No matter how much I'd like it to be so, free speech (and all other human rights) can't be absolute, because free speech (and all other human rights) runs up against other rights and even runs up against itself, since speech can be used to silence other speech. The only perfectly free speech is alone in an empty room.
You can see it where the same people crying for their own free speech in the same breath will complain about others. They recognize all their own rights, but don't recognize anyone else's.
But as a general principle, fighting for others right to say things you disagree with strongly is an important one. That's the only thing that makes rights worthwhile, the ability to use them when it's inconvenient.
You can see it where the same people crying for their own free speech in the same breath will complain about others. They recognize all their own rights, but don't recognize anyone else's.
But as a general principle, fighting for others right to say things you disagree with strongly is an important one. That's the only thing that makes rights worthwhile, the ability to use them when it's inconvenient.
Seriously. Hope you guys locked in, because that variable rate debt is much more expensive than it was when I posted this!
"You want to support the right of others to speak because you want your right to speak protected as well. You might think that your ideas and what you have to say is completely innocuous and therefore only the bad guys should be silenced. The problem is, somebody else thinks you're the bad guy. If you don't support others right to speak then that person won't be there to support your right to speak. The only way we can protect our freedoms is together. So what does harming someone else's right to speak look like? Well often, this means going out of your way to cause someone harm for their words. At this moment in time, the biggest websites in the world are all going out of their way to find people who are saying things that they don't like and they are shutting that speech down. They're kicking people right off the websites for saying the wrong thing. In addition to that, even when they keep the people on the websites they are editing the posts and adding little things to them. I've never been kicked off of any social media site. Honestly, most of the opinions that they're going after aren't opinions that I hold. However, those people are our canaries. If the people saying things that we detest our band and go away then we are always next. We are always next. After the people that you disagree with are silenced, you are always next." - The Graysonian Ethic (first draft)
The Journalist class whining about freedom of speech after shutting it down and vilifying it for years didn't get the memo.
The Journalist class whining about freedom of speech after shutting it down and vilifying it for years didn't get the memo.
I've got a new site I'm working on, onlybans
The moment you sign up, you're banned for TOS violations
The moment you sign up, you're banned for TOS violations
I wasn't pro Russia, it was more like the idea that let's say that Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan went to war, and everyone is saying "Take a side!" and it's like "what? Why?" -- has nothing to do with me.
Forcing people to take sides in a discussion along a specific two sides someone else gets to define is a common political tactic. It destroys nuance and allows bad debate to become the established debate. There's a lot of discussions right now that are polarized along lines like that, and the false dichotomy is damaging the causes they're applied to. For that reason, I'm careful about going all-in on "one side" or "another" since reality might look totally different.
I'm up in Canada, and one of the loudest voices against Russia was Trudeau, hours he'd seized people's bank accounts and suspended civil rights using the emergency act for having the gall to protest policies they disagree with and smeared them with mindless attacks about things that had nothing to do with what they were protesting about. That man recently said of that time "I'm worried about setting a precedent that [a peaceful protest in the nation's capital] can lead to a change of public policy", so the idea that he's gone from telling us our fellow countrymen are the devil to saying Russia is the devil is wholly unconvincing.
Given the suspension of civil rights over a peaceful protest, the whole "rules based global order" argument was completely unconvincing as well, coming from the guy who just did that.
The media said a lot of things about how horrible the Russians were, but the same media said we'd find WMDs in Iraq, so that's how much that is worth. Counter-narratives suggested there might be a lot more than the establishment narrative would like to let on, so staying neutral seemed prudent.
The "incentives not to go to war" argument I mentioned was the one argument that doesn't need you to throw in with either side specifically, but it works as a general principle. Make it hurt for war aggressors, and people won't engage in aggressive war (Unless it's the Americans of course)
Forcing people to take sides in a discussion along a specific two sides someone else gets to define is a common political tactic. It destroys nuance and allows bad debate to become the established debate. There's a lot of discussions right now that are polarized along lines like that, and the false dichotomy is damaging the causes they're applied to. For that reason, I'm careful about going all-in on "one side" or "another" since reality might look totally different.
