tante

Sociotechnologist, writer and speaker working on tech and its social impact. Communist. Feminist. Antifascist. Luddite. Email: [email protected] | License CC BY-SA-4.0 #noAI

"Ein-Mann-Gegenkultur" (SPIEGEL)

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Last Notes

2026-04-24 11:53:55 CEST

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@nprofile…m0rx getting books on is a little finicky: It can connect to a wireless network and then has a web interface to upload things to. It's not a USB mass storage device sadly. But that's the only annoyance I have.

2026-04-22 11:40:19 CEST

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@nprofile…q5hl thank you so much. It always is a very special day when my writing connects to people.

2026-04-21 23:40:07 CEST

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@nprofile…wt4z I really like the idea. But I draw a line at giving money to fascists. Among other things. I draw a lot of lines. Look like a crazy person at times TBH.

2026-04-21 23:39:16 CEST

With my day job being a bit ... in trouble (company is not me as a person) I keep looking at whether I should try to do a PhD.
Which is a massively dumb idea that I should not follow up on cause it would not work and I'd just hate myself.
If I mention it again, please punch me over TCP/IP.

2026-04-21 23:18:52 CEST

We do not.

2026-04-21 23:15:29 CEST

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(I care so much about this issue that I actually did even some proofreading!)

2026-04-20 19:30:40 CEST

The "agentic" in "agentic AI" refers to the agency the "AI" providers want to take from you.

2026-04-20 12:11:01 CEST

Personally I mostly tried shifting to "digital agency" ("digitale Handlungsfähigkeit" in German) because it talks about what it's about rather than pointing at the "evil other"

2026-04-15 22:28:24 CEST

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@nprofile…qca2 good luck with your new life and thank you so much for all your contributions. I use a lot of your software every day.

2026-04-08 15:44:39 CEST

"On the acceptance of GenAI"
https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on-the-acceptance-of-genai/
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/369/383/660/367/551/original/0c4cfd13cf91f6be.png

2026-04-08 15:18:24 CEST

"But X is useful" is not the good defense you think it is.
Who is it useful to, for what purposes and who bears the costs/harms?
Child labor is useful (to people wanting to squeeze out some money from desperate people). We still think that it should not exist.

2026-04-08 12:04:44 CEST

Es geht doch bei solchen Systemen nicht darum, die Qualität zu erhöhen: Es geht darum, mit schlechter bezahlten Juniors die formalen Hürden zu nehmen, um "Expertendiagnosen" abrechnen zu können.
(Die Juniors bauen dabei natürlich nicht die Skills auf Experten zu werden und die Skills der Experten werden auch schlechter. YAY!)

2026-04-02 21:54:55 CEST

“I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working.”
Honestly. That's like 50% of office workers' experience these days

2026-04-02 19:09:22 CEST

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@nprofile…r6lk @nprofile…44dh they do not.
I recently set up Ghost for a test and it's nice UI wise and all. But the setup is so complicated and fragile ... I've been running services on Linux boxes for more than 2 decades now and I failed twice to get it to work.

2026-04-02 18:45:55 CEST

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@nprofile…44dh @nprofile…r6lk also: The sales pitch for WordPress is buckets of plugins and it runs everywhere.
Now they have something without those plugins that is massively harder to run. What are they even doing?

2026-04-02 18:37:09 CEST

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@nprofile…44dh @nprofile…r6lk it is not a fork, is it? Just another probably vibe coded reimplementation to strip a GPL from popular code.

2026-04-02 18:14:30 CEST

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@nprofile…wr9l
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/335/999/011/604/637/original/fa01a2ea8381e620.mp4

2026-04-02 16:09:02 CEST

Linux foundation has been complicit with the scammy crypto scene for a long time. "Linux Foundation" sounds great, but they are doing a lot of shady shit that we should not accept.

2026-04-01 19:08:06 CEST

I hope more countries start looking at Sweden's lessons.
Learning is not about giving people tech skills but about shaping and environment, relationships, and mentorship in a way that lets people become who they want to be.

2026-04-01 17:46:49 CEST

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@nprofile…qgdv but that's basically true for everyone in the US

2026-04-01 17:42:11 CEST

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@nprofile…qgdv She's basically just on the "230 is holy text" train, right? Or are there other regulations she "rails against"?

