Do you remember February and March 2020? I was walking around the neighborhood today at 5am just as I was five years ago. A feeling of impending dramatic mass-scale changes rising. This time it's a political, a self-inflicted pandemic but no less severe and profound in terms of mass-psychological shifts. What is the equivalent of masking up today? Maybe it's about turning away from macro politics and engaging in micro politics and mental health care with neighbors and friends, in solidarity?
@asymco share the sentiment (made jokes about musk a decade ago that weren't appreciated) but then again, it invokes all kinds of satisfied "I told you so" attitudes which I really dislike, even when feeling them myself. I do admit that I didn't see the full fascist turn as it is evident since some years now btw. The real shocker is realizing how many people go along now .... Loyalists to power, hoping to get a share
Turns out that computing power does translate to political power. See inauguration pictures of tech billionaires and political office holders. The old "we come from cyberspace, your ruling does not apply to us" stance aged badly or needs to be followed up, reworked. Computing is political. Which networks and algorithms are at play and who runs and controls them does matter. It created billionaires who then double as political state-aligned actors, usurping politics or getting usurped.
Most new interesting projects in the social media or messenger space get started by few or even single people. That's totally fine. But if years into development, with a sizable user community, a very hyped project is still centered on a single person with no cooperative dev community to speak of I consider it a warning sign. Mid to long term it is not (only) individual genius but cooperation abilities and practises that allow evolving a sustainable alternative app or service.
@Daojoan while I am sympathetic to many of your points, I regard your ascribed "cynical" behaviour as only superficially cynical. It's often a disguise for confirming the status quo. Not sure if you have the patience or interest to engage but here is a quite different take on "cynics" https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alejandro-de-acosta-cynical-lessons
@tinydoctor "can not remember" indeed also means the act of remembering. Remembering a situation of my life, a conversation, is not "knowing it" but living through it again, partly and from there sensistivities rise as to the present. There is no "item" to know and then suddenly everything is different.
It's the conflicts and how we are cooperating around and through it what could make the #fediverse meaningful on larger scales. Don't measure by "number of users", rather appreciate interactions and enjoy other's takes and life signs like you would do in real life.
Oh and protected spaces are totally ok. There is no imperative to "open up" to toxicity. As they say, free speech does not mean everyone needs to listen.
Meanwhile EU borders kill people on a daily basis. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/21/dozens-of-people-drown-after-dinghy-sinks-near-canary-islands Still remember how in school I learned about the west/east Germany border where around 140 people were killed in 28 years and it was considered a very evil thing (I grew up in the west). Many times more died just in June 2023 on EU borders. The EU border is orders of magnitude deadlier than the Berlin wall.
helping to develop software driven by needs of people in repressive situations, especially involved with @delta https://delta.chat , interested in cooperative anarchist practises, playing table tennis and enjoying fathering (he/they/him), Freiburg/Black forest.Also cocreated pytest, pypy and other python projects in former times.