"The Liberal government in Canada aren't anything like Fascists! Stop comparing Trudeau to Hitler!"
Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
The positive value of loyalty was twisted and turned evil by the Japanese in WWII and it resulted in countless atrocities such as the rape of nanking.
The positive value of purity was twisted and turned evil by the Germans in WWII, and it too resulted in atrocities such as the concentration camps. Arguably, Saudi Arabia's worst excesses come from such a place as well.
The positive value of fairness was twisted and turned evil by the British in the 1800s, and it resulted in extreme class division under the idea that those who were doing well did so by their own merit and those who did not had obviously done so by their lack of merit, as well as treating those in the lower classes horribly because the world is fair so you must deserve what happened to you!
The positive value of liberty was twisted and turned evil in iceland, where pure liberty ended up turning into massive multi-generational blood feuds, the worst of what people fear would come from unlimited liberty. Arguably some of the worst excesses of early American colonisation came from a similar place.
The positive value of security was twisted and turned evil in the war on terror in America, where many basic human rights were infringed in the name of security.
The positive value of meritocracy is twisted and turned evil in many Asian countries, where the young are placed under such tremendous pressure to perform that it causes massive social problems, as well as myopia in adults because they spent every spare second studying for the next test for decades on end.
The world is not black and white, but many shades of grey, and so too is no single value only good or only evil, but consisting of many different attributes which interact with the world where those attributes exist in different ways with different outcomes in different situations. Therefore, people can't just turn off their brains and assume they're doing the right thing because they're following a good value. The world isn't that easy.
Often, these things happen in part because when one value is elevated above all others, people start to figure out how to re-frame getting what they want in terms of that value. The Japanese gets what he wants because it'll help the Empire. The German gets what he wants because it'll help the pure Aryan race. The Brit gets what he wants because it's only fair, the Icelander gets what he wants because that's what it means to be free.
Human beings are master rationalizers, and so over time they can build great obelisks of philosophy balanced on a single twig. A twig is not a firm foundation upon which to build such a philosophy, so inevitably the obelisk topples over, but a philosophy is not like a physical obelisk, even one that has been toppled can continue to be built as if there's nothing wrong even if it's obvious to everyone else there's a big problem.
Wokeness is one such obelisk. It was once much more balanced when it was younger, but it has been coopted by so many interests that it is no longer on even a twig of foundation whereas previously it had quite a strong foundation.
There is an image floating around of all the evil corporations happily throwing out their rainbow flags. Do you think they're doing it because they're good? These are companies like Phillip Morris, who sell cancer causing cigarettes, and paid off surgeon generals to lie about the cancer, and paid for studies for decades to muddy the water lest cigarette sales be affected, suddenly good and just? Halliburton was a key figure in the disastrous Iraq war, suddenly they're woke. Do you think it's because they're suddenly the good guys? The pharmaceutical industry is filled with some of the most evil people on earth, yet they're all super woke now. Are they the good guys and none of that other stuff ever happened?
And the sad thing is, that worked. Somehow, companies are attaching their soulless corporate products to the idea of equality and justice. Which is absurd. You mean to tell me that to refuse to take the pharmaceutical industry's latest poison, or the film industry's latest billion dollar mind poison actually means you hate women and black people? Think about that proposition for a second. Especially given the history of most industries regarding women and black people.
Similarly, and I think this is the key to all of this, about 10 years ago I started to see a lot of really angry people start to move into what was previously a pretty chill movement. At first they festered in their little echo chambers where they hatefully built ideologies that actively demanded genocide of certain groups (and calling for those genocides is considered acceptable in modern wokeness and will not generally be punished by our woke corporate overlords), threatened violence against political enemies, made unreasonable and bullying demands of innocent people, and overall just seethed in toxic hate.
Those little communities of toxic hate and entitlement were benign at first in the sense that they were siloed, but eventually they metastasised, and brought their cancerous hate everywhere. That would be the moment that the word "woke" started to be such a universally loathed phrase.
