Good point - but that will only happen when vandalism/protest matures to militarised political resistance so people understand strategic targets and US seems months if not years away from that. It will happen if/when military-trained people get involved in resisting the coup.

That would look good on a t-shirt…

Like they sold average of 12,000 vehicles a day in Canada (some number like that, Tesla allegedly fraudulently claimed they sold loads of EV in order to claim subsidies from Canadian government worth $millions)?

why?

After sonic/microwave attack in Serbia, you need to take headphones and a physical barrier to shelter behind, I dunno, an umbrella backed with tinfoil? One of those foil emergency blankets?

Not ‘people’ but AI-assisted gait analysis. Scan of video footage identifies points on body, tracks movement of those points through space, represents this as output of an algorithm, which generates a result (e.g. a long sequence of numbers like a barcode) which is unique to you. They cannot i.d. you by name and address unless they have your biometrics on record but it is a potential way to identify you just like fingerprints or dna and will stay on record and might hurt you in future.

‘squatting movement’ sounds like some kind of weaponised shitting. Knowing the Dutch, I think they’d be amused by that idea.

A world at peace, true peace based on justice and happiness not enforced by oppression and brainwashing, is my hope. It’s what humans need. It’s what I need :-) I would prefer democracy, votes, laws, regulations, social norms all coming together to deliver that. Right now, it is others who are ‘moving fast and breaking stuff’ so my puzzle is how to slow 'em down and mend stuff before it goes too far to save anything good. Can I do that without violence or not? I prefer not but is it my choice? I am not the powerful one here, it’s the guys with guns and nukes who are running this show, and they seem hell-bent on violence. Do I let them roll over me or take a stand, however token? I am old enough to remember Tiananmen Square protests and that guy standing in front of a column of tanks asking the soldiers to go back to barracks and not brutalise peaceful protesters. I witnessed the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. I ask myself have I the guts to do as much? Will I be a coward and let the tanks roll? Just being honest and thinking aloud. And worried, very worried, about where things are headed.

In my head Discord = toxicity. Not sure how it got that rep for me but it has gotten it. Thus, wont lose sleep if it dies out. Perhaps I am wrong. Reviewing rationality of this prejudice is on my ToDo List after a million other things…

And someone (on the Far-Right) is always trying to buy Wikipedia, monetise it, X-ify it, or take it down. I think Wikipedia is abusive - exploits volunteer unpaid labour - should have been created by an NGO like UN and kept safe for mankind like our Library of Alexandria. But it is what it is. Preppers download the whole site regularly in order to have that knowledge under their control in case is ever gets taken down or spoilt and they are rebuilding civilisation post-Armageddon. I keep meaning to download it myself (note to self: do that soon you lazy b. no more excuses!)

XDA forum was that for me. Great place to start and then follow links or do more research using the keywords used in the discussions. Just helpful for things like learning if a kernel is potentially fixable or not before buying a second-hand device for a custom rom project. The new look / reorganisation of stuff annoys me though as I find it harder to find stuff than it used to be but that’s because I am using it on autopilot. I guess new users might find it attractive / easy to navigate?

Discord was never ‘user-friendly’. It always gave me nerd, incel, neurodiverse, or weirdo vibes so not something I would miss much although I probably qualify as nerd, neurodiverse, and weirdo (but not incel, never that).

Yup. I loved Mastodon when it was niche. Then people wanted out of Twitter when Musk bought it. A lot turned up on my Mastodon and it turned to shit fast - they did not know how to communicate normally. It was all junk postings for likes, as if they could game algorithms to be popular and then monetise it. They did not know how to just share stuff for its own sake instead of as a product. I still have my Mastodon account but I never use it. Now Bluesky is drawing these people, maybe Mastodon is pleasant again - it is like living in a tourism hotspot, during tourist season life is shit but its great in the off-season.

