I think a key distinction is that the religious rhetoric is often precisely that — rhetoric. Specifically, it’s rhetoric aimed at an international audience, because conflating Judaism with the Israeli state is essential to how Israel frames itself and its genocide. It allows them to denounce all criticism of zionism as antisemitism, even if those critiques are coming from Jewish antizionists. Meanwhile, Israel’s actions have been helping drive an increase in actual antisemitism, which is also useful for Israel, because it helps them to justify the existence of Israel as necessary for Jewish safety.

That might seem like splitting hairs, but it’s important if we want to understand what’s happening. Many of the most vehement pro-genocide voices in Israel are secular Jews, as is a decent proportion of Jews in Israel. Judaism is more than just a religion, but an ethnoreligious group, and that distinction is important because Israel cares more about the “ethno-” part of that than the religious part (because like I say, there are many people who identify as secular Jews).

It’s somewhat analogous to how Trump performs a particular kind of conservative Christian rhetoric that’s more about white nationalism than any Christian ideals. The religious component is important to acknowledge, because many prominent MAGAs aren’t doing it performatively in the way that Trump and some others do, but rather their Christian faith is tightly intertwined with their white nationalism. However, to see this purely as a religious issue would lose crucial nuance of the issue.

The Swiss literally collaborated with the literal Nazis.

Oftentimes, they are successful. There are certainly times when a wealthy person who tries this ends up failing in their attempt, but it doesn’t stand out much because there’s a certain level of rich-people-assholey that’s almost expected, where people will disapprove, but in an unsurprised way.

Streisand’s case was absurd to the highest degree, which was why it blew up. The photo wasn’t even of her house, but an aerial shot of the coast which also captured many other houses. Her house was just incidentally in the image, and even if you zoom in close enough to try see details of the house, the resolution is so low that I can’t fathom anyone genuinely believing it was an invasion of privacy.

What’s more, the purpose of the aerial photos was to document coastal erosion as research for policy making. Especially back in the early 2000s, I’d bet that the majority of photographers sued under invasion of privacy laws were paparazzi, and this is completely different circumstances. People found Streisand’s response offensive because she was obstructing a project that was for the public good. It’s likely that there were other people whose homes were included in photographs from this project who wouldn’t be keen on that prospect, but sucked it up because it’s not like they were actively trying to photograph people’s houses, and coastal erosion is a pretty big deal for people living on the coast.

Though I imagine most people would be unaware their homes were even captured. I remember that the photo in question had only been downloaded 6 times — two of those times were her attorneys.

Though actually I just learned that her beef was actually far more reasonable than I’d realised — unlike other homes that were labelled anonymously, with latitude and longitude coordinates, hers was labelled as belonging to her. Given the awfulness of paparazzi and stalkers, I actually think wanting her name off of it was reasonable. Since then, she’s made it clear that this was all she wanted, and one of the legal documents I just skimmed aligns with that. I can’t imagine why the photographer wouldn’t have just acquiesced to that request before it got all the way to court (by which point, he’d accrued $177k in legal fees). I wonder if perhaps the initial cease and desist sent to the photographer framed it more like a request to remove the photo entirely.

She writes and talks about Trump because she feels that the insight that she has on the fucked up dynamic of the Trump family is useful in understanding the mindset of one of the most powerful men in the world. People care about what she says, and thus give her a platform, because they agree that her analysis is useful and interesting.

In terms of her agenda, if I were her, saddled with the curse of that name and the toxic family that comes with it, I would feel it my duty to do everything I could to criticise Trump, especially given that her name means that her words would carry weight even if her perspective wasn’t especially interesting (I do find her work interesting — she doesn’t just coast off of the name, but also draws on her experience as someone with a PhD in psychology). Hell, even outside of that hypothetical, I already do consider it my duty to oppose Trump however I can; it’s just that that amounts to very little given that I’m a Brit with no political power). Trump is such a repugnant human that surely we don’t need to grasp for some nefarious underlying agenda to explain why she’d criticise him.

Ooh, I like this

Edit: I think part of why I like it is that it’s evocative of both “construction” and “destruction”, and civil engineering necessarily involves aspects of both. Like, even when there isn’t existing infrastructure to demolish, there’ll still be tasks such as digging into the ground to anchor support structures, which I could consider to be a kind of destruction

I was going to edit my original comment to add this on, but that wouldn’t have notified you, so here’s an additional comment.

I was just reading Alyssa Battistoni’s book “Freedom Beyond the Free Gift” and there was a line that reminded me of you, and my response to you because of how effectively it distilled my entire thesis into one, guiding question.

“What must we do to make freedom possible on a damaged planet?”

COVID was the catalyst for Amsterdam exploring ideas from Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. It’s only a small example, but I find it powerful to see examples of alternative economic frameworks that prioritise sustainability actually being implemented.

