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 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.

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.

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

Public micro blogging overall is a bane, so yes.

The difference between clearly documenting features, and hiding or removing them.

First time I saw a Zoomer do that it hurt my soul.

This is actually a good take. Kids aren’t miniature adults, they’re kids. They’re not helpless or useless, but neither are they fully morally and emotionally developed. They need guidance. Plenty of adults can’t responsibly handle internet access. I survived early onilne porn and gore and social media, but it’s not like any of it benefited me in a meaningful way.

Some folks have an attitude that’s like “I touched hot stoves and I learned better”, but that’s far from ideal.

To be fair, at least as of this moment his prior post says Google is “manufacturing consent for”, not “actively supporting”. I believe that the former can be the latter, but is not necessarily the latter.

It’s more likely there not because the employer wanted it, but because the union demanded it.

UBlock asks that you give to the blocklist maintainers.

Do I approve of sex work?

So, yes, sorta, mostly, but I don’t think it’s straight forward.

For one, sex work is a very broad category that ranges from selling feet pics to having sex to which you wouldn’t otherwise consent with strangers. So under that large umbrella of “jobs wherein you assist someone with getting their rocks off in exchange for money” there’s a lot of variation and differing considerations for the impacts on the workers and the clients.

So I guess I approve of sex work in the general sense that I approve of any service industry labor that doesn’t intrinsically harm the worker or the consumer. But on the other hand, sex work, particularly having sex, and even stuff short of having sex, bares some higher risk than your average behind-the-counter job. There’s risks of violence, disease, and emotional or psychological harm, some of which is higher because of illegality or stigma, but some of which is higher simply because of the intrinsically intimate nature of sex. And sure, there is something kinda squicky about commodifying human intimacy.

But on the other hand, the demand is there (not like I don’t consume porn), so the supply will always follow to meet it. So best you can do is ensure that whatever labor sex workers do is as safe as possible, and that the people who do the labor do so freely (to the degree possible in a society that’s still capitalist).