They bounced three. In one of those links they cited SIXTEEN who openly used Nazi symbolism just in their avatars and whatnot.

Substack is still a Nazi bar.

But of course you didn’t bother to check, did you?

You’ve (collective) got the information. And the solution to it, no less, in the last link. What you (collective) choose to do about it is on your head. But given what I’ve seen in the USA’s so-called “left” you’re going to cheerfully continue using a service that profits from Nazis.

You do you, boo.

I’m pretty sure that my point was clear: “never” is a very fucking long time when it is already happening.

But sure, go get your feelings hurt. Buhbye.

Substack is a leftist platform? Since when?

• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/
• https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/09/substack-nazi-content-policies-controversy/
• https://www.theverge.com/24040685/substack-newsletters-nazi-content-moderation-policy
• https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/substackers-against-nazis
• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/business/substack-nazis-content-moderation.html

There’s more. Many more. And a list of literal (as in swastika-flaunting) Nazis being hosted on Substack would be far longer. (Oh, and you might want to have a look at the dates on those articles. This is not new information.)

What do you call a bar, again, that lets Nazis openly associate? And what do you call the other patrons also in it?

Maybe the non-Nazis should read this: https://ghost.org/docs/migration/substack/

Realities on the ground outside of the USA say otherwise. Here, for example, after a huge push toward ownership of individual vehicles, an ever-increasing proportion of those vehicles are permanently parked. Outside my window, for example, there’s a square that is filled with cars parked bumper to bumper that haven’t moved in the past year or two. Technically they’re owned and would certainly be counted in ownership statistics, but it is physically impossible for any but the four cars at the end of the square to even be taken out of the lot.

Why?

Because the advantage of private ownership has been whittled away slowly but steadily over the past 20 years.

There was a time that a private vehicle was the only practical means to cross the two rivers (Han and Yangtze) that divide the city. Buses of the time were hideously uncomfortable, highly unreliable, and painfully slow. Going from my home to the then-largest park in the city (Zhongshan park) was a good 2.5-3 hour trip by bus. By car, even through traffic jams (which buses had to go through as well, obviously), it was 1-1.5 hours instead.

Today that same trip is slightly lower by car (cut off about fifteen minutes because of the Yangtze tunnel) but by metro it’s about 25 minutes. And you don’t have to hunt around for increasingly rare parking, then pay for that parking on top of it. And then repeat that when you get back home. More and more people aren’t bothering to drive at all, leaving their cars in long-term parking “just in case” and that case never comes.

Personally I haven’t owned an automobile since the second line of the Wuhan Metro opened, and the bus service got upgraded to serve it. There’s no point. The rare times I need to use a personal vehicle in specific, taxi services are more than sufficient. For the price of a car I could use, after all, a taxi to go from one end of the city to the other and back every day. For two years. That very infrequent case of needing a taxi is a trivial expense compared to just the purchase price of a car (not including insurance, maintenance, fuel/electricity, etc. etc. etc.).

So “never” is a really long time that’s ending as I watch.

The irony of using a fasc-friend platform to talk about resisting fascists when Ghost is right over there.

I am not sure what you mean by saying the CPC isn’t Communist anymore.

The CPC has never been communist.

It’s socialist.

The number drops a bit when the polls are done in secrecy. Still far higher than any western government, mind.

To clarify for any pseudo intellectual who happens to be reading:

“<X> is true for <reason> you utter idiot” is not an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

“<X> is true because you’re an utter idiot” is an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

Glad to be of service.

Have you considered taking a communications course so you don’t sound like a pretentious, obfuscating jackass?

Eschew gratuitous obfuscation. (See what I mean?)

In AI alone, we lead the world.

*Deep Seek has entered the chat.*

Would this be the military that could only reach a standstill in Korea? That lost in Vietnam? That lost in Afghanistan? That ran away scared from Mogadishu? That “won” in Iraq by generating the world’s largest collection of terrorists until the blowback lost you two large towers and a smaller one?

That military?

At work? My go-to activity is to get the Hell out of the toilet as quickly as possible.

I hate squat toilets, see.

You’ll find that happens a lot when Americans comment on things abroad. Victims if their own educational system that they are, they really don’t know anything about the world outside of their borders so they just make vague pronouncements and nod as if they’ve said something wise instead of having just shit their own pants for all to see.

From above:

A large portion of Americans only have 2 brain cells and they’re both busy fighting for 3rd place.

