"but we didn't want him to win!!!"
Yeah dumbass, you don't get a say. Ask King George all about it.
Yeah dumbass, you don't get a say. Ask King George all about it.
I just think of if the American army was on the border about to take my city, and the call went out: "Who wants to volunteer to fight the Americans?" -- I'd probably be like "Howdy you all parteneur" -- go ahead, doesn't negatively affect my life if it's Trump instead of Trudeau, but it will very negatively affect my life if me and all my friends die fighting the Americans!
So I've got kind of a dumb question...
For the actual people living in Ukraine, is there a reason for them to actually care which assholes flag is flying over their building?
For the actual people living in Ukraine, is there a reason for them to actually care which assholes flag is flying over their building?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyun6SVfPM
This is an amazing restoration of a toy from 1918. The guy goes so far as to build his own stamping presses to remanufacture many of the parts that are totally destroyed.
I can't help but think that this toy would have been one of the most expensive toys you could buy in 1918. It has tons parts made of steel and all kinds of clockwork. After this restoration, it's probably among the most expensive toys on the planet.
This is an amazing restoration of a toy from 1918. The guy goes so far as to build his own stamping presses to remanufacture many of the parts that are totally destroyed.
I can't help but think that this toy would have been one of the most expensive toys you could buy in 1918. It has tons parts made of steel and all kinds of clockwork. After this restoration, it's probably among the most expensive toys on the planet.
They might be around but hiding. Look for fabric covered end tables you don't remember.
I like linus, but you will have to remember until the end of time that he wrote out the sentence "yes I understand I am about to break my Linux install" on camera then was shocked that his Linux install broke.
If figures like this stay this way there's no way bonds go down since risk goes up ...
Elf on the shelf is problematic, but not because it's authoritarian, but because it isn't. The elf on the shelf doesn't have any way to hurt you in the physical world, it won't actually rat you out, and it's just supposed to be a metaphor for guilt-based morality where you act as if someone is watching even when you know they aren't.
To properly prepare kids for our enlightened world that has killed God and replaced it with corporations and totalizing states, we need to give it power and judgement. We need elf on a shelf with a badge, a gun, and a twitter account. We have to give it a pellet gun, and give it the authority to shoot the children when an integrated AI recognizes an infraction has occurred (don't worry, it won't kill them, it's just really painful and might leave permanent scars or blind them), and give it veto power over the children's next meal. For really bad infractions, send emails to future potential employers in the region so the kid will never be able to get a job. All this "God will judge you after you die so be good while you're alive" stuff is too weak, we need to teach kids how things really are now.
This will prepare kids for the real panopticon we've created, an omnipresent threat of cancel culture, or of the authoritarian government that monitors and punishes your every move we're seeing increasingly around the world, such as the girl in England who was arrested, charged, convicted, and punished for posting a dead friend's favorite song on Facebook (a song which contained the naughty N word), or the schoolchildren who were recently arrested for saying words like "retard", or getting banned from social media for direct messages with another consenting person because social media companies face fascistic pressure from the state to control every word we say to everyone.
We've given up on our guilt-based morality and have begun a new era of fear-based morality. We need to update our traditions to reflect that.
To properly prepare kids for our enlightened world that has killed God and replaced it with corporations and totalizing states, we need to give it power and judgement. We need elf on a shelf with a badge, a gun, and a twitter account. We have to give it a pellet gun, and give it the authority to shoot the children when an integrated AI recognizes an infraction has occurred (don't worry, it won't kill them, it's just really painful and might leave permanent scars or blind them), and give it veto power over the children's next meal. For really bad infractions, send emails to future potential employers in the region so the kid will never be able to get a job. All this "God will judge you after you die so be good while you're alive" stuff is too weak, we need to teach kids how things really are now.
This will prepare kids for the real panopticon we've created, an omnipresent threat of cancel culture, or of the authoritarian government that monitors and punishes your every move we're seeing increasingly around the world, such as the girl in England who was arrested, charged, convicted, and punished for posting a dead friend's favorite song on Facebook (a song which contained the naughty N word), or the schoolchildren who were recently arrested for saying words like "retard", or getting banned from social media for direct messages with another consenting person because social media companies face fascistic pressure from the state to control every word we say to everyone.