I'm up in Canada, and one of the loudest voices against Russia was Trudeau, hours he'd seized people's bank accounts and suspended civil rights using the emergency act for having the gall to protest policies they disagree with and smeared them with mindless attacks about things that had nothing to do with what they were protesting about. That man recently said of that time "I'm worried about setting a precedent that [a peaceful protest in the nation's capital] can lead to a change of public policy", so the idea that he's gone from telling us our fellow countrymen are the devil to saying Russia is the devil is wholly unconvincing.
Given the suspension of civil rights over a peaceful protest, the whole "rules based global order" argument was completely unconvincing as well, coming from the guy who just did that.
The media said a lot of things about how horrible the Russians were, but the same media said we'd find WMDs in Iraq, so that's how much that is worth. Counter-narratives suggested there might be a lot more than the establishment narrative would like to let on, so staying neutral seemed prudent.
The "incentives not to go to war" argument I mentioned was the one argument that doesn't need you to throw in with either side specifically, but it works as a general principle. Make it hurt for war aggressors, and people won't engage in aggressive war (Unless it's the Americans of course)
A lot of the things I read from chat GPT remind me of those crappy SEO articles that started showing up on Google where you have to get several paragraphs in to realize that they're never giving you the information you want.
I've played a lot of games over the years, but haven't gotten to all of these ones. Early on I owned every game on GOG back when it was "good old games", but there's just too many to possibly buy now.
I'm revisiting a long-time favorite right now, Daggerfall. GOG has a copy for free that includes a bunch of mods that modernize the graphics and the like, it's really top notch. Besides that, Chronotrigger is still one of my favorites of all time, it's available on steam.
I'm revisiting a long-time favorite right now, Daggerfall. GOG has a copy for free that includes a bunch of mods that modernize the graphics and the like, it's really top notch. Besides that, Chronotrigger is still one of my favorites of all time, it's available on steam.
I'm on team "What is wrong with you stop you don't need more games SJ but wait there's a crappy FPS from 1997 on sale for a dollar"
I'll use two examples, one that's more leftward, and one that's more rightward.
Rightward, I've been a hard hard atheist all my life. Not only do I not believe in God, but I didn't see religion as something worth wasting any time on at all. Recently, through some seriously good arguments about the history and the philosophy of Christianity, I've come to realize that regardless of the existence of God, Christianity is an important part of the philosophical framework of the west, and a source of some of the values I personally hold important, including the justification for ultimately abolishing slavery and the slave trade. Whereas I would have previously taught my son to avoid religion altogether, I now read from his kids bible every weekend and bought him a nice leatherbound bible alongside the Confucius and Aristotle and other more traditionally philosophical philosophy.
Leftward (sort of, politics makes for strange bedfellows), I didn't really see any point to supporting either side in the war in Ukraine. It's literally on the other side of the planet from me, and it really looks like an ambiguous conflict in general between two powers neither of which seem to really deserve any support. The world leaders calling for it are unpersuasive at this moment, because it seems like they're mostly appealing to their own authority or the authority of the world rules, and the west just finished destroying that argument by breaking all our own rules. The argument that changed my mind somewhat was an analysis of history showing that times of peace came about in large part because players didn't feel like there was any benefit to going to war. So without any regard for the exact players in a given war, there's a moral argument for making it as hard as possible to make the aggressor in any war that breaks out hurt as badly as possible because once one aggressor makes significant gains in war without major consequence, it's probable that we'll start to see all kinds of wars and that won't be good for the common man anywhere.
Rightward, I've been a hard hard atheist all my life. Not only do I not believe in God, but I didn't see religion as something worth wasting any time on at all. Recently, through some seriously good arguments about the history and the philosophy of Christianity, I've come to realize that regardless of the existence of God, Christianity is an important part of the philosophical framework of the west, and a source of some of the values I personally hold important, including the justification for ultimately abolishing slavery and the slave trade. Whereas I would have previously taught my son to avoid religion altogether, I now read from his kids bible every weekend and bought him a nice leatherbound bible alongside the Confucius and Aristotle and other more traditionally philosophical philosophy.
