mozz, 10 days ago

Honestly, it's perfect. I don't know if you've ever seen a heated debate where if someone is an asshole their mic gets muted, and you can still faintly hear them yelling in the background through other people's mics while conversation continues among the people whose mics are still active. Or, where they try to barge their way over and grab some other mic that's still active. I've observed both of these, and they are exactly what we need right now.

I don't for a second imagine that this debate will remain civil or with any level of decorum, if it does happen, whatever the rules are. But the optics that could ensue from mic muting are exactly what our political discourse needs right now. Like, completely. To a T.

mozz, 10 days ago

Appears 😂

mozz, 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

It's not just fashionable accessories. Biden left in place tariffs too on steel, aluminum, did the new ones on EV cars that everyone knows about, actually lots of stuff

I won't pretend to be qualified to say if these are good things or bad things. I know that generally he's been accomplishing good things with the American economy, and I also know people will come out of the woodwork to say no he hasn't he's the worst thing since Margaret Thatcher, see he's identical to Trump, and as a good leftist I'm voting for Grimace from McDonald's instead to send a message and finally get things on the right track, and you should too

I'm not trying to talk about that. I just want to bring up that China complained about the steel tariffs to the WTO, and the WTO said hey yeah you guys can't do those, we order you to take those tariffs away, and the Biden administration told them to go fuck themselves and then did a bunch more tariffs

Like I say I have no idea about the issues, but anything that involves openly giving the middle finger to the WTO from any American administration is, to me, a rare and wonderful surprise

mozz, 10 days ago

Not true. Grimace will burn the place someday, he’s just waiting for his time. Look in his eyes and watch him close, and tell me it’s not true.

mozz, 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

"As soon as Kyiv agrees to fully withdraw from Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia and starts this process, we are ready to start negotiations,” Putin said on Friday.

Putin also demanded that the West lift all sanctions against Russia, and that Moscow's claims to the territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson be recognized internationally.

Is that all?

You assholes don't even hold Kherson. And you want Ukraine to withdraw and give it to you, after having chased you out of the capital already, as part of the peace agreement? (Did it get recaptured and I missed it or something? This honestly sounds like I must be missing something.)

I can see why they didn't bother inviting Russia.

Edit: No, I didn't miss anything. They want Ukraine to retreat from their advancing front line (or, well, advancing as of a year and a half ago and then stalled) and give them back again the territory that Ukraine already un-stole, in exchange for stopping shooting back against Ukraine's advance. Good luck gentlemen.

mozz, 11 days ago

Yeah, fair play. I didn't even see the demilitarize thing.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter. They already know Ukraine's going to tell them to go get fucked; they just want to be able to say that they're the party that presented a peace proposal which Ukraine would have loved to sign but the West vetoed, knowing that no one of consequence will believe that. Why they are doing that is becoming less and less clear to me as time goes on.

mozz, 11 days ago

Yeah. I think their interpersonal communication style involves dictating insane terms to people who can’t fight back so they have to accept them, or else try to resist and get punished. They’re literally just incapable of dealing with people they don’t have dominant power over, so they just keep pretending they do like a demanding teenager, thinking it makes them look “strong” or else just doing it from force of habit and because they don’t know what else to do.

mozz, 11 days ago

And it's gonna keep getting worse

Every year, for quite some time going forward, is gonna be worse than the year before, and no safety limit or anything like that until we actually start doing something about it

mozz, 11 days ago

Debian is mine and has been for decades + I’m a little bit happy to see it’s still well represented / well thought of in the community. Everything works, and you can choose new + exciting with headaches sometimes, or old + stable with no headaches but old.

