Let's do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

Project manager: "What's technical debt? Explain it to me like I'm 6 years old"

Devs:

(source: "Richard Scarry's Storybook Dictionary" : https://archive.org/details/1scarryRichardStorybookDictionary/page/n56/mode/1up )

Here is my Ukraine peace proposal:

1. Putin is sent to The Hague.
2. Russian soldiers leave Ukraine including Crimea.
3. Russia returns all kidnapped Ukrainian children.
4. Russia releases all Ukrainian prisoners.
5. Russia pays damages for everything their war has destroyed.
6. Russia pays damages to Ukrainian families who have lost family members.
7. Russia pays damages to every person who has been tortured, abducted or otherwise criminally mistreated.
8. Ukraine becomes a member of the EU.

It's a genre unto itself: finding old Charlie Kirk quotes and showing how they justify pissing on his grave. Good. Now focus on the living people who are taking up his repulsive legacy.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/09/15/never-has-a-mans-own-words-so-adeptly-justified-contempt-for-him/

There are some petitions spinning up to stop payment processors like Mastercard from dictating what we are allowed to purchase.

These are in response to religious nutjobs pressuring Steam and now Itch.io into removing content that they don’t like. On account of them being religious nutjobs.

Here’s a petition from the ACLU, which actually has lawyers to fight this sort of thing. I’m not an expert on petitions, but that sounds like a strong path forward.

Signed.

https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

A thing I'm seeing with increasing frequency from the younger members of our community is this like ...

Let me back up.

I work with some folks in their early twenties, and I am having a hard time relating to some of them. Some of them are having a hard time relating to one another.

And the root of this difficulty is propaganda, I think. All of them are constantly bombarded with video propaganda via social media. A lot of it is anti-community propaganda. Most of the media they consume is just about strengthening their disaffiliation with various outgroups. Even the stuff that's about celebrating people is, at least in passing, also about excluding or dehumanizing people.

And, for each of them, the memberships in these various in and out groups is unique. One of them has fallen in to a real trad Christian, 1950s fetishization, one of them watches a lot of stuff premised on the idea that nuerotypical people are an evolutionary dead end, and nuerodivergent people are the path forward...

It's... The specific content isn't what worries me. Like, both of those things aren't great, but the particular contents of the propaganda is irrelevant to my current point (because content can be addressed and deprogrammed.) Regardless of what flavor of self-isolating purity test content they've fallen in to, there are some common themes:

- policing other people's behaviors and desires
- shame for basically any expression of sexuality
- an outsized importance on excluding people

I'm sure there's other stuff, and I know this isn't unique to folks under 25, but it seems to be especially pervasive with them.

Social battles that I thought were long settled are not only coming back up, but also going the wrong way.

And I have to assume that this is, intentional and coordinated or not, an attempt to break any kind of solidarity that might build between people who are dissimilar.

No, I do not want to install your app.

No, I do not want that app to run on startup.

No, I do not want that app shortcut on my desktop.

No, I do not want to subscribe to your newsletter.

No, I do not want your site to send me notifications.

No, I do not want to tell you about my recent experience.

No, I do not want to sign up for an account.

No, I do not want to sign up using a different service and let the two of you know about each other.

No, I do not want to sign in for a more personalized experience.

No, I do not want to allow you to read my contacts.

No, I do not want you to scan my content.

No, I do not want you to track me.

No, I do not want to click "Later" or "Not now" when what I mean is NO.

I'm glad somebody out there is brave enough to push back against the "personal ChatGPT usage is terrible for the environment" message https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about

"If you want to prompt ChatGPT 40 times, you can just stop your shower 1 second early."

"If I choose not to take a flight to Europe, I save 3,500,000 ChatGPT searches. this is like stopping more than 7 people from searching ChatGPT for their entire lives."