If you stop feeling guilty for a second, and stop feeling angry for a second, and look at some of the latest stuff coming out of some of these movements with eyes unclouded by guilt or hate, this new ideology isn't what my entire generation grew up believing. Many people who believe in justice will look at what academia (a thoroughly infected class of people if any exist) defines "whiteness" as and be disgusted by what looks like pure bigotry. If you were a member of the KKK, I suspect academic "whiteness" would be just fine.
A movement that once idolized Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi suddenly gleefully pronounced "Punch a Nazi!" (Where 'a Nazi' is just anyone who slightly disagrees with you), and all tactics are allowable because wokeness has rationalized that all who disagree in the least actually are literal 1945 Nazis and so they aren't even human beings anymore.
A movement that once asked for equal treatment under the law now cheers for explicitly racist laws that lay out exactly what each race gets.
A movement that once convincingly argues that not all black people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few suddenly argues that all white people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few.
A movement that saw injustice against women and fretted constantly about issues of sexual consent and peer pressure suddenly loudly proclaimed "You will have sex with this person over here or you are one of *THEM* and will be dealt with appropriately"
A belief in tolerance and diversity never went away for most people. But most people aren't hypocrites and cannot simultaneously support tolerance and diversity and support wokeness because the two are not compatible belief systems.
Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
I fear what will come of the values I grew up with when this abomination finally dies. I hope the cancer doesn't take the patient with it. Most of us care for the patient.
The positive value of loyalty was twisted and turned evil by the Japanese in WWII and it resulted in countless atrocities such as the rape of nanking.
The positive value of purity was twisted and turned evil by the Germans in WWII, and it too resulted in atrocities such as the concentration camps. Arguably, Saudi Arabia's worst excesses come from such a place as well.
The positive value of fairness was twisted and turned evil by the British in the 1800s, and it resulted in extreme class division under the idea that those who were doing well did so by their own merit and those who did not had obviously done so by their lack of merit, as well as treating those in the lower classes horribly because the world is fair so you must deserve what happened to you!
The positive value of liberty was twisted and turned evil in iceland, where pure liberty ended up turning into massive multi-generational blood feuds, the worst of what people fear would come from unlimited liberty. Arguably some of the worst excesses of early American colonisation came from a similar place.
The positive value of security was twisted and turned evil in the war on terror in America, where many basic human rights were infringed in the name of security.
The positive value of meritocracy is twisted and turned evil in many Asian countries, where the young are placed under such tremendous pressure to perform that it causes massive social problems, as well as myopia in adults because they spent every spare second studying for the next test for decades on end.
The world is not black and white, but many shades of grey, and so too is no single value only good or only evil, but consisting of many different attributes which interact with the world where those attributes exist in different ways with different outcomes in different situations. Therefore, people can't just turn off their brains and assume they're doing the right thing because they're following a good value. The world isn't that easy.
Often, these things happen in part because when one value is elevated above all others, people start to figure out how to re-frame getting what they want in terms of that value. The Japanese gets what he wants because it'll help the Empire. The German gets what he wants because it'll help the pure Aryan race. The Brit gets what he wants because it's only fair, the Icelander gets what he wants because that's what it means to be free.
Human beings are master rationalizers, and so over time they can build great obelisks of philosophy balanced on a single twig. A twig is not a firm foundation upon which to build such a philosophy, so inevitably the obelisk topples over, but a philosophy is not like a physical obelisk, even one that has been toppled can continue to be built as if there's nothing wrong even if it's obvious to everyone else there's a big problem.
Wokeness is one such obelisk. It was once much more balanced when it was younger, but it has been coopted by so many interests that it is no longer on even a twig of foundation whereas previously it had quite a strong foundation.
There is an image floating around of all the evil corporations happily throwing out their rainbow flags. Do you think they're doing it because they're good? These are companies like Phillip Morris, who sell cancer causing cigarettes, and paid off surgeon generals to lie about the cancer, and paid for studies for decades to muddy the water lest cigarette sales be affected, suddenly good and just? Halliburton was a key figure in the disastrous Iraq war, suddenly they're woke. Do you think it's because they're suddenly the good guys? The pharmaceutical industry is filled with some of the most evil people on earth, yet they're all super woke now. Are they the good guys and none of that other stuff ever happened?
