Notices by Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social), page 8

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#humor #joke #redNote #littleRedBook

RIP red states https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/113875479105918655

Do your best to resist #cynicism, because cynicism destroys nuance, and almost everything valuable in life exists inside nuance.

Resist saying #cynical things like “who cares about privacy; your data is already out there”, “who cares about stopping climate change; it’s already too late”, “who cares about voting; we don’t have a democracy any more”, and any number of similarly simplistic, thought-destroying nonsense.

Cynicism is faux-intellectualism. It’s attempting to impress people with rational-sounding generalizations that lead to absurd, defeatist behavior. It’s a claim of “being real” while being too lazy to think through the problem. It’s feeling superior by kicking a table on which someone else is doing their homework.

Nuance exists even during a crisis—it’s arguably even more important then. Things can ALWAYS get worse, and things can ALWAYS get better. Working to make things better is worth doing. Feeling smug and telling people to give up is not; it’s the asshole’s easy way out.

Do not fall for Trump’s shock and awe. Read the news and let it wash over you, and retain your balance. He’s counting on you to be panicked and flustered. Don’t let him have that luxury.

On the other hand, learn from how Trump uses his office. Dems should take notes about how to wield the power they have.

How the fuck has the ADL fallen this far? https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qrllvid7s54k4hnwtqxwetrf/post/3lg7hf4ny6s2x

@liztai I feel the same thing happened to Bugzilla (remember that?) It started out simple, then accreted an unholy number of fields until it became unusable.

@liztai I’ve thankfully used Jira for only a few years, but to me the secret is to hide almost all the fields except the ones I use *all* the time. There are dozens of fields I never care about.

@liztai hahahaha exactly!

@wordshaper @liztai Can’t have that indeed.

@liztai “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” (Mark 6:4)

Familiarity breeds contempt, I think. People who grew up around you dismiss you because they think they got you nailed—why should you be any smarter than them?

Then they hear the same thing from a foreigner, and they’re amazed.

I feel that #Wikipedia should be a UNESCO Heritage site at this point. The amount of human knowledge and useful information contained in it rivals any collection ever built.

@liztai They have heard about other countries having a better system. They’ve heard about it a lot. But they think it’s propaganda. They dismiss such comments from fellow USians as “socialist nonsense”.

Now that they hear the same thing from someone whom they don’t consider idiots and traitors, their minds are blown.

#Instagram is preventing me from deactivating my accounts. This is the first time I’m trying to deactivate this account.

As we go into 2025, I think it’s important to continue curating reliable, trustworthy, informative reporting and opinion in a sea of what is likely going to be torrential bullshit.

The best way to do that is to find a person or organization that you find trustworthy and GIVE THEM MONEY REGULARLY. You don’t have to give a lot, but it is important that you give so they can continue to do their work.

A word of advice: be selective, but don’t be persnickety. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIND ANYONE WHO AGREES WITH YOU 100% so stop waiting to find that person before subscribing. If someone is trustworthy 100% of the time, but comes to the same conclusions you do only 80% of the time, call it good enough and throw a dollar or two their way. It’s better to support someone who does good work but annoys you occasionally than not to support anyone at all.

A hurricane of bullshit is coming. Support those that shine a beacon in the storm.

#news #opinion

People on #RedNote are asking USians to be respectful and mindful when interacting with Chinese folks.

They have no idea what’s coming, the poor slobs.

@liztai Great idea!

@liztai As an ASEAN-born person who naturalized into the US, one thing I painfully notice is that there are a *ton* of “thought killer phrases” that people use to prevent US citizens from criticizing their own country.

Things like “we are the greatest country in the world” and “we love freedom” and “I earned what I own” and any number of other trite appeals to just leave things alone is SO embedded into our national psyche, that it’s almost impossible to have a discussion that doesn’t get zapped by one of these trip wires. It’s more comfortable for people to withdraw into self-delusional circles where no one challenges the system, because you’ll find a great number of friends who do nothing but agree with you.

Because we are unable to talk about our problems, we aren’t able to appreciate that we *have* problems. It’s refreshing to see foreigners criticize the US on the Internet in a way that those short-circuit phrases cannot stop.

“Stairway to Heaven” played as a Classical Guitar piece.

#music #musicVideo #guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wqQqv-euRU

Incredible that the xenophobic banning of #TikTok has caused a massive migration to #Lemon8, which lets you browse TikTok content with a different UX, and #LittleRedBook, which is yet another Chinese-owned company (TikTok is owned by ByteDance in China, although the company is nominally based in the Cayman Islands).

Maybe write laws that prohibit specific behaviors instead of banning specific companies. Or will that impinge too much on the profit margins of US companies?

@tokyo_0 @rysiek They are road legal. The city makes up rules to make them illegal to park.

On some local streets, there are signs that say “no parking for vehicles taller than 6 ft”, which is an arbitrary and bullshit rule meant to target lived-in RVs. Pretty sure no one will call for a tow if someone parks their personal lifted truck under the sign.