Actually yes. If my neighbor openly, to my face, celebrated the state murdering hundreds of thousands of people in war, I would absolutely challenge them on it just like above. And I have, in fact. I see you’re more interested in civility politics than any kind of justice, so yeah: maybe it is time to fuck off and find some instance with people who have empathy and principles. Thanks for the “warning”.
Thought the irony of transphobes saying when they discover trans people’s skeletons, they’ll only see us as our AGAB. Apparently figuring out a skeleton’s sex is not so cut and dry. Fascinating story regardless.
Turns out that not all societies are (and were) as patriarchal as the modern ones imposed upon us by capitalism and colonialism are, too.
The field of “archaeology” seems to be better about illuminating such facts than the field of “history” is. But that could be anecdotal based on my exposure to archaeologists, historians, and their material.
You don’t have to agree with someone’s spiritual or religious views, but you should respect them.
You should really learn to distinguish between spiritual/religious views and the organization of religion into hierarchical organizations of churches though, TBH. And the indoctrination of people into those hierarchies both through coercive family relations (e.g. parent/child) and by systems like colonization and the genocidal missionary work that goes along with it. People are generally right that these hierarchies are destructive to society, whether or not we respect people’s personal beliefs.
Context is fun. What you did do is reply in a thread in which people are criticizing churches and their influence; a reply disparaging those statements and implying they aren’t being respectful of people’s spiritual/religious views. Dissertation unnecessary.
Sympathy from the U.S., where we’ll be told to pick between two fascists once again.
I think the world’s nation-states are widely adopting the “lesser-evil” faux-choice strategy these days, right along with the mass spread of neoliberalism and the all-too-ubiquitous open adoption of its bed-buddy fascism. This is by design. Politicians are waking up to the fact that we aren’t rebelling (effectively) even as they drop the pretense of democracy. The state has enough power over us at this point that it can get away with just about anything it likes.
There is no reasonable rational analysis where Joe Biden is a fascist
Oh yes, there most definitely is. He has enacted far more fascist policy in his career of politics than Trump has or ever could. Mass incarceration—including concentration camps—the “War On Drugs”, union busting and strikebreaking, mass surveillance (e.g. the Patriot Act, which he happily takes credit for), militarization of the police, attacks on journalism and whistleblowers, etc. Biden is most definitely fascist. It’s pretty fucking gross of you to practice such denial and apologia, TBH. Putting a donkey and some nice old grampa speeches in front of the policy doesn’t change the policy.
He’s a neoliberal
Yes. That too. As is Trump, by the way. Did you not notice how they share plans to privatize social programs like Social Security? Man, if I had a nickel for everyone who believes that a politician subscribing to neoliberal ideology means they can’t also subscribe to fascist ideology. Whew! The two liberal (yes, liberal) tendencies are completely complementary, and a ton of neoliberal economics—such as privatization—came straight out of Nazi Germany, as practiced directly by fascists in a fascist government. One manages the policy related to economics and so-called “soft power”. The other manages the more direct violence, control, spying, and abuse by the state.
Politics has been an exercise in finding compromise
False. Compromise is simply a tactic. Politics is literally about building and exercising power, and using it to secure and enhance the authority which grants it. “Politics is about compromise” is liberal propaganda that has very little to do with reality. When power relations don’t dictate that compromise is necessary, none is used.
We definitely don’t have an amazing system of politics. But “this is by design” is literally untrue unless you believe in some weird conspiracy thing. The US constitution is mega old, most of it’s failures are related to that, imo.
Again, this is completely incorrect. The U.S. constitution is a reactionary document that was literally designed to curtail democracy. There’s no conspiracy necessary. “Conspiracy” implies secrecy. The so-called “Founding Fathers” literally documented that that was exactly what they were doing, and what they intended. And those in power regularly admit it as well. All you have to do is look at what they say (quite openly!) when the intended audience isn’t the working class. They have their PR guys and the mainstream media to put it into much nicer sounding words when you and I are expected to be paying attention. You should really read more literature by people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. When those in power admit what they’re doing, and when it very much matches their interests to do it (i.e. preserve their power while ensuring you have none), you should probably believe them.
Nice. And no: throwing out names doesn’t erase the absolute fucking ignorance of political philosophy you displayed previously, sorry. The point out mentioning Chomsky and Zinn wasn’t about “people with different viewpoints”. It was literally about the U.S. constitution, the design of the modern system, and your assertion that people who recognize that it is working as intended are wacko conspiracy theorists. Yes, if you’ve really read those works, you should re-read them and actually pay attention this time.
