documented evidence of exactly that particular circumstance happening before we're allowed to worry about it.
I also think the "lil dangerous" part is ironic, given most of these "other" places aren't particularly dangerous, nor is the US particularly safe as-is. "lil dangerous" and "degree of lawlessness" are apt descriptions of the United States, and has been for my entire lifetime.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=masked+ice+raids&udm=2 [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-habeas-corpus-... [3] https://abc7chicago.com/post/george-retes-disabled-vet-us-ci... [4] https://apnews.com/article/immigration-detainees-students-oz... [5] https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/18/australian-deported-o...
It's a different kind of lawlessness.
I have little worry about some muggers and slumlords creating substandard construction and some restaurant paying off the inspector. I greatly worry about the HN demographics (rich white collar people, generally) voting for solutions to those problems that are worse than the problems while not solving the problems, something they do all over the US.
I mean, the president did just threaten to (somehow) revoke the citizenship of a celebrity who disagreed with him online. Based on what we've seen already, what's to stop them from dubiously claiming to have revoked someone's (natural born) citizenship and then deport them to somewhere before anyone has time to argue anything before a judge?
There was a time I would have agreed with you, but now it doesn't seem that implausible anymore.
The current state of the US is not that the secret police would come dissapear you for being sarcastic online, but the un-secret heavily-armed SWAT police could certainly show up if your sarcasm pissed off the wrong person.
That ain't great.
Do you feel like the trend of policing in the US is going in the direction of:
1) less heavily harmed, more accountable, more community-involved personal treatment
or
2) more heavily armed, anonymous, opaque large bureaucracies answering only to distant executives?
And which of those directions does the product in the linked article point?
And who exactly is this happening to? Who are the wrong people? Who are they swatting?
We all know exactly what is going down with immigration, but vaguely alluding to that instead of just saying it while pretending any given person is in danger would be dishonest.
It’s always like this though. Vague blurry imagery of perceived threats, no details.
>I find it fascinating that people will genuinely worry about this happening to them, despite it not happening
Trump very recently suggested he would revoke Rosie O'Donnell's US citizenship, a natural born US citizen, because of things she's said that's (rightly) critical of him. I have no doubt he will try to do it, and SCOTUS probably won't stop him. This is political retaliation, and it's absolutely abhorrent.
That's where we are. I have no doubt the "white vans" are coming for people who speak out against the tyranny this administration is foisting upon us. I have no doubt that this very comment may even be used against me someday, as ridiculous as that may sound to you right now.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so hard, it's a good point.
I'm not thrilled with where we are and I'm very cautious, but as a Black man in America the net difference in my fear and concern over my own government/police right now, as opposed to e.g. during Biden or Obama, isn't huge.
While I don’t think you should be downvoted… brother, maybe the headlines aren’t being exaggerated.
‘In passing by the side of Mount Thai, Confucius came on a woman who was weeping bitterly by a grave. The Master pressed forward and drove quickly to her; then he sent Tze-lu to question her. “Your wailing,” said he, “is that of one who has suffered sorrow on sorrow.”She replied, “That is so. Once my husband’s father was killed here by a tiger. My husband was also killed, and now my son has died in the same way.” The Master said, “Why do you not leave the place?” The answer was, “There is no oppressive government here.” The Master then said, “Remember this, my children: oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.”’
The subject of this paper is the problem of ensuring that government shall be less terrible than tigers.
--- From The Taming of Power by Bertrand Russell, 1938