Notices by Passenger (passenger@kolektiva.social)

@philip_cardella @mekkaokereke

While I am proud, as an IWW member, that we were always a union with no race bar and gender bar, I am sad that that is something to be proud of.

@AnthonyJK

There's a South African joke about a guy who fights off a dog that's attacking a little girl. A local journalist interviews the hero and he confesses that he's Zimbabwean.

The next day the news headline reads: "ZIMBABWEAN IMMIGRANT KILLS LITTLE GIRL'S PET IN FRONT OF HER EYES."

@AnthonyJK

Here in the UK, the fash have been talking about it as "wokeness and diversity caused the ship to go astray."

These fash commentators have a weird job: they have to take current events and force them into their preexisting talking points, no matter what happened. It's the perfect job for people who want to exercise great implementation creativity while avoiding any conceptual creativity at all.

@ned

The word "purple" comes from the ancient Greek "porphura", referring to Tyrian dye, which is what we would today call "red." (It's roughly #990024.) The word has sometimes also been used to describe arterial blood, which is also usually considered red.

Basically, we've been confusing the two colours for as long as those words have existed.

@Adam_Cadmon1

Interestingly, there has been some research on this. Among suburban people in the UK, satisfaction ratings with the cops are significantly lower after an encounter with them than before. (The only public service of which this is true.) This suggests to me that people love the fantasy of narcing on their neighbours, but then are disappointed in the result.

@aral

Denial is, after all, a common response to powerlessness.

@hakan_geijer

I'm phobic of dogs but I do feel the call of the second part.

@simulatedchollas

Same liberal: "The Democrat Party shouldn't listen to leftists. Who else are they going to vote for, Republicans?"

@dalfen @aral @noondlyt

I remember when Microstrategy, a then-respected analytics company that made one of the best data visualisation packages at the time, decided to go all-in on bitcoin. When the fad collapsed, it almost wiped them out, and very few analytics people take Microstrategy seriously any more.

Large companies like IBM or Facebook can get away with going in on bad tech. IBM bet heavily on blockchain and Facebook bet heavily on metaverse. Both survived the experience. Likewise, Microsoft will probably survive their bet on LLMs. Mozilla might not.

This is a problem because the world might not have needed Microstrategy, IMHO it does need Mozilla. Allowing Tableau to dominate doesn't harm the web itself; allowing Chrome to dominate does.

@hakan_geijer

Honestly sometimes it's nice to spend time in the aesthetics of a world which is fallen, and doesn't have anyone responding to that fall with denial or palingenesis.

@AnthonyJK @timo21 @scottsantens

Remember that the American concept of "Protestant work ethic" is racist. It was made up to blame poor recent-immigrant Irish, Poles and Italians (who are mostly Catholic rather than Protestant) for their own poverty.

@girlonthenet

Someone who will betray others for you will betray you for others.

@futurebird

Anti-intellectual is indeed not the same as stupid, far from it. I think a lot of people miss that anti-intellectualism is very common in tech circles, where it takes the form of contempt for the humanities and a worship of (rather than understanding of) science.

"We've solved human civilisation!" they say, ignoring the writers who tackled the problem centuries before and warned them of the mistakes they're making.

"We've built a machine god!" they say, ignoring the researchers who understand the thing well enough to explain to them that no, they haven't.

I've noticed that a lot of this sort of tech person is also a fan of Trump (or his equivalents in other countries.)

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

Tesla?

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

Tesla Motors is a car company. It makes cars with a notably poor build quality which have doors that don't open, windows that don't seal, and batteries which set themselves on fire.

I am attempting to generate humour by implying that Tesla's cars fit the pattern that was identified above.

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

I have. A girlfriend, back when I was a kid, was obsessed with that movie (even though we were too young to watch it.) It's a good movie although I think it's irresponsible in how easily it allows itself to be misinterpreted.

@bamboombibbitybop

The worst thing I've ever seen is a dude who was using an LLM to turn a short prompt into a longer email, and then another dude using an LLM to generate a short summary of that longer email so he didn't have to read it all.

My dudes

You have invented the world's first anti-compression algorithm, which sends a short statement by means of turning it into a larger statement for transmission.

@magitweeter @violetmadder @RD4Anarchy @neonsnake @HeavenlyPossum @AdrianRiskin @whatzaname @ciggysmokebringer @gnutelephony @ThatWeltschmerz @FrenchPanda @glitzersachen

With respect, I wouldn't call it fascism - it doesn't have the alarmist "the world must be set right by destroying the enemies within" element that fascism has.

That said, I think you could definitely call it pre-fascism: a poorly-defined emotionally-based set of values based around the idea of a comfortable middle-class existence served and perpetuated by both government and labour. A state of mind where roads are maintained without taxes being levied for it them, and where he can smoke weed but also call the cops on the black kids selling weed in front of his house.

@largess @jackofalltrades @subjacentish

Remember that when the Netherlands began its switch from car-based infrastructure to the modern bicycle paradise that the rest of the world envies, it was in the teeth of hatred from much of the populace. Dutch people in the 1970s loved their cars as much as anyone in Europe did. It was only after roads were made as inconvenient as possible and bicycles were prioritised - that is, after material change had happened - that people's opinions changed to reflect that.

Saying "voters need to change" is an escape hatch. Voters will vote their beliefs, and those beliefs are created by the structural and material conditions in which they live.

People who drive on tax-subsidised roads, who live in cities planned around cars, who have military-protected petrol supplies - of course these people are going to love their cars.

@jackofalltrades @largess @subjacentish

Tagging in @TomSwirly because a Dutch environmentalist would be better at discussing the details than I can be.