We've given up on our guilt-based morality and have begun a new era of fear-based morality. We need to update our traditions to reflect that.
The banality of evil. Imagine being on that jury, and saying "guilty" and nobody having any moral qualms about what they're doing because they're just doing their job as a jury.
One line in a recent p'nut video on YouTube describing the situation bothered me. It was saying Trump supporters were somehow blaming Biden or Harris for New York state raiding a home, stealing a pet squirrel and a raccoon, then euthanizing them. In the book "the master and his emissary" by Iain McGilchrist, he discusses the difference in information processing between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. One side of the brain is very literal, factual, precise, the other side is more broad, looks for connections between things, intuitive. The thing is, for the intuitive side of the brain, you don't need to directly link two things that are intuitively linked for them to be seen as connected. Government overreach by New York state still tells a story about government overreach federally even if there is no direct connection.
Holistic thinking often finds truth much faster than autistic data analysis because patterns show faster than all the calculations required for a direct mathematical calculation of everything. Moreover, it may find truths that data analysis never find enough data to prove the still intuitively obvious link. That's what made the story compelling to people, the intuitive injustice in one tiny case applied to many other daily situations despite not having a direct link.
Holistic thinking often finds truth much faster than autistic data analysis because patterns show faster than all the calculations required for a direct mathematical calculation of everything. Moreover, it may find truths that data analysis never find enough data to prove the still intuitively obvious link. That's what made the story compelling to people, the intuitive injustice in one tiny case applied to many other daily situations despite not having a direct link.
The craziest thing is that the left had all kinds of Joe Rogans, they own the establishment media. Arguably, they used to have Joe Rogan.
The problem is that being authentic and honest and having a highly controlled hyperpartisan message are mutually exclusive goals.
Now, some might go "But Joe Rogan is hyperpartisan!" which would only show that person's own personal biases, which right now are "anyone who disagrees with our partisan message in any way is literally the hyperparisan opposite of me".
in a sane world, Joe is probably center-left to solidly left. It's only in clown world that he's considered some far right figure.
The problem is that being authentic and honest and having a highly controlled hyperpartisan message are mutually exclusive goals.
Now, some might go "But Joe Rogan is hyperpartisan!" which would only show that person's own personal biases, which right now are "anyone who disagrees with our partisan message in any way is literally the hyperparisan opposite of me".
in a sane world, Joe is probably center-left to solidly left. It's only in clown world that he's considered some far right figure.
Some people think that "Mastodon is too much about just tech all the time", and that's really missing out on a lot of what the fediverse is. It's a grand tool, but one you have to use with intentionality and find the things you want to interact with, because there isn't some omnipresent algorithm trying to drag you into addiction.
People who want to follow certain topics can follow hashtags, or they can also participate in lemmy communities (I think? I tend to use lotide to interact with lemmy communities since they're kind of the same sort of thing).
@realcaseyrollins for example has done a fantastic job of consistently posting on a wide variety of subjects to lemmy communities. He used to be on lotide but unfortunately that project ceased development earlier this year so he decided to officially move to lemmy entirely.
I believe you can subscribe to communities on lemmy (I'm looking at his history for examples, which is why they are where they are) as if they were users, so for example if you wanted to see all the posts about celebrities from thelemmy.club, you could follow @celebnews or if you wanted to follow the movie community on lemm.ee, you would join @movies. There's tons of options out there, and lots of things being posted and discussed on a regular basis.
I also believe subscriptions to magazines (communities) on kbin also are compatible with mastodon, so if you wanted for example to see a bunch of stuff about industrial design, you could follow @IndustrialDesign@kbin.social and see a bunch of discussion on that topic.
