Notices by Passenger (passenger@kolektiva.social), page 2

@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.

@TomSwirly @jackofalltrades @largess @subjacentish

Thanks Tom! That was really interesting.

We're seeing pedestrianisation happen right now in Paris and there's a similar political fight about it. Over there, there's a noticeable divide between people who live in urbanised areas, versus those who moved out to the low-rise surrounding communities and want to drive in. I'm not Parisien but I have comrades who are, and hearing about it from them is very interesting.

@Damon

Off the top of my head, huge apologies if I've missed anyone:

@Miriamm
@futurebird
@Adam_Cadmon1
@StillIRise1963
@mafeesh

@Damon

Continued:

@obeto
@MightySisserou
@oceesay
@holyramenempire
@NoFlexZone
@anilmc
@so_treu
@Mabande
@Faintdreams

@Damon

Continued:

@carnage4life
@paninid
@msquebanh
@chiraag
@cendawanita
@timnitGebru
@AnthonyJK

Not everyone listed is necessarily minoritised in the country where they live; an Egyptian living in Egypt or a Malaysian living in Malaysia may be minoritised globally but that's not quite the same thing and this stuff gets complex. My sincere apologies to anyone listed if you don't consider yourself minoritised.

@Damon

Oh shit I forgot @Wolven and @aral I'm really sorry! Both are absolute grade-A follows.

I'm probably going to keep forgetting people so my apologies if you're not on this list, it doesn't mean I don't love you, it just means I'm a dumbass.

@stavvers

Them: "Hi, I finally got around to making an account on mastodon. It's nice to see everyone, I'm sure we'll soon be friends!'

Us: "Hi, what are your pronouns, what's your preferred linux distro, and do you condemn the sink-pissers?"

@ciggysmokebringer

War is logistics. This - exactly what you said - is why I do medic stuff.

@RustyBertrand @royalquack @tiny_m

"Purely on Mastodon to give comments, not to explain myself."

Dear Reply Guys, I think we found your king.

@BethanyBlack

Again, this doesn't sound like a tech problem, it sounds like a boss being an idiot and causing their own issues. PEBKAC, as the kids say.

(Historical trivia: flash fires in underground mines used to cost hundreds of lives a year. These fires were mostly caused by flammable gas being ignited by miners' lanterns. The year after the Humphrey Safety Lantern was introduced, the death toll plummetted to just one. That one person had removed the safety shield from his lantern so that he could light his pipe from it. I think about this a lot when it comes to modern technology.)

@babe

The physics of this is quite cool.

Be warned though: if a little bit melts then you can accidentally get a steam explosion that throws shards of ice around.

@ariadne

Hey, however someone gets their code to compile is none of my business. As long as they comment their shamanism properly.

@aral

I'm reading a book called The Rule of Law by @ChrisMayLA6 . I expected it to be a book laying out the liberal case for the rule of law, why it's good, blah blah blah.

In the fucking introduction, he blows that away. "The rule of law", he says, is a phrase that liberals use which they assume justifies itself and don't really examine further. Does it refer to laws being obeyed? No, he says, giving examples of cases where people condemn certain laws as being "against the rule of law." Rather, it's an ideological thing. It refers to the idea of laws, rather than to their reality. It cannot fail, only be failed, it is circularly defined, and it's vague enough for an advocate to invoke whenever they like while being too vague for a critic to nail down.

The rest of the book is about examining this using the tools we use to talk about ideologies, rather than about actual legal theory. I'm enjoying it and looking forward to finishing it.

He doesn't make the following comparison (so far as I've got) but I'm going to, because it stuck in my mind: liberals believe in "the rule of law" like Marxists believe in "the people." If a communist state faces opposition from its populace, then that doesn't mean that "the people" disapprove of communism; rather it means that the regime needs to repress the populace in the name of "the people." Similarly, a state which passes harmful laws which stunt personal liberty and economic development doesn't mean that "the rule of law" has failed; rather it means that those laws are against "the rule of law."

It's a god one can invoke to do the thing one needs to do to maintain power, same as any other god.

@RolloTreadway @Gargron

As someone else who moved here, it is a very beautiful country.

You can make jokes like "if that's the UK then there's probably poop in the water", and those jokes are funny, but it doesn't take away from the beauty.

@hakan_geijer @foolishowl @chairman_meh

Sadly, to a lot of people, "communist" means "you don't like cops and capitalism, and you refuse to be nationalistic." If such a person asked you whether you were a communist, then if you didn't have time for a long and potentially frustrating definition, then the clearest way to communicate your politics to them might be to say "yes."

(I'm certainly not claiming that this is a generally useful definition, but words mean what people use them to mean.)

@hakan_geijer @foolishowl @chairman_meh

Weirdly, when I tell people I'm an anarchist, about twenty percent of the time people respond by asking if I'm a sovereign citizen / antivaxer / 5G-tower conspiracy theorist. I once even got asked if it means I'm pro-Putin. Maybe I just have very odd in-person vibes, but I think it's more that "anarchist" is a word that a lot of people are carrying around weird definitions of, and that means the word is of limited communicative value.

At times, when people ask if I'm a communist, I say yes; not because any communist would regard me as a communist, but because by the values set carried around by that person, their definition of communist would include me.