Nostr notes by FoolishOwl

We keep losing because that's what people think winning looks ...

2026-07-08T03:52:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…4clp
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We keep losing because that's what people think winning looks like.

It's another form of the problem of the child in Omelas: they think we have to accept this. They don't understand that walking away is winning.

As usual in this scenario, I don't see anyone acknowledging ...

2026-07-08T03:31:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…k6zp
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As usual in this scenario, I don't see anyone acknowledging they made a mistake either.

Several people, online and off, told me it was overreacting to ...

2026-07-08T03:10:17Z

Several people, online and off, told me it was overreacting to reject Platner on the basis of his Nazi tattoo and his career as a mercenary.

I am angry.

I got into FOSS hoping that I could help non-profits and activist ...

2026-05-14T22:01:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…9g27
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I got into FOSS hoping that I could help non-profits and activist groups become more independent from corporate influence. Instead I've seen them outsource more and more of their organizational infrastructure.

Who does use FOSS? Hobbyists, and the inner machinery of the worst organizations in the world.

It was already notorious that FOSS advocates were often at odds with writers and independent artists, who have to sell their work to survive. FOSS has been part of the alienation of IT workers from workers in general.

Outside Fediverse, and occasionally even on it, I see "fossbros" advocating for "GenAI" on the grounds that artists charge too much for creative work.

And at some point, I have to ask whether it's even ethical to do volunteer work when the main beneficiaries of your free labor are surveillance and propaganda organizations, and the military.

I've been indulging in various building games lately ...

2026-04-27T14:59:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…05u9
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I've been indulging in various building games lately (Rimworld, Luanti, Space Engineers), and they are very much Robinson Crusoe fantasies.

Along with their formal progression, there's a sort of regression of perspective. At the beginning, it seems overwhelming how much you have to account for to have a functioning community. By the end, you've achieved mastery over a simulation and it looks easy.

Of the games I listed, Space Engineers is my favorite, but the "survival" mechanics are the most absurd. At least in Rimworld it shows a lot of salvaging and reuse, and success depends on having a larger group with a lot of skills.

People praised the book specifically for starting by explaining ...

2026-04-25T15:37:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…v5zn
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People praised the book specifically for starting by explaining the model of Emacs.

I was looking at reviews of Mastering Emacs which gush over it, ...

2026-04-25T14:44:29Z

I was looking at reviews of Mastering Emacs which gush over it, but it's $50 for an ebook, which is rather a lot, and "opinionated" tech books are always worrisome, especially when it's something like Emacs, where people tell you to rearrange your keyboard to make a text editor easier to use.

I have to note I've gotten really tired of them absolutely ...

2026-03-26T15:59:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…rka4
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I have to note I've gotten really tired of them absolutely definitely having completely defeated the Borg for good, only for them to come right back.

"Oh, the Borg queen, who had total control over the Borg, was the last survivor, and she just applied for membership in the Federation."

Next episode: "We're fighting the Borg again."

If a good person is cursed with vampirism against their will, ...

2026-03-21T16:53:58Z

If a good person is cursed with vampirism against their will, that's pitiable.

When they start killing innocent people in order to continue their existence as a vampire, it's not pitiable and they're not a good person anymore.

I prefer graffiti that makes marginalized people feel like ...

2026-03-20T20:08:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…yp32
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I prefer graffiti that makes marginalized people feel like there's someone on their side.

Like, racists, bigots, etc., like to give the impression there are more of them around than there are.

I carry around stickers to cover up their stickers whenever I see them.

I figure it's an aspect of autistic masking that I can ...

2026-03-20T18:40:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…k53w
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I figure it's an aspect of autistic masking that I can recognize that there's a received set of rules, and a hidden set of rules that contradicts those rules, and that the hidden rules are hidden out of necessity and those are the rules I should be committed to, ethically, but it often requires conscious effort to remember that I have to pretend to follow one set of rules while really following the other.

(E.g., graffiti and minor vandalism. They bother me at first glance, but then, I'm actually on the side of whoever spray-painted "Fuck ICE" and I'm glad they manifested resistance.)

So I have some sympathy for someone making the mistake of following the received rules. They *should* know better, but I can understand the mistake.