2026-04-01 17:36:33 CEST

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@nprofile…lkdl that is an interesting and complex question.

2026-04-01 17:35:02 CEST

Hallo Wien.
Ich bin vom 13.-15. April. in Wien für das Milton Wolf Seminar on Media und Diplomacy. (https://www.asc.upenn.edu/research/centers/milton-wolf-seminar-on-media-and-diplomacy/2026-seminar)
Aber habe da auch noch einige Freizeit. Man könnte da also noch was machen, wenn Bedarf besteht.

2026-04-01 17:28:39 CEST

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@nprofile…lkdl both

2026-04-01 17:25:00 CEST

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@nprofile…5y54 I have had very much the same experience

2026-04-01 17:18:52 CEST

I have been thinking a lot about the term "free and open web" lately and I think that if we want to build an Internet that can live up to some promise beyond "I can order garbage delivered to my house quickly" we need to go back to the drawing board. Hard.

2026-04-01 17:00:05 CEST

"The experience of workslop directly erodes social connection, erodes trust in one another and in the end erodes solidarity. Because why would you stand with a person who does?"
(Original title: Dissolving the social)
https://tante.cc/2026/04/01/dissolving-the-social/

2026-04-01 14:21:31 CEST

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@nprofile…h7np I am basically just trolling on LinkedIn.

2026-04-01 12:35:57 CEST

Exactly. As I wrote a few weeks ago: This fits perfectly into Jeff Bezos' pitch at the end of last year telling us that "owning a computer" will no longer be a thing we do, we'll be renting them.
That is what big tech learned from all of this. It is possible to lock us out of the means of computation.
https://chaos.social/@dpk/116328991931442364

2026-04-01 10:00:05 CEST

"Die Linksfraktion will geschlossen auf einen Großteil ihrer Diäten verzichten," und das Geld in einen Fonds für gewaltbetroffene Frauen und Queers investieren.
(Original title: Feministischer Fernandes-Fonds: Linke spenden ihre Diäten)
http://www.taz.de/Feministischer-Fernandes-Fonds/!6167329/

2026-04-01 09:54:33 CEST

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@nprofile…ugp2 He makes one mistake that undermines his point massively. He wants to treat "AI" as "normal" technology (which one can argue) but conflates that with treating it as "neutral" technology, which it is not.
(There is the fundamental issue that "AI" is not "a technology" but that level of detailed argument is hard to make these days.)
In a way it's just the "there is no alternative" framing from a different side. I don't find it to be very convincing.

2026-04-01 00:33:26 CEST

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@nprofile…4z9s @nprofile…lkqc I elaborated on that here https://tante.cc/2026/01/15/software-as-fast-fashion/

2026-03-31 23:37:20 CEST

I also enjoy how Claude Code only understands English. So "verdammte Dreckscheiße" would not be a negative Sentiment (which in German it would be)

2026-03-31 23:18:48 CEST

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@nprofile…crls you might find Aron Benanav's recent essays titled "beyond capitalism" about how those kinds of different goals could be integrated with one another https://www.aaronbenanav.com/papers

2026-03-31 23:14:04 CEST

Anthropic's Claude Code's full source code leaked. Claude is seen by many to be the best coding LLM on the market with Anthropic proudly stating that Claude Code itself is mostly written by the LLM.
Now this sounds good as long as nobody can see the code which is quite the trash fire. Detecting "code sentiment" via regular expressions, variable and functions names containing prompt parts trying to influence the bot, a completely intransparent mess of a control flow that makes actual maintenance and debugging functionally impossible and the prompts ... of the prompts. All the begging and pleading to the chatbot not to do this or not to do that or please to do this.
It is fascinating but it is as far away from actual engineering as drunkenly pissing your name in the snow. Dunno what you call the people prompting software at Anthropic but "engineer" is not it.
Now it is fun to look at the currently hyped product striped bare and showing its pathetic quality but that is the future of software if we let those companies continue to undermine every good practice software engineering has tried establishing.
The software we have to use will be bad, insecure, unmaintainable, expensive with nobody having the skills or resources to build something better. As I wrote a few months ago: LLM based software production is equivalent to saying that fast fashion should be the only way to produce clothing. A tragic degeneration of the quality of the artefacts we rely on build for maximum profit on the backs of people in countries from the global majority.