Another example is that when I was at university, disabled students activist groups were constantly battling to get the university to implement basic reasonable adjustments, such as recording lectures so disabled students who couldn’t attend in person wouldn’t miss out. The university was a big, old one, so there was a lot of silly inertia. While I was there, it was often necessary for the university’s Disability Support Department to employ people to go into lectures and physically be there to record lectures. It was tremendously silly and wasteful, and even then, some lecturers would refuse to be recorded, even after having been told by the university that they had to.

For obvious reasons, that all changed during COVID, when everything was done remotely. It was quite frustrating to see things implemented so easily, because it highlighted how needless all of the previous battles had been. However, now that things have gone back to being fully in person, those changes made during COVID have persisted for the students who need them. Lectures and other learning materials are now more readily available to students with accessibility needs, because the social and technical infrastructure now exists in a widespread way.

Progress isn’t linear, and it certainly doesn’t happen all at once. I only know about the remote learning thing because I used to be a part of disabled students groups at that university, and because I am friends with someone working in public policy in Amsterdam. We hear so much about how the world is going to shit, and that’s not wrong, but there’s also so much good work being done beneath our notice, everywhere and all the time. There are likely things in closer proximity to your life where you’re either already a part of building something good, or you could be. I know it’s hard to muster the energy to try to change things when the world is so demoralising, but it is possible to build positive things that can make the future a bit better. These things don’t erase the awfulness that’s going on, but neither do those awful things erase our achievements.

Yes, but there are good examples too. Despite being chronically demoralised at the state of the world, I am literally only alive because there’s so many things that give me hope. It’s not the kind of hope that necessarily counters the dread I feel at all the awfulness, but rather something that stands alongside it, despite everything.

As a random example, I went to the Netherlands recently, and I was jazzed at the freedom conferred to me by the solid bike infrastructure. Being disabled, I’m more reliant on my car than most people, and I never feel so disabled as when I’m having to spend half an hour driving through a city when the walking route can be twice as fast. Riding a bike through Rotterdam felt so liberating, especially when I cycled to a shop that was due to close soon. I remember thinking “this must be what able bodies in a city people feel like — to be able to go somewhere free of the constraints of their car”

When I returned to the UK, it was pretty depressing to see how rubbish our bicycle infrastructure is in general. Though there are many smart and passionate people pushing for changes to civil infrastructure to facilitate pedestrian and cycling transit in cities, there’s so much inertia and fragmented implementation that it’s pretty depressing.

Recently, however, I visited a friend in Preston. Like many UK cities, the bike infrastructure was far from universal, but what I did see was really cool. Distinct bike lanes that are wholly separated from the road, just like the experts are always pushing for! Road markings and traffic signals that require car users to yield to cyclists. This stuck out to me especially because I was reading recently about how Preston city council has been doing a thing called “community wealth building”, which involves an investment strategy that prioritises local growth and infrastructure. So like, if there’s a new housing development that is being bid for, then local businesses and contractors would get priority on that. This strategy was, in large part, a response to the chronic underfunding of local authorities, which disproportionately affects the North of England, and other socioeconomically deprived areas. It’s only small, but it makes me hopeful because this is a concretely good idea that’s being implemented. It might not work out entirely as hoped, and even the best solutions to problems will inevitably present us with new problems, but that’s great — that’s how we learn!

That’s one example of my hope at a larger, systemic level, but I also find my resolve bolstered by countless good things at the personal or community level. Seeing how a local community activism group navigates complex governance problems and draws on past experience is another thing that makes me hopeful. A personal example is that I have faced so much strife due to the system letting me down, but when I have most been struggling, the kindness and solidarity of the people around me have helped immensely. Sometimes this kindness comes from people who are struggling just as much as me. Acts of individual kindness aren’t enough to fix a broken system, but they’re powerful in a different way, especially because they exist in spite of all the incentives towards being a selfish asshole that capitalism provides.

Our history is fixed, but the history of the future is still being written — by us. People who come after us will have countless examples of “what not to do”, but what keeps me going is the desire to give them as many examples of “what is good to do” as possible.

What helps me a bit is to think about what the world would look like in the years after a widespread societal collapse. Many of the things we rely on and take for granted today would no longer be available, so we’d have to do a lot of rebuilding of societal systems

But the crucial part is that if humanity ends up in that scenario, then the last thing we should do is try to rebuild society to be as it was before. After all, our current system is what is currently wrecking the world. That means we need to do what we can to proactively consider (and where relevant, implement) systems designed for a better world.

In all likelihood, I won’t be one of the people who would be rebuilding in that scenario (chronic health stuff means I’d be dead before I got to that point), but there’s still power in building new stuff. My hope is that if(/when) everything blows up, then maybe the things that I have helped build will end up as useful pieces for the people who come after to salvage.