And more broadly, I feel the fundamental way class hierarchies work, across its various forms, is that most of us, most of the time, are honestly just trying to keep things working, and it's sometimes hard to work out what things are best broken.

I feel increasingly certain that the US, and the world at large, ...

2026-03-20T15:46:52Z

I feel increasingly certain that the US, and the world at large, is in the grips of a ruling class that hates life, hates beauty, hates humanity, and is literally, consciously, trying to destroy everything.

At one job, I kept trying to explain to software engineers why we ...

2026-03-18T15:49:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…swjx
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At one job, I kept trying to explain to software engineers why we couldn't expand an existing partition to 2 TB on a 500 GB SSD.

I also kept pointing out there were nine unused 1 TB SSDs installed on the same system, so they could create an array from them and mount it at any mount point they liked. But they had no idea what I was talking about.

As a "remote hand" at that datacenter, I wasn't allowed to do any of this.

I think it varies by program, but I've often gotten the impression they don't teach people about basic system administration in computer science degree programs.

It looks like that's one of the things Hasbro took down. Or ...

2026-03-16T18:27:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…37g2
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It looks like that's one of the things Hasbro took down. Or was that the joke?

The central weirdness of GI Joe was that it's got all this military hardware and gunfire and explosions, but it doesn't really show anyone getting injured.

There's a particular form of immaturity that Gen X nerds are ...

2026-03-16T16:16:07Z

There's a particular form of immaturity that Gen X nerds are vulnerable to, a nostalgia for the brightly colored fantasies of our childhood, a refusal to acknowledge that it's foundational propaganda for our present dystopia.

The best exploration I've seen of it was an episode of the TV series Community, in which one of the characters, Jeff, is in a coma, and retreats to his memories of the cartoon, GI Joe. His adult sexuality and understanding of the nature of war is interpolated into his memory of the show, which ends up revealing just what absurd, disturbing propaganda it had been. It was a fantasy of having one's cake and eating it too: blissful childhood memories of propaganda about the US war machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Jeff

In high school, my fellow students got really excited about the ...

2026-03-12T00:02:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…mm4p
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In high school, my fellow students got really excited about the word "pneumatic" when we read Brave New World, because it meant they had an excuse to talk about something related to sex in class.

I was annoyed they were missing the point of the book, though in retrospect, I may have been missing the point of being a teenager.

There's a lot of people who just can't get their heads ...

2026-02-27T16:32:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…ryn4
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There's a lot of people who just can't get their heads around the idea that we don't want a centralized system that's easily parsed and commodified.

I've thought there's a case to be made that we're ...

2026-02-24T19:02:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…rlsg
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I've thought there's a case to be made that we're transitioning to a different, post-capitalist class system. Elon Musk is supposedly the richest person in the world. But Tesla is a small, unsuccessful car manufacturer; I don't know how Starlink rates but I'd gathered it's not valued as highly as Tesla.

So he's treated as very rich, but that's not coming primarily from extracting the surplus value produced by Tesla factory workers. Somehow he's in a position of leverage to extract wealth from the economy as a whole, almost like taxation.

I've seen "purity culture" used a lot within the ...

2026-02-23T20:56:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…a8gg
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I've seen "purity culture" used a lot within the ostensible left to denounce critics and criticism. It was a big part of the "dirtbag left" who were a major influence on DSA around 2014-2015 (some of whom went outright fascist).

I think it did start as a deliberate comparison of critics of internalized sexism, racism, etc., to Purtians and evangelical Christians.

It was used to bury a lot of important critiques on both sides of that comparison.

Yeah, the wild things you could do with enchantments was a lot of ...

2026-02-21T00:12:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…jhs3
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Yeah, the wild things you could do with enchantments was a lot of the fun.

Sometimes I think game designers worry too much about balance, 'breaking the game economy", and so on. Players are as given to self-imposed limits as they are to cheesing.

Oof. Markus Peterson and Mojang made me angry for how they ...

2026-02-20T20:31:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…j8my
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Oof. Markus Peterson and Mojang made me angry for how they treated the modding community, before I found out about Peterson's abhorrent bigotry.

