Jesweez
5mo ago
I think we should at least mandate that tech companies provide the ability to opt out of maximally addictive features.
For example, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, to an extent X, basically every social app has adopted the “infinite scroll of short video reels” that makes TikTok so addictive.
You used to be able to opt out of automatically being shown “shorts” on YouTube. However, they’ve taken away that option.
Instagram, used to be a place where photography enthusiasts post their pictures. Now it’s an attention on screen maximizer using algorithmic suggestions and infinite scroll short videos.
I read a book recently which if anyone is curious I can link the name, but basically identified that a problem with the digital age is that all of our digital tools and utilities come built in with distraction maximizing features. An article tries to shove 3 videos and 4 advertisements with maximally weird looking photos in my face while I read it. A currency exchange rate app is showing me ads. Everything that I do is trying to grab and divert my attention.
Some people say it’s choice, e.g. it’s my choice to use instagram for example. And I could always go for a dumb phone. Yes, but. The choice has largely been engineered out of my environment. And I believe we should mandate the ability to opt out of addiction and attention maximizing features on the tools and the so called town squares of our digital age.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Source?
I don’t think the problem is that they depleted all the reservoirs.
Jesweez
5mo ago
The reservoirs are currently near full, everyone saying that this this the problem is plainly pushing a political agenda instead of trying to understand the world around them.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Yep, if anything I’d expect the headline shared to work to increase the number of firefighters not decrease it?
Trying to target new demographics who typically don’t go for those jobs, sounds pretty cool.
I agree, but this negates what is often used as a point to discredit the claim that climate change plays some role in recent extreme wildfires.
I often point to figure D from the paper I linked, showing that there’s an incredibly tight relationship between annual area burned and atmospheric aridity (measured as vapor pressure deficit).
And in fact, we know very well that increasing continental vapor pressure deficit extremes is a key aspect of climate change.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51305-w
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JD025855
I’ve seen a lot of the back and forth rhetoric about the conditions in California right now. One side, it’s climate change! The other, it’s homeless camps who are lighting fires!
All I know is that Southern California is currently experiencing their second lowest winter (wet season) rainfall totals in 150 years of record keeping and then the Santa Ana winds arrived.
https://calmatters.org/environment/water/2025/01/california-rain-drought-north-south/
That drought may or may not be related to climate change, but these type of scenarios almost always have an angle where the climate is playing a primary role, for one reason or another.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Why do all these outbreaks of mass arson seem to occur exactly when there is historically extreme fire weather conditions?
https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10279345
Are they that competent to plan exactly when the conditions on the fire triangle are perfect and then go out to set fires together?
Same thing with the Canadian fires in 2023. Apparently there was this historically unique epidemic of arsonists setting fires all through the boreal forest even deep into the north country exactly when the climate conditions were extraordinarily prone to wildfire.
Jesweez
5mo ago
It’s easier to do in Florida because the climate there isn’t conducive to explosive out of control fires, so there’s less risk.
I live in Arizona where we do a ton of prescribed fire, it’s taken very seriously. Still though, it’s risky out west. Half of the iconic mountain here is bare of trees because a prescribed fire got out of control a few years ago.
A lot of care is taken to only burn during certain conditions. Still, it can sometimes get away from the crews who are out there burning.
Nonetheless, kudos to Florida, it is a good thing.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Now, I’m perfectly happy to discuss whether or not other, more recently-emergent models of geopolitical coexistence have effectively obviated the underlying logic of wars of expansion. Maybe it’s genuinely no longer necessary to do so in order to secure prosperity and security for one’s people! Maybe the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. But clearly many very intelligent people are still dubious of that assertion, and see it as mere self-serving posturing by the victors of the last great territory-redistributing war(s).
It’s also true that almost all groups have at one point or another enslaved other peoples to our own benefit at some point historically.
But now in the modern world, we ideally don’t accept that behavior anymore, and we celebrate when slavers get their teeth kicked in. (You might be able to point to some modern slavers who seem to be getting a free pass, but I think it’s hard to doubt that modern people generally would celebrate to see them get their comeuppance and their enterprise dismantled).
Similarly, people who wage wars of conquest in the modern world, they often get ganged up on and it’s a modern value to celebrate at them getting their teeth kicked in.
Sometimes it’s hard, e.g. they have nuclear weapons or something. But boy, modern people often love to slap people who wage wars of conquest and that’s a pretty cool and adaptive recent novelty in human geopolitical behavior.
Jesweez
5mo ago
“We have to destroy the woke mind virus so we can save western civilization and eventually get to the stars”
That’s fair, but similar to socialists, I honestly rarely see actual libertarians outside of Internet forums. They just don’t seem to have much voice in American politics.
Maybe America will have a Milei figure to come along to shake things up at some point.