2026-03-31 19:44:56 CEST

Had the same impression. It's just a bunch of nerds praying to their machine god to do things right. Please. Pleasepleaselplease.
These are not serious people. And they are not engineers for sure.

2026-03-31 19:32:01 CEST

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@nprofile…xf5f I saw someone already used Claude Codex to "port" the editor to Python and claiming that that was a way to strip copyright.

2026-03-31 16:00:29 CEST

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@nprofile…5ekp falls a) du kannst die seite statisch rausrendern, dann ist es nur noch HTML und kann auf jedem Billo Space laufen
falls b) könntest du evtl. Wayback Machine/Internet Archive nutzen um einen Snapshot zu machen.

2026-03-31 15:56:29 CEST

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@nprofile…5ekp willst du nur die Software (wahrscheinlich Wordpress) und deren Maintenance loswerden oder willst du die ganze Domain und alles loswerden?

2026-03-31 11:38:31 CEST

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@nprofile…ag68 I use INWX (inwx.de) who are in Berlin. Works well.

2026-03-30 13:02:52 CEST

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@nprofile…m33g with way shittier weather

2026-03-30 12:20:06 CEST

"Das Auf und Ab der Tech-Konzerne an der Nasdaq hat ein Ende - nun geht es stetig abwärts. Um ihre Versprechen zu halten, agieren OpenAI und Co zunehmend verzweifelt."
(Original title: Tech-Konzerne an der Nasdaq: Druckabfall in der KI-Blase)
https://www.golem.de/news/tech-konzerne-an-der-nasdaq-druckabfall-in-der-ki-blase-2603-207049.html

2026-03-30 12:15:34 CEST

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@nprofile…3src it's motivated reasoning. A trick to stop criticism of "AI" companies

2026-03-30 10:50:47 CEST

Ich durfte zu Dr. Ramona Casasola-Greiner's und Korbinian Rüger's Buch zu "KI und Demokratie" ein Kapitel beisteuern.
In diesem geht es darum, dass die Geschwindigkeit und Automatisierung die unter dem "KI" Label versprochen wird, massiv korrodierend auf unsere Demokratie und und unsere Rechte wirkt.
Das Buch kann unter https://link.springer.com/book/9783658503345 vorbestellt werden.
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/116/317/267/326/058/595/original/3e2a41020e977ecd.jpeg

2026-03-27 10:58:39 CET

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@nprofile…deg6 "This Place for lease" - Motherfucker, there's a Kaiju living upstairs!

2026-03-26 23:27:01 CET

These days updating to a beta release of your linux distribution creates fewer issues than a bog standard Macos update.

2026-03-26 16:59:34 CET

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@nprofile…m5v4 krasser Effekt: Derselbe Dude in drei Altersstufen

2026-03-26 07:30:07 CET

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@nprofile…qy73 https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116285982899476322

2026-03-25 18:20:51 CET

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@nprofile…0tjl the user agent is the user's browser. You need to look into the request

2026-03-25 17:38:43 CET

"Wir lieben Frühling, doch wir hassen den Merz"
https://youtu.be/zcBEupFOllo?is=y5qgNsdCB7Uo2HPk

2026-03-25 16:02:04 CET

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@nprofile…zaxj totally get that! It is the correct move. I just wanted to explain to people who might not know how the tools works that others can also easily use it.

2026-03-25 16:00:46 CET

I personally consider "I asked ChatGPT to generate a response to you" not witty but a form of an insult. Don't do that please. If that is how you want to talk to people at least don't tell me. It's offensive.

2026-03-25 15:58:17 CET

That would just be one user account. The service connects with each user's account through a browser making it a bit annoying to detect. So you can block the developer but anyone else could use the same tool to scrape your posts and feed it into a slop machine.