Ironically, I think that did teach a fair number of young people some important lessons. There may not really have been any teenaged hackers breaking in to Pentagon databases, but there were teenagers learning Java programming to reverse-engineer Minecraft and create mods for it.

Come to think of it, a few years ago I was working with a 17 year old who'd re-written Minecraft in Javascript in order to bypass his school's computer software controls.

I looked at it a bit about two years ago, I think. I'm ...

2026-02-20T17:52:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…98j2
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I looked at it a bit about two years ago, I think. I'm impressed it's still going.

A strange thing about playing Fallout: New Vegas again, was that ...

2026-02-20T17:42:37Z

A strange thing about playing Fallout: New Vegas again, was that it's a game from 2010, and I literally spent two days trying to get a set of mods installed to fix bugs and improve its performance as if it were ancient.

There's something very strange about Bethesda's relationship to its fans, in particular that there's effectively a secondary industry devoted to fixing Bethesda games. I've gotten used to looking for omnibus bug fixes for prior Bethesda games, which was more than bad enough. Viva New Vegas involved more than 140 mods, many of them very complex with long detailed changelogs, all intended to just get the game to work the way it was intended to to begin with.

I'm awed that Bethesda games get so much devotion, but also disgusted that Bethesda can just count on so much free labor to complete its commercially successful games.

A simple lesson of the Epstein Files is that the US ruling class ...

2026-02-08T18:55:15Z

A simple lesson of the Epstein Files is that the US ruling class is literally a group of people who have each other's names in their address books and invite each other to parties where they chat about how to oppress people.

My reasons not to buy firearms: 1) They're expensive, ...

2026-01-26T16:28:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…p4cr
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My reasons not to buy firearms:

1) They're expensive, especially when you take the safety precautions and training into consideration;

2) Nearly everyone I know has been troubled with suicidal ideation, and we've discussed that we don't want firearms around because we're afraid of the temptation;

3) I don't think they're effective for individual self-defense, only for coordinated groups, so basically you'd want a militia and an armory, not individual ownership.

That would make it hard to explain all us nerds with our ...

2026-01-24T07:20:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…7wfx
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That would make it hard to explain all us nerds with our speculative fiction and role-playing games.

Much like it was a sign of the weakness of the Russian ...

2026-01-21T17:09:00Z

Much like it was a sign of the weakness of the Russian aristocracy that they couldn't get rid of the disastrously incompetent Nicholas II, it's a sign of the weakness of the US ruling class that the liberals apparently exhausted themselves removing Biden, and now the class as a whole can't get rid of Trump.

It's a common assertion that stories are about conflict, ...

2026-01-18T18:22:48Z

It's a common assertion that stories are about conflict, except that it's sometimes pointed out that many cultures produce stories that are not about conflict.

I've gotten to think that we have a lot of stories that could be described as conflicts, but that's not the best way to understand them, and perhaps fitting some stories into a model centering conflict distorts the stories.

I was glad that Doctorow said the reason for the "AI" ...

2026-01-10T21:46:22Z

I was glad that Doctorow said the reason for the "AI" bubble is that there's nowhere left for real profitable investment, which is how I've been explaining it. This was in an effort to answer someone asking about the inevitable burst of the bubble, "But what can we do?" But they kept asking the question.

The problem is, most people assume capitalism.

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

That seems unnecessarily heated. Buying cards when you don't ...

2026-01-09T01:29:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…ffzj
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That seems unnecessarily heated.

Buying cards when you don't know the value of the cards you receive does seem to me to be a kind of low-key gambling.

One of the things I don't like about a lot of multi-player ...

2026-01-08T16:25:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…mevf
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One of the things I don't like about a lot of multi-player computer games is that narrative and imagery are distractions from game play. I'd say "treated as distractions", but this has been a norm for decades, so designers must be aware of it by now and design accordingly.

It's less an escape from reality than an exaggeration of it, in which you are punished for paying attention to history or sensuous detail or asking questions about what you're doing.

What I mean is, part of what makes D&D "sticky" is ...

2026-01-08T02:50:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…fnlw
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What I mean is, part of what makes D&D "sticky" is that a lot of "table talk" concerns synergies between abilities and the like. That's fairly common with strategy games, trading card games, and some sports, but a lot less common with other role-playing games.