Technofascists can hide away in their bunkers and network states when everything blows up, because I earnestly believe that the rest of us will stand a far better chance at surviving, even if we have far fewer resources than the billionaires. They fundamentally do not understand humanity, so all their silly plans for their “afterwards” are even more doomed to failure than our current, groaning structures.

No matter what happens in the coming years, there will always be an “afterwards”. Time will keep ticking forward no matter what. I reckon that even in the super bad outcomes, humanity will continue to exist in some form, even if in drastically diminished numbers. However, I don’t know that for certain. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because I’ll never know what comes after me. If humans do end up being eradicated, then I suppose nothing I do matters. However, because I can’t know if that will be the case, all I can do is operate under the assumption that humans will continue to exist when I no longer do. Consequently, I feel that my ethical duty is to do everything I possibly can to give those hypothetical people the opportunity to salvage some useful tools and building blocks from the wreckage of our collapsed society.

The neat thing is that this work is still useful in a world where things don’t collapse disastrously. The question of “what would we need to thrive?” will be just as relevant in the event that we are able to avert a full on societal collapse. I find it useful to look back on the history that my life is built upon; whilst there’s so much awful stuff that has direct throughlines to the awful problems we face today, there are also so many powerful acts of resistance and activism that help me build a template for what I feel we should strive for today. I imagine that the people who come after me will look back on us in a similar way. All I can strive for is to build little pockets of goodness that will help them in the same way that I draw strength of historical resistance.

Maybe it won’t be enough, but that’s okay, because I don’t need to ask the question of “how much is enough?”, because that’s not answerable now, or ever. Thus I am forced to set that dread aside and just focus on what I can do to help.

No, but maybe we can muddle along together.

The people who come after us will also feel like they have no idea what to do, but my hope is that we might be able to make their struggle a little easier for them. They won’t necessarily realise the impact of our work; it’ll form the mostly invisible, foundational assumptions that they build their own perspectives on top of, but that’s okay. The point of it all is to facilitate them being able to see further than we are able to — to see *more" than we can right now.

It may not feel like it when we’re in the thick of it, but this is what progress is.

A form of wage theft that’s common in the US (and elsewhere) is that workers are expected to still do work when they have already clocked out (such as closing up the shop).

I have a Japanese friend who told me that it’s not uncommon that if your work colleagues are going to the bar after work, you are expected to go along. If you don’t, it shows a lack of commitment to your job. As it’s not a formal requirement, of course you don’t get paid for this, despite it being functionally mandatory. What’s worse is that you can’t just stick around for one drink and then head home — you are expected to stick around at least as long as your boss, even if he (let’s face it, the boss is probably male) is still drinking long into the night. I consider this to be an especially egregious form of the wage theft I described above.

It sounds so exhausting that I would likely be unable to do anything besides pretend to work, and even that would lead to inevitable burn out. I had heard that the work culture in Japan was bad, but I had no idea how bad until my friend shared some first hand experiences with me.

Corporations are not our friends, even when they seem friendly, like Steam. However, they can be useful allies, so I’m glad to see this response from Steam.

Were you running it with the unofficial patch? I don’t remember what it was that was causing me problems, but it’s possible that was it.

"I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine. […] I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people.

In between working on my game and dying of various accidental injuries, I sometimes feel like I need to milk a particular joke until its inevitable demise. I will do this no matter how many legal threats, actual threats, black vans with the Mattel logo on them, or severed Barbie heads are mailed to me.

This is because I have issues with authority, particularly authority derived from intimidation. I kicked a lot of bullies in the nuts when I was a kid.”

Idgaf about silly mods like this, but this is iconic

To be fair, the first part of the game is by far the best. The unofficial patch adds back in a heckton of content in the late game, but even then, it feels sparse. I have very fond memories of exploring Santa Monica though. The game felt huge and exciting, even playing it for the first time in 2019.

Damn, I should try install it again. I’m running Linux now, and if I recall, I had some problems getting it working. I should take another crack at it.

The problem is that’s not what they’re doing, even after people who volunteered time to work on localisation have asked for the AI to not overwrite existing human-translated documents. That’s the bare minimum, but it seems like it’s too much for Mozilla

I am filled with rage whenever I hear stuff talking about the ceasefire as if it still exists. At least articles like this call it like it is. My view is that a ceasefire can only be broken once, and then there would need to be a new ceasefire arranged. Israel broke the ceasefire not long after it was put in place, so it’s utterly absurd we’re still talking about the ceasefire as if it still exists.

Bad strawman. Teenagers can’t buy paint thinner.

Exactly, and this is why their excuses are bullshit. They know that guardrails become less effective the more you use a chatbot, and they know that’s how people are using chatbots. If they actually gave a fuck about guardrails, they’d make it so that you couldn’t do conversations that take place over weeks or months. This would hurt their bottom line though.

I like how the computational linguist Emily Bender refers to them: “synthetic text extruders”.

The word “extruder” makes me think about meat processing that makes stuff like chicken nuggets.