There is just a ton of news today.

In markets, after the Memorial Day Weekend two days of across-the-board rises in stocks. Thursday they went down, and after an afternoon announcement by Trump that he would talk about China and Hong Kong Friday. Friday stocks went down again.

But there is a little battle going on between US politicians and social media. Twitter, which is Trump's favorite platform and the one he used famously during his 2016 campaign and ever since, put a 'fact-checking' warning on one of his posts earlier this week and today hid his wild-west tweet about the riots that erupted in Minneapolis, where the police station is currently on fire and the staff has left.

When you click the hidden tweet:

Senator and previous presidential hopeful Ted Cruz called for an investigation of Twitter for allegations the company is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

After Trump said he was going to go after social media companies, and there was talk of removing their 'protections' laws that protect them against culpability if people on their site post illegal speech, Zuckerberg commented that he didn't think social media platforms should try to fact-check, and today there's a ton of people reposting Facebook-like images citing him as a child abuser etc. This is law on top of bad law. The underlying issue is that people don't have free speech and companies are at risk when people say things outside of the range of legal speech on them. Both of those things are wrong and the issue at heart is that free speech and expression should be guaranteed. Instead, they made a law limiting types of speech, and held companies responsible for it, and then put another law on top of that to 'protect' those companies when that happens.

There are riots in Minneapolis' Twin Cities, with hundreds of shops looted and lots of fires. Headlines included the arrest of a CNN reporter even after he identified himself. I don't know the details. There is outrage because of video footage by a nearby store security cam of a black man named George Floyd dying under the knee of a white police officer, after he told the officer he couldn't breathe and not to kill him. Trump is cracking down, while today he has to comment on China cracking down on China passing a new law to crack down on protesters in Hong Kong.

Many people are still saying it's a black issue, as if white people weren't unfair victims of police and other brutality, myself included. There have been several large protests against police on black violence. The LA Riots in 1992, fires, looting, killings, spurred by Rodney King being bang-beaten by a group of cops outside his car one night. A lot of records were sold rapping about this afterwards, and a lot of violent mentality incited in blacks and others against whites and police. Then in 2012-13 the Black Lives Matter protests became popular across US cities, in response to events of George Zimmerman and police killing three black criminals, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. These protests haven't been helped by the victims of the killings. We saw a lot of Rodney King and black rappers, politicians and activists, and white ones taking the cause and making it their own, but not much of Rodney King, perhaps because it wouldn't serve the cause to have more information about him enter the public face of the dialogue. With the 2012 events it was similar. I saw the video footage that came out later of the huge Michael Brown physically bullying the Asian clerk and robbing him. I still have yet to watch the footage of George Floyd but I suspect it might be a similar situation. Abuse of power or of people is always wrong, whether a cop or otherwise, and the responsibility has to be higher in terms of consequences for people who are given elevated power over others and allowed to use discretionary force, like cops. The good the riots do is threaten police and politicians into enforcing on cops their responsibility, the same things cops are supposed to do for criminals, although laws are some good, many bad, and actually harm people as well. It's a bit of a mess.

The BLM movement has been going for a couple years now. You could say since the Rodney King incident 30 years ago in another sense. Why in that time do they not have any figure they can hold up that would be a person they would hold up even if he wasn't killed or beaten up? Why don't they have an incident of actual racism, I mean where the aggressor is making their racism clear, something along the lines of saying 'All you niggers should die because none of you are any good,' and then acting on their racist belief in a physical, demonstrable way, or something like that? And all BLM holds up to show is incidents where the deceased or beaten up guy is black and the aggressor white? Recently there's been a little wave of people posting on social media videos of full grown black men beating up random white old men in grocery stores and the like, and a lot of people saying 'Why isn't this a hate crime?'

When I say it's because BLM is political I mean political: Trying to use various types of force to cause other groups distinguished by the ability of a group to call them 'separate' to foot the bill for privileges for the group that supports the movement or to bow in deference to the other group in terms of power, the ability to dictate. Just like Dinka and Nuer or Republicans and Democrats, in all cases to an extent, mixed with more sociable beliefs.

