bensmoif

Joined 4 years ago

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Feb 2

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Comment · 2 months ago

Big up Edward Tufte

Comment · 3 months ago

It's stunning. The video speaks for itself. Please scale this up, like way up back of a truckbed size. This would be delightful to see spinning and running IRL.

Then get a grant and make one as wide as a city street

Comment · 3 months ago

1000%

Comment · 3 months ago

Brother, no he did not liberate a single one of his own slaves. Some escaped and he did not pursue, but his final slave died under Benjamin Franklin's enslavement 9 years before Franklin himself died.

Them facts you were looking for: https://share.google/J4zlTt102nc81Fhay

I think it's a sound analysis, he was a thoughtful and philosophical man who considered the nature of slavery heavily, and he benefitted from it greatly, and dearly understood its terrible nature, and continued it's cruelty, and freed no one.

Comment · 3 months ago

I'll accept your conceit but answer this: why didn't he liberate his slaves? If it's a wash, why keep humans in slavery at all?

I think it's because, in his own calculus, he believed he needed to desecrate human beings, destroy their families, and humiliate their dignity to maintain his greatness.

Comment · 3 months ago

My brother: trolls troll out of cynical cruelty, there are many children's books that can illustrate this clearly.

Franklin's ability to speak plainly about the evils of slavery, in between his own acts of unspeakable cruelty, and robbing families of their dignity and humanity, requires a level of disconnect and pride that is worth significant mention whenever we do justice to his great legacy.

This talk of human utility sounds like a lot of chump shit.

Comment · 3 months ago

In this century we have a word for that kind of talk by slaveholders who professed some longing for abolition (Franklin. Jefferson, Washington, John Jay) but did not really wanna be inconvenienced: trolling.

Comment · 3 months ago

I don't think it's irrelevant that a brilliant man like Benjamin Franklin may not have been able to achieve as much as he unmistakably did WITHOUT the heavy assistance of forced slave labor in his life, from cradle to grave.

Pretending like these things can be separated is ignorance. Ignoring its brutality does a disservice to our history and that man's legacy

Comment · 4 months ago

Really interesting, and a link to your GitHub with a "code coming soon". Please get us the tool already!

Comment · 6 months ago

Oh yes to this! I spent yesterday morning working this out when it smacked me in the face

Comment · 10 months ago

The tax is his shares, those shares become public assets, the government and (ostensibly) the citizens finally get a say in what the hell is happening with that guy.