DreamerofDays

That went from zero to apocalypse very quickly.

I think you’ve been chasing the news dragon too long and too hard. Past a point, it doesn’t make you more informed, just… sadder. More given to misanthropy and despair.

We’re here, and we’re not all bad. Most of us want the same things: health, happiness, love, and camaraderie. We want those things for the people we care about— sometimes more than for ourselves.

The vast, vast majority of us are just people. We get caught up in things, and we forget it sometimes, but that’s a people thing too. And so is helping— when tragedy strikes, or those times we create tragedy, people are also the ones running toward the danger and uncertainty to help save those who cannot save themselves.

So long as we are anecdotal, that has not been my experience.

Judgments along observance lines, and people thinking those in some denominations are crazy or lesser, but I haven’t seen it drawn on those lines.

Generally the same kind of a thing you’ll find in any religion, or any fandom for that matter— those who are more observant or more dedicated may say the less observant/dedicated aren’t doing it right; the less observant/more casual may say the more observant/dedicated are crazy.

Eh, there’s also a decent chunk of non-native English speakers who might have a harder time with written sarcasm, and Poe’s law, I don’t doubt, accounts for more.

Technically, if you’re visiting the Big Bang, aren’t you home already in space?

To use the old words: “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”

Believing this account outright is just as foolish as dismissing it outright.

There’s a reason “the first casualty of war is the truth” is a cliche— it’s because it’s very hard to know exactly what’s going on when there’s so much chaos and impetus for people to push agendas.

I have some assumptions I’m confident about, but those are fairly broad, and based on the nature of what happens in any war. Specifics I’m trying hard to slow-roll my reactions to and full acceptance of— I’ve seen way too many news stories about active situations be proven in part or in whole false, and most of those aren’t in war zones.

That link suggests differently:

Following Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza-strip in 2005, the Philadelphi Accord with Egypt was concluded, which authorized Egypt to deploy 750 border guards along the route to patrol the border on Egypt’s side. The Palestinian side of the border was controlled by the Palestinian Authority, until the 2007 takeover by Hamas.[3] The joint authority for the Rafah Border Crossing was transferred to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt for restricted passage by Palestinian ID card holders, and by others by exception.

To the best of our knowledge, they still won’t care about the other creatures in the web going extinct. We don’t have any evidence of animals global or species-wide conceptualisation. This doesn’t make it right, just that anthropomorphising animals and animal thought isn’t a good argument.

But you’re right— no creature exists in a vacuum. The decisions we make matter, and having this abstract conception of the world gives us a moral obligation to be stewards of it. Some of that stewardship is about restoring and preserving what exists in the wild. Some of that stewardship means honoring the bonds we have made and the responsibilities we have taken on to animals we have domesticated. And some of that stewardship means acknowledging that our constructed environments have also become the homes and habitats of wild critters.

This is all to say— we need to do better, but no good answer will be simple, and nothing comes without consequences.

Forced migration, which this would be, is a bad idea, as has been born out repeatedly through history.

• if it’s to many countries, it splinters communities.
• if it’s to just one country, few are open to taking even small numbers of people in, let alone five and a half million.
• if one was open to it, none have the infrastructure in place to receive so many people.
• people get attached to land, and the idea of it.

To that last point, that land is not interchangeable, and any assumption that it is is remaining ignorant of some of the desires of the parties involved.

I could go on, but I don’t think that would add to discourse. This is a hard problem, renewed with every moment of violence. I don’t believe we should expect any of the grievances each side has stacked up to be let go of without honouring their non-violent desires.

I think the answer lies in between our statements, as absolutes have an absolutely thin margin for accuracy.

Intrusive thoughts are a thing, and they introduce thoughts of violence in pacifists, and racism in the tolerant. We don’t get these ideas because we want them or believe in them, and, from my perspective, giving them voice grants them power or legitimacy they never would have had otherwise.

But this could be an exception to your position sitting in a cutout you assumed in the expression of it.