Headlines had it that Facebook staff were upset about Zuckerburg's not removing some of Trump's 'violent' tweets. Everyone views it as a move to try to win Trump over away from Twitter.

Later Trump positioned himself against governors in cities where there were riots, saying 'most of you are weak,' which is probably true although this is a democracy so winning the favor of the common people is more important than anything, which includes siding with protesters and kissing babies. Trump made some pretty ignorant statements though like, 'You've got to arrest people, you've got to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you'll never see this stuff again,' showing he doesn't understand even the most simple things about democracy, protest, and human rights. Probably he's upset with them because he's under some pressure right now and feels the delicacy of the situation. The economic measures are pretty good it seems, and his dealings with countries is better than the past presidents. It seems he has no ability or even workable understanding of anything outside of business though. Still, I think he'd be fun to have a beer with, and perhaps isn't too much a square although I'm not sure. About DC he boasted that it was 'under very good control, but we're going to have it under much more control. We're going to pull in thousands of people.' Active duty troops were apparently deployed there.

Apparently the government flew war and surveillance drones over the protests. The surveillance drones have a stronger signal than anything else, so cell phones, which seek the strongest signal, all go there, so it can harvest that data, which presumably will be used against people. The modern age. The reason I don't bother.

The chief of the Louisville PD was fired because there was no bodycam footage of the event.

Among the wreckage was some confederate statues and statues of 'slave owners,' in the continued effort to erase and reform history. The mayor of one city asked them not to and he'd do it officially in a peaceful way. I guess none of these people know that basically every statue anywhere in the world of anyone except the post-dark ages Christian West held slaves, and there is more to history and the figures that represent it. These types of things remove the motivation to suffer for people by trying to stand up for them and their groups.

The protests continue, a week later or so, and have been aligned with the black rights / black victims movement. Despite having no actual racist element in the event. Simply that the man was black and the officer white seems to be all that was needed to fit into the narrative and purpose of those movements, highly political, the Democrats too. Headlines have it Biden invested big in social media ads targeting Trump's response to the event. This is no surprise of course. I would like to read a few scientific reports on this though, how little is needed for an instance to be adopted by a purposeful group, how the psychology works on it. I still haven't watched the video because I don't care enough to and don't think there's any particular value in it. If I ever have to really look at the subject I would. I expect it's about a tall, big snarly bouncer black guy dressed casually being apprehended after allegedly trying to pass some counterfeit or a bad check or something, I forget. Would it have been different if he was white, asian, or hispanic? I'm as white as can be and my experience was similar, and could have ended the way his did potentially, and I wasn't anywhere near that size. I wasn't committing any crime either, just that the officer didn't like that I told him I had a right to be standing there when he told us all to leave. If I was black would these groups have abused my event and made it about race?

But the actual event wasn't about everyone else. It wasn't an event undertaken by any group or against. What we have in this case is two people, and a few more on the side in the other officers. We had a problem. But how can the conflict be resolved? The one party is dead. Still the other party could have undertaken conflict resolution but he now can't, because his will has been taken away from him. He's been treated like a criminal, which he allegedly is, but beyond that he is no longer allowed the position where he could undertake apology and penance, express his mistake, his experience afterwards, and what he will do to make up. If he were to do any of that in the current state of things it would seem he's doing it as the little subject of a big punishment system and in response to a huge force of opposition and criticism in the BLM masses rather than a response to his own conception. In those circumstances who would feel right apologizing, as it can't be seen as coming freely from him and the actions he takes to decriminalize himself can't be seen as coming from himself. Which they would be. No one can undertake actions like that for another person. The state and big entities try to force people to 'do the right thing,' but in that case the person isn't doing anything from themselves, he's being forced. Neither BLM nor the punishment system want him to apologize or do penance from his own heart, though. In the same way they like their focal figures silent or dead, the BLM wants an enemy, particularly a weak one, and the punishment system wants someone they can prove or validate their prerogative of institutional force with.