And here we have a case in point: an American who can’t read history.

I’ve been listening to Tanya Tagaq’s Retribution album this morning. She’s by far the best Inuk-punk performer in the world, no exceptions. (I say this with confidence because she’s the only Inuk-punk performer in the world. 🤭)

Simon Whistler is a presenter and it often shows. He’s pretty entertaining, and he has the look of a scholar which gives him some gravitas and credibility when he talks, but he isn’t particularly knowledgeable of anything (including topics he’s already covered in one channel when presenting the same topic on another).

So of course he thinks ChatGPT is smart.

This is the precise problem with these kinds of empty actions. Back in the '70s and early '80s, when this was still new, companies would panic over this kind of action. Then they noticed it didn’t even register as a blip on the stats. A mild anomaly, maybe, if it was held on the last day of a month, but completely buried in annual statistics.

If you want them to actually take notice, you’re going to need to have more than a day. And that means going without. Which most people are unwilling and/or unable to do.

In general there is no “neutral” source of information. At all. Yes, including Wikipedia with its “NPOV” policy. (It even says that there’s no such thing in its own policies, so I’m not exactly saying anything new here.) Most of the sources you cite as “neutral” will actually be sources that agree, broadly, with your own cultural assumptions that you are likely not even aware of, not to mention actively questioning.

That being said, since there is no such thing as a neutral source of information, you can still have good sources of information. Wikipedia is one such. Is it perfect? No. Because nothing is. But it is good enough for most general knowledge. It gets a bit dicey as a source when you leave the realm of western assumptions, or if you enter into the realm of contentious politics. But for most things it’s just fine as a quick resource to get information from. It’s a decent encyclopedia whose ease of access isn’t matched by anybody else.

Reddit is not, however. Because reddit has no disciplined approach to information-gathering and -sharing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (with all the strengths and flaws that form takes on). Reddit is a lot of people talking loudly in a gigantic garden party from Hell. Over by the roses you have a bunch of people loudly expounding on the virtues of the Nazi party. Over by the fountain you’ve got another group loudly expounding on how vile and gross the Nazis were casting glares in the direction of the roses. In the maze park you’ve got a bunch of people meandering around and laughing while they babble inanities. Out in the driveway you’ve got a bunch of Morris dancers practising their craft. It may be fun if you like that kind of thing, but it is absolutely not a source of reliable information unless you do so much fact checking that you might as well skip the reddit step and go straight to getting the facts from the places you’re using to check.

ChatGPT, to continue using strained analogies, is that weird uncle in your family. He’s personable, bright, cheerful, and seems to know a lot of stuff. But he’s a bit off and off-putting somehow, and that’s because behind the scenes, when nobody’s looking, he’s taking a lot of hallucinogens. He does know a lot. A whole lot. But he also makes shit up from the weird distortions the drugs in his system impose on his perceptions. As a result you never know when he’s telling the truth or when he’s made a whole fantasy world to answer your question.

My personal experience with ChatGPT came from asking it about a singer I admire. She’s not a really big name and not a lot of people write about her. I wanted to find more of her work and thought ChatGPT could at least give me a list of albums featuring her. And it did! It gave me a dozen albums to look for. Only … none of them existed. Not a single one. ChatGPT made up a whole discography for this singer instead of saying “sorry, I don’t know”. And when I went looking for them and found they didn’t exist, I told it this and it did its “sorry, I made a mistake, here’s the right list” thing … and that list contained half of the old list that I’d already pointed out didn’t exist and half new entries that, you guessed it!, also didn’t exist.

And the problem is that ChatGPT is just as certain when hallucinating as it is when telling things that are true. It is PARTICULARLY unsuited to be a source of information.

you literally can cross-check the sources if you think it is making a wrong claim

When the source is readily available. A lot of stuff is not online and books go out of print and may be hard to track down. There’s a sizable set of bad actors on Wikipedia who rely on this by quoting passages from out of print books out of context to support their stance.

That being said, this is a minor problem and WIkipedia is an acceptable source of general knowledge. Claiming it’s a bad source of information would apply to any other lay-level source including the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I’m specifically talking about the one day economic blackout.

These have been done dozens of times over dozens of issues and have had zero impact ever. A one-day blackout won’t do shit except give the Ralph Wiggums of the world that “I’m helping!” feeling. If you want them to feel it it has to be longer-term. A week. A month. A year. And that’s sadly, something that people in a consumerist culture lack the stamina to do.