Notices by Louis Ingenthron (louis@ingenthron.social)

Important PSA:

Being a pacifist doesn't mean you'll never throw a punch.

It means you'll never throw the first punch.

You should always do your best to throw the last punch, pacifist or not.

@freemo @kraweel65 No, I'm saying the media failed to adequately cover him. They cleaned up his gibberish quotes into policy positions and failed to report on some of the more egregious things his ticket did (i.e. I just spoke to a Trump voters who didn't know his own running mate called him "America's Hitler").

@kraweel65 @freemo I'd argue it's a mix of what freemo is saying (supporting Israeli genocide) and an abdication of the mainstream media to cover Trump's abnormality to the degree it deserved.

@freemo Wait, aren't the last set the same thing?

@freemo Isn't it luck, though, even if purely through timing? If you were unlucky enough to be born a year or two later than you were, do you not think that head start would give your competitors enough time to make your same discovery before you did?

My point is that, as I believe it to work, success is nearly always equal parts luck of being presented with an opportunity, and hard work/preparation of being able to seize that opportunity.

@freemo Okay, so I'll grant that you met your opportunity with determination and hard work and that paid off.

But let me ask you this: How much of your overall success do you attribute to the good luck of having the right skills at the right time when there was a specific identifiable need that you could fill? In other words, if someone else released your algorithm a month before you did, how would your life now be different?

@freemo Learning coding and electronics is one thing, but you need money and hardware to practice them to any reasonable degree, especially for building new technology. Where did that come from?

@freemo Okay, let's drill into that first bit. How was your first job $100K? Mine was $5.50 an hour.

@freemo Then you could also consider the privilege of absence. During this time when you were pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, did you have additional mouths to feed? Debilitating and uncontrollable medical expenses? Inherited debt? PTSD?

The older I get, the more I notice that people always want to see themselves as the underdog. We accentuate our meager origins while remaining blind to our advantages. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

@freemo You can't think of *any* privileges you might have had? Even something so simple as someone to set a good example for you?

@freemo For example, I was born into a lower-middle class family, and I worked my way up to becoming a highly-paid consultant, but I also know damn well that I never would have found my calling were it not for the privilege of going to a school that had the resources for a computer program in the late 90s.

@freemo *if you have money.

If you don't, then you'll exhaust all those marvelous mechanisms in your head just to struggle to get a roof over your head and enough to eat at the end of the day.

@mekkaokereke Yup, just told my mom I wouldn't be going to the family Christmas we go to every year because she wouldn't like the shitshow I'd inevitably start with my MAGA uncles.

What I've learned is that ripping the bandaid off may be hard, but grinning and bearing it for the better part of a decade isn't much easier.

Uh, so I think the game Metal Gear Solid 2 and the movie The Rock are... actually the exact same thing?

Yesterday was a day of grief. Today is a day of resolve.

I'm done trying to convince people fascism is bad. I'm resolute about fighting it, any way I can, and that includes anyone who supports it.

I'm done with limiting my support of the marginalized to words and money. I'm resolute about using my privilege to provide concrete protections.

I'm done with assuming civil war is a distant possibility. I'm resolute about taking steps to defend pluralism, equality, and anyone who stands for them.

@mekkaokereke @rasmus91 Holy shit. Come for the incredible timing, stay for the guy who's so damn confident and smooth in his work that he twirls his sticks even in the recording studio.

@freemo Also Republicans: But don't give any of these people the same deference as men.

@brimshae @freemo Lol, what? I extended your own logic to point out its absurd conclusions. Whatever undertone of malice or frustration you think you read were entirely in your head.

Try reading my toots as intended: detached, emotionless, and vaguely condescending; like a has-been Shakespearean actor who's now recording audiobooks for printer manuals.

@brimshae @freemo And the mask comes off.

@freemo @bonifartius On the issue of whether one can be killed or not before being born, men and women are equally involved. But when it comes to being an unwilling incubator for a parasite (especially in the case of rape), women are infinitely more involved than men. So, on balance, women have more of a say.

It's like the toilet seat. We use it down like 25% of the time, but women use it down 100% of the time, so the average is 62.5% which means the correct position is down.