2026-03-25 15:55:44 CET

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@nprofile…4f3c Sure but when people start messing with their user agents you can consider them explicitly malicious actors.
(you could maybe have come up with that simple fact without using a fascist slop machine)

2026-03-25 15:43:37 CET

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@nprofile…dn55 So, since you follow me I thought I'd ask politely before blocking: Do you intend to add a feature so people can opt-out of that sort of data processing of their writing by a slop machine? Because I do not consent.

2026-03-25 14:45:39 CET

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@nprofile…efvt nope all you can do is stop users of your instance from using the tool.

2026-03-25 14:39:09 CET

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@nprofile…h4nu tha code uses "Zetgeist" as application name which one could filter. If they start messing around with that thats a whole different story, then he can no longer claim to be a decent citizen

2026-03-25 14:38:08 CET

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@nprofile…efvt yeah. Since it runs in people's browser's IP blocking or headers don't work, but it registers as a specific Application name with a mastodon server which could be blocked.

2026-03-25 14:36:06 CET

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@nprofile…edud I wonder if that is already available in the configuration UI

2026-03-25 14:34:02 CET

Does anyone know if a Mastodon server can block client applications based on their name?

2026-03-25 12:06:53 CET

Die wirkliche Frage ist doch, ob wir uns einen noch schlechteren Sozialstaat (und einen noch handlungsunfähigeren Staat als solches) leisten können.

2026-03-25 11:09:58 CET

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@nprofile…4rfv mine do the same.

2026-03-24 22:14:50 CET

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@nprofile…2s9x It's not a rug pull, they are just dumping inflated stock on retail.

2026-03-24 22:08:14 CET

The OpenAI IPO in the fall will be the closest the "AI" bubble has come to the crypto bubble.

2026-03-24 21:42:08 CET

In the end all that the "AI" dudes will have disrupted is the reliability, sustainability and trustworthiness of our software supply chains.
Fantastic.

2026-03-24 21:21:09 CET

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@nprofile…94nv according to WSJ it will not be added to chatGPT. They wanna focus on coding and other slop.

2026-03-24 21:14:43 CET

OpenAI kills their Sora Video generator.
Which isn't that surprising TBH:
- it is massively expensive to run
- the results were not that usable
- it was a lawsuit generator
So in order to keep the numbers looking better till their IPO at the end of this year they are starting to cut shit. Just an indicator that things are not looking good cashflow-wise.

2026-03-24 20:59:51 CET

Mozilla pushes more slop on the users. Who of course all want "AI". Well maybe not. The responses are speaking loud and clear ;)

2026-03-24 15:40:04 CET

"his is, in fact, how "workload" works under capitalism: labor is perpetually squeezed to do more, to generate more surplus value, to create more profit for the boss. Technological advancements -- that's what "AI" purports to be -- enable more to be done during the work day"
(Original title: Something I Can Never Have)
https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/something-i-can-never-have/

2026-03-23 14:46:24 CET

Some take this as a relief but even if it's more expensive than a salary it still will never unionize so is preferrable to capital

2026-03-23 14:33:20 CET

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@nprofile…lx5s it will put some pressure on things, I am sure

2026-03-23 14:20:14 CET

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@nprofile…nalc exactly.

2026-03-23 14:14:43 CET

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@nprofile…wyw7 they tried but quantum doesn't have the juice

2026-03-23 14:12:46 CET

The "AI" bubble currently cannot pop because tech has nothing else to land on.
Metaverse was dropped after a few months like a bad habit because everyone could pivot to "AI". But there is no new story available right now.

2026-03-23 14:09:35 CET

Spending 3 to 5 USD for every USD you make is not exactly what I'd consider good business.

2026-03-23 14:04:39 CET

"Microsoft 365 has more than 450 million paid commercial seats. After roughly two years on the market, Copilot has converted approximately 15 million of them into paying users. That's a 3.3% conversion rate, at $30 per user per month, generating roughly $5.4 billion in annual revenue. That's less than what Microsoft spent on infrastructure in a single quarter (3)."
None of the numbers make economic sense.
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/nadella-paid-650m-recruit-ai-170000361.html?guccounter=1

2026-03-22 16:08:45 CET

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@nprofile…fvyn no, not yet

2026-03-22 15:59:28 CET

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@nprofile…yxk2 beautiful!