And the sad thing is, that worked. Somehow, companies are attaching their soulless corporate products to the idea of equality and justice. Which is absurd. You mean to tell me that to refuse to take the pharmaceutical industry's latest poison, or the film industry's latest billion dollar mind poison actually means you hate women and black people? Think about that proposition for a second. Especially given the history of most industries regarding women and black people.
Similarly, and I think this is the key to all of this, about 10 years ago I started to see a lot of really angry people start to move into what was previously a pretty chill movement. At first they festered in their little echo chambers where they hatefully built ideologies that actively demanded genocide of certain groups (and calling for those genocides is considered acceptable in modern wokeness and will not generally be punished by our woke corporate overlords), threatened violence against political enemies, made unreasonable and bullying demands of innocent people, and overall just seethed in toxic hate.
Those little communities of toxic hate and entitlement were benign at first in the sense that they were siloed, but eventually they metastasised, and brought their cancerous hate everywhere. That would be the moment that the word "woke" started to be such a universally loathed phrase.
If you stop feeling guilty for a second, and stop feeling angry for a second, and look at some of the latest stuff coming out of some of these movements with eyes unclouded by guilt or hate, this new ideology isn't what my entire generation grew up believing. Many people who believe in justice will look at what academia (a thoroughly infected class of people if any exist) defines "whiteness" as and be disgusted by what looks like pure bigotry. If you were a member of the KKK, I suspect academic "whiteness" would be just fine.
A movement that once idolized Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi suddenly gleefully pronounced "Punch a Nazi!" (Where 'a Nazi' is just anyone who slightly disagrees with you), and all tactics are allowable because wokeness has rationalized that all who disagree in the least actually are literal 1945 Nazis and so they aren't even human beings anymore.
A movement that once asked for equal treatment under the law now cheers for explicitly racist laws that lay out exactly what each race gets.
A movement that once convincingly argues that not all black people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few suddenly argues that all white people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few.
A movement that saw injustice against women and fretted constantly about issues of sexual consent and peer pressure suddenly loudly proclaimed "You will have sex with this person over here or you are one of *THEM* and will be dealt with appropriately"
A belief in tolerance and diversity never went away for most people. But most people aren't hypocrites and cannot simultaneously support tolerance and diversity and support wokeness because the two are not compatible belief systems.
Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
I fear what will come of the values I grew up with when this abomination finally dies. I hope the cancer doesn't take the patient with it. Most of us care for the patient.
"The working class masses that are trying to rise up against the upper classes oppressing them in a time of exponentially rising income inequality make me SO MAD! I wish I could just kill them all!"
🤦♂️
🤦♂️
I think firing almost everyone was smarter than people think, but the reality that buying twitter was an extraordinarily poor idea and his main skill is pumping and dumping that won't work in a stagflationary environment means he can't use his normal skill set to talk his way out of it.
Lots of these guys aren't dumb, but there's a lot more luck to what happened than they'd like to admit. And luck like that doesn't last forever.
Their luck is about to run out.
Their luck is about to run out.
Me too actually...
But I'm also thinking... How many times are you going to have to deal with getting garroted in your car? Is this a Chicago thing?
But I'm also thinking... How many times are you going to have to deal with getting garroted in your car? Is this a Chicago thing?
I make more money by far when someone buys an ebook of The Graysonian Ethic, it's not even close. Moreover, the cost of the ebook is almost half, making it an easier sale.
But I ask people to buy the dead tree version anyway, because of this exactly. Someday Amazon will shut down it's book service. Someday my home servers will be buried in a landfill. But maybe some of those dead tree books will continue to exist, and maybe my ideas will live on without me or without the digital technology we need to make use of it.
But I ask people to buy the dead tree version anyway, because of this exactly. Someday Amazon will shut down it's book service. Someday my home servers will be buried in a landfill. But maybe some of those dead tree books will continue to exist, and maybe my ideas will live on without me or without the digital technology we need to make use of it.
