Mastodawn

ex0du5 Dec 11, 2023

@nicholas_saunders @georgetakei I don’t think you are trolling or playing team sports here, looking at your timeline, but you have to realize how ridiculous this sounds.

Right wing news was attacking Hunter Biden before the 2016 election about all sorts of lifestyle reasons. Then there was the Ukraine extortion by Trump (that became one of his impeachments) where republicans tried to make Hunter work in the region sound more nefarious than Trump’s, and the stolen laptop, where right wing news turned a privacy leak into another exploration of lifestyle (drugs and prostitutes) and an attempt to spin every crumb of ambiguous message with some overarching conspiracy. It is so clear they see Hunter as the softer target than Joe because of the drug stuff and have been trying for years to turn that into something.

Like man, they have tried _so_ hard. Openly. Publicly. If you are pretending that the house choosing to force a special investigator was not political but just normal government function, then you are not being an honest participant here.

And none of this is “defending” Hunter. If he’s done something wrong, he should restore the world of his harms, whatever they be. It’s merely pointing out that he has been a clear, open political target for years now, and that’s not the act of people who dispassionately use the power of the state for justice - which appears to be your framing.

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ex0du5 Nov 30, 2023

@arstechnica Can we be clear that this is why we have the phrase “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”? Like, the first time a company does this - that ain’t cool, you got some restoration to do. But the second time, that’s an immediate dissolution of the corporate executive structure and an immediate transfer of ownership of the factory to the workers (or an appropriate collective social choice abstraction).

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ex0du5 Oct 18, 2023

@dangoodin @ksaj @saraislet For number 2, I’m only making the (factual) claim that many people have made those connections.

For number 1, you said “Anybody normalizing Twitter is a problem”. I am sure you can argue that “problem” is not a negative term, that you meant it with love and kindness and all that, but people who argue words have no meaning are usually untrustworthy.

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ex0du5 Oct 18, 2023

@dangoodin @ksaj @saraislet Wow, Dan. You’re out here actively dissing anyone who stays on X because you are upset at the legitimization of the rising white nationalism… while working for a company that participates in that legitimization??

You are aware, I am sure, as a reporter that doesn’t just shoot from the hip but seeks facts, just how many are staying due to their reliance on community aid, right? That that’s how they make a living?

Kind of like you?

You won’t make the leap and try to make a living elsewhere, but you are willing to look down upon others doing the same?

And you are doing this publicly?

And many others do so to keep contact with community, because the alternative is to be isolated from those they care for and who care for them. Because in many cases and in many ways, human connection is just as important to a worthwhile life as food and shelter. This is particularly true of marginalised communities that can’t find that connection locally.

Look, we all know those associates in real life who really don’t care about the rising bigotry, who don’t see it as a problem, maybe even cryptoenjoy, and it’s super easy to bring their image to mind when making proclamations like this. But you, explicitly, are attacking all races and marginalised communities, directly defending that attack in this thread.

That tells me a lot about your capabilities and biases as a reporter, Dan. I suspect it tells a lot of people the same. Maybe take a moment to consider the forces that keep you employed with one of these legitimizers and think how those same forces may be behind other people’s presence on X, Facebook, etc. before so easily finding condemnation of an entire group of people. That ability to attack groups for the actions of individuals is the bigotry you seem to want to fight.

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ex0du5 Oct 1, 2023

@rhempel @charlotteclymer People who exclude others from contributing to the discourse based on their profession are anti-democratic and harbor a bigotry. People who make assumptions about a person’s ability or intelligence without having talked with them do not really want to learn in interaction.

And honestly, it sounds like your issues are more with the people listening than the people talking.

ex0du5 Jun 15, 2023

@cpoliticditto No. They love obeisance and the knee bent towards them. It’ll just turn them on. I mean, they’ll still hate trans people and work toward their destruction, but they’ll also turn it into some weird sexual obsession because that’s what they do.

ex0du5 Jun 15, 2023

@pivoinebleue I mean… is that really the framing to pursue? I would say his “malevolent intent towards vast categories of his would-be constituents” would be a far more relevant reason for his lack of leader-quality.

I have many friends who don’t like to talk to people and yet whom I’d find reasonable candidates for “if we really gotta have a President then them”.

I wish we could dislike needy, impotent people like DeSantis without trying to turn every little uncomfortable behavior into “the thing! (finally)” for why everyone should now agree to dislike the scum. It’s not just that people who don’t see the scumminess actually just don’t want to see it, but also it ends up with stretching so often and much that there eventually come times where it gets offensive to others. If you are reaching to show someone is bad, you’ll eventually be attacking perfectly fine behaviors.

The malevolent stuff, the actual desire to hurt some people - that should be sufficient to dislike this chud. I don’t care if he ties his shoes in an uncommon manner.

ex0du5 Jun 8, 2023

@shaknais @nerdybutcute Now there’s two of us sitting here, all frightened and awkward. Not sure the situation is improved.

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ex0du5 May 27, 2023

@briannawu @ben The fact that it is _economists_ whose worry here is being centered is so sociopathic. Especially since many economists have a clear solution for the economic effects of this (increased immigration) which the same sociopathic right wing media would never touch, but like - where is the concern for the reasons this choice away from children is growing? The structural systems pushing people away, the long term outlook on social cohesion, opportunity, a golden future - and the emotional toll of an abusive society, and all that entails? Why isn’t it “psychologists are worried about what this says”?

Always the framing is just naturally about using people for their labor. Almost completely without reflection on what this reveals about the author and the paper’s views more widely.

ex0du5 May 7, 2023

You know, it’s really sad that the use of God by humans so often is about an “ultimate power” or an unbeatable force to be used to ultimately harm those one hates, whether as a force of righteousness (like the western interpretation of Karma) or as a force of justice (salvation and punishment). The punitive vision of God is such an ugly, harmful side of humanity.

But the idea of a greater purpose, a common goal or spirit, that I totally jive with. I think we need more common visions. Not because I think people need to be followers more. That’s what’s wrong with the whole authoritarian view of God and why it gets confused. But I think people can choose mutual aid, health, a common social purpose actively, of their own will and decision, not as an act of following but of purpose.

This is why I think social choice is so important, and why I think ultimately our choice to lift each other up equally is, in our social contract, a promise of equal power, or direct democracy.

Anarchists have a long, struggling relationship with social choice. Sometimes, it is for more caricature reasons like the egoists, with weak individualist arguments that pretend no shared consequence. But there are a lot of really deep objections based in the relationship of hierarchy to structures of organization and organism that are subtle and require longer analysis and respect.

Ultimately, though, I think it’s good when we get along and build a common vision and there are healthy notions of organization and healthy views of organism. I think we gotta find ways to get along and I think formalization is just a way for us to be clear to each other what our intentions are. A formal process of social choice is only a net benefit.