Changing the past tense to present tense (these people and practices are still very real, they are not just part of “the past”) is a correction.

I don’t think men on the internet say “Epstein didn’t kill himself” because they want justice for him. That meme was to drive home that he was likely killed to ensure his silence and protect guilty gov’t officials and multinational executives

My wife, who works at a college, was recently trying to locate some information from an old college newspaper that may not have been digitized yet and used their new work AI for help finding it. It directed her to the school’s archives, but provided made-up contact info for the office, and also recommended she contact herself.

And yet more than a hundred thousand Afghani people died. I’m glad your trip was uneventful.

I’d love to know what it is about help threads that attracts people who don’t believe in helping.

Something needs to change to stop the cycle of angry people who know they have no prospects falling for fascist propaganda about how they’re going to improve things. But the camps weren’t it. The movement to rid the government of all nazi affiliates in this way was slow and complicated. It disabled significant parts of the government which slowed down the economy, delayed important work like repairing infrastructure and thus made prospects even worse than they had to be for said disillusioned young men. Then the Soviets and the Brits and the U.S. all found some people too important to remove from their posts which left the Nazism in place and bred resentment about why some people were punished for their roles and others weren’t. The Soviets liked the camps the most, but because they believed in purifying the masses’ ideological beliefs. Which is papering over some of the practical policies therein.

What saved Germany from the masses of disillusioned men was actual opportunity and rising standards of living. What’s causing a ‘conservative’ resurgence there and in the U.S. and elsewhere is the backslide in those areas. The answer is improving people’s lives, or at least not worsening them. Admitting we need to change what is and isn’t considered ‘creating value’. Focus on caring for our young and elderly and caring less about how many physical hours you must waste standing or sitting or walking around somewhere because a middle manager likes owning your time. But if we want to leave oligarchs in place to toy with our health and happiness and then put ourselves in camps every so often that’s an option too I guess. I just feel as though that’s part of the cycle, not breaking the cycle.

The market for small phones that last a long time is quite sizable. Which doesn’t matter because they don’t want to buy a lot of phones. It’s like Google. Years before Gemini, they made their search engine worse on purpose because it makes more money. Search twice, get served twice the ads. Nobody outside of the company has ever wanted Search But Worse. There is zero desire for Worse. But as long as Google is free to make purely economic decisions, there is no reason for them to revert to Search But We Make Less Money.

Thanks—that’s very well stated.

Tangentially relevant. Anyone seen the new Microbus? It’s appalling. They gave it angry headlights like every other stupid generic car on the market. A hideous grille. And it’s got a giant flatscreen tv for all the interior controls. All in a 60s throwback vehicle specifically chosen for its nostalgic character. How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???

Oh, sure, I didn’t mean you should focus on another country’s completely inaccessible leaders instead of your own marginally accessible representatives. Just that there is no long term viable global solution within the bounds of the UN and that the focus should be on fixing or ignoring or replacing it. Convincing all of Germany that Israel has no right to kill Palestinians doesn’t really change the reality of the situation when the US threatens unilateral economic and military action against anyone who opposes their little ethnostate experiment.

That’s obviously nothing more than my opinion about the best path forward. Perhaps I’m wrong and what’s needed first is a powerful EU actor to take a more visible stand, to make the chains of the security council more obvious when the people’s desires are rendered moot. But my experience is that liberal politicians quite like the stability of written bylaws, more so than actual democracy. Better for Palestine to be blown away than for there to be any uncertainty.

Yes, Israel, the global hegemon. I would love to spread the blame, but seeing as the US has been the only functional vote in favor of Israel’s genocide for 40+ years, the US that allows Israel to decide how Jerusalem will be run, contrary to UN resolutions, the US leadership that calls Netanyahu when he has gone too far, and that Netanyahu listens, you will literally never convince me that it’s not the most important player. I’m aware it’s a systems issue. International conflict is undemocratic and the UN specifically is a system that has no written path for dealing with a bad actor within the P5. We cannot tell how much festers underneath until the US’s unilateral international decision making power stops covering up what the rest of western civilization thinks. I think quite a bit! I think large nations are functionally a front for multinational corporations doing as they please in the name of profit! I think that much of wealthy Europe is happy to sit back and let “America” take the heat for their inhumane financial decisions! But until that happens we should take all the actors at their word and focus on the only one who openly calls for the genocide to continue, instead of speculating on how deep the problem may run and getting overwhelmed with its hypothetical depth.

Germany voted for ceasefire and for making food a human right in 2024. Both were vetoed by the US. There are many other UN resolutions that follow this voting pattern. Germany may be profiteering and enabling, but the US is fully in charge of the situation. They are not the same. The existence of the US’s unilateral veto powers in the security council is another good reminder that they are fundamentally operating on different levels.

It’s probably just for the people who want it. I have thought about how much nicer two pages would be in the past for this reason and for displaying sheet music.

I think Chomsky is still nonverbal from his 2023 stroke.

Every time I search for a simple answer Google suggests I use Gemini instead, or they show me a “switch to AI mode” pop up that covers the lower third of my screen. I’ve just started receiving emails about using it on my old Gmail account apropos of nothing. These companies are begging people to waste that energy.

Surprisingly yes, I tend to agree. I think you wanted to communicate a general desire for retribution and nothing deeper. I get the sentiment. I’m sorry. I hope we choose a different path.

I am on the cusp of getting sidetracked by a discussion of the fundamentals of communication theory. Let’s just ignore all of that for a while.

Let’s say you understand the de-nazification program as it unfolded in East and West Germany. What aspects of this program do you like and how will implementing them help the people of the world?

Oh, well that’s cherry picked, obviously ignores the connotation of most use cases like the ongoing Uighur “re-education”, and is a terrible example because it was an unpopular and ineffective program. Of indefinite detention. But if you don’t care about being understood by other people or about making a good point, you can use the word that way!

Yeah obviously my beef isn’t with disarmament it’s with your comment about re-education, which means torturing and killing people. So we’ve still gone nowhere in this discussion.

Really obvious differences in skin color and culture