Only real issue is the package management hasn’t kept pace with node / python / go / everything else wanting to do its own little mini package management, and so very occasionally that side is a little bit of a mess

NixOS I would like to try at some point as the core philosophy seems a little more suited to the modern (Docker / pip / etc) era, but I never messed with it

mozz, 10 days ago

Wait, how does that work? Can you do Nix package management on a Debian system or something?

mozz, 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

But Biden is old and, according to this poll I found, unexciting

How will I decide whether voting is even important at all; I’m not motivated

mozz, 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

I am

I am lampooning a certain population on Lemmy who like to come up with an endless variety of specious reasons not to vote for Biden. Some of their reasons are pretty much exactly as I stated, and to me they are outweighed by “Trump wants to kill anyone who disobeys him, so we shouldn’t put him in charge of the military” among other issues, and so hence the lampooning.

mozz, 10 days ago

Yeah, it’s a perfectly fair question. Idk what the downvotes are about but be not afraid; they can’t hurt you.

mozz, 11 days ago

Honestly it makes about as much sense as calling people on the phone, barking a long series of questions at the ones who answer, taking the numbers you get from that and multiplying them out by a big set of coefficients to “correct” for how badly off the numbers you got last time were compared to the reality, and then reporting what comes out of that with a margin for error of 2.5% (and reporting it as news anyway if someone’s ahead within even that purely fantastical error bar).

When I dug into a bunch of recent elections and the polls that attempted to predict them, the polls wound up being off by an average of 16 percentage points.

mozz, 12 days ago

Hatred keeps people young

I'm only half joking, you need some kind of vigor or spirit to sustain you, and it seems like bitterness is a certain type of vigor that works for the criterion.

mozz, 13 days ago

It’s like people who show up in court and say “But you gotta understand, your honor, she wasn’t doin what I told her. What was I supposed to do?”

mozz, 13 days ago

Can I come to your house and start taking your things and say you’re prolonging the suffering if you try to stop me, and we should just stop and go our separate ways (after I take a few more things)?

mozz, 13 days ago

You you relayed your humanitarian concerns

mozz, 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

IDK what the thinking is with this, but "let's frighten the US by sending 4 ships over nearby to them after losing 29 of our vessels in a war with a country 15 times smaller, that doesn't have a navy" seems like a non starter of an idea. Once people reach adolescence, this "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you, are you uncomfortable" crap just comes across as a highlight of how carefully you are adhering to the boundary you are walking up to so aggressive-looking-ly.

If that even is the thinking. IDK, maybe they are just doing exercises, and there's no particular intent behind it and the US press is writing a bunch about it just because it is notable that it's happening.

mozz, 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

Hm... I thought that the Ukrainian navy was pretty much fucked as a branch of service after the fall of Crimea -- most of the naval vessels captured by Russia, other countries talking about giving them some ships but not following through (or not yet), naval drones being piloted by members of the GUR instead of by someone affiliated with "Navy of Ukraine." I sort of put all that stuff in a category with airplanes being flown by the army of a country that doesn't have a dedicated air force -- like yes they have boats but they don't have a navy. IDK, I don't know the formal status and I could be wrong in my thinking; that was just how I was looking at it.

mozz, 14 days ago

Trying to do brinksmanship only works if there is believability to the idea of you crossing the brink. Putin who doesn't want anyone to be allowed to sit near him, constantly asks his friend-countries if they've been hanging out with NATO behind his back, and managed to fuck up one war with one tiny country this badly with the whole weight of the biggest nation in the world behind the effort, is very different from Khrushchev overseeing the cold war and the development of the nuclear arsenal and directly challenging the Cuba blockade, banging his shoe on the podium at the UN and screaming "We will bury you!" Putin may view the threat that he will attack the US as believable, but I do not think that anyone in the US or Russian government considers it a strong possibility and like I said I think the "not touching you" game (if that is in fact what he's doing) just makes him look weaker to both parties TBH.

(I hadn't even really considered the death sentence that is attacking the US with nukes as on the table for Russia; the nuclear option I was envisioning was attacking Ukraine and gambling that the rest of the world would be so against starting WW3 that they could get away with it.)

mozz, 14 days ago

Dude it's fuckin weird

I watched some videos from one of those pro-Russian military Youtube channels, and the whole thing is two years worth of uninterrupted victory, steady forward progress, missions accomplished and disasters for Ukraine. And yet, there's no acknowledgement that if everything had gone as they said the Russian armed forces would have swept across Ukraine, on through Europe, and circled the globe 5 or 6 times by now, with how much progress they have made... but that in reality the eastern front line has in that time not gone anywhere.