Eh… I think I might care about somebody suggesting nuking the entire area. Not all ideas are created equal, and not all ideas are worth expressing.

Criticism, constructively made, helps avoid bad ideas, and makes good ones better. But you don’t always know the better way when you see a bad one— I don’t need to know how to build a boat to know a screen door won’t float.

Part of the problem is one side having a desire for autonomy, and limited, at best sense of self-determination. Robbing them and the state they have grievance with of both their autonomies and capacities for self-determination doesn’t seem like a good answer to the problems they both have.

I mean, you’re not wrong. Neither of you are.

It is scary, and the precedent in the world is not for long-term national stability. Even setting aside invasion and occupation, dynasties end, governments fall, and a country’s name might be among its only bits of continuity to the past.

Betting on a country maintaining a continuous government for a hundred years is taking the long odds. Those odds become even worse if the government is relatively new. The USSR lasted less than 70 years, and the current Russian government has only been around a bit over 30(less, if you’d argue that Putin has fundamentally changed it). Stability is truly a bad bet for them in particular.

And they have a giant arsenal of weapons, nuclear and otherwise. “Worrying “ is a fully reasonable response.

With a fair cohort moving here to escape the creep of corporate internet, it doesn’t seem, on the face of it, like they’re looking for drama. Saying they are is a handy way of dismissing them out of hand, though.

My criticism on this topic isn’t attached to the rescue efforts, but to the media coverage.

Attempting to save people is a good thing. There’s few people so truly undeserving that they don’t deserve the attempt, and I don’t trust myself to make that distinction.

But what made this story such catnip to everyone who had a platform?

Was it the submarine? A conveyance so exotic it captures the imagination. Was it the passengers? Not famous but wealthy, and easy to know about. Was it the destination? Our obsession with the Titanic has a constantly refreshing shelf life, it seems. Or was it more morbid— the imaginary oxygen clock ticking down breath by breath, trapped beneath an uncaring sea.

Whatever thing or combination it was, this story was goddamn everywhere.

But I don’t know that the media ought to carry all the blame. They supplied the drug, but it’s not like we haven’t taken the hit every chance we can get.

Every story about every development gets comments and discussions. The story is the star of many a “have you heard?” conversation. And every schmo with a classist axe to grind is gleefully grinding it in the briny deep.

But maybe I’m chasing the wrong thing here; moralising about what is printed, what is read, and what the “right” kind of news is. It might be that “news as entertainment” is just something people like, and that there’s nothing inherently wrong in it besides what I was taught and have imagined to be so. Perhaps in accepting it as valid, I can retrain those criticisms on what actually is healthy or unhealthy about it.

It’s not like C-level folks aren’t cashing in well before their companies are profitable. They put on executive clothes and live executive lifestyles, either because it’s what they want or because it’s part of the theatre put on for investors.

I feel confident in the assumption that most users wouldn’t begrudge a company a modest profit off of the content they produce uncompensated on their sites. But it’s an unwritten social contract, and therefore ripe for abuse.

Some of it is born of users not realizing the value of what they give to the corporations— their data for mining, their engagement for attracting and maintaining even more users to the site. Some of it is born of the explicit contracts being written solely by one side(the execs).

Dropout (via Sam) also explicitly stated around the time Netflix was rumbling about cracking down on account sharing that they’re cool with it. So if you can afford to pay for the subscription, that’s great – it helps support some fantastic content and the people who make it. If you can’t afford to pay, but have a friend or family member who has it and is willing to share(or are the person in the position to share), that’s also good.

Maybe it’s more than a lot of noise

He realized he needed to make a push in the press, so he resorted to the only way he apparently knows how to communicate: lying.

I already had it mulling in my head privately, but this shit conches it for me: spez has to go. He broke community trust, and continues to more and more as this thing drags out.

It sounds like he wants to replace that “landed gentry” with a landed gentry loyal to him.

Very good and very Democratic. Stable genius level.