Have you tried Revolt? It’s supposed to FOSS and offer similar functionality to Discord. I keep meaning to try it, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Hey fellow nerds, I have an idea that I’d like to discuss with you. All feedback – positive or negative – is welcome. Consider this a baby RFC (Request for Comments)....
IMO it can be MUCH simpler. Deleting content should propagate across federation just like adding content does. De-federating should retroactively remove all content that it would normally keep from propagating (possibly leaving “this post/comment deleted” markers so that replies make sense). And losing track of an instance for long enough (e.g. a week, or a month) should be equivalent to de-federating, possibly with the option to resurrect content when and if the instance comes back online.
I believe that would remove a lot of the issues with extra traffic, and possibly a lot of the issues with extra processing. I don’t know enough about the protocol to tell whether it would add requirements for extra data, but I suspect it wouldn’t.
Playing around with PeppermintOS on a "new " old laptop, and having fun. Its making me realize that tiny things can really work to impress. (Especially when you're waiting on a ram upgrade, haha!)...
When Google first started making a name for itself, it actually returned links to shit where the content literally had the search terms in the visible text. Ah, the good ol' days before the fuckin' search engine decided it was smarter than its users.
Also remember this is useless without complementary security measures:
Encrypt the storage on any device where these are installed (including if you install e.g. the desktop version of Signal).
Lock your devices with pin or password, and store that pin/password only in your head (there's no such thing as telepathy at this point in time, so they can't physically force it out of you unlike biometrics like a fingerprint).
If you are relying on "Legally they're not allowed to..." instead of, "they simply can't, even if they try," then you're not doing it right.
Google does not really offer a space where people can come together to create communities or discussion threads. However, with the introduction of Perspectives, it may do so later.
So—despite the dumbass title (article's fault, not OP's)—explicitly not an alternative to Reddit, where literally the whole point is to create communities and discussion threads.
Out of 33 of these crisis center websites they looked at:
In follow-up tests, four organizations appeared to have completely removed the code. The majority of the centers we contacted did not respond to requests for comment.
Ignorance may have been an excuse prior to this investigation, but it's not an excuse now.
I appreciate that the only JS scripts Beehaw seems to load are from beehaw.org. Usually NoScript shows like two full pages of domains, and (at least—you know, the obvious ones like xyzads4you.com) half of them are for ads and "analytics".
All right. Well, let me rephrase: it's not a meaningful excuse which we should buy as justification for gross undermining of our privacy and our trust in organizations which allegedly exist to help us when we are in crisis.
It's hilarious for Meta to invite some person who happens to run a server to an "off the record" conversation with "confidential details that should not be shared with others" anyway. LOL.
The only "confidential" information that's likely to be involved in such an exchange would be some kind of bribe for the person to shut down or assimilate their infrastructure with Meta's. It's not like they're going to reveal Meta's trade secrets to someone they believe to essentially be a competitor or anything.
'Member when the Zuck assured everyone that Facebook cared deeply about their privacy, and then immediately turned around and quietly implemented features where people had to opt-out of sharing all their shit (when opting out was even an option at all), and those users didn't even know it? And we're not even getting into how it sells your data behind the scenes to advertisers, government entities, and anyone else with a little cash to offer.
Ah, the good ol' days. And I don't even resent it due to being personally affected. I've never had a FB account, and I just watched from the sidelines as it affected people I know and love and the broader online community as a whole.
they could make their own custom version of the fediverse
I mean, they already did and it's called "Facebook" (and "Instagram")? Are people forgetting that Fediverse apps are being developed as an alternative to the existing commercial "social media"? Meta is already heavily invested in keeping users on their platforms and killing alternatives. This is 100% an attempt to do that. They just added a pair of Groucho glasses to it and think people won't see through the flimsy disguise.
...and they never really had any intention of embracing an open source project.
Well, FOSS. Open source projects can still be proprietary, as just because you can see the source code doesn't mean you have legal permission to use it as you wish.
Anyway, there's a simple rule about this: capitalist corporations NEVER have the intention of embracing FOSS. Like, people want to give M$ lots of credit for contributing to the Linux kernel for a while, but the truth is that their motivation for doing so wasn't to improve on Linux, but to gain advantage for their own hypervisor (and then cloud) platform. They'd tried to take over the web server space with Windows Server and realized it was never going to happen, so they took a step lower and tried to get every instance of Linux-based web servers running on Azure. Tailoring the Linux kernel for their brand of virtual environment was NOT done for the benefit of Linux developers or users.
