@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org none of us consented to being born into this often hellhole of a world. postmodern capitalistic oligarchy is a shitty place to live. unfortunately there is no higher power which enforces any right to suffer only the arrangements we consent to. we can be enslaved. many humans have been. the proverbial they can all fuck off, but they don’t. here we are. maybe we can find ways together to make it a bit less awful.
@travisfw is think “nature to us now” is a great metaphor for what in-person interaction might become, is already becoming.
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org i guess i think that’s very mistaken. unless you do live entirely self-sufficiently in the woods, the world affects you. and even if you do, if modern supply chains collapse and hundreds of millions are hungry, the woods capable of gently supporting you would quickly become populated and contested. we are all in this together, and the horribly imperfect ways we try to make it work are the only starting point we have.
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org we can’t know that, because we can’t know the counterfactuals. but i think your conclusion is way too incautious. the post-war period, first of dual hegemony, then of soke hegemony, for all its real atrocities, many committed by the US, was nevertheless much much safer and more peaceful than the prior half century. 1/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org unmanaged decline in perceived US power and willingness to punish territorial aggression is likely to invite more adventures like Ukraine that undo that remarkable achievement. 2/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org things have gone badly for the US and with the US the last few decades, no doubt. i’d like to find a more multilateral way of enforcing a principled norm against territorial aggression, and suspect that must involve some partnership with China on this one very limited principle to which both powers ostensibly subscribe. 3/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org unfortunately, while the current crises run as hot as they are and the Taiwan status quo is unstable, it will be hard to negotiate that kind of partnership. /fin
money buys petulance. ht @socialsciences https://mastodon.world/@dsrabbithole/112191164974828442
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org the US has participated in a lot of atrocities, no doubt. but a couple of things distinguish Israel/Palestine from other sometime atrocious interventions. first, most interventions were reasonably connected to some genuinely important state interest. vietnam and korea where horrible wars, full of US (though not just US) atrocity. but they both represented reactions to revising status quo borders by force, deterrence of which remains important. 1/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org second, the character of atrocity is Israel/Palestine is quite distinct from pretty much anything the US has been involved in. a large civilian population is trapped, blockaded, starving in huge numbers. the closest post-WWII antecedents are Cambodia and Korea, where the US indiscriminately bombed huge numbers of civilians. but even there, populations weren’t trapped, blockaded, actively starved. 2/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org the world is replete with horrors. if we are just counting bodies, it is the Soviets who suffered most in WWII, not the Jews, and Soviet and Chinese internal events (the holodomor and many similar, famine provoked by Cultural Revolution) and events we barely notice in Africa (Congo’s endless wars) that are probably worst. 3/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org But when we judge these things, we are not just counting bodies. There are questions of the character of atrocity (which is what distinguishes the Nazi Holocaust much more than its scale) and questions of whether the context in which they occur also serves some positive cause which must weigh in the balance. 4/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org I support the US continuing and quite accelerating sending armaments to Ukraine, even though I know the effect of that will likely you be to prolong the war and the casualties and destruction that results. The same ugly fact that compelled intervention in Vietnam and Korea compels at least this much intervention in Ukraine: borders must not be revised by force, of if that is more than we can enforce, it must have been very costly. 5/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org Enforcing that norm is what makes Ukraine justifiable, and Ukraine’s conduct of the war, while undoubtedly involving some atrocity (all war does, don’t imagine there is a “moral army” once you’ve captured the guy who just blew away your friend), has been solid grading on the horrible curve of warfighting. 6/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org With Israel/Palestine, it’s not at all clear what valuable norm the war is serving, and Israel’s conduct has been atrocious. 7/
@TURBORETARD9000 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org even in hell, there are important distinctions to be drawn. /fin
a very, very good critique of Effective Altruism by #LeifWenar, perhaps the best of the genre. https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/ ht @deanwampler
@LouisIngenthron just wait ‘til they close for the holidays of every religion!
soon our authorized deep-fake spatial videoconferencing avatars will be so much better acted than we are IRL, in-person interaction will come to seem flat, off.
spending some time over at the other site always restores my faith in misanthropy.
“the internet interprets privacy as damage, and routes around it.”
“Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s anti-immigrant National Rally party, argues that true exile ‘is not to be banished from your country, but to live in it and no longer recognize it.’”
my dear Marine, that is not exile. that is called getting old, and disagreeable as it can be, it’s what awaits all of us, if we are lucky.
quote from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/world/europe/angry-farmers-are-reshaping-europe.html
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org the US has no interest in, a contrary interest to, participating in a military operation most of the world considers sheer atrocity. Israel misperceives its own interest in considering its conduct of this war advisable. this catastrophe has been in no party’s interest, other than the most amoral sort of Palestinian nationalist who sees mass “martydom” as “worth it” if it advances their cause, which this war certainly has.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org there are questions of deeper interests than a party recognizes of itself. in that sense the US may have been less devoted as an ally. we’ve abetted Israel as it destroys its own project, as well as thousands of innocent lives, simply by giving them what they’ve asked for. absent some sharp change in how they conduct themselves, a decade from now there will be few people left who wish Israel well.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org being concerned about and supporting the interests of the other.
what if Biden trolled everybody and declared March 31 as the furry day of visibility too and dressed up as the Easter Bunny and bounced around the South Lawn while photo-op kids hunt for colored eggs?
@dpp it’d be quite the dramatization if your device becomes vulnerable and gets pwned while netflix app is streaming the show!
q: why do your focus your criticism on the anti-cthulhu movement, rather than on people working to bring cthulhu upon us?
a: well, look. just about everyone in establishment authority is anti-cthulhu. that kind of monoculture of power is dangerous, while the cthuhists are mostly oddballs and weirdos without access to the levers of the state. therefore it follows that it’s the anti-cthulhists who must be taken down. fight the power.
prediction: a dramatization of the xz backdoor story will be streaming to netflix shortly.
@travisfw great answer.