2026-03-22 15:57:43 CET

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@nprofile…8t6y Earthsea is probably next

2026-03-22 15:52:50 CET

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@nprofile…wt4z not yet. A lot of books to get through :)

2026-03-22 15:52:19 CET

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@nprofile…fvyn I knew her short stories just never had read her Long-Form

2026-03-22 15:32:44 CET

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@nprofile…cqk6 book fucking blows your mind every 10 pages or so.

2026-03-22 15:30:14 CET

It was my plan to read some Ursula K. Le Guin and having gone through half of "The Dispossessed" I am so angry for it taking me so long to do it.
Holy fuck.

2026-03-21 22:47:10 CET

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@nprofile…d2dq @nprofile…208x "billig und unbekannt" ist mein zweiter Vorname

2026-03-21 22:20:20 CET

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@nprofile…208x WARUM WERDEN DIE HAFENSÄNGER DANN SO KRASS GUT BEZAHLT?

2026-03-21 21:53:37 CET

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@nprofile…zs3c Ja. Aber sehr gut bezahlte. Ich schreibe Gutachten für die Hälfte und meine Treffergenauigkeit ist höher ;)

2026-03-21 21:47:52 CET

Ich hätte also nachweislich mehrfach deutlich mehr Recht als hochbezahlte PWC Berater*innen.

2026-03-21 18:40:05 CET

"The same industry that once called you family is now using the fruits of your labor to commit war crimes. [...]
The industry has decided what it wants to be."
(Original title: How to do the work)
https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-do-the-work/

2026-03-21 18:20:05 CET

Es ist ein Problem, dass der Digitalminister so wenig Ahnung vom Thema hat.
Massenarbeitslosigkeit durch "KI" ist kein realistishces Szenario
(Original title: Karsten Wildberger: Digitalminister warnt vor dramatischen Jobverlusten durch KI)
https://www.golem.de/news/karsten-wildberger-digitalminister-warnt-vor-dramatischen-jobverlusten-durch-ki-2603-206770.html

2026-03-21 08:29:27 CET

The "parrot" in "stochastic parrot" stands for "memorization".

2026-03-20 15:21:41 CET

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@nprofile…6jqn done

2026-03-20 13:52:33 CET

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@nprofile…ej49 beste Zusammenfassung von "Leben" seit langem

2026-03-20 13:20:06 CET

"I admit, this is an innovation I did not see coming: Silicon Valley has invented the philosophical zombie from the classic thought experiment "lol how crazy would it be if there were a philosophical zombie.""
(Original title: Marc Andreessen is a philosophical zombie)
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/897566/marc-andreessen-is-a-philosophical-zombie

2026-03-20 13:20:06 CET

Companies are realizing that pushing people to using "AI" is expensive (even at the subsidized pricing going on right now)
(Original title: Companies go full AI — then the bill comes due)
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/03/19/companies-go-full-ai-then-the-bill-comes-due/

2026-03-20 13:00:16 CET

Declaring one's humanity seems to be the thing these days so I also did:
https://tante.cc/human.json (using the standard defined here: https://codeberg.org/robida/human.json)
If we know each other/met and want me to vouch for you, ping me.

2026-03-20 12:04:39 CET

Marc Andreessen claiming that he "doesn't do introspection" is just another building block in the attempt to shift the definition of "person" in a way to allow "AI"s to gain rights.

2026-03-20 10:47:31 CET

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@nprofile…5fek your impression is of course valid. I just wanted to add my perspective on it (but I've been in Internet debates for a long time so my baseline might also be fucked up ;))

2026-03-20 10:41:27 CET

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@nprofile…5fek he needed to defend himself since my criticism got a bit of traction. I get it. I think he's still arguing against a straw man but I personally didn't feel too attacked TBH.
He used a lot of quotes to basically say "I do not need to care about the source of things" which sadly is kind of the mainstream conservative standpoint.

2026-03-20 10:32:08 CET

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@nprofile…5fek he is? He kinda wrote a blog post trying to rebuke my criticism (not 100% successfully) but I didn't see more than that.

2026-03-19 19:43:59 CET

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@nprofile…unx4 true