US midwest — I was taught both versions in school but we focused more on latin american/mexican spanish which more people around us spoke.

Less of a bot problem, more influence over the features added, no ads, no dealing with mergers or shareholders or ceos, anyone can build software to interact with it, code is open source and auditable, if you don’t want to deal with moderators you can self host. A lot of people left reddit because reddit was acting like a bully.

I hope more people join so that niche communities can form but I’m happy to make do with less people for the time being.

Agreed, I just think we need to nurture how people relate to/ground their opinions before theory can take root properly. Currently both science and politics are treated like sophistry—it’s all a matter of argument

What I think is especially unhelpful is people who have not read enough theory to understand what they are talking about (let alone considered it in the context it was written), but they are passionate about an issue so they try to debate people using the logic of that theory and they end up just making the theory seem like nonsense because they didn’t understand it. Only in the context of debate does it make sense to argue for a theory you don’t really grasp. Debate is about winning an argument but not about what is ‘true’ or ‘right’. I would rather that person just stick to their guns on the basics of whatever the argument is over (ie. genocide is bad no exceptions). This way they stand firmly on their own feet but can also have confidence in their reasons even without a nuanced historical perspective of how things got to where they are.

Anyway I love reading and discussing theory and philosophy (including your guides) and find it extremely rich and rewarding. It should be used as fodder to help you think rather than a guidebook to inform what you should think.

I like the anarchist tendency to encourage thinking for yourself because I think outsourcing political opinions and generally the narrative that politics is too complicated for the layman to fully grasp goes a long way in enabling a world where everything is treated as sophistry leaving gaps for people to blindly follow ideologues. Something similar happened with science and now we have folks ‘debating’ things that are clear as day if you just look.

Encouraging each person to think for themselves isn’t to say everyone should live in a private conspiracy. I think everyone should take a course in propositional logic or higher because it truly helps your brain sort through information more clearly and quicker, and makes you much sharper at catching sophistry.

In ourselves we should try to note when we hit that point in an argument when we are arguing just to win. At that point we should (potentially apologize) and bow out. Arguing just to win is unhelpful.

Theory is much more helpful once you have your feet under you. You are committed to dignity for all. That is a strong position to assess the world from. The categories are quite clear. Once you are here reading theory, especially examples of successful revolutionary projects, helps you understand the types of tools and approaches you might use (or avoid) to bring about change. It also saves lives to avoid strategies that commonly fail.

Something something a follow up joke about special debt vehicles

Yeah it’s like gmos. The biggest companies in the game are well documented as ill-intentioned profiteers. The technology isn’t inherently bad.

!theydidthemath

Yeah ever since it started hosting serious topics I’ve had the impression microblogging encourages ‘gotcha’ behavior and discourages meaningful discussion.

Less so when it first launched and was mostly used to follow what your favorite band was up to or watch your friend live tweet a south park episode.

Sounds like they’re experimenting with AI for a variety of things and didn’t realize their customers would be so upset about it. Now that they know their base feels strongly (against) hopefully that will help guide their process. The whole point of offering intimate discord with devs by subscription is that the supporters get to help shape the vision and give direct feedback.

Latest one in 2023, promise I’m not giving advice from the 80s:)

Again, not sure it’s active where you are but there’s also a job list on idealist.org which lists a lot of canvasing or union type jobs but also some regular ones.

Small businesses don’t even seem to be a talking point anymore.

I’ve had 3 full time desk jobs and found 2 of them on craigslist. Not sure where you’re located but perhaps you have something like craigslist? Lots of spam jobs to sift through but unlike job aggregator sites I usually actually got a reply back and felt like my application was going somewhere other than the void.

How to activate?

Someone from the electrical company who was fixing my heater informed me that it’s pronounced Sass quaa and not Sass quatch. He and his friends went on Sasquatch hunts and he gave me some good hiking recs. I haven’t been able to find his pronunciation elsewhere so I thought someone else might want to carry this important information with them.

All those people who didn’t vote for him to get the nobel prize could have prevented this by simply voting rationally instead of voting their conscious!

They’re kind of a live mixing engineer, it’s really hard to coordinate a piece between more than about 6 others without a conductor to give feedback, cues, and tend to the overall sound (tone, dynamics, rhythm).

Damn I just noticed this in my portfolio tracker, wonder what’s up

Just noticed my orchids are spiking this morning! It’s one of my markers that the days are indeed moving and that spring is inching closer.

I got one of those pillows with a chunk in the middle hollowed out and it helps a lot if you have trouble squishing your ears. Mine’s a memory foam type with a rectangle cut out. A lot of them are mini (for newly pierced ears) so make sure it’s a regular sized pillow.

I don’t think it’s necessarily phobic but I personally find it a bit presumptuous for someone you’re not dating yet to express preferences about how they prefer you to groom.

HAVING the preference doesn’t seem like a problem and doesn’t seem linked to transphobia.

In my perfect world you would learn about their preferences when you were trying a new thing (shaving, haircut, outfit, whatever) and they were like “I find this new thing incredibly attractive.”