Reddit went from “I append site:reddit.com when querying google for well-founded and nuanced info” to the opposite.

Open another terminal killall vim

I didn’t think that kind of joke would ever :q

Me, if the goats use me for parkour exercise

Meanwhile, you’ve been cheerfully dodging all the directly pertinent things like conservative platforms and spaces deleting opposing voices or disabling comments entirely, cries to “kill the X” where X is anything from libs to slurs and right wing acts of violence like shooting up clubs, churches, or storming the congress because your favourite TV show host no longer get to use the POTUS twitter to commit acts of stochastic terrorism.

But sure, not fighting strawmen designed to scare the gullible into fear of the “other” is the real fault. Nevermind the gross misrepresentation of what we mean by hate speech. “You won’t let me use slurs, you’re literally Hitler!”

The systematic persecution of jews started out with an increasing tide of hatred, misinformation and propaganda against them. We don’t need to wait until isolated acts become a systematic pattern to see the signs on the wall and try to fight them before it comes to that point.

Nobody sane thinks that forcing people to suck your cock is anything but rape, and in the famous case of a trans woman setting weight lifting records, she was competing in the male category. You’re getting mad over nothing and turning a blind eye to actual deception.

No, if I find something offensive, I will combat it. Because the other side does the same, banning dissenting voices in their spaces, calling for violence against the libs and such.

I’ll not engage the transphobia point because it’s a reductionist take that strips context to make strawmen fit.

You’re projecting pretty badly here, and since you keep using the suppression of differing opinions as qualifying trait to consider people fascists, I’m guessing the systematic killing of ethnic and sexual minorities seems like the lesser of their evils to you?

I’m not going to stand by idly while they encourage each other with calls to violence. I don’t want anyone to die at all, but they’re the ones advocating for it. They started this.

We all just want to live our best lives. We only ask that you don’t interfere with our enjoyment. When you do, we reserve the right to self-defense, the most natural right of all.

If you genuinely think that they’re fine to call for the death of my people, but I’m wrong to want to silence that sentiment, then you’re complicit in their violence.

Just leave us in peace. You can have your little circle of supremacy where you reaffirm how awesome you all are, as long as you don’t bother anyone else. That’s all we ask: Tolerance and respect for one another.

Oh I have tried the rational argument often enough. I still do, where I see the opportunity. I spend way too much time trying to convince people of my point of view even when I’m pretty sure there never was any hope in the first place.

But the type of hate speech and stochastic terrorism we’re talking about “censoring” is beyond rational discourse. If “Don’t use slurs, please” drives you to say “Fuck you, I’ll hang with the bigots then”, then tolerance can’t have been that important to you.

You don’t need to keep touching the stove to realise it’s hot. Many platforms have tried the free speech angle and realised that it leads to an influx of hate, devoid of reason, and they’ll either introduce some moderation or have all other people leave because nobody wants concentrated vitriol on their feed, except for those toxic enough to thrive on it.

We can debate rationally when both parties are being rational. If you can’t “debate” without spewing hatred, then I shouldn’t have to waste my time playing by rules you never gave a fuck about in the first place.

I sorta do? My employer has been making commitments to improving things, and I’m involved in one of those projects, but they’re a very slow ship to turn and I can’t say I 100% stand behind what they’re generally doing.

I joined out of a mix of necessity, opportunism and the chance to develop new skills, and grew to like the specific job I’m doing. I didn’t have many choices for private reasons, but needed the money when I signed up, so in a way the money was good enough to compromise on ethics.

I got a permanent position now, and again, I stuck for personal reasons, to improve my future prospects and because I like the job, but for all the security a permanent position offers, I’m still planning to start looking for different opportunities when circumstances allow, unless the internal culture makes some masive progress in the next two years.

In the medium run? Not sure. I’d like to think I’d compromise money over ideology, but I also know that I tend to be selfish and really good at mental gymnastics to justify decisions. I would probably not sign on with Exxon, so there’s definitely the severity of opposition to account for, but there isn’t any clear line that I’d swear my life on. On the other hand, if the money was enough to support political causes that I feel (or tell myself) would weigh up the toll on my conscience, I might fold.

In the long run, I hope to get to a point where I can answer that with a firm “No”. Maybe once life stabilises, I’ll grow firmer in my convictions. Maybe once the question of pay shifts from covering necessities to the amount of luxury I can afford, the exact number will lose meaning. Maybe I’ll find a place that I both support fully and earn enough at that any more would feel obscene anyway.

So basically, it comes down to the factors of

1. How strongly do I oppose the company?
2. How much money, compared to what I need to live, and compared to what I need to support a pleasant lifestyle?
3. Where am I on the scale from nihilism to idealism at the given point in time?

That’d be a wack premise for a crazy scientist story

I don’t think the Nazis care about what I think they should or should not be allowed to do. They’re going to use violence, whether or not I hold a gun or a white flag. If I say “No, force is bad!” they’re going to say “Suit yourself!” and use it anyway. How am I going to stop them?
An ideology is worth only as much as the people defending it. If I am so concerned with the letter of the law if tolerance that I refuse to defend its spirit, I’ll be condemned along with it.

That’s the point of the paradox: If we deny ourselves the use of force, we’re essentially conceding that right to them.

This an ideological conflict. We each believe the other is in the wrong, so whatever rules the other attempts to impose have no bearing on us because they’re wrong. Hence: We should try rational argument first and hope to keep them in check by public opinion, but when that fails?

You can go stand in the middle and be proud of your enlightenend and nonviolent convictions. And when they next shoot up a gay night club or a black church, you can go and look the dying victims and their grieving loved ones in the eye and say “Aren’t you glad these people get to freely encourage each others’ bigotry?”

So when it comes to dealing with fascists, I’ll listen to the guy that watched the rise of the original fascists, the failure of democracy, and took notes

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

(ibid)

Yeah, that’s the Paradox of Tolerance. Short version: If you’re being intolerant, why should I tolerate you?

To paraphrase Karl Popper: A society that values tolerance to the point of indulging those that oppose it will effectively be defenseless against that hate. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reason with them first, but we need to reserve the right to shut them up, by force if we have to.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Karl Popper, 1945, The Open Society and Its Enemies

What, 2023-223 for the 223rd day of the year 2023? That… is oddly appealing for telling the actual progress of the year or grouping. No silly “does this group have 31, 30, 29 or 28 members”, particularly the “is this year a multiple of four, but not of 100, unless it’s also a multiple of 400?” bit with leap days.

You’ll have oddities still, no matter which way you slice it, because our orbit is mathematically imperfect, but it’s a start.

…and if I don’t need the year, my eyes simply skip to the dash and continue to read from there.

Together with hh:mm(:ss) for times and +hh:mm for timezones. Don’t make me deal with that 12am/pm bullshit that doesn’t make any sense, and don’t make make me look up just what the time difference is between CEST and IST. Just give me the offsets +02:00 and +05:30, and I can calculate that my local time of 06:55+03:30=10:25 in India.

Germany too

Yeah, automatic voting gets dangerously close to automatic censorship and botting.

Also, human language, context and nuance is complicated and the unknown error bar on “correctly flagged posts” scares me. It’s not entirely predictable what kind of posts people may make, and accordingly not entirely predictable what the plugin would and wouldn’t recognise.

A post chain “Madness?” / “THIS” / “IS” / “SPARTA!” may make sense and be fun in the right context, but the “THIS” comment could get botted to hell.

The familar taste of poison