I appreciate the sentiment. One of the core conflicts I’ve had with family over the past couple decades has been their unrepentant usage of my data on these platforms. As a result, I never take or share pictures. They’ve responded over the years by casting suspicion on me, for not capitulating to the status quo, and for wanting to understand the nuts-and-bolts of technology. I’ve never shared mine nor others’ data. I worked in the data economy for about a decade and still, they’d dismiss my well-founded concerns in favor of corporate propaganda and the ego-dopamine loop. “What do you have to hide?” Dumb fucks.

The longer the Concorde fallacies marinate, the harder that cognitive dissonance hits.

deleted by creator

I have mixed feelings. I do support the Swartz-influenced “information should be free” perspective, and I acknowledge that progressing toward that end requires popularizing a sentiment that influences the democratic process, while it still has some teeth.

But, no doubt popularity shines a spotlight on all data sharing, and link aggregators don’t have as much skin in the game as file hosts. Enabling easy access accelerates the war on information access. Perhaps it’s naive to think piracy and/or information sharing can compete with the deep pockets of capitalist stakeholders. However, I also think this conflict is inevitable as it becomes cheaper and easier to ID all users on a network. I wonder if the time is nigh for the activism that underpins a lot of the information underworld to play out. We are clearly in the acceleration phase of the human arc. Piracy becoming “annoying” is the least of our problems.

I initially downvoted you but then upvoted because I do think your comment valid and emblematic for some in the scene.

A few years ago, due in part to frustration with our information environs, but also for fun, I decided not to get internet after moving to a new apartment. I didn’t have real internet for about 2 years. I did have 1GB of data per month through my phone service and used my phone or a mPCIE 4g card as an uplink for text-only internet. I restricted myself to JS-free http applications or light protocols like gopher, irc, rss, etc. I quite enjoyed my time having to be very mindful of my data usage. It forced me to fully audit all the technology on my LAN.

If this kind of legislation passes, I simply won’t pay for internet. If both ISPs and telecoms start restricting devices, then I’ll forego cell-based data as well. If public wifi spots become too restrictive, I won’t patron those spots. I’ve accumulated more offline content on my server than I could ever consume in many lifetimes, so it really isn’t a loss. Hell, it’d be an opportunity to organize it all well, and share via meshnets. Don’t tempt me with a good time, politicians. I could save money, nerd out, and cut the noise from my information environments? Sign me up!

edit: I wanted to add: I do really like having a fiber link, but the main draw is having the ability to host my own services. If that goes away due to hierarchical pricing or device/encryption restrictions, 95% of the value prop disappears. I will not be strong armed into using overly-centralized services.

Maybe the brain worm came from taste-testing raccoon cock rather than snorting coke off toilet seats. Just the type of intrepid thinker we want in charge of the Health Department, heh.

Hubba hubba

I love vi cli mode. vi-mode with OpenBSD’s ksh is my jam.

deleted by creator

I can echo that statement. The insular family promulgates and reinforces the very ideas that keep us chained. It’s so fucking frustrating. Thanks Reagan and all the puppeteers in the shadows, from before his time and now. It’s a travesty of wasted human potential.

I think it’s a mix, with overlap, and the ratios are tough to determine. Opportunists and believers align in stroking their egos and celebrating class or human exceptionalism. I imagine the tip-top of the pyramid consists primarily of opportunists, but I’d not be surprised if they’ve crafted their own batshit philosophies that justify their imagined superiority. The more dogmatic, rigid, and traditional ideas are reserved for the plebs.

Also, I don’t think that intelligence obviates belief/ego; in fact, I wager it can lead to an even more spurious web of justification, like epstein and the dark enlightenment bros. People are crazy and environmental chaos will amplify it.

Right. Productivity tools, like AI or bloated frameworks, can both lead to mountains of slop. I don’t reactively take issue with AI, especially if it eventually produces better work, but I will always choose the more transparent approach. I take umbrage with deceit and will stay away from systems that seem to be careening toward manipulation and more hierarchical, gatekeeping bullshit.

We all need to contend with the possibility that these intelligent systems become far better than most people and adapt accordingly. It doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice our FOSS ideals, if that applies to you.

Though, I completely understand the reactivity, as we watch many peoples’ life trajectories become financially irrelevant, and the oligarch’s prime the population for a return to manual labor, while dangling that utopian carrot.

Similarly, I’ve focused on inexpensive embedded devices. I like trying to minimize consumption, so finding the most efficient ways to satisfy digital needs is enjoyable. My old, power-hungry server now only comes on when something is needed in deep storage.

I still very much enjoy fiddling with technology, but I don’t chase any mainstream, bleeding edge hardware.

Agreed. It’s a damn shame, because there are a lot of interesting ideas at play, lost in the miasma of geopolitics and acceleration. If only we could slow down, build/scale probabilistic hardware, and carefully test and validate which problems are best suited to each mode of compute.

But nah, let’s be rapacious, anthropomorphize “AI” into an awe-inspiring entity, and thrust it into all the orifices.

To be fair, the world has a bit of an extinction problem.

Trumpelstiltskin, ever spinning gold into shit.

Here’s the fantasy I had during term 1:

We nab the fucker, re-open alcatraz, tar & feather him, toss him in a cell, make it a tourist attraction where citizens visit, jeer, and throw corn kernels at the piece of shit.

Then, he went and proposed we re-open alcatraz. It’s fated.

Happy to hear his turtle genes didn’t select for longevity.

I’m rather surprised at the audacity of leaders, thinking they can contain the chaos they are stoking. I suppose Iran and Gaza may give them hope, but I think they are way too confident in the propaganda machine despite its successes to date.

Perhaps our best chance of spurring change without careening into civil war is to encourage folks to move to battleground states. That’s what I did during term 1.

Sounds like you consume useful information. I wager she uses socials as many: to compare herself to others, perusing a mix of ego-affirming and ego-damning content. These are powerful emotional hooks and oscillating between those states can be confounding. Add a dash of fatalism, which is not hard to come by in this culture, when at a low, and I think it easy to see how one might capitulate.

There are a lot of people out there that think their personality traits are inherent and that their physical attributes are static. In fact, my brother was one of these people. He passed away at 40 years old due to morbid obesity. I attribute his downfall to capitulation by way of comparison. He came to think the hole was too big and that his genetics were too poor to make changes, despite me providing an example to the contrary. Sadly, my parents fanned the flames of his dissonance with their own identity-bound delusions.

So, my guess is that you have developed a healthy personal philosophy and have not surrounded yourself with the type of people or digital content that renders that philosophy dissonant.

edit: Check out Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves” for an appropriate take on the folly of genetic determinism.