• 0 Posts
  • 88 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 25th, 2023

help-circle


  • Currently there are an awful lot of bills currently in process in federal or state legislation in the US that aim to restrict healthcare, education, legal recognition, access to gender-separated public spaces and so on. Furthermore, hate crimes against trans folk, and suicides by transgender persons are at elevated levels and have been since 2016.

    It may be specific to the US, the UK, Australia and a handful of other countries, but right now a lot of bad shit is going on. Yes.

    Do I know when it was last this bad? No.


  • The nice way to beat fascism is to make it less appealing. When families live in precarity or in poverty, they start looking to blame someone. Sometimes it’s obvious, like billionaires forcing workers to pee in bottles.

    In response, the affluent elite utilize their resources to create a propaganda campaign to blame scarcity on already-marginalized groups (in the US and UK, the rising genocide of transfolk is an example). Hangry communities feeling insecure + Tucker Carlson spewing hatred every night leads to fascist action.

    Note that it works because its instinctive. We don’t like living in societies with more than a hundred people, even when it means we get infrastructure like running potable water or internet or electricity or food at our grocery stores so we don’t have to farm and hunt, ourselves. We actually have to train ourselves to live and let live, and not start a centuries-long family feud every time someone cuts us off on the freeway.

    Social safety nets and better standards of living can pull people out of poverty and precarity, so they don’t feel they have to begrudge everyone outside their front door.

    Otherwise, we’re going to keep trying to organize labor, and in response, the companies are going to try to distract with hate campaigns. Remember Trump commandeered the GOP in 2015 and 2016 because he gave permission to hate while the other candidates wanted to just continue to quietly oppress with code-worded fears. Even if we quash Trump, they’ll find new Mussolini-wanabes to back and worship, and eventually they’ll start a civil war.

    If we don’t want the civil war, we need to make shit less bad for the 80% living paycheck-to-paycheck (or worse) and we need to reform elections so that their outcomes are better informed by the interests of the public (not the elite). Or at least that’s what CIA analysts (retired) interviewed on PBS think.

    Once civil war breaks out, though, or they’re harassing marginalized people and committing hate crimes, yeah, feel free to [REDACTED] off the face of the earth. And anytime a law is passed or a rule is adjudicated that retracts a civil right, remember that is violence.







  • As the Golden Age of Islam came to a close in the 14th century,astronomers and algebraists were persecuted as sorcerers the way herbalists and brewmistresses were sometimes persecuted in the west as witches.

    The scribbles and charts of mathematicians and star watchers did their part to inform the magics and mysticism of the later years.

    Math is sometimes sorcery, and yes, brewing booze is sometimes witchcraft.




  • I’m looking forward to owning my computer, especially as Microsoft claws away more of my rights season by season. But WTF am I getting myself into when I make the jump? Is it possible to own my computer and have an easy to understand OS?

    I hope I’m not fucking myself when I try to make the switch, but when the first response to it’s got problems is don’t look a gift horse in the mouth then yeah, it makes me a bit worried I’m going to be left out in the elements on my own by a community with the attitude of COD gamers.


  • Our base instincts tend to function only for populations fewer than one hundred. Once there are more people than your Facebook friend list, people start to get the sense that renegades and degenerates have infiltrated and are corrupting the community.

    This means hierarchal system in our post-agrarian non-migratory civilization will always be driven to corruption and injustice, which has so far led universally to the dissolution of civilizations to warfare and collapse.

    Maybe well find a way to reshape civilization to end hierarchy so that rule of law applies equally and everyone is assured a minimum standard of life. Until we do humankind will always be only centuries away from catastrophic risk.



  • Um, the frost giants built the rainbow by hand and are done with it after the götterdämmerung of Ásgarðr. They made it pretty taking pride in their workmanship and welcome public use.

    Aside from hippies LGBT+ symbology and Apple Computer circa 1970s, the rainbow was used in the 1980s by the video tape industry to represent the brilliant color replication of of it products.

    The rainbow shown to Noah is only a single use after the fact.

    Also, as if Adonai didn’t rip off Hephaestus’ designs for Zeus’ thunderbolts. Divine intellectual piracy runs rampant.

    PS: The dwarves engineered their own thunderhammer for Thor, independent of Hephaestus, though they admit it is not a perfect build.





  • Hilbert’s Grand Hotel can manage an infinite number of boulders, each containing an infinite number of Sisyphuses (Sisyphi? Sisyphes? Sisyphodes?) by designating each boulder a prime number and each Sisyphus a counting number, and multiplying the two to get their room number.

    This leaves some rooms open for additional guests, which may get management angry about underutilized rooms. There are other configurations that pack everyone in more tightly.