Test Dept made an album with the ‘South Wales Striking Miners Choir’ called Shoulder to Shoulder. It contains the track ’ Shockwork ’ which starts with a speech, rallying up the protestors. Test Dept is an industrial band with an emphasis on percussion. Another track on the album is called ’ Fuel to Fight '. They accomplish exactly that with their music. I can’t imagine a more appropriate band to be at such a rally.

I sometimes miss the sort of politically engaged anger of the 80s. I was born in the 90s so perhaps it’s just a romantic look at a past that never was. People are angry now too, but I wonder if it’s not, more than in the past, fused with algorythmically induced hatred of the ‘other’, instead of honest, rightful anger. Like the difference between: ‘I am angry because there is this injustice, and we’re not going to tollerate you standing in our way to solve this injustice’ and ‘I am angry at you because there is this injustice, which is your fault and therefor I hate you’. Clearly the first version leaves room for the ‘unjust person’ to change and choose to go along with this new move towards justice. The second one leaves the ‘unjust person’ feeling, "wait, what… I am not deserving of such hate, I am not evil, you must be crazy for hating me, and therefor I will hate you in return and together we will spiral down into the depths of civil war’.

If it turns out Hitler had some bad genes his relatives’ descendants will get a bad name. This is obviously a joke, but it’s actually true as well. They’ve all distanced themselves from the name Hitler, but surely some people know about their relation to Adolf. I guess the questions is: how bad is it when you’re grandfathers half-brother or whatever his DNA is public. There is a legitimate privacy concern there, that shouldn’t be too easily dismissed because ‘haha hitler & privacy’.

We don’t have an alternative for oxygen. Our biology requires it. It is unrealistic to think we could do without, it’s science fiction. Capitalism is not something that exists outside of the human mind. Changing something that exists only in the human mind is of course very possible. It exists only in as far as we believe in it. If we would no longer believe in it, it would seize to exist. We could go for anarchy as an alternative. Or communism. But perhaps these too are the old ways, and we need new ones. New fictions to believe in because we’re confronted with new challanges. Believing in capitalism has brought us to destroy our habitats. If we’d simply think 'The whole world is capitalist. Changing it at this point seems unrealistic", that is indeed a very defeatis attitude. That is not to say that I have the alternative ready. I’m saying in this new time we shouldn’t stick to old dogma, believing it is the only way.

Capitalism is everywhere. So are our efforts to destroy our ecosystem. Changing it at this point seems unrealistic. I mean, you could make this point, but it is indeed defeatist. But to be fair, on short term I would also pick severely limiting and controlling capitalism over a sudden revolution. As a start, let’s get rid of billionaires. That would help making any change further down the road, because there won’t be a class of people with incredible power that will try to prevent any change.

Not recognizing ICC, regime change, illegal killing of foreign civilians, supporting genocidal regimes, invading other countries, carpet bombing nations, incarcerating their own population, killing eachother in mass shootings, biggest per capita contribution to climate change.

American exceptionalism isn’t doing us any good.

But ooh nooo China, please Europe, fear China… We are your ‘allies’.

So, we can use Donald Duck, but not Harry Potter? I don’t quite understand why. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to write my own Harry Potter books? (not that I would).

Frontal lobe is for degenerate modernists, real people rely on their brainstem, and their brainstem only.

Well duh, Microsoft respects privacy

I wholeheartedly agree

It was voted for by 6 parties, all of which are considered right wing.

• PVV (right wing anti immigration party)
• VVD (fiscal conservative right wing party)
• BBB (conservative farmers’ lobby party)
• SGP (right wing conservative christian party)
• FvD (right wing QAnon-type conspiracy party)
• JA21 (split-off of FVD)

You could of course argue that this means the center has shifted, and some of these should be considered center. Personally I think it’s just that immigration has been the dominant theme for decades now, and therefor people who would benefit from left-wing economics, now vote extreme right. I don’t think that makes them or anybody else a center.

Larry Tesler, inventor of the cut, copy, and paste commands, dies at 74
Larry Tesler, inventor of the cut, copy, and paste commands, dies at 74

Any Dutch people here? Follow nerdvote.nl, to help decide who to vote for this election. They are suggesting technical minded people should unite and form a block in elections, so that parties will try to cater to us. If you want our vote, come up with plans an proposals to create digital sovereignty and freedom. As a member of PVDA/GL I am probably voting Barbara Kathmann , as she is fighting for digital sovereignty. Without preferential votes she probably won’t make it in so your preferential vote matters!

According to God, yes, it’s fair and makes a whole lot of sense actually.

If humanity needs insight into anything, surely it is business. Doing market research is doing the Lords work. If only we could structure society in such a way that automatically most of the available money would be directed to market research and marketing, the world would be a better place.

I suppose my sarcasm here is obvious. But it’s not uncommon to hear people on the right say things like ‘but the money needs to be earned first, before it’s spent, therefor we shouldn’t hinder business in any way.’. As if to say 'we just need to make more room for business people to do their thing, and then we’ll be good. It amazes me how people fail to see how ‘business’ as we know it is such ill-directed human effort. I know, we need to be productive, we need to do good things, I am all in favor of that, but doing whatever makes the most money for a company, isn’t the equivalent of what is good.

If and when you’re allowed to speak, you may speak freely. It’s just that you’re not allowed to speak. Rather than limiting ‘freedom of speech’ it’s limiting ‘speech’. So that’s alright.

/s

Been using Fairphone 5 with /e/OS and I’m fully content with it. I’m sure your critique is fair, and they could do better on several fronts. Still I’m very happy to support this company, and I’ve not seen anything on the market that seems to do better overall than fairphone, according to what I value that is. It feels good to contribute to ‘an alternative’. I can’t help but see regular smartphones as a disease that try to colonize your brain and reduce you to a remote-controlled zombie. I don’t feel that way with the Fairphone. I see most of it’s limitations as a blessing in disguise. None of this is to refute anything you’re saying, it’s just trying to balance it out with some genuine love for Fairphone. :)

After a long legal battle they’ve decided it is no longer oportune to poison their customers.

Isn’t it beautiful?

you’re right, there’s probably some anti-ai/anti-scraping folks on there aswell as here. Personally I most definitely hate intellectual property more than I do generative AI. But you’re right, different people on there will feel differently. But the point still stands that for those who thought they shared their thoughts with the world, their ideas that they donated were taken from them.

This isn’t news.

People who posted on Reddit ( speaking in the past tense, because who would continue to do so now that we have better things? ) never intended for it to be of limited access. Reddit was a publicly accessible place, and people shared their thoughts and comments on it because it was the frontpage of the internet, so the place of choice to share things with the world. That being scraped should not be a problem. But clearly Reddit didn’t want to give you a platform to share your thoughts with the world, they wanted you to donate your thoughts and take it as their property so that they can capitalize on it.