Capitalism is the problem, not social media per se. And when capitalism infects stuff, I move on. That is not a new problem. Every innovation in modernity gets appropriated by capitalism (capitalists even claim that capitalism invented it but often they do not invent, they only commercially exploit something and conflate ‘marketing a product’ with ‘inventing a technology’). To stop this appropriation, you need laws and regulations, and enforcement to see the rules are kept. That means governments pushing back on predatory capitalism. EU is starting to do this. UK is not. Not sure about other countries around globe. It feels like governments are decades overdue in defending society from these parasites but better late than never?

I use the Stealth app downloaded from f-droid. You log in to read Reddit but without a Reddit account so you cannot post (not that I ever want to). I like Reddit for community answers e.g. how to fix stuff like a broken household appliance, advice about a glitch in software, useful things like that. I prefer it to YouTube (which I access via Clipious or similar apps, also on f-droid) unless I need to see a job done to understand the repair method. I enjoy some of the jokes and memes and nonsense posts so its cheap entertainment. And, to be honest, I learn a lot about relationship skills by the AITA or TwoXChromosomes reddits - on the whole, I am impressed by the lucidity and maturity of the reddit ‘agony aunt’ stuff although there is also a lot of crap which I think of as part of the entertainment - ‘my wife had sex with my dad, now I am not sure my kid is mine, would I be over-reacting if I asked for a paternity test?’ or ‘I came out as a horse and now my kids refuse to visit me, should I cut them out of my will?’ sort of written version of the Jeremy Kyle Show (British tabloid t.v. nonsense). What is missing on Reddit or anywhere else is ‘positive masculinity’ stuff so that is a ‘gap in the market’ for anyone looking for a project. Not sure I could name a living male role model I respect so maybe that is the reason Reddit feels unhelpful at times - you cannot promote what is not there? Men step up, is the take away message on this. Women cannot carry men’s social media activities for them so maybe quite a lot of stuff is dying because men do not make enough effort to keep it going.

It sounds good in principle but would be hard to do in practice because everyone would have to do a lot of work negotiating ‘standards’ (technical stuff and editorial principles like how to handle NSFW content etc) that would apply universally across the federation of forums and as this is all voluntary work it is asking a lot of people.

I was a ‘early adopter’ for technology most of my life. I tried Facebook when it was new. As soon as I signed up for an account, I saw how it was abusive - taking away my choices, treating me like a farmed animal being milked for data. I signed up. And immediately started the process to cancel my account. They tried every trick to stop me closing my account. I do not know if it ever was closed! I did the same with everything else that was new and closed all of it very quickly as it was almost always abusive or time-wasting in some way.

The only stuff I stick with is stuff I consider ethical - which is why I am using Mastodon and Lemmy not commercialised social media. And I tend to use that episodically and then get frustrated and stop using it for months before another flurry of use. Why do I use social media? I guess I use it when I am scared and need reassurance from others. Why do I stop? When I do not get the community care I need. We talk about ‘loneliness epidemic’ in contemporary society. I am not sure its ‘loneliness’ - I live alone and like it. What I feel is fear. Maybe we are ashamed to admit it. I am not ashamed to say it - the prospect of fascism, WW3, loss of a ‘safety net’ does frighten me. It is rational to be afraid! When afraid, you look for others who also feel threatened and you test to see ‘do they have my back?’ If there’s a sense of safety, mutual support, you stay. If there is not, you move on.

Social media ‘works’ if it solves real life problems, if it does not help you stop using it. Sure, kids with no real worries because they are protected by adults can post rubbish online for ‘shits and giggles’ but anyone aged 14 or older quickly loses that privilege as they move into adult life and then they use social media differently - for fun, yes, but also it must help you survive by giving you ideas, comfort, information, encouragement, escape for a bit etc. If it only adds abuse to a hard life, who has the energy for it?

I just closed my The Guardian UK version account. I used to comment on the news stories. I can no longer be arsed because of the stress it causes - 99% of comments are so damn stupid and adrift from reality. Most of the comments are from people who (1) voted Labour in order to get change despite being warned by Labour itself, as well as everyone on the Left, that it was not offering change and (2) are now belly-aching because Labour is too Rightwing for them and no better than Tories. Starmer says he ‘likes and respects Trump’ - what the fuck!?! Leopards are eating Labour voters’ faces and they are lacting shocked? If you say so, your comment gets deleted by the moderators because we are not allowed to be truthful or challenge MSM’s imaginary version of the world which is carefully curated to be cosy and profitable. Fuck 'em all.

