FriendOfDeSoto

The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.

Personally, I don’t think it’s as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the “possible but outlandish” category.

If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn’t be possible. But that’s a feature, not a bug.

The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn’t realized for a while that shared posts don’t show up in my PF feed on the app either.

I don’t think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you’re not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you’ll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.

Another reason why PF won’t be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It’s only great for looking at pictures. It’s terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I’m using the Android app and it’s not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don’t feel like I’m breaking the protocol.

This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don’t go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.

Yes, the introduction of an individual, ethical “veto” came after the formation of national militaries like we know them today. There is built in tension to introduce a right to disobey into a system that otherwise demands obedience to function. It’s also hard to grasp as a concept even for the better educated. It’s fucked up. These days I’m thinking more and more about the adage that morale is something you need to be able to afford. And I understand every sergeant who feels like they don’t have any morale money to spend when ordered, say, to fire on shipwrecked drug smugglers. You piss off your boss and before you know it you’re dishonorably discharged back to the poverty stricken area you tried to get away from. Also, left-leaning liberals are a minority in a profession that practices how to kill people. There is so much gray there.

I say I understand the hypothetical sergeant in their moral life dilemma. As far as my respect is concerned, I can be totally black and white about this though.

The pessimistic take is none of this will matter because the US is moving further away from its constitutional order into a 21st century version of fascism. The military will be ridden of the morale “veto” and sworn to obey the leader no matter what. The optimistic take sees the current cult/fascistoid leadership edged out in 3-7 years and we will mostly see the homeopathic punishment I mentioned before. If we’re lucky, a tightening of the rules under which circumstances and with whose authority military units of any kind can be mobilized in peacetime within the US.

These names tend to be attached to them after the fact. I imagine there were a few Leonardos or Johannesses roaming about at their time so much like Alexander became The Great to set him apart from all other Alexanders, these names are scribes’ and historians’ shorthand to make clear which Leo or Joe you were talking about. And a few centuries of historical telephone later they seem to fit perfectly in our first name/last name system. Which in western Europe really only became officially standardized with the Code Civil from our friend Napoleon.

Or where they were from: da Vinci, Gutenberg. The Bible also doesn’t have a lot of action in China where last names were a thing before Jesus.

Soldiers have the right and the duty to resist illegal orders. I reserve respect for those who abide by that. Blind respect leads to blind eyes to when they eff up. And this American blind respect for active service members is so paradoxical in the face of how most veterans get treated.

The US military has survived the hot phase of the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And it probably should have taken more damage as an institution after each of these. It will survive 47 as well. Long drawn out procedures will meter out homeopathic doses of wrist slaps for most involved minus a handful of high profile scapegoats.

I don’t think it would be weird. It’s up to them if they accept or not. I would just suggest you make parallel plans as well to meet new people. A hobby group, a book club, etc.

I think there are two general (human) media preferences at work: “if it bleeds, it ledes” superceded by which deaths are more extraordinary. So soldiers murdered in peacetime is noteworthy. They could’ve become accountants but chose a career where there is a real and high risk of death. Btw I fear it’s that death math that made medical professionals drop out of noteworthiness post-pandy, i.e. the threat is real but the risk has gone down again. I think children dying generally of tragic circumstances will be noteworthy. Nurses contracting AIDS or non-famous people dying of natural causes become less noteworthy. And I use noteworthy here as what they chose to cover in their newsrooms. They have financial interests to consider as well, which brings us back to “if it bleeds.”

The American filter generally erases many “mundane” gun deaths from visibility. Either people are so numb it doesn’t register as the tragedy that it is or it doesn’t get covered. There are plenty of places on earth where a single gunshot fired in anger that would make headlines.

There is a worldwide blindness to traffic deaths. We have just accepted that this is how many people die. So if something more interesting happens elsewhere, the t-boned accountant on the way to Walmart just gets dropped.

So there are a number of factors that influence what makes the news or not. The list goes on.

I would also say that media coverage is not prescriptive for who you should feel empathy for. We cannot all feel all the tragedies on this planet at once. We’d go mad. You pick and choose as a defense mechanism. So if you don’t feel that much empathy for these national guardsmen, I kind of get it. If you don’t like how much media coverage it’s getting, I can definitely understand that. The problem is just that when you say this out loud you open yourself up to criticism, like: you don’t feel for the people who died while sworn to defend your freedom! What about children and nurses? That’s just whataboutism! Etc. So I would suggest you follow your own heart and change your media consumption when it bothers you. Or you’ll end up in a culture war debate about whose lives matter more.

You don’t show him the stupidity of his ways by sleeping with that lady. You either find a way to confront him about that. Or you unattach yourself from this toxic person by finding other, better friends. Frankly, I would give him a piece of my mind and then find other friends anyway.

I don’t think I’m leaning too far out this window when I say: no, there isn’t an optimal size. It depends on so many factors. How many people? Is this urban or rural? What’s there neighborhood like? Facilities, public transport, doctors, grocery stores, etc.? What’s the crime rate like? How long is the commute to work? People have different priorities and make different choices as a result.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Trusting judges is not uniquely American. You’ll find similar processes on the continent across the channel. The hurdles of who can sue and under which circumstances may differ. The appointment of judges is often less politicized. I think the UK is the unique case here and I believe that’s because by and large there isn’t a written constitution, at the very least not in the same way as in the US or France or Poland. Supreme courts are there as a check on whether or not laws conform to constitutional values and have the power to overrule a legislature when it passes laws that don’t. It’s not an “upper hand” deal, it’s checks and balances.

