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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Wait did world defederare from ml after all? I thought it hadn’t. Because people keep complaining about ml and I still see memes.ml and comments from ml users. Or is it one of these things where federation works in ways that are more complex than most of us assume? Is it that the other instances defederated from world? But I’ve seen ml users comment on my comments. Argh federarion is confusing…



  • Are we still going to refer to them as Putin’s puppets, when the US has been angling for a while now to become the greatest exporter of alt-right ideology? Doesn’t this detract from the fact that the US isn’t exporting democracy anymore (if it ever did) and is instead exporting its degeneration into whatever Bannon/Trump/Musk/Thiel and others want it to become?

    Maybe calling them Putin’s puppets helps discredit them on US soil, but the rest of us see the US go the way of Russia and China. And a bleak future in which most of us will only get to choose between different flavors of authoritarianism…




  • While he comes off as a jerk, and possibly is one, I can understand the sentiment, having spent a few years of my life among ethnically Chinese people in Asia. There is this drive and aspiration to be recognized by leading brands in the West as equals, perhaps even betters. Due to a history of subservience and shame and a strong nationalistic current seeking to undo that.

    This game is one of the most ambitious and accomplished to come out of China and they’re hungering for that kind of recognition. So it is likely that fans of the game feel it was ‘stolen’ from them and he seems to be responding to that sentiment. To us it looks petty, but to some of the game’s most ardent Chinese fans this may have been an appropriate response. Not sure how this was received in China though, just speculating.





  • Doesn’t the very concept of jury nullification only apply to cases where a crime has already been committed and then a jury is called upon to reach a verdict on said crime? This honestly reads as mental gymnastics. Or perhaps it could be worded better. Do you mean to say that jury nullification will be fine going forward, no matter what the crime, but you still must forbid calls to violence against named or otherwise identifiable individuals or specific groups or people and/or the glorification of violence in general? This would be better wording I think, though still hard to distinguish and enforce consistently. I find the concept of “jury nullification for future crimes” hard to grasp.


  • I wish people in general stopped looking for good guys and bad guys. My maxim as I grow older and weary is everyone is awful, unless proven otherwise. Or, in other words, it’s all geopolitics and a complex web of conflicting interests. Combating factions choose their alliances less on principle and more on what serves their long term goals and immediate tactical aims. In the meantime we are fed whatever narrative paints one or the other side “good” and depending on our politics and possible stake in a conflict convince ourselves that we are “on the right side of history”. But history is largely written by the victor and in hindsight it is always easier to say what was good or bad. In the heat of the moment, when lives, money, and land are at stake, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.









  • Because stating that people are biased for beauty and youth and western, predominantly white media are biased for whiteness, is like saying that the sky is blue. It adds nothing and detracts from the story, which is more about the excessive drinking culture in youth, backpacking, thrill-seeking, Southeast Asia, and a host more closely related topics. Noticing that the faces on the BBC heading are pretty blonde girls and making an issue of it is anything but deep. It is the most superficial thing you could notice and comment on, bordering on creepy, because you reduce a story to “pretty blondes”. If and when you suspect that an important story is buried because its protagonists are not conventionally attractive or because of their race or gender identity, then do bring it up. Then you are helping elevate people whose stories perhaps should be told and heard more widely.