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KingOfTheBailey
20m ago
What is the best way to harden a free software community against the sort of drama which recently engulfed the Nix community? Preemptive bans seem like a recipe for getting called an x-phobe, but letting these people stay and build up numbers results in takeovers. Has anyone seen a free software project's community successfully resist the tactics of the woke left?
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
29m ago
So, what are you reading? (There was another book thread in the Fun Thread here)
Still on Human Action. Also going through Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute, an early and very unusual warning shot against the dangers of the internet. It is a bit haphazard, but also a bit profound, and I wonder why I have never heard of this book before.
To run on automatic is, for the human being, to sink toward instinct, unfreedom, and statistical predictability. It is to give up what sets us most vitally apart from our material environment and our tools. It is to remain asleep in our highest capacities.
Whether our ideals can survive depends- beyond all pessimism and optimism vested in automatic processes- on whether we can consciously take hold of the mechanisms around us and within us, and raise them into the service of what is most fully human because most fully awake. The first prerequisite is to recognize the severity of the challenge.
hydroacetylene
38m ago
Black Hebrew Israelites and 5% nation, most notably.
epohon
just now
With apologies to @Capital_Room (not really) I'm reposting his hypothetical:
Let us consider a hypothetical character named John. Here is what John has to say about some of his coworkers:
Alice at work keeps stealing my parking space; obviously, she wants to murder me so she can have it all to herself.
Bob bumped into me in the hall yesterday; obviously, he’s a threat to my life, since he clearly shows a willingness to inflict violence upon me.
I suggested to Carol that we use a red background on the webpage, but she used a blue one instead. I can only conclude that she wants to kill me so that I stop showing up her lousy ideas with my better ones.
Dave made a comment about the smell of fish in the break-room after I reheated my lunch in the microwave. Obviously he hates my culinary choices, because he hates me, and intends to assassinate me.
Emma in management announced the new work schedule, and the set up for Monday afternoons conflicts with one of my hobbies outside work. She obviously created that whole schedule specifically to attack me personally, because she’s plotting to destroy me.
Frank called me a “paranoid nutjob.” He’s clearly out to get me and wants me dead.
Greta says I’m constantly exaggerating how much people don’t like me to play on people’s sympathy. She’s obviously plotting my death.
Henry made a comment about how I frequently accuse everyone of wanting to kill me, which only goes to prove how much he wants to kill me.
(Cartoonish, yes, but it’s a deliberate excess for purpose of illustration.)
What’s the best explanation for why John is Like This?
John is paranoid — maybe a classmate tried to stab him on the playground as a kid, and now he views everything through the lens of that trauma, or something. John is cynically engaging in hyperbole to win over others into taking his side — he found out that exaggerating how much hostility he encounters engendered greater sympathy, and he just kept ramping it up in intensity. John frequently contemplates killing anyone he disagrees with or dislikes — he’s engaging in “typical-minding,” believing that everyone else shares his own murderous hate.
Disregarding that this is a metaphor for the Jews or whatever, it's how I model people. What is the best explanation?
Bleep
just now
okay, so you knew she had supported your speculation, having read the linked article, and you still wrote a comment claiming she didn't
and now you're going with you don't know others in media talking about it because foxnews and oan haven't? what?
this is just dishonest
AvocadoPanic
1m ago
identify with Hamas and take the side of our enemies
There are lots of groups that have a dim view of Hamas' enemy. In the US I've only seen those on the left taking the side of Hamas. Are there groups on the right also aligning with Hamas? On the right I see more "let your enemies fight".
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
9m ago
called an x-phobe,
Any community afraid of this has no defenses worth a damn.
rmtodd
12m ago
Six main novels, yes. I kind of forgot how many side stories are there, maybe I should read them.
Yeah, there's the 6 main novels (Empire of Silence, Howling Dark, Demon in White, Kingdom of Death, Ashes of Man, Disquiet Gods) with the 7th/final one in progress, three short story collections (Tales of the Sun Eater Volume 1/2/3) and three auxiliary stories (The Lesser Devil about Hadrian's younger brother, Queen Amid Ashes about Hadrian on a planet recently freed from the Cielcin, and The Dregs of Empire about one of Hadrian's underlings getting sent to prison after the events of book 5).