The American legal system is not great. I don’t know the details of the case you mentioned. One bad decision doesn’t mean the whole system needs to be abolished. If that were so I’d like to have a word with the UK’s highest court on what constitutes a woman.

Which part is infuriating here? The law that will be difficult to enforce and probably has all sorts of unintended side effects? Or that lawyers, and indeed layers funded by big internet companies, are suing?

Fundamentally, let them sue. Not everything coming out of the legislatures the world over is pristine law and this is how the system can correct for mistakes. Also, I’m sadly more on the side of the Googles and the Metas. Their freedom of speech argument is entirely self serving but that doesn’t make it wrong. Any age verification has itself a chilling effect on speech online. Forcing it creates more data sets to be leaked and hacked and in this case of minors’ information, not grownups’ who can make an educated decision if they want to go through with it to go watch porn. This is not a clear case of mild infuriation.

Is it porn the deceased spouse created or is it porn the widow created with the deceased husband’s likeness? And which would indeed be sadder?

If you are referring to the UK government, I’m going to guess no. They either don’t have the full version or they won’t be interested in releasing the files themselves. The brother of the current pointy hat wearer is up to his non-sweaty elbows in this mess and they don’t want to have to deal with this and damage the monarchy further.

If you’re referring to a UK publication, they will probably not be able to release the full dossier. They would have to carefully tread around any UK citizen or noble d-head involved because they don’t want to be knee deep in defamation lawsuits.

What we need is a country that no one thinks they’re biased or has an agenda or much to lose under a 250,000 percent US tariff. So not Russia or Venezuela. Or China or Iraq or Afghanistan or Canada or Denmark … Maybe Vanuatu will do. The only problem is that even if the entire dossier was accurate and unedited, you won’t have to wait long until reasonable doubt gets injected into the public debate that it was doctored before release. The effect of the release will not lead to immediate resignations, firings, arrests, etc.

I would guess that leading English speaking newsrooms probably have access to enough of it already and that what’s there is not enough for a spectacular release. And a possible kill order of the pedophile in prison will probably not have left a paper trail. And it will not clearly say Trump or Bubba raped teenagers although the smoke around the fire will be tough to ignore. Circumstantial evidence is not the same as proof.

Set alarms on your phone and pretend it’s phone calls from work, a friend in need, etc. Go hide in there bathroom and take a ten minute break.

Do you have allies in the family? Make a pact to take turns. Get them to lure you away on a pretense. Go help clean the kitchen.

If you can’t wiggle free, give yourself permission to switch off. You don’t have to fight every battle, you don’t need to set everything right. It’s amazing how long you can keep a conversation going if all you do is repeat the last thing they said to you back at them but you raise your tone at the end to turn it into a question. Make plans on how to compensate yourself for enduring this shit. Pat yourself on the back for maintaining peace in the face of adversity.

Nothing bores people more than showing them “a funny video” on YouTube. Or some really boring vacation pictures. Or have a non-controversial topic of your own and stubbornly steer conversation that way. Tell a story with no point. If you’re sitting in something comfy, like an armchair, pretend to fall asleep because you worked so hard. Praise the food and how good it was every time you’re biting your tongue and you really want to say fuck you.

It’s family, it’s the holidays. I’m not saying you should swallow all bullshit. But raise the bar in the interest of family peace. And remember that folks will blame the loudmouths, the ones who raised their voice more than necessary, and not the quiet one for any fracas.

None of these strategies will work by themselves. It’s the mix that does it. It’s better to go into the situation looking at it like a game you play. Not like: fuck! Uncle Bob is going to annoy me again. You have your armor on and uncle Bob can’t do shit.

That release was batshit if you ask me.

BatOS obvs

Yes, because my point is that your point doesn’t make sense.

That’s a remarkable statement in the context of a hypothetical, counterfactual scenario where we are attempting to interpret the possible thinking of a long deceased man displaced in time for the benefit of said scenario.

You may disagree with me. You haven’t changed my mind either. So let’s leave it at that.

You’re citing my text but cutting off just before the point I was trying to make. I think be would still side with the people who claim to follow his ideology (yes, piss poor efforts objectively speaking but that’s irrelevant to him because he would prefer them over the folks entrenched in capitalism on the other side).

Ideologs are a dangerous breed because they are surprisingly flexible under realpolitik conditions when the alternative is having to admit defeat. Or in Marx’s case admitting that his ideas didn’t work or the fact that they didn’t work as intended cost the lives of millions. Surely he wouldn’t like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China and well apoortioned crticism thereof (or of the GDR or wherever) would have eventually spent his good will capital (pun intended) with the local leadership and he would end up in a gulag or erased from history. Karl-Marx-Stadt would have been renamed sooner.

I think if he were honest with himself he would see that what he got wasn’t what he had envisioned in any of the countries that claimed to be communist/socialist. But they were his team so he would publicly support them. You can sell his stance as an evolvement of the theory rather than admitting mistakes. Not too dissimilar from the way the PRC sells its version of communism to its people: communism “with Chinese characteristics.”

Chances are though that he would have perished in one of the purges happening in whichever communist country he would have chosen to reside in. He would have enough clout to niggle at leadership openly about stuff going wrong and eventually be would deliver the straw that broke his camel’s back. He would be mind-holed and his legacy rectified so he wouldn’t be the lighthouse of the movement that he could only become because he died early. And he didn’t starve millions. And communism would become the thing created by the people through an arduous march and not a system dreamed up by some German philosophers.