Maybe it will be enough to alert some of them to those issues? If the effects of corruption are felt more strongly, people may be more vocal about it and realise how many like-minded people there are. Then they may come to wonder how these bills keep getting passed if so many people oppose them.

Or they may keep their heads low for fear of sticking out and becoming the next target, or become dog-in-burning-house impersonators: “This is fine :)”

Reddit went from “I append site:reddit.com when querying google for well-founded and nuanced info” to the opposite.

Open another terminal killall vim

You’ll have to be more precise on the definition of God. There are quite a lot of them.

The existence of an abstract concept is provable by thinking of it. If there exists an idea that you call God, then a God exists. However, that proves nothing about its properties beyond its mere existence as an idea, including whether it pertains to any real thing. Likewise, all attributes you ascribe to that idea become part of the idea, but do not automatically prove anything about reality.

Thus, the question whether there is an idea called God is trivially answered by asking it at all, but has little bearing on anything at all.

What makes ideas useful is that they group properties, and what makes them real is that there exists an actual thing having all those properties.

Thus, the question whether a real thing exists depends on the properties of that thing, so let’s tackle one:

Do I believe that there can be an omnipotent entity? No. The typical argument here is “Can God create a rock so heavy, They cannot lift it anymore?” Either answer contradicts the premise of omnipotence, unless that entity can create logical contradictions, in which case all argument and reasoning is moot anyway.

In particular, do I believe that some variation of the Abrahamic God exists? No, or at least none of those I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to being shown otherwise.

However, the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving God runs decidedly counter to the existence of suffering, even if we ignore (or exclude) the contradiction about omnipotence.

I didn’t think that kind of joke would ever :q

Disturbed - Legion of Monsters

You made sure the world will remember the name
But didn’t the thought even enter your mind?
You′d give a new legion of monsters
A reason to take your life

The song originally is about a school shooting, but the point is the same

The only winning move is to just offer a better solution and ignore him.

You’d think a better solution would be easy to find, but they spent so long indoctrinating their own followers to be loyal to names rather than concepts that they now fear these followers may attach to the Trump name.

Meanwhile, you’ve been cheerfully dodging all the directly pertinent things like conservative platforms and spaces deleting opposing voices or disabling comments entirely, cries to “kill the X” where X is anything from libs to slurs and right wing acts of violence like shooting up clubs, churches, or storming the congress because your favourite TV show host no longer get to use the POTUS twitter to commit acts of stochastic terrorism.

But sure, not fighting strawmen designed to scare the gullible into fear of the “other” is the real fault. Nevermind the gross misrepresentation of what we mean by hate speech. “You won’t let me use slurs, you’re literally Hitler!”

The systematic persecution of jews started out with an increasing tide of hatred, misinformation and propaganda against them. We don’t need to wait until isolated acts become a systematic pattern to see the signs on the wall and try to fight them before it comes to that point.

Nobody sane thinks that forcing people to suck your cock is anything but rape, and in the famous case of a trans woman setting weight lifting records, she was competing in the male category. You’re getting mad over nothing and turning a blind eye to actual deception.

No, if I find something offensive, I will combat it. Because the other side does the same, banning dissenting voices in their spaces, calling for violence against the libs and such.

I’ll not engage the transphobia point because it’s a reductionist take that strips context to make strawmen fit.

You’re projecting pretty badly here, and since you keep using the suppression of differing opinions as qualifying trait to consider people fascists, I’m guessing the systematic killing of ethnic and sexual minorities seems like the lesser of their evils to you?

I’m not going to stand by idly while they encourage each other with calls to violence. I don’t want anyone to die at all, but they’re the ones advocating for it. They started this.

We all just want to live our best lives. We only ask that you don’t interfere with our enjoyment. When you do, we reserve the right to self-defense, the most natural right of all.

If you genuinely think that they’re fine to call for the death of my people, but I’m wrong to want to silence that sentiment, then you’re complicit in their violence.

Just leave us in peace. You can have your little circle of supremacy where you reaffirm how awesome you all are, as long as you don’t bother anyone else. That’s all we ask: Tolerance and respect for one another.

Oh I have tried the rational argument often enough. I still do, where I see the opportunity. I spend way too much time trying to convince people of my point of view even when I’m pretty sure there never was any hope in the first place.

But the type of hate speech and stochastic terrorism we’re talking about “censoring” is beyond rational discourse. If “Don’t use slurs, please” drives you to say “Fuck you, I’ll hang with the bigots then”, then tolerance can’t have been that important to you.

You don’t need to keep touching the stove to realise it’s hot. Many platforms have tried the free speech angle and realised that it leads to an influx of hate, devoid of reason, and they’ll either introduce some moderation or have all other people leave because nobody wants concentrated vitriol on their feed, except for those toxic enough to thrive on it.

We can debate rationally when both parties are being rational. If you can’t “debate” without spewing hatred, then I shouldn’t have to waste my time playing by rules you never gave a fuck about in the first place.

I sorta do? My employer has been making commitments to improving things, and I’m involved in one of those projects, but they’re a very slow ship to turn and I can’t say I 100% stand behind what they’re generally doing.

I joined out of a mix of necessity, opportunism and the chance to develop new skills, and grew to like the specific job I’m doing. I didn’t have many choices for private reasons, but needed the money when I signed up, so in a way the money was good enough to compromise on ethics.