TheGodhead
17m ago
Adam Nevill’s Last Days, a novel about a guy in the 2010s filming a documentary about an apocalyptic 60s cult. Really enjoying the writing style so far, it’s entertainingly sardonic without being too cynical.
shakenvac
19m ago
I was shocked at how well Israel did in the popular vote. Not only was their song kinda boring and mid but politics is a huge part of the televote (and jury vote?) and I thought what with public support for Palestine, Israel would get a super low score in the televote.
Possible explanations:
- I have terrible taste in music, the song was actually a banger, but the juries hated it for reasons.
- Joe public's support for Palestine / antipathy for Israel is hugely overstated and in fact most people are still very sympathetic toward Israel after October 7. I am extremely online.
- People are not necessarily sympathetic to Israel, but are massively sick of constant pro-Palestine protests, and this was pushback.
- people felt sorry for 20-year-old Eden Golan constantly getting booed by the crowd.
- The BDS movement to boycott Eurovision was weirdly effective which trimmed off the pro-Palestinians, and consequently their votes.
- Mossad did it.
Thoughts, anyone?
quiet_NaN
19m ago
I am a utilitarian, numbers matter to me. The main difference between gitmo and the gulags are the scale. Now, I thought gitmo was an abomination when it was first established by GWB and I think the same to that day.
We have two options to compare these systems. One is to count every act of state violence against members of the population. Of course, this puts us in morally ultra-relativist territory: "Some states have the death penalty for murder, rape, gay sex, criticizing the party, theft, not bowing deep enough, apostasy, listening to enemy radio stations, arson. All of these serve to keep the regime in power, therefore all of the acts forbidden are morally equal as forms of political dissent." Or we could claim that some of these acts are intrinsically more political than others. States not (at least in principle) punishing murders leads to a bad equilibrium (feuds), so almost all states at least notionally have laws against murder on the book.
But even if you count the whole US prison industrial system as pure repression, by the numbers I would gladly pick the US over the 1940s USSR even through a veil of ignorance where I materialize as a random citizen. And that is before we even go to the indirect advantages of having less repression, like
As for the quantity of the repression, it's a function of how secure the regime is and essentially nothing else.
The version I could agree on is 'every system of government has a minimum of repression it requires to stay in power'.
Some governments deal out too little repression and are overthrown, like the Weimar Republic.
But a common feature of the more repressive governments is that they overdo repression. Almost no organization ever declares that its mission is accomplished and disbands itself. The secret police is no exception. There will always be someone who is the first to stop applauding after Comrade Stalin gives a speech, some intellectual who is the least aligned with the party line.
And some ideologies are more accepting of repression than others. A communist who declared that the class struggle is over, all the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries are defeated would have to answer uncomfortable questions about when exactly the communist utopia will become reality, while in a liberal democracy a lack of life-or-death conflict should be the default state.
Glassnoser
21m ago
Sure, it’s something we all do unconsciously, but the very act of making it explicit causes problems.
Like what? I agree that it's weird, but I don't see anything wrong with it.
Tanista
26m ago
That's what I thought.
My thinking is they got caught up so easily because they're antisemitic (and can't/won't hide it) and b) no one is really worried about them: "we need to finally get organized" is just a cliche in these circles. It's actually even used by grifters now: Dr Umar Johnson has - allegedly - been building a woke black school forever and keeps complaining about how black people want to talk and not step up and donate.
There are prominent black people organizing or lobbying. Presumably you'd go after them first. But most aren't going to start on a rant about being the real Jews when pushing the NFL.
But I don't think the conservative reaction is the point
The government decided to redefine the social contract in a way that allows it to attack more and more people and institutions as "transphobic" in a way that is basically unavoidable. Because of the moralizing, it was able to do this shockingly fast and with relatively little pushback, even according to activists themselves.
I mean, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to me! Not sure why we need to posit some additional indirect play or benefit.
laxam
45m ago
This wisdom is why the South is currently the most patriotic part of the country instead of a hotbed of political terrorism and separatist ideology.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
52m ago
Living in one of the rare other countries where soccer isn't the main sport, there really seems to be a something ostentatious about the way anti-soccer Americans go out of their way to talk unprompted about just how much they don't care about soccer and how un-American it is etc. that you don't really find here.
I suppose it's a culture war thing but even then, a self-aware person would at least consider that it really is then the culture war that's at fault, moreso than the game itself.
Like who?
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