JasSmith @ JasSmith @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Since you've admitted you accept discrimination on the basis of race, that makes you, quite literally, a racist. I'm sure you think your racism is justified and righteous and good, but all racists think that. You're not special. You're just racist.

Your recount of history is wild. There were absolutely black slaves, but did you know that there have been millions of white slaves too? Slave markets flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 15th and middle of the 19th century. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as the Turkish Abductions in Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries.

My own Irish ancestors were also the victims of genocide in the Potato Famine. No one has a hereditary claim on suffering. If you go far enough back in anyone's past you'll find cruelty and subjugation, no matter their skin colour. That you'd try to make it a competition to justify your racism is, I think, quite awful.

I'd like to preface this by saying I have all the vaccines, including four covid vaccines.

Until just a few years ago, I was all-in on the institutions. You see, institutions have been synonymised with science and intellectualism. Fast forward to covid and we had our healthcare professionals lying to us. "Masks are ineffective." "Sorry I lied. You'll die if you don't wear masks in public." "Except if you're a BLM looter, then racism is a public health emergency." Our leaders were locking us in our homes, closing our bank accounts, banning us from social media, shutting down free speech, and effectively forcing us to take very minimally tested vaccines, repeatedly. They gaslit us about the origin of the virus. We learned that the people who were likely responsible for the lab leak were working in collusion with the Chief Medical Adviser/Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation.

Kind of alarming, right? Data suggests trust in institutions took a huge hit under covid. Not because of "misinformation," but because of dishonest and authoritarian actions by leaders.

Then we have science. Data shows that political partisanship is at an all time high in universities. Up to 20% of lecturers identify as communists. There is no equivalent on the right. In fact, the mix of liberal and conservative faculty members in universities in America is so lopsided now, it's as much as 10:1. We can all pretend like this hyper-partisanship doesn't lead to research and educational biases, but we can see that it does, in real time. For example, trans research. It would be hard to name a field receiving more funding today, nor a field less impartial. Many advocates and researchers argue vehemently that transitioning is necessary to save the lives of those with gender dysphoria. Yet there is not a single study, anywhere, which shows this. The closest researchers have come is arguing that "suicidal ideation" is a synonym for "suicide," and because self-reported ideation decreases in some studies, this means transition saves lives. Clearly this is incorrect, but such research is so widely used and misused that the President of the U.S. has endorsed it.   Conversely, there are numerous reports of researchers being barred from testing hypotheses which question this premise, or outright removed from universities. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]  When researchers are prevented from studying all sides of an issue, all that's left is the narrative of those in power.

For me, the question isn't "will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?" Instead, it really should be, "what are institutions doing to mend the immense harm they have caused to trust?" I am amazed it hasn't happened sooner, and that the backlash isn't even larger.

I'd be okay with your rationalisation if you followed similar logic for "blackness." Do you? Is it okay for me to attack blackness, and call it dirty and bad?

If you go a little further back in history you'll discover some pretty heavy historical claims to the land by the Jewish people. Just to be clear, I consider "historical claim" to be the most bullshit geopolitical argument in existence. I'm merely pointing out the fallacy in claiming Palestinians have claim, but Jews do not. Palestine wasn't even a country until it was established when Israel was established. It was just a bunch of nomads moving between various borders.

What would you do?

I would not beat, rape, and murder innocent people. That seems like a low bar to clear, right? Attacking military targets and personnel might be morally justified, but certainly not what they did over the weekend.

Reddit has been aggressively banning people for many years. People used to cheer it on because it was mostly aimed at conservatives, but they've expanded and created what appears to be a first-strike policy with no appeal. Now it's affecting everyone. I support consistent application of the rules, but their rules are petty, arbitrary, and broad. A famous example is how they ban people for racism, unless it's racism towards white people. That was literally written into the site rules until recently.

I think Reddit is a lost cause. They peaked long ago and now they're coasting on their moat. As other services like Lemmy gain traction, Reddit will continue to decline, and they will continue to aggressively monetise the remaining users. The only thing to lament is the information already stored on the site.

I guess we've found the new home of /r/Politics. Good to know which communities we should block.

That's hilarious! Here's another one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

This one's great too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohm9C4u63qk

Apparently Google is paying Apple upwards of $20B per year now for search default, so it’s not hard to see why they’re sticking with Google. It does highlight one of many potential anti-trust violations.

If it’s on Lemmy it would be a hilarious political purity test to see who could virtue signal harder. It would be insufferable. That’s why most users don’t have any kids or spouses. I honestly couldn’t think of a worse place to set up a dating service.

I have to concur with the concern. It's not a free market if we don't let bad businesses fail. What's that saying? Privatised profits and socialised losses? Less of that please.

It's like Google back in 2010. You find stuff you are looking for without pages and pages of ads, spam, and clickbait.

If you hit a domain which is obviously spam, you can block it forever. If you find a domain you really like, you can promote it for future results.

It's clear that Google's motivation is no longer to offer good results. It's to maximise the time you're on the site, and the number of ads and spam sites you click. Their goal is now, literally, to feed you bad results.

They’re not going to wait for the war to end.

That is the premise used to argue that one day a zombie company will emerge which will live forever. In millennia, it has never happened. I'm fairly confident it's unlikely. These companies eventually allow their culture and focus to settle into complacency. Buying other companies can't solve that. In fact, it hastens their demise, as they spend large sums of money on companies they're incapable of properly utilising.

I want to use qbittorrent, but my Mac won’t let me install it - says it’s too old for the operating system and/or that it can’t be verified.

You can fix that verification check like this. If it's saying it's too old then you might have an Apple silicon Mac while the app could be for x86. Even then, it should automatically emulate.

qBittorrent is great, but Transmission also works well on Mac.

That's the basis for the theory behind the business life cycle. The theory goes that eventually companies mature and settle into a kind of coasting phase, where they maximise profit instead of continuing to innovate. This provides a large opening for competition, who inevitable eat the incumbent's lunch.

Indeed, on a long enough time scale, all companies eventually die. It's just that, living in that moment, it appears that these companies are so unbelievably large and powerful that they could never be unseated. I'm sure people thought that of the Dutch East India company at the time, yet it dissolved 224 years ago.

Eventually, Facebook will kill itself. It's already done such a great job.

If by the fascists you're referring to the criminals who murdered him, it's too late. The victim was out there every day fighting to keep these criminals on the streets. We really do need to get tougher on crime, all over the West.

Thank you very much :)

I feel SO much better since cutting out the caffeine. It's a vicious cycle. It gives you a little emotional boost for a couple of hours, then you're just left feeling on edge for the rest of the day. Then it fucks with your sleep, and you need caffeine just to get back to baseline the next day.

I just think they lack any real issues. I grew up poor and constantly insecure. I had real issues, and it has given be perspective. I'm grateful for every day I have food and shelter. I don't have a lot of bandwidth to care about stuff which might affect people 100 years from now.

Of course I'm glad that they grew up with such privileged lives. I just wish they'd care a little more about poor people today.