I only want to hear from people willing to face reality. I need to find a community that is living in the real world not in some self-indulgent fantasy in their head like most British voters seem to be. I reckon that the age of social media is dead because the age of comfort is over. It was fine wasting time on posting nonsense when you were not watching a coup or seeing WW3 developing in real time or could still believe that whatever happened online, offline life was ticking over normally and you could still feed yourself, access housing, get healthcare, rely on benefits if you were sick or old. All of that safety in real life is gone - so to survive this shock we bunker-down and that means finding your village to shelter with because who wants to bunk with Nazis or cultists?

There will still be social media going forward but it will be fragmented because in times of war, you take a side and you do not fraternise with the enemy. Anyone lamenting this is pretending we still live in the past when you could get along with others and ‘two side’ debates because actually you agreed on 90% of stuff and were disputing details. Now we dispute the nature of reality and fundamental morality and there is no two sides to such existential matters. I mean it has been brewing for almost a decade (i.e. in the west, started much longer ago in places like Russia and ‘untruth no reality stop-think’ probably infected the west from those places) - ever since the rise of 4chan and bizarre conspiracy theorists started undermining reason, was turbo-charged by the pandemic, and started to infect reality via stuff like brexit and MAGA. There is no excuse to be surprised that we are here, it was clearly signposted for years.

I know it is the Far-Right who brought us to this crisis but as a radical Leftist I say ‘bring it on!’ You started this conflict, I am determined people like me will win it. I just need to find my comrades and unite in push-back. I get my inspiration from democracy protests like those currently happening in Serbia, Greece, Turkiye. Why is there nothing like that scale of reaction in USA or UK? Because most people in those places are still feeling comfortable and do not grasp the reality of the crisis they are in. They will not react until it is too late. They frustrate me past expression!

I needed to vent.

I agree with you but I got side-tracked because of the way my childish mind thinks and started chuckling to myself as I imagined an enormous ‘dictator’s support’. The Trump Truss (patent pending). I am visualising something Steampunk style with polished brass, gears and levers, and puffs of steam - a bit like the walking house in Howl’s Moving Castle but bolted around the Tangerine nethers. Cheered me up!

Beware the Ides of March, huh?

If I recall, Shakespeare’s Caesar says to Antony:

*Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*

Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it’s just a coincidence.

I think we have to explore moral questions. I think it immoral to just refuse to think. It is wrong to simply assert ‘killing people is wrong’ instead of arguing a case. Games, imaginary scenarios, give us laboratories in which to test out our ideas without hurting anyone.

Like you, I am very reluctant to harm any sentient being. But is it always wrong? Example of a thought experiment: you are passenger on an airplane, a terrorist hijacks the plane, says he is going to fly it into a hospital and kill thousands of people. You just came out of the rest room and are behind him, he has not realised you are there, you could jump him but he has a gun, you might have to wrestle for the gun, and he, or you, or a bystander might get killed. What do you do? If you must never kill, then you must not take the risk of killing him, or yourself, or a bystander while you wrestle so you just have to let him fly the plane into the hospital and kill thousands. Or you might argue it is morally better to act, risk killing someone rather than do nothing, and as a result thousands die.

For thousands of years (probably far longer) humans have asked themselves ‘what if…?’ questions. We did this with stories around the camp fire, with theatre, with novels, with radio, movies, t.v., cartoons, comic books. Now we do it with video games. Speculating and questioning and debating is how we develop moral views. This is how humans do human. This is the way we got to having courts of law to argue cases, democratic institutions to argue over what is best government. Asking a question is not immoral. Refusing to ask questions is - those who do not think for themselves, often have their thinking done for them by others, and that is at best infantalising, a refusal to do adult, and at worst a form of willing slavery. That’s my view.