Photuris

Yes. I’m for free trade agreements, so long as those agreements include the free movement of labor just as much as the free movement of capital.

I miss Usenet.

BTW, does anyone remember Google Wave? That was actually a pretty neat idea, so of course they killed it.

Dude, camel fat smells and tastes so bad

“Yeah, dude, I wasn’t asking ChatGPT, I was asking you!!”

That guy is weird af.

You think they guy who writes code to make Xbox games work, or the woman who does data analytics in R and Excel to optimize cloud hosting traffic shaping rules (or whatever), is the same as ICE and the SS?!

Jesus Christ. Climb out from under your rock and go meet some real people doing real things, and do some real things of value yourself. Maybe learn how to make something with tech. Maybe learn a little bit of code, I don’t know.

I work in tech. I am not rounding up my Hispanic neighbors for ICE, nor am I building spyware infrastructure for Palantir. I write code to help doctors and nurses do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. But fuck me I guess for trying to earn a living by providing some value. And fuck Microsoft employees for writing code to allow people to play video games or whatever.

Oh, fuck you.

People need an income, and they work hard to provide for their families.

Tech employees are people, too. And many of them spent years perfecting a very difficult set of skills that the market is quickly deciding isn’t as valuable as it once was, because their corporate employers regard them merely as resources to be exploited and then discarded at the first opportunity. That sucks.

It sucks whomever it happens to, be it warehouse workers, truck drivers, call center employees, retail and customer service employees, or office knowledge workers. Just because a person had made a pretty good salary doesn’t mean they haven’t still be exchanging their precious time for dollars like the rest of us, grinding away their life at a job rather than spending quality time with their loved ones and persuing their own hobbies and interests.

Seriously, fuck you dude.

These control freaks keep popping up, and so we’ll have to do it again.

Jesus actually said something about that, it turns out. Not that it matters to these knuckleheads.

Such a wild different mindset. Like, empathy, morals, and decency aside for a moment, having someone around as your “property” sounds like so much goddamned work! Like, why would one want to keep someone around through coercion and fear? It’s sounds dreadful - much better when someone wants to be around you, no? If they don’t, why not wish them well and move on ffs.

Control freaks are the worst.

Yes that is what I’m saying. Could have structured my writing better.

And that’s why Bitcoin was created as a first rough draft, and Monero as the full implementation of Satoshi’s vision. If you can’t buy coke and hookers with it, it ain’t money in the strictest sense. Fungibility matters.

Alas, crypto today is mostly the complete opposite of that, and a complete scam.

I relate to this so much!

Well fuck

Nobody told me all this when I signed up. I was simply instructed to pick an instance, and I did.

Righteous!

A long time ago, I use to call myself “Libertarian.” Before you cringe too hard at this, this was long before MAGA, the Tea Party Republicans, all that. I just wanted weed to be legal (even though I don’t partake myself), no more foreign wars, and basically people to mind their own goddamned business most of the time and for the laws to be less convoluted but apply to everyone equally. Basic stuff for a younger mind. I don’t like busybodies and control-freakery.

My primary concern was in maximizing Freedom for the greatest number of people.

What changed my perspective, was learning and understanding the difference between Negative Liberty (freedom from) and Positive Liberty (freedom to).

And I then understood how a healthy Left and a healthy Right might in theory disagree when Positive Liberty and Negative Liberty are in conflict, even if they both actually really value Freedom (e.g., the freedom to own firearms responsibly vs. the freedom from fear of having one’s children murdered in middle school; Or, the freedom to drive anywhere on public, toll-free roads vs. the freedom from excessively high wheel taxes, or emissions standards that are burdensome on the working poor, or from imminent domain laws that take bits of your land to build roads on).

That understandjng had me, over time, shifting from Libertarian to Liberal. I became a normie Democrat.

Another shift has been happening lately, from Liberal to Progressive/Democratic Socialist, for largely the same reasons: my understanding of what Freedom (and by contrast, cooersion) means in practice is deepening (also, the rise of MAGA and the fecklessness and corruption of the Democratic Party has me a bit radicalized).

I still value Freedom, and I want it maximized for the greatest number of people as possible. I have changed my mind on what that means exactly and how we might get there.

The thing is, and I know this is just semantics, but these MAGA folks are not “conservatives” in the least. They are reactionaries.

I don’t see much “conserving” going on.

The actual, real conservatives these days are (love ‘em or hate ‘em) the centrist, status quo, moderate, neoliberal institutional Democrats, and the former Republicans (such as Liz Cheney and the Lincoln Project folks) who have joined them. They’re the ones attempting (albeit fecklessly) to conserve and preserve institutions (flawed though they may be), decorum, rule of law, the Constitution, things like that.

These MAGA types are actual Fascists, even though they balk when you call them that.

Here’s what Fascism is: a populist movement constructed around a palingenetic myth, with a vision of a glorious future, with the nation (and leader) at the center of this glorious rebirth. Palingenetic is a fancy word for “rebirth.” So a palingenetic myth is a compelling (to many) story about rebirthing and renewal.

So it goes something like this: “In the Past, We were once Great! The envy of the world!!! Everything was awesome! Alas, we have fallen. We are no longer Great, because of Them (immigrants, Jews, gays, progressives, Muslims, Communists, whomever blame sticks to). But We (the real ones) can be Great again! We can recover what was stolen from Us! The Nation takes primacy over the individual, and “law” is only valid so long as it’s not an impediment to Greatness. Rally around the Dear Leader, then, join the Movement, and let’s rebuilt/rebirth our Greatness together! Let’s kick some ass and be great AGAIN!!!”

That is Fascism, and that is what MAGA is.

When I watched Triumph of the Will many years ago, what I saw is being repeated, with American modifications and flavors, by MAGA today. Same shit, different day.

It is not “conservative” at all. That term is just a cover.

People are angry, and many people find the Fascist palingenetic myth to be compelling. Neolib Democrats have failed us, so rebellion against the status quo is at some level understandable.

We on the Left of center aren’t offering a compelling story or uniting vision of the future. We’re too busy nitpicking and policing language, virtue signaling, and woke scolding people. Calling someone “unhoused” vs. “homeless” does nothing to create a house for someone. Putting pronouns on our Twitter profiles does nothing to ensure fair and equal treatment under the law. Capitalizing the word Black does nothing to reverse systemic injustice. So yeah, we don’t have anything to offer as an alternative to either Fascism or status quo corporatism other than word policing. No wonder they hate us. I hate us too.

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I’ve always wanted to sail.

I feel guilty saying it, because I know I was in a privileged position, with a job that could be done remotely and living close to nature, but I fucking loved COVID lockdown. I can’t remember being so happy since childhood. Everything just slowed down, and I spent more time with my family.