I got a permanent position now, and again, I stuck for personal reasons, to improve my future prospects and because I like the job, but for all the security a permanent position offers, I’m still planning to start looking for different opportunities when circumstances allow, unless the internal culture makes some masive progress in the next two years.

In the medium run? Not sure. I’d like to think I’d compromise money over ideology, but I also know that I tend to be selfish and really good at mental gymnastics to justify decisions. I would probably not sign on with Exxon, so there’s definitely the severity of opposition to account for, but there isn’t any clear line that I’d swear my life on. On the other hand, if the money was enough to support political causes that I feel (or tell myself) would weigh up the toll on my conscience, I might fold.

In the long run, I hope to get to a point where I can answer that with a firm “No”. Maybe once life stabilises, I’ll grow firmer in my convictions. Maybe once the question of pay shifts from covering necessities to the amount of luxury I can afford, the exact number will lose meaning. Maybe I’ll find a place that I both support fully and earn enough at that any more would feel obscene anyway.

So basically, it comes down to the factors of

1. How strongly do I oppose the company?
2. How much money, compared to what I need to live, and compared to what I need to support a pleasant lifestyle?
3. Where am I on the scale from nihilism to idealism at the given point in time?

On the contrary, I am quite ideologically sympathetic. I’ve always used Open / LibreOffice, I no longer use windows, never had a Mac or iPhone or anything, I argued with stakeholders for making our university project FOSS rather than proprietary, the list goes on. I’ve spent enough time arguing with people why they should care about FOSS.

I’m just also aware of my biases, and of the fact that most people are heavily biased by their UX. Most people don’t want to spend a long time thinking to understand, they simply want to use. And in that respect, bad==proprietary doesn’t universally hold up. Big companies can spend big bucks on user research, on figuring out what does and doesn’t work for their target audience, on developing features that appeal to people. They also can spend big bucks on marketing and cultivating a brand image so that people start to identify with their products, deepening the attachment.

There is also an unfortunate side effect of FOSS when it comes to setting technical standards: If everyone can make their own, plenty of people will do that. Sure, many things have since been standardised, but how often has a common standard evolved as a side effect of some big corporation(s) adopting or outright developing it?

I don’t need to preach to you about all the ways this sucks. The unfortunate pragmatic truth is that proprietary software is a poisoned, but quite appealing apple. The most common answer I got about FOSS is “yeah, it sounds great, but I don’t care, I just want something that works for me.”

Even if their proprietary system of choice got so bad to use that they’d switch to an open one, that doesn’t mean they’d embrace the ideology. It just means that specific system does what they need it to. If iOS becomes unbearable, they may switch to Android, or perhaps to Windows phones, but they’re still gonna install and use apps that feel good to use, regardless of whether they’re FOSS.

The fight against proprietary software isn’t going to be won on ideological grounds. I feel like some developers and advocates of FOSS miss that fact. If you want to be solid competition, worry about being a viable alternative first. Once people start to use a system that allows them to customise more, they may get intrigued by that liberty and become susceptible to the ideology behind, but unless they enjoy using it already, they’ll never engage with it deeply enough.

I don’t think the Nazis care about what I think they should or should not be allowed to do. They’re going to use violence, whether or not I hold a gun or a white flag. If I say “No, force is bad!” they’re going to say “Suit yourself!” and use it anyway. How am I going to stop them?
An ideology is worth only as much as the people defending it. If I am so concerned with the letter of the law if tolerance that I refuse to defend its spirit, I’ll be condemned along with it.

That’s the point of the paradox: If we deny ourselves the use of force, we’re essentially conceding that right to them.

This an ideological conflict. We each believe the other is in the wrong, so whatever rules the other attempts to impose have no bearing on us because they’re wrong. Hence: We should try rational argument first and hope to keep them in check by public opinion, but when that fails?

You can go stand in the middle and be proud of your enlightenend and nonviolent convictions. And when they next shoot up a gay night club or a black church, you can go and look the dying victims and their grieving loved ones in the eye and say “Aren’t you glad these people get to freely encourage each others’ bigotry?”

So when it comes to dealing with fascists, I’ll listen to the guy that watched the rise of the original fascists, the failure of democracy, and took notes

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

(ibid)

I googled about lemmy, found a blog post to introduce the whole concept, they linked an instance recommendation thing based on (if I understood correctly) the uptime, (de)federation and user count of the instance, and I just clicked one of the suggestions. So many posts claimed that it doesn’t make a great difference that I eventually decided to toss my overoptimisation habit and take what was suggested to me.

But I’m still learning my way around here, who knows if this will stay my forever home.

Absolute big brain move

Wolfman dies, kills some monkeys, does some rope stuff, performs eye surgery and kills himself (depending on what ending you go for).

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/720/

Image for hotlinking https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/recipes.png

If we divide, we’ll be conquered. That wisom is at least two thousand years old by now. Better to unite and defy.

Yeah, that’s the Paradox of Tolerance. Short version: If you’re being intolerant, why should I tolerate you?

To paraphrase Karl Popper: A society that values tolerance to the point of indulging those that oppose it will effectively be defenseless against that hate. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reason with them first, but we need to reserve the right to shut them up, by force if we have to.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Karl Popper, 1945, The Open Society and Its Enemies