Maybe there will be no rapprochement between the two parties, if you could identify them because I can't, because there is no valuable relationship that has been built. If there isn't one, where is the motivation to resolve conflict? But a greater point is that there is no actual offense to be sorry for, although the massive group claims one. Unless they can identify a victimizer, which there isn't, and an offense of racism, which there isn't, who is supposed to apologize and what are they supposed to apologize for? These realities don't negate the feelings of injustice and any actual injustices that happen, but I'm just saying the movement will be vague and can't have any actual demand or resolution. Is it more of a game for adults?

A couple weeks later and this is still the main US news story. While trying to find a copy of Raph Koster's Theory of Fun, a video game book, I found myself on Gamasutra and one of the headlines was a CEO of Riot Games resigned after he shared his opinion on George Floyd saying Floyd's lifestyle was to blame. Riot Games is in support of BLM and taking measures to support blacks in tech. They say racial minorities but that's of course not what they mean. The buzzword is 'systemic racism,' totally vague and lacking anything specific anyone could address, except people in support can make a point of hiring specifically blacks instead of whoever they would hire otherwise. There was a headline the other day on CNBC that someone said that people using the 'I have black friends so I'm not racist,' wasn't good enough. I'm not sure what that means. What for them would be good enough? It seems what they want isn't fairness but to be able to claim victimhood. It seems like a game. Assuming this CEO got there because of years of dedicated work and being the right person for the job, it's crazy that he would be forced to resign by his company for expressing his opinion. This is another example of why I don't live in the West. If you can't even express your opinion, and it's like you'll suffer bigtime if you even think an opinion different from the active, vindictive and violent mob, what's the point of anyone who believes in liberty and being a person want to live there? It sucks though because who wants to live away from where they were born and grew up, even if their politicians have sold and are selling it to other peoples?

I don't agree with the statement entirely. I don't think people should even go to jail for 'Cocaine,' which isn't enough to write either. Was it personal possession or dealing or what? But the other crimes, using armed force to rob people, and breaking into a person's home and using armed force to rob them are definitely highly anti-social and harmful. Anything using force against other people to force them to do something they don't want to do and harms them. These convictions were 10 years apart so you might imagine there were a lot more people being armed robbed or having an intruder in their house, and shows that the man wasn't in a short phase he gave up during that time. However, the last conviction was over 10 years ago, and he was now like 47. So the last conviction was when he was about 35 and the first when he was about 25. He could definitely have changed his ways as he got older, but I'd have to know a lot more about him to say. However that he was trying to rip off people by passing a fake check means that either he had turned a page to do no more violent crime and only take advantage of trust to rip people off, or that he was still involved in all crimes, or perhaps that it was a one-off thing because at the moment he really needed to buy something and didn't have money, although that seems like it's probalby unlikely. The thing on driving on meth, I'm not sure what the effects of meth are on driving. The effects of drinking and driving are terrible, and that is a serious offense no one should ever do, the risk being massive. That's for the value of the image the CEO shared, but that he should be able to share his opinion is unquestionable, right, in a free country? Where do you have a free country nowadays?

There's a lot of talk about police reform and the Democrats are trying to get fame for making a bill for it. Accountability is important, but anything has to be supported by facts, not just the claims of people, although claims of people is a current problem in evidence, false claims often cause huge problems and are never detected or sometimes are detected years later. How though can you have nice-guy police in a precinct with real badguy criminals? I mean violent, tough, snarly criminals. You can have calm police in a white collar area because toughguy cops are gratuitous, but if you want to effectively police an inner city crime neighborhood and discourage thieves, robbers, murderers, burglars, rapists, and even conmen, I suspect you need toughguy cops, but ones who know how to focus violence on violence and turn calmness to calm people.

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I referred to: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kp89e/riot-games-investigating-exec-who-blamed-george-floyds-murder-on-his-lifestyle