I think Russia is pretty good at creating believable bullshit (they are certainly good at influencing elections), but when faced with an actual problem that objectively exists in the real world, it just looks hilarious to see them attacking it for 2 years continuously by simply insisting with absolute passionate confidence that they are solving it better than anything you've ever seen, and they're on the verge of yet another great and crushing success, as everyone can see, just watch.

mozz, 14 days ago

"Now if you're gonna stab, stab, Trigger. Don't, you know... dance."

mozz, 14 days ago

I have no knowledge at all, but this is what makes the most sense to me. I don't have a high opinion of Russia's strategic military decisions (and the truth is I have no idea what this is about), but I know that countries have ships that travel around, it is normal, and I just can't imagine any country that is run by adults that would think that sending ships to Cuba in this way would be any kind of anything provocative or whatever.

But I can easily believe that the US news media would see the words "Russian ships" and freak out and start writing all kinds of stories about it. I mean, people are clickin on it. Mission accomplished.

mozz, 14 days ago

I came back to this and I just wanna highlight that “stay the f out of America’s curtilage” is one of the most succinctly perfect phrasings I have seen on the internet for quite some time

mozz, 14 days ago

Just to clear up, he’s still fine to sell them; he just can’t trademark the phrase or stop other people from selling the exact same thing. The whole thing about RBG was that she also had a bunch of merch sold about her but none of it was entitled to trademark protection either while she was alive.

mozz, 14 days ago

100% agree with this

I should make clear I am not an ACAB person by any means. The whole mentality that the police are automatically the enemy makes just as little sense to me as that the police are never the enemy.

But no one in the world should simply have unaccountable power. Body cams, judicial oversight, warrants, charges when they abuse their power, get rid of police unions or anything else that makes it difficult for a department to fire an officer who they feel is causing problems. Just like some percentage of non police people do bad stuff and we need a system to watch them and try to protect everyone else from them, we need it 10 times more for police people.

mozz, 14 days ago

Yeah. The frustrating thing is that the blanket "defund the police" attitude actually makes the problem of department-hopping bad cops, or tolerance for bad behavior by cops, worse a lot of the time, by starving departments of resources which makes it harder to hire as many cops as they need which makes them more desperate for employees and makes it harder to be selective about who they employ.

mozz, 14 days ago

Yeah. That part makes perfect sense to me. It's a little different from what you were saying, but someone on Lemmy was actually telling me about their experience with someplace where something like this had been implemented -- mental health people going on certain calls instead of cops, with cops assisting in cases that might turn violent, and it sounds like it works out great from all people involved's perspective. The callers are happier because people come who are better at handling the problems, the cops are happier because they don't have to deal with calls they are less qualified to deal with, the mental health people are happier because they have cops on standby for violent calls but they also get to deal with things right from the jump, instead of coming in after the cops came and just tackled and cuffed the person or whatever and now they have to come into the middle of the wreckage.

I know you were talking about things at an even much earlier level than when the 911 call happens; that sounds good to me too. The only part I was objecting to was the vindictive framing of it. Like if you want to fund mental health and homeless services that sounds great, we should do that. Coupling that idea up with punishing the police because they were bad (not saying you're doing that, but definitely some people have that in mind saying "defund the police" I think) I don't think is the way to produce progress though.

mozz, 14 days ago

The cartoon is excellent but yes the problem is that the phrasing doesn't match the reality. "Fund the nonpolice" isn't catchy though.

Honestly, just properly funding anything that is designed to do benevolent things for the community as a whole is a tough sell with way too many US community politicians

mozz, 13 days ago

I have a private theory, for which I have absolutely 0 evidence, that the forces of the establishment have some way of sneaking stupid unpopular things or phrases into the left’s discourse which the left then seizes and runs with, much to the establishments’s delight. E.g. renaming the Green Party the Green-Rainbow Party, climate activists attacking famous artworks, things like that.