Leftward (sort of, politics makes for strange bedfellows), I didn't really see any point to supporting either side in the war in Ukraine. It's literally on the other side of the planet from me, and it really looks like an ambiguous conflict in general between two powers neither of which seem to really deserve any support. The world leaders calling for it are unpersuasive at this moment, because it seems like they're mostly appealing to their own authority or the authority of the world rules, and the west just finished destroying that argument by breaking all our own rules. The argument that changed my mind somewhat was an analysis of history showing that times of peace came about in large part because players didn't feel like there was any benefit to going to war. So without any regard for the exact players in a given war, there's a moral argument for making it as hard as possible to make the aggressor in any war that breaks out hurt as badly as possible because once one aggressor makes significant gains in war without major consequence, it's probable that we'll start to see all kinds of wars and that won't be good for the common man anywhere.
John mastodon is a pretty cool guy. He runs the mastodon website and doesn't afraid of nothing
I like to be proven wrong, and to have my thinking changed. I'm happy to have found a lot of people who are capable of doing that in the last few years.
You have to be very careful though, because skepticism needs to be applied at all times as well. There are lots of people out there whose sole purpose is to try to deceive you into thinking in a way that's useful for them. Therefore, you should be supple enough to be open to new ideas and new information, but strong enough to push back against blindly and stupidly believing anything that's presented to you without question.
You have to be very careful though, because skepticism needs to be applied at all times as well. There are lots of people out there whose sole purpose is to try to deceive you into thinking in a way that's useful for them. Therefore, you should be supple enough to be open to new ideas and new information, but strong enough to push back against blindly and stupidly believing anything that's presented to you without question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-VZJnLZvIQ
This is a great video by a guy from Ontario Canada that reviews a lot of the primary sources and analyses thing from a number of different viewpoints.
This is a great video by a guy from Ontario Canada that reviews a lot of the primary sources and analyses thing from a number of different viewpoints.
Your CRTC mandated cancon!
This image needed to exist. I didn't create it, I found it within the pixels, like Michelangelo finding David within the chunk of marble.
This image needed to exist. I didn't create it, I found it within the pixels, like Michelangelo finding David within the chunk of marble.
[admin mode] Ok, FBXL Social is now running off the reBased back-end. Not sure there's a huge difference, but with the fediverse growing the way it is, we really need to make sure we're keeping up with this stuff because peak traffic times are hammering the hardware pretty hard now. Love to see it, but it does mean keeping up with things will be increasingly important.
World War 2 became the new founding myth of the boomer generation, and in particular the American empire's boomer generation. Prior to that, I'm sure they'd accuse you of being a satan worshipper, it's a catch-all for "bad person" rather than anything meaningful.
I use personally use Nazi imagery as a shorthand for the same reason -- everyone knows Adolf Hitler wasn't a very nice chap, he was an authoritarian dictator who did some pretty bad things a lot of people went out and fought against, and certain world leaders are not very nice chaps who are out there doing some very bad things. I agree that you can't compare national socialism to anything we have at the moment except through vague historical similies.
One thing I think is really important is that a lot of those young men who are now our grandfathers and great grandfathers went out and fought for a freedom we obviously are seeing deteriorate in many western countries. I keep the fact that my grandfather became very disillusioned as he watched what happened right up until he died close to my heart.
https://video.fbxl.net/w/6VVndpjSF1jKya4o6Yd4tA
I use personally use Nazi imagery as a shorthand for the same reason -- everyone knows Adolf Hitler wasn't a very nice chap, he was an authoritarian dictator who did some pretty bad things a lot of people went out and fought against, and certain world leaders are not very nice chaps who are out there doing some very bad things. I agree that you can't compare national socialism to anything we have at the moment except through vague historical similies.
One thing I think is really important is that a lot of those young men who are now our grandfathers and great grandfathers went out and fought for a freedom we obviously are seeing deteriorate in many western countries. I keep the fact that my grandfather became very disillusioned as he watched what happened right up until he died close to my heart.
https://video.fbxl.net/w/6VVndpjSF1jKya4o6Yd4tA
That's absolutely true. The only difference is that one group claims it's morally wrong and does it anyway, the other group at least claims they think they're doing the right thing.