I kind of meant to point to system mastery in the sense that ...

2026-01-08T02:03:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…9y72
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I kind of meant to point to system mastery in the sense that it's something valued at all.

As in, I've seen it said of some narrative-style games that it's not really necessary to understand the rules, it just helps things go more smoothly if you do. Some rules light systems are intended to be too simple and consistent for system mastery to be the interesting part. Some OSR systems, I suspect that confusion is an intentional part of the experience.

I don't want to object to people enjoying that style of ...

2026-01-07T21:36:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…8vcr
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I don't want to object to people enjoying that style of gaming. I just feel sad that some people don't know about the broader range of possibilities, especially when they clearly want to play in a way D&D doesn't accommodate well.

I saw a general gaming news site feature an article about ...

2026-01-07T20:04:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…clwj
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I saw a general gaming news site feature an article about potential changes to the ranger class in a future D&D edition. That's a big deal if you only play D&D and rangers are your favorite class. From the perspective of most indie games, I think it's kind of assumed that you'll tweak things on the fly and borrow ideas from other games; it wouldn't even make sense to write about a minor change in the text.

I think this has been a basic split in the TTRPG scene since ...

2026-01-07T19:59:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…8uw3
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I think this has been a basic split in the TTRPG scene since nearly the beginning, though I think indie games have become significantly more popular in recent years.

There was the "D20" period, in which they made an earnest effort to generalize D&D's core mechanics. But through most of its history, I think D&D has tended to emphasize its specific or idiosyncratic features. "System mastery" is closely related, but it also plays into something like nostalgia.

There's an argument that "luxury" items have become ...

2025-12-12T21:48:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…anad
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There's an argument that "luxury" items have become cheap relative to necessities. It's a lot easier to see a movie now then it was in the 70s, for instance. But, housing, education, and medical care have become incredibly expensive.

So people feel guilty about comforting themselves with movies when they're worried about losing their apartment, for instance.

This is complicated by the cultural memory of it being the other way around.

I couldn't handle college and gave up trying after six years. ...

2025-12-06T06:57:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…czr4
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I couldn't handle college and gave up trying after six years. Every so often I hear someone talk about how college was effortless and it just makes me feel stupid.

I eventually did a practical program at a community college, but it's not the same.

A movie involves a large number of creative people, so just ...

2025-12-02T21:25:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…aa5f
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A movie involves a large number of creative people, so just because the director is a white man doesn't mean that there can't be significant contributions from actors, set designers, writers, etc. It really ought to be understood as a collaboration.

I hate the "auteur" theory, the idea that there has to be a singular unifying vision from a single person.

No, virtual private server, on which I can run a small web ...

2025-11-28T23:38:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…fjdv
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No, virtual private server, on which I can run a small web service.

Can people recommend a VPS provider? I have a few services ...

2025-11-28T18:04:53Z

Can people recommend a VPS provider?

I have a few services running on a small computer, and I'm expecting to move soon and won't have control of the LAN in the new place, so I think I'm better off moving the services out of the house.

I'm looking for inexpensive and ethical, and I don't have any extraordinary security concerns. I prefer running Debian, and having IPv6 would be nice.

One of the fundamental issues I have with "prompt ...

2025-11-18T18:37:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…klxq
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One of the fundamental issues I have with "prompt engineering" is that it's literally the opposite of engineering, and I'm shocked more engineers don't say that. It's an assault on the sciences and the humanities at the same time.

Management and economics students are, by and large, parasites who deal in pseudoscience.

The recent movie or the original novel?

2025-11-18T18:17:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…nyuk
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The recent movie or the original novel?

We no longer feel shame for schadenfreude, because we have a ...

2025-11-18T15:27:56Z

We no longer feel shame for schadenfreude, because we have a glimpse of a world in which the giants are defeated and buried, and we survive to replant our gardens.

OMFG, that may be where "friends of Dorothy" came from. ...

2025-11-16T22:22:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…p9rx
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OMFG, that may be where "friends of Dorothy" came from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

It's been a while, so I checked Wikipedia. 1) Was magically ...

2025-11-16T22:17:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…egj3
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It's been a while, so I checked Wikipedia.

