this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

donald trump gets 10 warnings for intimidating witnesses and indefinite trial postponement for hoarding and most likely leaking classified documents. Sweet sweet justice.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (3 children)

People keep trying to convince me it's not evidence of two justice systems.

 

But it is.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

It's evidence that we live in corporatocracies masquerading as "democracies". The 0.1%, shielded by the liability protections of the corporations they own, and their armies of lobbyists — they finance our politics, choose who ends up on the ballot, and shadow write most of our legislation, policies, and regulations.

Trump is free because he is a part of that < 0.1%.

The Boeing execs who oversaw systemic fraud, lied to the FAA, and murdered 166 people still ARE FREE AND RICH. Why? Because they are the 0.1%.

The IPCC hosts fossil fuelled climate summits in fossil fuel exporting countries, inviting fossil fuel corporations and lobbyists to attend — at a scientific conference about how to solve the crisis they created and profited from! why? Because we live in corporatocracies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The US is a kleptocracy, we're ruled by the people who have looted the public

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I think this is a consequence of any (unregulated) capitalistic system in general. The system is founded on money, more money will give anyone more influence and power over the system

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It's a consequence of our "growth at all costs" take on capitalism. Capitalism is only livable for the average person when it's kept in check by a strong government and corruption is vigorously prosecuted. We've decided that corruption just happens and there's nothing we can do about it, and so there are no disincentives to corrupting government.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

It's the subtle difference between a JUSTICE system and a LEGAL system.

One aims to maintain law and order in society in a fair and equal way regardless of one's status or situation.

The other is a system gamed to benefit the richest and wealthiest individuals to get away with everything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

For the record, Aaron Swartz never actually went to trial, nor was he "sentenced" to anything.

Federal prosecutors came after him with overzealous charges in an effort to make him accept a plea deal (they do that a lot), which he rejected. It would have gone to court where the feds would have had to justify the charges they were bringing.

But that never happened because he killed himself.

We don't actually know how this all would have played out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

The comment in OPs post is misleading but he did nevertheless kill himself because of the justice system trying to prosecute him for accessing science most likely funded by public money in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

And will never know, selfishly speaking, the possible extent of his further contributions to society. Died at 26 after an incredible life already.

Besides his life, what else did they steal from us?

RIP Aaron

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Articles paid for by the public through grants btw

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

With authors often paying for open access publications literally out of their very own money, not just grants.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not at the time this happened. Aaron's case was one of the motivating factors that led to the Open Access publication movement gaining enough traction that authors could publish that way. JSTOR access is paid for and administered on college campuses by libraries and librarians as a whole field felt terrible both about the paid publication system and the way Aaron was treated. As a community of professionals, the Librarian and Information Science community pushed very hard for the adoption of Open Access publishing into the Academic community.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Good to know we had something very good out of this.

Now, let's beat the living hell out of publishers so that those crazy open access publication prices would decimate.

Because right now, I literally cannot afford publishing further than Q3, which already eats up most of my personal grant earnings (which are so bad I can say I work purely for an idea).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Look, the kid was a hero, but this is also patently false.

He was not sentenced to 35 years. The trial hadn't started. 35 years was the maximum possible sentence. He was given a plea deal for 6 months that he rejected.

We don't need to spin lies to make his story more tragic than it already is.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

35 years max, plea for 1/2 that was rejected. He was going to get the book thrown at him to make an example. 5 years minimum but I wouldn't doubt 10-20.

The rapist traitor that headed a insurrection on Jan 6 2021 has never spent a day in jail and is still the frontrunner for president to be legally elected in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

plea for 1/2 that was rejected

The rejected plea was for 6 months.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

also he worked with wikileaks... i think he was named as a source posthumously...

he also wrote an open source system of servers that function exactly like wikileaks submission system (actually i think it is, given clues as to how it operates... like the manning chat logs)
dead drop is now called "open drop" and powers every major newspaper's leak submission system...

he was murdered.

not only the did it make no sense, given the 6 month plea bargain option, but he was an outspoken activist and would've at least left a note... in the form of some post online...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

He committed the idealist's perennial sin: He thought that because the system is bullshit, it's okay not to play ball with it.

"Hey this is a bunch of crap. I can be guilty or innocent, and the right move is always to plead guilty even if I didn't do a damn thing wrong, because if I try to fight the case they're gonna tack on a ton of new charges and they almost always win and I might go away for most of my life."

"Preach."

"I'm gonna plead not guilty because I didn't do anything wrong."

"No no no no no that is not the way to reform the system no no no that is a bad mistake"

Aaron Swartz was a fuckin hero. Read his posthumous book, it is wonderful. But the same idealism and faith that led him to the good things he did in his painfully short time here, also led him not to understand how to engage with the US federal government and keep your skin.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Shout out to Alexandra elbakyan. She continues part of aaron's work by running sci-hub and libgen, but lives safely out of reach of the american criminal "justice" system 💔

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly, it wasn't even illegal since these scientific articles should have been public to begin with because they used public funds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

That may be so, but IIRC he was charged with breaking into MIT's networking room and illegally tapping into their network to get the articles:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261840/Aaron-Swartz-MIT-surveillance-shot-ruined-tragic-Reddit-founders-life.html

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Oil CEOs pay fines for bringing about a global climate catastrophe. Fascist politicians are given slaps on the wrist for an attempted coup d'etat. Government officials openly commit gross violations of privacy and suffer no consequences.

But a guy hacks a university network and downloads a hoard of scientific articles that should have been freely accessible to begin with and he gets 35 years in prison. I'll admit I wasn't familiar with this case before I saw this picture. Which is kind of insane in and of itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Remember Kim Dotcom? He had a file sharing website and the police raided his house with guns like he was a dangerous criminal. There is a video of it on YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

This is propaganda he got sucicided. And he didnt transfer or share scientific articles he simply downloaded them thats all. This poat is extremely damaging as its almost correct juat slightly shifting the commonly accepted reality of history. This is not the first time I've seen posts about him here doing a simmillar thing this raises the question who's trying to rewrite history and what for?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Reddit could've been so good with him at the helm...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Good thing we've got a second opportunity. ;)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (8 children)

He didn't even share them as far as I know, he just downloaded them. And the trial hadn't started yet when he committed suicide.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

He didn't get the chance to share them because he was caught downloading them, and his download requests were getting blocked.

And to be clear, he wasn't downloading from the Internet as one might download a car, he went into a restricted networking closet and connected directly to the switch, leaving a computer sitting there sending access requests. He had to keep going back to it to check on the progress, which is when they caught him.

And the trial hadn't started yet when he committed suicide.

Yeah, I agree with the sentiment of the post, but this is just wildly misleading. He was not sentenced to anything, he committed suicide before the trial.

He was given a plea deal for 6 months that he rejected, in an effort to make the feds justify the ludicrous charges they were pressing. Had it gone to trial, he certainly wouldn't have been found not guilty, but it's unlikely many of those charges would have stuck. It's extremely unlikely he would actually have served 35 years.

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