Edit: like the right often wants to reduce government spending, sure. But for example, it gets done in a DOGE fashion where figures such as Elon and Vivek are both very rhetorically palingenetic. The mind virus is destroying western civilization and we need to save it so we can go to the stars! In fact the more I think about it, an expansionist United States with Elon style techno-saviorism at the helm is a pretty credible model for the emergence of a 21st century American fascism. We’re gonna be great, we just need to destroy the woke mind virus, secure Greenland and the canal, master AGI, make a few cryptos go to the moon so that the peons are happy, and then get to the stars ourselves. The woke will try to interfere, but at a certain point might makes right and it’s our destiny and mission to shut them out of the political process.
Honestly this wouldn’t surprise me to see, lol.
Jesweez
5mo ago
the motivation to have a political movement fairly represented within a democracy is unquestionably pro-democracy, no?
Depends on the political movement.
Fascism is pretty often born out of democracy.
I’m not at all saying that this is Trump/MAGA.
But objectively, an anti-democratic movement could easily come to power on claims of shenanigans in an election, whether valid or not.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Is it fair to say that it’s a situation which often boils over to genocides?
Yugoslavia, Greece-Turkey, the Hutus and Tutsis, etc.
I probably lack full historical literacy of all the details but any time a country sends their military to another to protect their ethnicity as a minority there, or try to annex them into their own I feel like it tends to end up in horrible bloodshed.
I think the principle of sovereignty, respect for territorial boundaries, and relative freedom of movement has been a good salve for this recurring pattern of warfare.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Trump's not a palingenetic ultranationalist, but he's a somewhat palingenetic nationalist ("somewhat" mostly meaning that there's less need for palingenesis in America, which is arguably still in the height of its national power).
I agree with you overall, but I think it’s pretty central to the American right’s worldview that the nation is currently deeply decadent and that a palingenetic movement is sorely needed.
I’m not a fan of palingenetic nationalism as a definition of fascism because the American right are nearly all palingenetic nationalists and I don’t think that they’re all fascists.
Maybe the difference is that they’d need to be palingenetic extremists who value the rebirth over the tradition of democracy. That’s a good definition perhaps.
But he has to let go of the idea that he will get all of the land back. There is no universe in which the Putin regime stays and power and this happens, unless Ukraine achieves some military miracle. At an absolute minimum, the eastern Donbas is gone.
Minor note but obviously someone isn’t going to fold and throw away their entire negotiating hand in a war during a podcast.
the pro-Ukrainian discourse that I have observed has been horrendously poor. Disappointingly, Zelenskyy continued this. On the other hand, Putin's speeches were highly intellectual and several levels above any speech I have ever heard a Western leader give in terms of sophistication
The sophisticated version I’ve heard is simply that since the end of the big war, European nations have not attempted to conquer one another or to annex each other’s territory. Europe thus has a historical interest to make it as hard and consequential as possible for any nation which attempts to do this.
Meanwhile, Putin’s frame where historical claims of great civilizations and uniting the ethnicity through territorial annexation is important has historically resulted in horrific and likely unending bloodshed on the European continent.
For anyone on the western side to begin discussing the problem from within Putin’s frame is already to cede ground to his worldview.
Instead Zelensky has cast him as a naked assed barbarian who lives in a world of historical tribal claims rather than the modern world based on the principle of territorial sovereignty.
Zelensky did however lay out the historical context of Ukraine. The nation who gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees which were subsequently not respected. That has significance. He also in my opinion could have painted the broader historical picture for westerners of why Ukrainians have historical reasons to resist domination under Moscow. Something about one of the largest man made famines in human history? I’m not sure how big a part of the Ukrainian psychology that event is. He probably could have done a better job here.
But in the end as @TequilaMockingbird says, conquerors of territory often operate on some great historical mythos in their own head. However even so, there still may be reason to consider them naked assed barbarians whose concept of grandeur isn’t compatible with the interests or frame of the rest of the world. Simply having a grand theory of history doesn’t correlate well with being a force for good in the world. It’s quite often the opposite.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Were people riled up because of the sanctity of democracy?
I’m not sure that was the core motivation.
I think the modern new American right is one of the movements which is developing an anti-democratic undercurrent.
It’s not mainstream, but you start to see it pop up more and more. Your comment itself is bordering on being a testament to that.
Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalist
Can you elaborate on this?
For clarity I don’t think Trump is actually a fascist but below I say he often rhymes with one.
I’m looking up this terminology and I think it still fits.
Roger Griffin argues that fascism uses the "palingenetic myth" to attract large masses of voters who have lost their faith in traditional politics and religion by promising them a brighter future under fascist rule.[1][2]
More radical movements often want to overthrow the old order, which has become decadent and alien to the common man.[1][2]
The palingenetic myth can also possibly stand for a return to a golden age in the country's history so that the past can be a guidebook to a better tomorrow, with an associated regime that superficially resembles a reactionary one.[1][2]
Palingenesis being a word meaning rebirth. The palingenetic myth as I understand it seems to be about a rebirth of strength, vitality, and greatness from a society which is seen as decadent.