Which is a bad plan, TBH. At this point in history, zero waiting needs to be done to know exactly the sense of Meta's involvement. The "if" is a certainty.
Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram.
This part could actually be enough on its own, TBH. Imagine that there's one Fediverse instance where you can interact with the rest of the Fediverse and interact with FB and IG, but it doesn't propagate stuff between the two networks (i.e. it doesn't allow people on Beehaw to see what someone on FB posts, and vice versa). Now there's a reason for everyone to migrate to Meta's instance, and a built-in way for Meta to advertise the migration to everyone in the FV. Once it sucks up enough users, it just de-federates from everything else and goes on its own way.
A study by the Common Cause Foundation, due to be published next month, reveals two transformative findings. The first is that a large majority of the 1000 people they surveyed – 74% – identify more strongly with unselfish values than with selfish values. This means that they are more interested in helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness and justice than in money, fame, status and power. The second is that a similar majority – 78% – believes others to be more selfish than they really are. In other words, we have made a terrible mistake about other people’s minds.
The revelation that humanity’s dominant characteristic is, er, humanity will come as no surprise to those who have followed recent developments in behavioural and social sciences. People, these findings suggest, are basically and inherently nice.
...
So why do we retain such a dim view of human nature? Partly, perhaps, for historical reasons....
...
Another problem is that – almost by definition – many of those who dominate public life have a peculiar fixation on fame, money and power. Their extreme self-centredness places them in a small minority, but, because we see them everywhere, we assume that they are representative of humanity.
The media worships wealth and power, and sometimes launches furious attacks on people who behave altruistically. In the Daily Mail last month, Richard Littlejohn described Yvette Cooper’s decision to open her home to refugees as proof that “noisy emoting has replaced quiet intelligence” (quiet intelligence being one of his defining qualities). “It’s all about political opportunism and humanitarian posturing,” he theorised, before boasting that he doesn’t “give a damn” about the suffering of people fleeing Syria. I note with interest the platform given to people who speak and write as if they are psychopaths.
...
Misanthropy grants a free pass to the grasping, power-mad minority who tend to dominate our political systems. If only we knew how unusual they are, we might be more inclined to shun them and seek better leaders. It contributes to the real danger we confront: not a general selfishness, but a general passivity. Billions of decent people tut and shake their heads as the world burns, immobilised by the conviction that no one else cares.
All right. Well, TBF I'd rather "sound unemployed" (whatever that means) than sound like I'm shilling for big tech corporations and their predatory practices. shrug
Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to block other users. So I wouldn’t be too optimistic about Apple’s response…
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5,000-year-old 'Ivory Lady' upends what's known about sex and gender in prehistoric societies (www.ctvnews.ca)
Thought the irony of transphobes saying when they discover trans people’s skeletons, they’ll only see us as our AGAB. Apparently figuring out a skeleton’s sex is not so cut and dry. Fascinating story regardless.
United Methodists lose one-fifth of US churches in schism driven by growing defiance of LGBTQ bans (apnews.com)
Macron's call to 'cut off' social media during riots sparks backlash in France (www.france24.com)
Stop Using Discord for Your Open source Communities | mattcen's mumblings (blog.mattcen.com)
Recently I accidentally made a Fediverse post which went viral:...
Data protection, the right to be forgotten, and federation
Hey fellow nerds, I have an idea that I’d like to discuss with you. All feedback – positive or negative – is welcome. Consider this a baby RFC (Request for Comments)....
What are some tiny, lightweight apps for Linux that are really neat?
Playing around with PeppermintOS on a "new " old laptop, and having fun. Its making me realize that tiny things can really work to impress. (Especially when you're waiting on a ram upgrade, haha!)...
Protests broke Reddit hack for useful Google search results—and Google knows it (arstechnica.com)
cross-posted from: vlemmy.net/post/317922...
Unclassified FBI Document: Ability to legally access Secure Messaging App Content and Metadata (January 2021) (beehaw.org)
An official FBI document dated January 2021, obtained by the American association "Property of People" through the Freedom of Information Act....
Reddit alternative? Google introduces Perspectives, a search feed with results from humans (tech.hindustantimes.com)
Google is trying something new on the search feed
Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook (themarkup.org)
Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange. (fosstodon.org)
The exchange is about Meta's upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is fighting a losing battle against the site's moderators (qz.com)
The company wants to charge for API access. Its volunteer moderators have other ideas
GitHub - tjkessler/plemmy: A Python package for accessing the Lemmy API (github.com)
Howdy,...
Liz Truss says being compared to a lettuce was not funny (www.politico.eu)
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment (www.techdirt.com)