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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • What THE FUCK. I knew this stuff but for some reason reading it again made me all furious again.

    Eva Mireles, from inside the adjoining classrooms where the shooter was, called her husband, Ruben Ruiz, a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officer, who was outside the school. According to DPS Director Steven McCraw, during the call Mireles told Ruiz that she had been shot and was dying; when Ruiz “tried to move forward into the hallway, he was detained [by law enforcement] and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.” Mireles eventually died from her gunshot wounds.[82][83]

    After the police cordoned off the outside of the school, parents pleaded with officers to enter the building. When they did not, parents offered to enter the building themselves.[84][85] Officers held back and tackled parents who tried to enter the school, further warning that they would use tasers if the parents did not comply with directions. Video clips of these interactions were uploaded to social media, including one that depicted a parent being pinned to the ground.[86] Police pepper-sprayed a parent trying to get to their child, and an officer tackled the father of another student. Police reportedly used a taser on a parent who approached a bus to get their child.[13] A mother of two students at the school was placed in handcuffs by officers for attempting to enter the school.[13][87] When released from the handcuffs, she jumped the fence and retrieved her children, exiting before police entered.[88] A video clip showed parents questioning why police were not trying to save their children, to which an officer replies: “Because I’m having to deal with you!”[89]

    And, they harassed her afterwards because she was giving interviews that made them look bad.

    Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, said he arrived at the school thinking he was the first law enforcement officer on the scene. He claimed he abandoned his police and campus radios because he wanted his hands free to shoot the gunman, and stated he also thought the radios would slow him down. He said one radio’s antenna would hit him when he ran, while the other radio was prone to falling off his belt when he ran, and that he knew from experience that the radios did not work in some school buildings. Arredondo said he was unaware of 9-1-1 calls being made from the classrooms the gunman was in because he did not have a radio and no one told him; the other officers in the school hallway were not in radio communication either.[97]








  • That’s how Linux happened. Microsoft got so good at eliminating competition, and so lazy about making a product that was more than barely-passable, that it created a unique combination of “we want something good” and “something good cannot be constructed” that drove a whole generation of techies to get familiar with Linux simply because there was no good alternative for certain types of serious computing. The selection pressure of “any competitor company will get destroyed” eventually produced a competitor that wasn’t a company.

    I think that’s what’s happening right now in social media. For a long time ActivityPub went nowhere, and then the big players all got so godawful that you couldn’t ignore the godawfulness, and now look what’s happening. It’s not because Mastodon and Lemmy are great “products” as such; mostly, people just want something that’s not shit. Then in the longer run the selection pressure will create something that’ll be a lot harder to kill or control.

    It would have been easier for Facebook and Twitter not to be shit, but apparently that’s too much to ask. I think the ultimate outcome will be way for the better this way.






  • Not only that, but he was definitely informed. White House counsel and other informed professionals were privy to a bunch of meetings where people were talking about these ideas, and they shared their opinions and sometimes got in shouting matches or resigned.

    I think Trump’s brain genuinely cannot process the concepts of “right” and “wrong” as distinct from whatever he feels like doing, and so you could say: Yes, people whose job it is to be informed experts told him very clearly that these things were illegal, but his brain is so rotten and single-minded that he couldn’t absorb that their advice might be objectively true, any more than a dog can understand a “keep off the grass” sign.

    Fortunately I think the chance of his lawyers advancing that as a defense is pretty remote.




  • Sure. What is Techrights?

    It might be a little inaccurate to label the site “Nazi” too when it’s really fascist and/or Nazi adjacent. Saying something is adjacent is like saying it’s similar, but not quite the same.

    So, is the site Nazi? Or not? Why is there a picture of people with swastikas?

    Techrights is always writing shitty articles based on disinformation and bald faced lies but they covered a leak of Redhat’s hiring guidelines. Roy “Fuckface” Schestowitz, the owner, seems to be saying that these policies are racist. Redhat just wants to do the right thing and hire minorities. It is not racist to fuck with the oppressors. “White genocide! White erasure!” fascists generally say. That’s why I am pretty sure that this hate site is Nazi adjacent, misogynistic, transphobic, white supremacist AND fascist.

    I read the linked article. It doesn’t make any sense either. It’s a couple of random forum posts, one anonymous, with no context, and a presentation that happened at Redhat supposedly, also with no context and no further commentary.

    What does any of that have to do with:

    • Nazi adjacency
    • Misogyny
    • Transphobia
    • Fascism

    ?