It was early 2020 that I started to recognise that I needed an alternative to big tech, and at the time I was playing around with alternative platforms like MeWe and Minds. They weren't really working for me(They were big empty buildings compared to what I wanted), but in early 2021 after some success with self-hosting nextcloud I started hosting friendica, and while I eventually moved onto other platforms it was a good enough success that I was hooked. Unlike most "alt-tech" platforms, there was actually interesting and fun stuff going on. Eventually I stopped logging into mewe and minds, and deleted my facebook, and now fediverse is my main communications platform.
The revolution will not be televised until it gets a corporate sponsor. By that time, the revolution will be over.
The revolution will not be televised until it gets a corporate sponsor. By that time, the revolution will be over.
Synapse and Dendrite are resource intensive, but I'm running matrix-conduit and it's similar in resource usage to ejabberd. Got both running on an intel atom D2550, as well as lotide, and that server basically idles all the time.
Only downsides with matrix-conduit is it isn't 100% compatible with everything, and it's still early on so there aren't much in terms of admin tools yet.
Only downsides with matrix-conduit is it isn't 100% compatible with everything, and it's still early on so there aren't much in terms of admin tools yet.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9297311/trigger-rate-mortgages-bank-of-canada/
How many of those variable rate mortgages were because some financial advisor said "don't worry! You absolutely have to do this! Rates can never rise!"
I'm starting to realize something: We're at a moment in history where we really need to think for ourselves, come up with accurate mental models, and make decisions based on what we think could happen instead of what the talking heads tell us will happen. You can't just cruise by doing what you're told because they're going to steer you into the ditch for their own ends.
How many of those variable rate mortgages were because some financial advisor said "don't worry! You absolutely have to do this! Rates can never rise!"
I'm starting to realize something: We're at a moment in history where we really need to think for ourselves, come up with accurate mental models, and make decisions based on what we think could happen instead of what the talking heads tell us will happen. You can't just cruise by doing what you're told because they're going to steer you into the ditch for their own ends.
Hey Google: How long until you shut down all my devices and move onto the next project?
tbf, the problems can be solved overnight for individuals by hopping in a moving truck.
Assuming there's somewhere that's doing things better.
Assuming there's somewhere that's doing things better.
Authoritarian nutjobs don't realize that people who wouldn't care about Alex Jones suddenly will side with him when they see everything going on including getting a judgement greater than the GDP of Canada.
Hey, fediverse? Anyone have a Piped instance they recommend for speed? The one I use is piped.kavin.rocks and it struggles to go above 144p video quality with out buffering.
Yep. I've said for many years "Necessity is the mother of invention, and opportunity is the father".
I think understanding that is key to planning out your life. In some ways it's sad, but in other ways it's liberating. You and I will never be Steve Jobs because that moment in time has passed and will never come again. Instead, we can focus on the opportunities we have ourselves in the moment, and walk the roads that are unique to ourselves.
The really cool thing is that if we're willing to look, there are unique opportunities nobody else has right in front of us. We won't be able to be Steve Jobs, but we might be able to be ourselves.
I think understanding that is key to planning out your life. In some ways it's sad, but in other ways it's liberating. You and I will never be Steve Jobs because that moment in time has passed and will never come again. Instead, we can focus on the opportunities we have ourselves in the moment, and walk the roads that are unique to ourselves.
The really cool thing is that if we're willing to look, there are unique opportunities nobody else has right in front of us. We won't be able to be Steve Jobs, but we might be able to be ourselves.
That's all very true too. To become a really big semiconductor company you really needed to get started during that revolution. Most of the biggest big tech companies really came out of the 2000s. Other sites are rising, but it's on a different tide than those original companies and you can never be those companies again.
One piece of merit and skill is recognising this stuff and focusing on the possible.
One piece of merit and skill is recognising this stuff and focusing on the possible.
That's true.
No matter how clever you are, you'll never create the next big tech website in South Sudan. There's no strategy which will lead to such opportunities (besides maybe leaving South Sudan)
No matter how clever you are, you'll never create the next big tech website in South Sudan. There's no strategy which will lead to such opportunities (besides maybe leaving South Sudan)