Notices by Unpartitioned Variance 50% off (guyjantic@c.im), page 2

@zens It always starts with some kind of simple typewriter for me (wordpad, vim, nano, etc.; simple text editor). Honestly, over half of what I do on computers can be done in a text editor. Then again, I'm not exactly a programmer. And I might also be missing the point.

@gidi @archaeohistories If I lived in one of those houses, the shelves would be partly for show and tell, and party for dumping whatever was in my pockets from the day, especially stuff I'd need the next day. I guess they didn't carry around house keys, though.

@fraying Last sentence: maybe, maybe not. But I still want to see what Bibi does if the US actually cuts off all military aid.

Everyone knows religious thinking is huge in American #conservative circles. I think #liberals feel like we're immune.

We absolutely are not. Lots of #liberal / #progressive groups clearly seem influenced by factors we usually associate with #religious #thinking, like group #tribalism, gaining status through denigration of the Other, #authority #worship, valuing #tradition, moral #ThoughtPolicing, valuing #ritual, judging others by outward clues of #morality, the use of shibboleths and other linguistic cues of righteousness or group membership, and just straight-up #conformity and #obedience. There's a lot.

I'm not smart enough to write a serious piece about this, yet. Maybe someday. Or, more likely, someone who *is* smart about this stuff has already written it.

#religion #groupdynamics #peopleGonnaPeep #immunity #not

@rebeccawatson @forteller I am one of the "hundreds" I guess. I think I get why you used the reductive language, but I also don't think it would have been too hard to say something like "I received this email from my mastodon server..."

@freemo Author: Thomas Szasz

@jeffowski @IntentionallyBLANK I think we're categorizing differently. For you it's all one ball of wax. For me it's different things, though connected. I can see the view that religion = all bad things together, but I don't share it.

@jeffowski @IntentionallyBLANK Sure, and I agree. However, I was personally never taught to prefer one group over another (though my church had hella official racism very shortly before my time). I was just taught that you do what God says, no matter what, because he's smarter than you.

It's not necessarily about bigotry, though I agree it very frequently goes there.

@IntentionallyBLANK @jeffowski I grew up conservative Christian. I can tell you this question wouldn't have made most people I know "uncomfortable." They would have just said "Yes, I'd kill you" (or waffled if they felt it was socially too awkward to say). In many religions, morality is fully outsourced to God, and most people don't see this as bad or inconsistent with having personal morality. They are taught that their job as a human is to learn to understand God's morality and make it theirs.

And yes, that's how things like suicide bombers happen.

@derpoltergeist @mmasnick I also approve of taking their good ideas but not their business model or their philosophy. In fact, right now I'm in favor of defederating from bluesky entirely.

@xylya @derpoltergeist @mmasnick The parts I don't enjoy include their heavy use of algorithm-based feeds and (probably) collecting and monetizing user data, the latter probably through targeted advertising at minimum (last year the buzz was that ads were inevitable; I haven't seen recent info, though). I've been reading that their infrastructure requires a bunch of expensive centralized(ish) services, and they're a for-profit corporation, so they need the revenue to survive. The company will almost certainly be shaped by pressure to continue financial growth no matter what. The company charter is not available to the public, and... Bluesky is Jack Dorsey's baby.

Yes, what Moosk did to twitter after Dorsey left is pretty horrific, but actions don't go from negative to positive just because of contrast. Many of us watched for years as Dorsey bent rules to keep misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, racist, and anti-democratic activists, politicians, pundits, etc. active on twitter (if they were rich or popular enough), only deplatforming the worst of them when their relevance--and probably their profit-generating ability--faded. I've not yet seen any commitment from Dorsey to do anything different with Bluesky.

Corrections to my probable misunderstanding of some of the statements above are welcome. I'm not a tech or business expert.

@AdrianRiskin @Radical_EgoCom @abhayakara @magitweeter I think maybe I have some faint common ground with you here: logic (as with any other system of thought) at some point relies on some "givens" that themselves can't be empirically proven. This isn't really "faith" or "blind belief," however; it's based on other considerations.

I'm quite partial to logic because

a. It is much more internally consistent than most other systems of thought

b. The conclusions and explanations it offers up (i.e., pretty much everything from all sciences) are more likely than those of other systems to fit the real-world experiences and observations of lots of humans, as well as to predict other experiences.

c. Science is logic-based. Compared to competing systems, logic leads to bridges falling down a lot less, electricity making our appliances work more, people being abused less (my field), vaccines helping fewer people get sick and die, etc.

If you have an alternative system, explain. If you don't, and you just want to say "nothing works," the evidence strongly contradicts that position.

@AdrianRiskin I have issues with this statement: "The only way to define the truth of an explanatory system is if it allows people to get along in the world."

First, why is that the ONLY way to define the "truth of an explanatory system"? I'm not big on thinking we can ever assess "Truth" but for evaluating explanatory systems, I favor "degree to which the explanations match empirical data" (where the last part needs defining, too).

Why is "getting along in the world" better than "matching empirical data?"

Fascist Germany and Japan were pretty good for getting along with each other; they only had problems outside their "worlds". Cargo cults are arguably great for helping people who believe them "get along in the world." should we be trying to convert the world to cargo cults, for "truth?"

Various religious empires have had explanatory systems that, when accepted by millions of people in "the world," helped those people "get along."

That criterion for evaluating ideologies makes no sense to me.

But we have really good reasons!

#israel #gaza #genocide #ceasefire

@jeffjarvis Let me try to fix that:

"Republicans still don't know how to hide their abortion-related policies from Americans, and the truth is costing them votes."