With Mastodon, the ActivityPub support means you can also do cool things like subscribe to your favorite Peertube channels (assuming you have favorite peertube channels). A lot of them are tech related, but for example on makertube.net there's @thegiddystitcher whose channel is about sewing and knitting. Having videos from this platform show up in your posts is pretty exciting, it's an example of how something completely different than mere messages can integrate using the ActivityPub protocol.
There are also other parts of the fediverse that are relatively new but may be quite unique and different. For example, you can follow people on minds, which is a fairly large social media platform in its own right with some media personalities having active accounts there. Threads is a big corporate site, which means that some instances block them by default and some instances are blocked by default, but if you're on a mutually friendly instance it has a lot of users as well that aren't likely to hang out on smaller instances.
It's not as straightforward, but you can also follow and interact with people on nostr through the mostr bridge. There's a lot of bitcoin and the like on mostr, but it's still another option. You can follow former twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at @82341f882b6eabcd2ba7f1ef90aad961cf074af15b9ef44a09f9d2a8fbfbe6a2 (just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?)
There's also portions of the fediverse that you won't know about unless you actually know about it -- for example, journa.host hosts many journalists, as well as the fediverse pages for a number of news organizations. I follow @winnipegfreepress because I used to live in Winnipeg for example.
There are also a number of notable celebrities on the fediverse. American idiot George Takei, famous for saying "oh my!" provocatively, has a very active account. Fascism advocate Robert "Third" Reich also has a very active account. A wide variety of other celebrities also have accounts, for example famous genocide activist Greta Thunberg and red painted doll head collector Kathy Griffin, but typically many of these accounts were created during hissy fits about something or other, and like most political hissy fits by celebrities they gave it up once they realized nobody cares. The fact that they can't just hire someone with thick glasses to game the algorithm was probably a major factor in leaving since they're not special on the Fediverse.
The fediverse really is like the old story of two wolves being inside of you. Whichever ones you feed are the ones that will grow. If you're doing it right, you can have any kind of feed you'd like and you'll find it really enjoyable.
People who want to follow certain topics can follow hashtags, or they can also participate in lemmy communities (I think? I tend to use lotide to interact with lemmy communities since they're kind of the same sort of thing).
@realcaseyrollins for example has done a fantastic job of consistently posting on a wide variety of subjects to lemmy communities. He used to be on lotide but unfortunately that project ceased development earlier this year so he decided to officially move to lemmy entirely.
I believe you can subscribe to communities on lemmy (I'm looking at his history for examples, which is why they are where they are) as if they were users, so for example if you wanted to see all the posts about celebrities from thelemmy.club, you could follow @celebnews or if you wanted to follow the movie community on lemm.ee, you would join @movies. There's tons of options out there, and lots of things being posted and discussed on a regular basis.
I also believe subscriptions to magazines (communities) on kbin also are compatible with mastodon, so if you wanted for example to see a bunch of stuff about industrial design, you could follow @IndustrialDesign@kbin.social and see a bunch of discussion on that topic.
With Mastodon, the ActivityPub support means you can also do cool things like subscribe to your favorite Peertube channels (assuming you have favorite peertube channels). A lot of them are tech related, but for example on makertube.net there's @thegiddystitcher whose channel is about sewing and knitting. Having videos from this platform show up in your posts is pretty exciting, it's an example of how something completely different than mere messages can integrate using the ActivityPub protocol.
There are also other parts of the fediverse that are relatively new but may be quite unique and different. For example, you can follow people on minds, which is a fairly large social media platform in its own right with some media personalities having active accounts there. Threads is a big corporate site, which means that some instances block them by default and some instances are blocked by default, but if you're on a mutually friendly instance it has a lot of users as well that aren't likely to hang out on smaller instances.
It's not as straightforward, but you can also follow and interact with people on nostr through the mostr bridge. There's a lot of bitcoin and the like on mostr, but it's still another option. You can follow former twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at @82341f882b6eabcd2ba7f1ef90aad961cf074af15b9ef44a09f9d2a8fbfbe6a2 (just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?)
