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Lessons to be learned from the Kavanaugh Hearing

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The argument that the Internet existed in the 1980s, and therefore this subculture must have known about that subculture and shared their special jargon is laughable. The fact that this argument is actually being made is one of the things that leads me to believe some people would in fact accept any excuse to disqualify Kavanaugh. (Another piece of evidence has been Craig4's assertion, posted without any objection here, that no (legal) trick is too dirty or too low to keep Kavanaugh off the bench.)


The only point I was making was that the mid 80's were not "pre-internet".

And I didn't bring up the internet in the first place.

All the rest of that you'll have to take up with whoever you think you are arguing against.
 
In a nation of about 230 million people (back in 1982), what's the probability that Kavanaugh and his friends were among those thousands?


The same probability that Christine Blasey Fraud's allegations are true -- the odds are roughly 1 in a million.
 
And of course in the 80s there was no established online repository of popular culture memes. There was no Wikipedia. There was no Urban Dictionary. There were no social media echo chambers elevating and amplifying ideas across a broad swath of the public. There was the infrastructure of the Internet, sure, but there was nothing like the Web we know and love. Even in the mid-90s, the web was a pale shadow of what it is today, not nearly the repository of common knowledge and accessible factoids we now take for granted.

The argument that the Internet existed in the 1980s, and therefore this subculture must have known about that subculture and shared their special jargon is laughable. The fact that this argument is actually being made is one of the things that leads me to believe some people would in fact accept any excuse to disqualify Kavanaugh. (Another piece of evidence has been Craig4's assertion, posted without any objection here, that no (legal) trick is too dirty or too low to keep Kavanaugh off the bench.)

Gee, I wonder how people managed to even speak the same language, then!
 
The argument that the Internet existed in the 1980s, and therefore this subculture must have known about that subculture and shared their special jargon is laughable. The fact that this argument is actually being made is one of the things that leads me to believe some people would in fact accept any excuse to disqualify Kavanaugh.


My point has nothing to do with internet access in the 1980s. My point is that the internet now is a huge repository of human knowledge. And nowhere in any corner of that vast database was "devil's triangle" a drinking game rather than a sex act. Nowhere in the internet was being a "Renata Alumni" considered a way of saying something nice about a girl named Renata, rather than naming her as a slut. Nowhere is crying considered restained. Nowhere is blaming Democrats trying to get revenge for Hillary Clinton considered apolitical.

Just. Nominate. A. Different. Guy.
 
I think I worked with a Gee in the 1980s! I haven't seen that name in a while.

Twas such an auditorily confusing time...just a jumble of meaningless sounds before the Net defined them.

I would greet someone with 'Sup?' and they would say 'sure, I'd love to have dinner with you'. Expensive times, they were
 
Indeed, they were confusing times. I may have supped with Gee. ...or chowed with Chow, which was his last name, btw.
 
Based on stats showing about 18% home ownership of computers in around then, plus upper quartile homes having 18% higher chance of having one around then, it looks like a 20% chance.

Not even close. Back then, modems were not a standard item on all computers, they were an expensive add-on that most people didn't have or want.
 
Terminology aside the BBS/E-mail "boom" if you can call it that and the World Web Boom are very, very different things.

Until.... early-mid 90s the "public" was not on the internet.
 
I used Fidonet (a BBS network) to contact people in Russia for friends of mine who had adopted from there.

How "local" is that?

Leaving aside your apparent ignorance of the meaning of the word "mostly", Fidonet was first released in 1984. This was trivially easy to look up, your failure to even check before you advanced your argument is hilarious.
 
Forget it.

Collins just said that Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, so I think it's safe to say she'll vote to confirm. The Republicans have the votes. Kavanaugh will be seated.
 
Forget it.

Collins just said that Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, so I think it's safe to say she'll vote to confirm. The Republicans have the votes. Kavanaugh will be seated.

Q. What do you call a judge who was confirmed to the Supreme Court in a highly controversial process that alienated half the country?

A. "Your Honor."
 

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