1) Was magically transformed into a boy and forgot her own past until the curse was lifted and she became a girl again;

2) Loves her best friend, Dorothy (in the classic "just roommates" fashion);

3) Eliminated poverty, inequality, unnecessary labor, and war in Oz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Ozma

Yeah, I can see why they'd be avoiding all that "woke nonsense" from 1904.

I'd hope for a backlash, but as we've seen repeatedly, if ...

2025-11-14T20:28:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…6rvf
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I'd hope for a backlash, but as we've seen repeatedly, if it's gone this far, it means the fascists are just asserting control and we have no leverage.

If we've lost the Linux kernel and the Debian project to slop ...

2025-11-14T19:23:13Z

If we've lost the Linux kernel and the Debian project to slop coding, I don't see what hope is left for FOSS.

What does "moving forward" actually mean? Why do they ...

2025-11-13T22:39:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…hchf
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What does "moving forward" actually mean? Why do they assume that adding more features is what people want, or should want?

What if we want a minimalist browser that conforms rigorously to standards defined by public processes, and uses minimal resources to do it?

I've enjoyed reading China Mieville, for instance, but I ...

2025-11-13T01:00:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…4j8g
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I've enjoyed reading China Mieville, for instance, but I couldn't imagine writing stories with his tone.

GMs, Is it common to feel bad about imagining the cruelty of evil ...

2025-11-12T19:07:40Z

GMs,

Is it common to feel bad about imagining the cruelty of evil forces your players' characters will confront?

I know it's not rational. This is imaginary, it's what being a GM entails, it's what I would expect from a GM as a player, I've heard anecdotes about actors who always portray villains being exceptionally kind people, etc.

But as a novice GM, I'm getting a knot in my insides as I try to imagine more specifically what the PCs might encounter.

#TTRPGs

No Man's Sky is a great game, and I've gotten a lot of ...

2025-11-11T23:14:15Z

No Man's Sky is a great game, and I've gotten a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it.

But I've found the writing very disappointing.

The introductory storyline, added after the game was released, usually called "The Artemis Path", was good; it had a balance between the existential awe of confronting the god-like ATLAS, and the developing personal relationships with Artemis, Apollo, and null, and the reveal at the end about ATLAS's motivations was affecting.

The thing the federated model is better at (though far from ...

2025-11-11T15:48:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…5kpx
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The thing the federated model is better at (though far from perfect) is at ostracizing overt fascists. They keep trying, but we have a lot of crustpunk bartenders watching out for their swastika pins.

More subtle influence is stuff I'd associate with liberals, really: insisting on growth as a priority, bridging to Threads; the sorts of things that leaves us exposed.

We often complain about the Fediverse getting left out of ...

2025-11-11T15:15:40Z

We often complain about the Fediverse getting left out of mainstream discourse about social media, but I have to wonder if it wasn't ignored, if fascists would be trying harder to control it.

The federated model would offer some resistance, but arm-twisting a few major VPS providers and the largest instances would do a lot of damage.

We may be better off under the radar.

Most of the denigration of empathy by reactionaries is referring ...

2025-11-07T16:32:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…evpy
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Most of the denigration of empathy by reactionaries is referring to what in the past would have been called sympathy, synonymous with compassion.

It's essentially an assertion of patriarchal power, with the traditional idea that compassion is feminine and weak.

Over time the meanings of sympathy and empathy have swapped. ...

2025-11-07T16:28:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…xjvx
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Over time the meanings of sympathy and empathy have swapped. Sympathy meant "feeling with", the ability to experience another person's feelings, whereas empathy meant the ability to intuit another person's feelings from observation.

Saying that autistic people lack empathy (in this sense) was an oversimplification. This became outright ableist with the idea that autistic people are incapable of sympathy, and therefore lack a "theory of mind", which isn't true at all.

At the time, I think there was also a norm of regimented behavior ...

2025-11-05T13:52:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…quwg
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At the time, I think there was also a norm of regimented behavior for children along with the neglect, so that the idea was that kids would be delighted to be on theur own for a while.

There's also the thing near the beginning where the boy asks for help tying his shoes, and later he's creating Rube Goldberg contraptions. There was a popular idea that children were helpless because they were coddled, and would learn quickly on their own.

