Both, I'd say.
Money doesn't create corruption out of thin air - anyone who's corrupted by it already had to have the potential. But money does undoubtedly lead people who otherwise would have resisted their baser nature to indulge it instead.
And it very definitely provides the means for people who are already psychologically and/or morally inclined to corruption, and so is very attractive to them.
Great essay.
About a third of the way through it, I was already composing a response that would point out that the Tytler Calumny is sort of narrowly true, but that it's not that the people as a whole vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, but that the wealthy and powerful few manipulate the system so that the people (or more precisely, the politicians who pretend to represent them) vote largesse to them. The end result - the destruction of democracy and ultimately of the nation itself - is essentially the same, but the process by which that happens is not.
Then Brin spent the rest of the article making essentially the same point.
On a related note, I quite like Brin's novels, but didn't know that he also writes political commentary.
It's a shame that the Israel this author is analyzing is a pure fiction, because the analysis is otherwise solid.
But it all ultimately hinges on pretending that current Israeli policy just sprang into existence after October 7, and could have been something other than what it was, when the reality is that current Israeli policy is just an extension and expansion of policies that have been in place for decades, and there was no other direction it could have possibly gone.
Israel has been oppressing and murdering Palestinians in Gaza, and terrorizing, murdering and stealing the land of Palestinians in the West Bank, for decades now, while most of the west self-servingly turned a blind eye. They didn't just suddenly start doing that after October 7 - they'd been doing it all along. All they did after October 7 really is pull out all the stops and start murdering en masse rather than just sporadically.
Israel would indeed be in a much more secure position if they instead helped establish a stable and non-Hamas government in Gaza and worked toward a two-state solution. But they threw the idea of a two-state solution out decades ago. It's not an accident that the last notable official to publicly promote a two-state solution - Rabin - was assassinated.
Yes - Israel would be better off following the strategy outlined in this article. But they would've had to have started following it decades ago, and notably didn't. By October 7, it was already far too late.
So I don't really follow California politics at all, but the impression I've gotten from the bits of Newsom that pop up from time to time is that his governance style is basically to bang on things, then complain when that doesn't work.
Is that about right?
There actually is a statistical correlation between conservative, anti-trans political affiliation and a preference for transgender porn, and Texas leads the nation in searches for transgender porn.
Pure unmitigated evil.
Explaining the sudden access for some users on Wednesday, X said a change of network providers had "resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users".
The company’s explanation had caught some observers by surprise.
"Everything that happened during the day led us to believe that it was on purpose," said Basílio Rodriguez Pérez, advisor to ABRINT, the country's leading trade group for Internet Service Providers (ISP).
Um... yeah. See... there's this thing that people do called "lying." It's when they deliberately claim something other than what's actually true.
There was likely a time when "incel" just meant "involuntarily celibate," without all of the baggage, but then two things happened together.
First, a significant number of "incels," most notably on 4chan, fell into a specific set of essentially misogynistic coping behaviors - primarily blaming the supposed hypocrisy and shallowness of women for their own problems.
And second, a significant number of smugly self-righteous bigots saw an opportunity to hurl self-affirming hatred at an undifferentiated mass of people without suffering the backlash they'd get if it was directed at a group that essentially enjoys protected status, and leaped at the opportunity.
So now the popular conception is that all involuntarily celibate men are "incels," with all that that implies - that they're not just involuntarily celibate, but shallow, hateful, misogynistic losers and assholes.
It could potentially help if involuntarily celibate men who don't share the misogyny of the "incels" had their own label, but honestly I don't think it would make much of a difference in the long run, because there are now enough asshole bigots reveling in their hatred of "incels" that they'd refuse to let anyone get away. Just like all other more traditional bigots, they'd cling to their self-affirming conception that the mere fact that an individual is of a specific ~~race~~ ~~gender~~ ~~sexual orientation~~ relationship status means that they're necessarily foul and loathsome, so their hatred of them is justified.
True, and I indeed should have said "reflex" instead.
I actually started early with gamepads, dating all the way back to the Gravis and the original Logitech Wingman, but it might be relevant that I still primarily use a mouse and keyboard, and especially for anything that requires precise aiming.
I use a gamepad for emulated console games, since they're designed for a pad, and for things that require free and flowing movement, so respond well to a stick or a d-pad - racing games primarily, and many platformers and similar action games. But for things that combine separate movement and aiming - first person shooters and RPGs and the like - I just think a mouse and keyboard is better than dual sticks ever could be.
Seriously, WHAT is THE DEAL with conservative disinformationists scattering ALL-CAPS WORDS throughout EVERYTHING they WRITE?
My THEORY is that it's MEANT as a SUBSTITUTE for LOGIC and REASON - that in LIEU of saying things that are ACTUALLY logical, reasonable or true, they JUST say things really LOUDLY.
It MUST be TRUE because it's so EMPHATIC, right?
And it PROBABLY triggers a PAVLOVIAN response in the DUNDERHEADS who READ it. "LOOK at all the CAPS! This is MY kind of TRUTHINESS!"
It's just... WEIRD. And sort of PATHETIC.
So we're supposed to believe that Israel is only at this late date "ready to risk (an) all-out war" that it in fact has brazenly and obviously been trying to provoke for months now?
Seriously?