I have 0 evidence for this, as applied to “defund the police” or anything else. Actually I sort of suspect that “defund the police” was an original creation of the ACAB contingent which meant exactly what it sounds like, that got retconned by more sensible but still reform-minded people into meaning “more properly fund everything else” for exactly the reasons we’re discussing. But as a general rule I suspect (again, with 0 evidence) that some of what you’re talking about actually comes from deliberate sabotage.

mozz, 14 days ago

ActivityPub is so loosely designed (in my opinion as somewhat of an outsider) that the opportunity was squandered to be able to have all different services interact smoothly with each other. It's basically one little fiefdom per app, and if Pixelfed wants to make itself compatible with Mastodon's fiefdom, then fine, and likewise for Mbin with Lemmy and etc, but it's not really "cross compatible" between the whole universe of apps, in the same way as other better-designed protocols like email work, where it's just "email" with no app specificity to it. It is a shame and a missed opportunity with how the protocol was designed, I think.

I think in general, the fediverse people are working on solutions, but we're sort of stuck into the present setup which has this not really ideal compartmentalization and there's not a good way to fix it. Certainly not from the Lemmy side that I'm aware of. Two possibilities though:

• Pixelfed has in-progress work on groups support, which is apparently very close to reality and at which point it should be able to interoperate with both Mastodon and Lemmy, which are the two main fiefdoms at present. And, Dan seems like he takes it pretty seriously the idea of maintaining compatibility all around (incl specifically with Lemmy).
• You can do kbin/mbin, which is more "Lemmy like" and is the best currently-working option I'm aware of for interoperating with Mastodon and Lemmy both (incl following Mrs. Hedge on Pixelfed and also any Lemmy communities). That's why I am using mbin currently FWIW.

mozz, 11 days ago

I think no 😕

mozz, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Disclaimer: I have no idea and it's confusing; I just read a bunch of stories just now; and people lie sometimes. That said, these are the details of the full plan as of a couple weeks ago, which supposedly came from Israel but which they immediately clammed up about whether or not they actually would agree to, not saying either yes or no for quite some time, which was weird. There is still some uncertainty over whether they will "agree to" their own proposal.

This is the best story I could find which actually somewhat explains what's going on at this point. According to it:

• Hamas didn't reject the deal but they asked for changes (details not made public and people disagree about what they were and how big they are). Personally I tend to put quite a lot of faith in the Qatari spokesman whose blackly comic summary of the issue was "two fundamental differences; between what Hamas wants as a permanent ceasefire, and what Israel wants as a hostage release and maybe a plan to continue the war."
• On that note, someone in Israel's government (no one knows who) said yesterday, "Israel will not end the war before achieving all its war objectives: destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, freeing all the hostages and ensuring Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel in the future." I.e. we get all the hostages back and keep killing you until we feel like we're done, and then at that point, we'll be happy to cease fire.
• We finally see the details of what's going on in Israel's government: Sounds like Benny Gantz (who already resigned) and Yair Lapid are supporting the cease-fire, and Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have threatened to "collapse the government" if it goes through. Nothing public about what Netanyahu thinks but Benny Gantz cited disagreements with him as why he was resigning.
• Both Blinken and Qatar are blaming both Israel and Hamas for doing too much bickering and not enough agreeing to the cease fire. Blinken points out, with maybe a certain amount of validity, that Hamas could have simply said "yes" to the US/Israel/UN/Qatari approved plan already on the table instead of giving the Israelis any room to blame them and keep the war going which is clearly what they wanted to do anyway.

TL;DR it's probably Israel's fault

mozz, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

This is the actual deal. It's been approved by the US, UN, and Qatar as a mediator. According to the US, it came from Israel, but there's apparently a little civil war going on in Israel's government about whether to "agree" to it or not. It seems likely to me that the terms were simply dictated to a mostly-unwilling Israeli government, then announced (by the US) "on behalf of Israel," and now they're pouting about it but also don't want to say out loud to their sugar daddy "fuck you I don't want to," because then we might stop arming them so comprehensively and vetoing things for them at the UN, and so they're stuck.

Hamas's proposed changes are not public, so it's impossible to say how big a deal they are or how necessary. I tend to blame Israel in general because they are so clearly acting in bad faith and also they're the ones killing all these innocent people, but... I also have to say that Blinken's statement makes some sense to me.