There's also portions of the fediverse that you won't know about unless you actually know about it -- for example, journa.host hosts many journalists, as well as the fediverse pages for a number of news organizations. I follow @winnipegfreepress because I used to live in Winnipeg for example.
There are also a number of notable celebrities on the fediverse. American idiot George Takei, famous for saying "oh my!" provocatively, has a very active account. Fascism advocate Robert "Third" Reich also has a very active account. A wide variety of other celebrities also have accounts, for example famous genocide activist Greta Thunberg and red painted doll head collector Kathy Griffin, but typically many of these accounts were created during hissy fits about something or other, and like most political hissy fits by celebrities they gave it up once they realized nobody cares. The fact that they can't just hire someone with thick glasses to game the algorithm was probably a major factor in leaving since they're not special on the Fediverse.
The fediverse really is like the old story of two wolves being inside of you. Whichever ones you feed are the ones that will grow. If you're doing it right, you can have any kind of feed you'd like and you'll find it really enjoyable.
The glass ceiling for incompetent buffoons who made it far past their Peter Principle limit long ago is real.
-Was the first to drop out in the 2020 primaries after being bombed into the stone age in the first debate
-Selected as vice president solely based on race and gender and party seniority
-so incompetent she made Electric Fence Mike Pence look good in the 2020 debates (and he's so full of shit the flies stuck to him)
-During violent riots that caused at least 2 billion dollars in damage across the nation said "They're not gonna stop [...] and they should not" on national television and the facebook post where she raised money to raise bail for violent rioters is still up on facebook
-the least popular vice president in history
-even the administration she was a part of kept locked up in the freezer because every time she talks she looks like an idiot
-never had to personally win an election outside of the bluest cities in the bluest state in the nation
-Didn't personally win the 2024 primary and instead was installed by fiat
The only shocking thing about her loss is that anyone with half a brain thought she could win.
The press was entirely on her side, for example with one media outlet that reported on her becoming the "border czar" revoking the story years later so they could claim she was never made "border czar". That's just dystopian and fascistic in the truest sense of a cooperation between government and corporations to establish total control over people's reality. Thank God it failed.
It's just shockingly bad. Could a woman be President? Yes, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in my lifetime. Many countries have had female leaders including closely aligned UK and Canada. But the Kamala Harris was never going to be that. The only way she's getting made president is by being installed by fiat (and some of her supporters are suggesting exactly that, that Biden step down so she can be president for a couple months, in part to screw up the process on January 6th so Trump isn't elected)
-Was the first to drop out in the 2020 primaries after being bombed into the stone age in the first debate
-Selected as vice president solely based on race and gender and party seniority
-so incompetent she made Electric Fence Mike Pence look good in the 2020 debates (and he's so full of shit the flies stuck to him)
-During violent riots that caused at least 2 billion dollars in damage across the nation said "They're not gonna stop [...] and they should not" on national television and the facebook post where she raised money to raise bail for violent rioters is still up on facebook
-the least popular vice president in history
-even the administration she was a part of kept locked up in the freezer because every time she talks she looks like an idiot
-never had to personally win an election outside of the bluest cities in the bluest state in the nation
-Didn't personally win the 2024 primary and instead was installed by fiat
The only shocking thing about her loss is that anyone with half a brain thought she could win.
The press was entirely on her side, for example with one media outlet that reported on her becoming the "border czar" revoking the story years later so they could claim she was never made "border czar". That's just dystopian and fascistic in the truest sense of a cooperation between government and corporations to establish total control over people's reality. Thank God it failed.
It's just shockingly bad. Could a woman be President? Yes, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in my lifetime. Many countries have had female leaders including closely aligned UK and Canada. But the Kamala Harris was never going to be that. The only way she's getting made president is by being installed by fiat (and some of her supporters are suggesting exactly that, that Biden step down so she can be president for a couple months, in part to screw up the process on January 6th so Trump isn't elected)
You man the guy who literally wrote a book basically saying "Holy fuck I love cocaine!!! EVERYONE should try this shit!!!" wasn't the best option for civilizational stability?
