I wish the US had spent its efforts and resources towards completely eliminating the Taliban as an institution and ideology rather than kind of shoveling money around to opportunists with no skills for organizing people or maintaining loyalty. I think what happened instead was that the US was afraid of sparking a new movement that would eventually operate outside of its control so it funded what it thought it could control: rich assholes.

And now the religious fascists are back in charge. Wheee.

Just because they’re conservative doesn’t mean they’re publishing falsehoods. Just be on the lookout for bias, which you should for all media.

For example, the oppression of women in Afghanistan is probably being reported on more by conservative sources not because they are against the oppression of women, but because they’re hawks who disagreed with leaving Afghanistan, and there’s probably some anti-muslim sentiment motivating it as well. Likewise liberal media sources are probably ignoring it because leaving Afghanistan the way America did was largely considered to be a disaster which was finalized under a Democratic administration, and for all their talk of caring about women they did basically abandon half the population of an entire nation. It would probably not help their side of the current election cycle to shine light on the catastrophic fallout of one of Biden’s major international policy decisions.

I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.

This is basically Objectivism.

Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.

Everyone has a choice.

There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.

I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.

One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.

I’m pretty sure I’ve lived on less than this in inflation adjusted dollars.

Oh I don’t think it’s a problem for Discord, but when it comes to software projects specifically I find the reliance on Discord frustrating because of its non-public orientation. If I’m having an issue I’d far rather search for a solution on a public wiki, bug report system, or forum than sign up for one more Discord server.

Far more than should tbh. Too many little game mods will have a Discord for questions and reporting issues rather than using their GitHub or a forum.

I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.

Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.

Or…you tend to be negative.

I feel bad for folks who are introverted and not particularly strong. Almost every job with a low barrier to entry demands a lot of physical or emotional labour.

Imagine a barista with a pin that says “Here are some of the soft skills that this job demands and which I lack.”

I think by “do nothing” he means no arbitrary interface changes, new features no one asked for, etc.

That’s the sort of “doing something for the sake of doing something” stuff that Microsoft and Apple often do that people hate.

When I have romantic feelings it doesn’t make me want to sleep with the person they’re directed towards.

It doesn’t make me want to necessarily sleep with them either, but rather stay up late having sex with them. And maybe after sleep.

But this idea of asexual romantic attraction makes about as much sense to me as saying “When I am hungry it doesn’t make me want to eat food.”

When I say I have “romantic feelings” for someone, the feeling I’m referring to is a combination of love and sexual desire. Even when I was a kid and would sort of push down or repress sexual thoughts because in my head it felt wrong or inappropriate, what I was feeling was sexual desire and love.

My understanding of the term “romantic” has always been euphemistic, based in an understanding that it would be weird and rude to just tell someone you’re crushing on that you love them and you want them to love you too and you want to put your mouth on their genitals because you think you could make them feel really good and you want to physically intimate to be vulnerable with them because vulnerability is a part of of not just physical but emotional intimacy and you want them to share their feelings and feel open to you and so on and so on you get the idea.

Do people seriously conciously fantasize about taking part in erotic acts with real people (especially ones they have feelings for)?

Yes.

I kinda get the disrespect perspective, maybe. I felt that a little as a teen. But then I thought it probably wasn’t respectful treating my crush in my mind like a sort of sexless statue or object rather than a real human being that I was in love with and wanted to have sex with.

Because they’re also rich. Laws are for the poors.

Public micro blogging overall is a bane, so yes.