My partner sent me a photo of a poster she saw in San Francisco ...

2025-10-31T18:53:42Z

My partner sent me a photo of a poster she saw in San Francisco that said "STOP AI". I did a little checking and it turned out to be a small group afraid of superintelligent AGI. I'm not sure whether they're dumbasses or astroturf.

Increasingly I feel like the IT job market is a fierce ...

2025-10-31T14:44:21Z

Increasingly I feel like the IT job market is a fierce competition for jobs as fascist surveillance machine operators.

Incidentally, the opening chapters of Dawn of Everything, by ...

2025-10-30T18:12:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…5ch9
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Incidentally, the opening chapters of Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow, talks about how much Enlightenment arguments for democracy were initiated by European contact with North American cultures, who had quite sophisticated and insightful critiques of European social structures. The book talks in particular about the Wendat diplomat and orator, Kondiaronk.

I don't want to be naively enthusiastic about local ...

2025-10-30T17:53:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…rrwy
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I don't want to be naively enthusiastic about local governments, but, there are examples of local governments trying to fill the gap left by SNAP. It's not quite the full radical possibility shown by "disaster communism", but I think a few instances of, "Well, we've got all this food, so why don't we just give it to people, and figure out the bookkeeping later", may shake things up a bit.

"Nihilism" was my word, trying to summarize what I ...

2025-10-30T17:45:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…hupj
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"Nihilism" was my word, trying to summarize what I remember being said. I can't seem to find the original.

I think they were also complaining about criticizing things without offering an alternative. Which, c'mon.

I wasn't sure whether to mention it to you, but someone ...

2025-10-30T17:17:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…090h
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I wasn't sure whether to mention it to you, but someone reacted to a thread of yours -- basically that both US major political parties share responsibility for the current state of affairs and neither can be trusted -- by complaining about leftist nihilism, and then they compared it to a 9/11 conspiracy theory.

It can be hard to imagine systemic change, but I'm still astonished when people can't seem to understand it as an implication.

In other words, the US government and tech companies are ...

2025-10-23T13:35:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…qhj3
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In other words, the US government and tech companies are collaborating on fascist propaganda engines and requiring everyone to use them.

I would have been a lot more sympathetic if they had been talking ...

2025-10-21T17:28:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…tkh6
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I would have been a lot more sympathetic if they had been talking about vegetable gardens.

At work, I overheard people from another team, talking about how ...

2025-10-21T17:22:53Z

At work, I overheard people from another team, talking about how hard it is to be on an HOA board and deal with people who don't keep their lawns short and allow "invasive" clover to grow.

The tinkering is a problem for most people, though.

2025-10-19T19:47:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…nvza
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The tinkering is a problem for most people, though.

I'm surprised. Most games I've tried run better in Linux, ...

2025-10-19T19:46:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…3a69
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I'm surprised. Most games I've tried run better in Linux, and I've only found one in my collection that doesn't really work.

Sigh No, not the whole timeline. It's a sore point, and ...

2025-10-19T01:22:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…ugyv
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*Sigh* No, not the whole timeline.

It's a sore point, and some people poked it.

Well, I steeled myself to overcome my social anxiety and go to ...

2025-10-19T00:54:34Z

Well, I steeled myself to overcome my social anxiety and go to the No Kings march, and I got home, and my timeline is full of people complaining that I basically supported fascism by protesting fascism.

I am, honestly, very worried about what is going to happen in ...

2025-10-15T22:42:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…kn3h
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I am, honestly, very worried about what is going to happen in Portland in the next few days, given the extreme hostility from the White House.

There's been a protest strategy of wearing costumes, being very obviously not violent. I was talking about Banana Block a few days ago, and then they made an appearance! And then the Feds beat up a marching band in banana costumes.

It doesn't matter if we do anything provocative. The White House will just lie about it either way.

The framework of linking sexual abuse directly to masculinity, or ...

2025-10-15T17:20:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…ljpl
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The framework of linking sexual abuse directly to masculinity, or testosterone, or penises (three different things, of course) sets up a false choice between self-loathing, or totally ignoring the problem of sexual abuse.