That all sounds like classic MAGA to me.
Again I don’t think Trump is a true fascist so I’m just curious how you use the palingenetic ultranationalist definition to disqualify him.
Not attacking your position just trying to understand it. But this definition makes me more concerned about Donald Trump, not less.
Jesweez
5mo ago
That’s fair.
And do note, I never said Trump was a fascist.
But I get why he gets pattern matched as one.
You might look at what the commenter I responded to said.. “trumps replacement very well could be a fascist.”
You could look at breaking norms in a somewhat fascist coded way while having a cult of personality associated with you as a danger even if the subject himself isn’t likely to declare himself generalissimo.
But to talk about why that might represent a sort of danger you’d need to invoke fascism.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Well there’s not a great definition of fascism, but I do think it’s a valid category that we shouldn’t do away with, nonetheless.
Jesweez
5mo ago
Liberal democracies tend not to do things like for example:
Crush a protest against the leader with authoritarian force, dismantle the system of democratic choice.
If you read my statement, I said that Trump didn’t do either of these things.
But he often does show tendencies toward these things, causing people to pattern match him to them.
Of course, if you are someone who is concerned about fascism, it’s important to pattern match potential fascists before they become actual fascists, so for those people it can be considered a worthwhile exercise.
Fascism is a word that has an actual meaning.
It has a meaning which does at times resonate quite a bit with Trump though, I’d argue that although he doesn’t fully meet the definition there is a reason it keeps getting applied to him specifically. For example,
Fascists often:
Dismantle the systems of democracy. Trump didn’t do this, I don’t think you can call him a full fascist at this point, but he has tendencies on this point. For many people, including his former vice president, he’s the first US president to try to break the system of transfer of power. Whatever you believe about that situation, he said from the beginning that he’ll consider the electoral process rigged if he loses. And once he did, he loudly and consistently employed a whole host of means to try break the system, trying to get governors to “find votes”, to put up alternative electors, to halt the system of certification, etc. He got his followers so riled up about this that they formed a mob and broke into the US capitol building. These are all definitely tendencies toward the dismantle democracy aspect of fascism, and if you were in a country where someone did try these things, you might pre-emptively call that person a fascist.
Promote ethnonationalism and typically delineate a group of people as an enemy. Trump often takes steps in this directions and then pulls back. Actual ethnonationalists often have a love hate relationship with the guy because he’ll use promising rhetoric and then say something else which is pro x or y ethnicity and which pisses those guys off. But in the end he was elected on the central promise to conduct the greatest mass deportations in American history, and those vibes certainly match what would be expected for historical fascists to say as well.
Use authoritarian state force on internal minority groups. I don’t think he’s done this, kudos. Other people often think he has, “children in cages”, etc. But fascism tends to be crueler than this and less within previously established norms. There are obviously fears around this happening during the mass deportations, but that remains to be seen.
Crush dissent violently. This is often part of the dismantle democracy thing. I don’t think Trump has done this and this would be the biggest American norm to violate in order for a fascist to emerge. I do believe that Trump the man himself has these tendencies that could have emerged in a different context (consider his rhetoric in quotes such as his praise of China’s strength during the Tiananmen massacre, and lamenting that were not strong like that). There are many similar quotes that could be mined to paint a case that he sometimes has somewhat of a fixation on this type of “strength”.
Idealize the military and often use military force in expansionist ways. Trump has sometimes idealized the military in ways that previous American norms have not, e.g. calling for the US to begin doing military parades in the style of China or N Korea. But up until this point he has not shown much tendency to launch any sort of military adventure, much to his credit. (And of course to your point about previous presidents, much to their demerit). Recently he’s been making people edgy on this point, yesterday saying that he would use economic and perhaps military force to annex various territories around the world. Knowing Trump, this is likely his typical “start with the most extreme statement” bluster. But I think it can be pretty clear to understand why for people who think he does have certain fascist tendencies to become concerned when he suddenly starts talking about expansion or annexing territories. We’ll see if he actually is serious about using economic force to try and annex other territories. If so he fits the point about territorial expansionism. If he broke with norms so extremely to threaten Panama with the military in order to take territory from them that would obviously be extremely fascist coded behavior. The whole thing, in the end, shows hints of him breaking with norms that liberal democracies have had in the postwar era. Like in the Helsinki accords, to which the US is signatory; they respect each others sovereignty, they respect territorial boundaries, they do not threaten one another for territory, etc. Breaking these norms is definitely fascist coded, and we’ll see if he continues down that path or if it’s just another passing Trumpism to sit back and enjoy.
I think you should learn Spanish specifically because shooting the shit with Mexicans — and I’m putting Mexicans in a deserved pedestal above all other Spanish speakers here — is the funniest shit and will probably lead to a great improvement in your daily life.
I’m sorry but es la neta wey
I’m not sure, submitting this for research purposes:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ormQQG2UhtQ
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