    I have more questions about the rest of the article but we can start there.



  • (Eh, fuck it, I already spent this much time on it. Part 2:)

    But the point is it wouldnt be better than a “substack without nazis”. Like not every board on 4 chan is overrun with nazis, not every section of twitter is controlled by chuds. There are "good’ parts to each website, just like substack. But if they removed nazis from their site entirely then all 3 would only get better.

    Then can you name a single website or hell even a physical publication or space or anything of the sort that went from “Nazis arent tolerated” to “Nazis are tolerated” and actually got better? That helped people de-radicalise instead of just serving Nazi propaganda, giving them money and helping them recruit?

    Pretty much any forum that includes Nazis will get worse as a result, yes. Absolutely 100%. That’s why I wouldn’t ever “force” a forum operator to include Nazis if they don’t want to. But:

    Like your core argument is that its better to let them shout their propaganda as it will actually hinder them right?

    Yes. Absolutely yes. With a caveat but mainly, yes.

    Nazi ideology is abhorrent. Most people hate it. Most people, if they find out it’s going on in their community, are going to be fucking disgusted, and curious to know more about where the fuck is this even coming from. I absolutely think that Nazis feeling like they can be open about being Nazis is way better than keeping secretive and doing the same shit they would be doing, just without associating in the public sphere. I’d be happy to check with experts on extremism to make sure that they feel the same, if you’re open to hearing it.

    Basically, if a forum is open to signing up to be the lightning-rod of bad faith they’re going to get from the Nazis, and abuse they’re going to get from the wider community, and degradation their forum is going to suffer as a result, in order to let the Nazis into the public sphere so that people can see for real what’s going on, and talk back to the Nazis directly instead of having all the Nazi-to-Nazi communication go on in some other place that the public isn’t privy to, I think that’s a good thing. 100%. I think that’s going to hurt the Nazis. Again, I’d be happy to check with experts on extremism to make sure that they feel the same, if you’re open to hearing it.

    The caveat: That doesn’t mean I’m naive about the danger of letting these ideologies have a good foothold in society. You said “let them shout their propaganda”… I think combating Nazi propaganda is an important thing to do, yes. I think putting Nazis out of business or in prison because of their crime is fuckin’ fantastic.

    I think it’s extremely important to combat Nazi propaganda when it comes in more subtle form, pipelines, engineered disinformation, or things without Swastikas (your TPUSAs and your Patriot Fronts). Those, to me, are much more dangerous than Substack blogs with swastikas. That’s a different thing from kicking the swastikas off Substack though.

    Im non binary, and have many trans friends. People used to not give a shit until the right organised together to hate us. Now because of your glorious free speech they have been given a pass to be awful disgusting human being and spread their hate and ive lost 3 friends in 5 years to suicide because of it, because of things you think should be not only protected by law, but actively given a platform, advertised and monetised by companies like sub stack.

    I am sorry for your loss. I’ve lost a friend to suicide. It sucked.

    Is the lives of those people a good trade for you?

    I want to talk to you about this, because I take it pretty seriously and obviously the rise of hatred on the internet is a huge problem.

    I’m a little hesitant to say more because I don’t want to sound like I’m probing for information about something so personal or using it to “debate” with you. That’s honestly not my goal here. If you’re open to talk more I can tell you what I think would be a good ways to actually reduce hatred on the internet. I’m going to say this with all the kindness in the world: Kicking the Nazi blogs off Substack isn’t going to do shit. Not in the sense of “too small but any little bit is helpful.” In the sense of “counterproductive, putting you and your friends in more danger.”

    Tell you what – if you’re comfortable, explain it to me. What type of hatred has directly impacted you, what needs to happen to fix things in your view. Any level of detail that you’re comfortable with, if at all. My goal is more just to explain myself and hear you out as opposed to “debate,” so let me hear you out.

    (Edit: Reframing it so we’re talking about “hatred against trans people on 4chan” and what to do about it instead of “Nazi philosophy on Substack” and what to do about it makes a lot of what you’re saying and how you’re reacting make more sense. Nazis are going to be pretty rare, although they’re out there. Anti-trans people are in the modern climate everywhere. That’s why I’m asking more directly for the root of what you’re talking about.)

    are you just going to ignore this question like ignored all the other questions that would have uncomfortable answers for you?

    Which questions didn’t I answer? I’ll address anything you want to ask me if I missed any questions before or anything.