Self-loathing can be a step towards compassion, which is the way out, but I've looked at incel writings a few times, and they wallow in self-loathing, without questioning sexism or learning compassion.

I think, among heterosexual men particularly, there's a lot ...

2025-10-15T15:49:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…c4rq
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I think, among heterosexual men particularly, there's a lot of self-loathing for their own sexual desires, and it comes from a long cultural tradition of describing two very different things, one an act of violence and domination, the other an expression of mutual desire, as if they were the same thing, and defining it as central to masculinity.

It goes back much farther than Dworkin, of course, and it's one of the the things I blame the Roman Empire for.

I have complicated feelings about Andrea Dworkin and her book, ...

2025-10-15T15:44:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…gnu5
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I have complicated feelings about Andrea Dworkin and her book, Intercourse, which I read when I was young and inexperienced, in the 90s.

On the one hand, I see it as part of an opening up of discourse around the horrific extent and normalization of sexual abuse.

On the other, it felt like an argument that very common sexual desires are inherently abusive, particularly those of heterosexual men; it argued that even enthusiastic consent was socially coerced.

No love for that guy, but it's hard not to notice that ...

2025-10-15T15:06:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…qkl2
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No love for that guy, but it's hard not to notice that several powerful national governments suddenly went all in for pseudo-science at the same time.

In 2019 in Portland, we had a large antifascist demonstration ...

2025-10-11T22:51:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…saqp
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In 2019 in Portland, we had a large antifascist demonstration that included a large "normie" contingent, including the Banana Block, a marching band in costume, and people in black bloc, who deflected the fascists away from the main body.

A lot of organizing went into making this happen, but it showed what's possible, that you can have people who are prepared for different sorts of action but reinforcing each other.

It is true both that the US has always been profoundly unjust, ...

2025-10-11T21:34:09Z

It is true both that the US has always been profoundly unjust, and that it has recently gotten much worse, and emphasizing one of those two points should not imply a denial of the other.

Yes, watching the local and federated timelines. The federated ...

2025-10-11T04:43:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…yy04
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Yes, watching the local and federated timelines. The federated timeline is pretty much the firehose. That's how I saw your post.

Trending isn't updated very often, and home would just show ...

2025-10-11T04:29:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…vy99
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Trending isn't updated very often, and home would just show posts from whoever you're following.

Are you able to see the local timeline and the federated ...

2025-10-11T04:15:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…3ymj
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Are you able to see the local timeline and the federated timeline?

If not, try going into settings, appearance, and select "advanced web interface", which should give you multiple columns.

No one should have to look at a Web frontend to a git repository ...

2025-10-09T21:38:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…3sts
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No one should have to look at a Web frontend to a git repository unless they're reporting a bug or planning to help with the coding.

You can do a download page in like nine lines of HTML. Six if you're lazy.

And of course, part of the "AI boyfriend" phenomenon must ...

2025-10-09T14:43:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…06ge
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And of course, part of the "AI boyfriend" phenomenon must be the increasing pressure on adolescent boys to express masculinity through cruelty and sadism.

Putting it this way wins over a lot more sympathy from me for the ...

2025-10-09T14:41:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…t4mt
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Putting it this way wins over a lot more sympathy from me for the people in this position.

Like a lot of people my age on here, I grew up infatuated with computer technology and had positive feelings about the companies marketing to "nerd culture", and gradually became disillusioned, then horrified. And it still hurts.

How much worse this must be for people who've developed stronger feelings and had less time to come to terms with their abuse.

My morning: my partner and I were talking about SMS apps, because ...

2025-10-09T13:46:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…90d9
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My morning: my partner and I were talking about SMS apps, because no one else in our family will use Signal, and I've just been reading about RCS. I thought it was significant that Samsung was the first to release an RCS app, but pulled it, in Google's favor. Also, RCS is blocked on phones that have been rooted or have alternate OSes, for "security".

It's either Google enforcing monopoly, or collaborating with state agencies, but I'm not sure those are different things anymore.

I scream, You scream, We all scream, "Nazi punks fuck ...

2025-10-03T16:48:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…axp6
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I scream,
You scream,
We all scream,
"Nazi punks fuck off!"

Founding Fathers ...

2025-10-03T16:44:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…cuxk
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Founding Fathers

"Founding Fathers" sounds kinda Freudian somehow.

2025-10-03T13:51:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…96rz
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"Founding Fathers" sounds kinda Freudian somehow.

So just to be clear, Trump and Hegseth unambiguously and openly ...

2025-09-30T16:57:51Z

So just to be clear, Trump and Hegseth unambiguously and openly called for the military to violate the US Constitution, commit war crimes, and murder political protesters.

Yeah, my memory of using mumble on desktop is that it walks you ...

2025-09-27T21:10:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…rj5t
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Yeah, my memory of using mumble on desktop is that it walks you through calibration the first time, but then you know it works.

Anyway, I'd suggested mumble first, so I'm happy suggesting it again. I'll just have to find something to work as a whiteboard.

Huh. I've been using Jitsi with Waterfox, and it worked, ...

2025-09-27T20:50:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…h57s
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Huh. I've been using Jitsi with Waterfox, and it worked, without an error message. At least on Linux, I know the audio stack is a tangled mess and I've been lucky.

Anyway, if there's a voice chat tool that you know works for you, we can try that.

We had the first part of a Session Zero today. We ran low on ...

2025-09-27T20:11:33Z

We had the first part of a Session Zero today. We ran low on time, and had some technical issues. But we were doing some collaborative worldbuilding with #Downcrawl2E, and we were pretty well in sync with the vibe, so it was was quite a bit of fun.

#TTRPG

You can make a nuanced character, and some people will ...

2025-09-22T04:10:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…5ekp
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You can make a nuanced character, and some people will understand, and some will not. You can make an unambiguous villain, and some people will feel it's just setting up a character to be a villain who should have been a hero.

I suppose you have to know your audience, and speak to the audience that will listen to you, and not worry about the rest.

My most intensely felt criticism of "generative AI" is ...

2025-09-07T21:33:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…y6nk
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My most intensely felt criticism of "generative AI" is that it is profoundly anti-humanist, the product of people who genuinely believe art has no meaning because human life has no meaning.

Most people using these tools don't reject meaning so completely, but they haven't thought as carefully about it as they should and don't fully appreciate how vulnerable we all are.

There's an incredible amount of pressure behind normalizing ...

2025-09-07T02:03:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…f58q
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There's an incredible amount of pressure behind normalizing the use of "generative AI", in workplaces and schools and most social media. I don't like "bubble" discourse, but the Fediverse is literally the only environment I know in which opposition to "generative AI" prevails over advertising for it. (And I'm thinking of switching instances over the issue at that.)

Getting the friend group together is the main thing. Personally ...

2025-09-05T21:25:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…xtnu
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Getting the friend group together is the main thing. Personally I've read TTRPGs much more than I've actually played them, but I'm happy to make suggestions.

To be fair, with D&D, there's always been contention over ...

2025-09-05T19:16:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…ksgl
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To be fair, with D&D, there's always been contention over its constraints, and subversions.

More relevantly, there are literally thousands of other role-playing games that differ significantly from D&D in any respect we can imagine.

LeGuin's stories don't lend themselves to imagining ...

2025-09-05T19:05:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…dsk6
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LeGuin's stories don't lend themselves to imagining people as pawns.

Tolkien's "races" in particular influenced Dungeons ...

2025-09-05T19:04:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…gkpz
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Tolkien's "races" in particular influenced Dungeons and Dragons, where different groups are understood as having specific roles.

I often think of Cedric Robinson, in Black Marxism, arguing that an antecedent of racism was that European aristocracy played divide-and-conquer by hiring mercenaries and skilled workers from other regions and justifying with, "People from {place} are the best at {trade}".

I'm reminded of The Last Ringbearer. I started reading it ...

2025-09-05T13:30:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…uyr7
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I'm reminded of The Last Ringbearer.

I started reading it once, and found that unfortunately it leans a bit too hard in the direction of quasi-Stalinist Prometheanism: industrialism good, agrarianism bad.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Fun fact: data centers have big "off" buttons, called ...

2025-08-27T21:30:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…0fxc
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Fun fact: data centers have big "off" buttons, called Emergency Power Off (EPO).

https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/Emergency-Power-Off-EPO-button