It would have been very easy for Hamas to simply agree to the deal on the table, and if Israel wants to reject it, or “accept” it but just continue the war immediately under some paper thin excuse (both of which seem highly likely), then at least there's not this weird confusion about whose fault that is. It's hard to come up with an explanation for Hamas wanting changes and fucking the whole thing up that doesn't involve blaming them for the inevitable results of that decision at least partly. To me as an unqualified observer person.

mozz, 15 days ago

Nice to know that if you work for a company that can afford to pay the fine, you can literally just straight up kill people(*) and pay the money and it's all good

(*) certain types of people at least

mozz, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Israel is a lot more malicious in their sabotage of the peace process than Hamas is, yes. Like I said, I'm not suggesting an equivalence between the two; Israel is clearly worse. I'm just saying that Hamas also has some of the same twisted incentives in place.

They didn't suddenly murder hundreds of innocent people back in October because they wanted to inflame a sudden spasm of peace and good will. Just because Israel is worse, doesn't mean Hamas is not bad.

mozz, 15 days ago

wanted the murdering to stop

How'd that work out

If they were killing Israelis in some way that would lead to better outcomes for the Palestinian people, I'd say that'd be pretty well justified at this point, for more or less exactly the reasons you said. That's pretty fuckin far from what they did though.

mozz, 15 days ago

For anyone watching: I suspect that Linkerbaan is one of the don't-vote-for-Biden shills, and this whole thing is a sort of cosplay of being a pro-Palestinian person. I talked with them at length in another topic, and their responses are just kind of... off.

There are other interpretations. But I noticed yesterday that they were making arguments that didn't make much sense, and didn't even seem to be coming from a place of them believing them themselves, or expecting anyone else to believe them. This comment and this stuff about "heavily target military bases" is a pretty good example. It's just... it's just off. It's weird. I mean, it's obviously not true, but it's also just kind of random in this very particular low-effort way that looks more and more unusual the longer you hold it up to the light and carefully examine it.

Anyway, so then I looked at their user history and I found all sorts of "Trump isn't that bad" "both parties are the same" "blue MAGA" stuff (that's honestly the only real consistent through-line I saw other than "yay Hamas") and it all clicked into place.

I somewhat suspect that the shill accounts tend to pick left-looking causes to rally behind to give themselves some cover, so their history doesn't wind up as just all no-Biden all the time. A month or two ago a lot of them were doing economic issues, and I think now they've shifted to largely pro-Palestinian issues.

Like I say: All speculation. The truth is I have no idea. But, that's my take on it.

mozz, 15 days ago

All sounds 100% accurate. (Or, well, it was until they proceeded further than that into outright wholesale slaughter 6-7 months ago.) Did I give the impression that I thought that it was not?

mozz, 15 days ago

My god dude. Okay, sure. This next is a two part message (1/2)

---

Me

I'd like you to create a report on Linkerbaan's level of good faith engagement in this comment chain. You'll have to be a little bit careful to observe the nested structure of the comments, which ones are replies to which, and then make a detailed report -- in the format of a formally structure report like a UN presentation of fact-finding, divided into chapters, sections, and then subsections where appropriate.

Some of the main chapters I'd like to include are:

• Unanswered questions: Things people asked Linkerbaan that they never responded substantively to
• Misrepresentation: Claiming that someone else said something, or some source said something, when it never happened that way
• Any others you feel are appropriate. Either positive or negative characterizations of Linkerbaan's engagements in the conversation would be appropriate as you determine.
• At the end, a concrete list of "recommendations" -- a bulleted list of things that would be good for Linkerbaan to answer, or provide, in order to move the conversation forward productively.

Here is the comment chain that I'd like you to summarize in that way. Bear in mind that the topic is a fairly sensitive topic.

(comment chain is redacted)

---

GPT

Report on the Engagement of Linkerbaan in the Comment Chain

Chapter 1: Unanswered Questions

Section 1.1: Key Instances of Unanswered Questions

• Question from @Belastend:

  • Original Question: "Who keeps blocking the real UN rape investigations again? Oh right, israel."
  • Response: Linkerbaan repeatedly redirected the conversation back to this point without addressing other questions asked by different users. For example, in response to a direct question about the UN report's evidence of sexual assault, Linkerbaan reverted to asking, "Why does israel keep blocking the UN investigation?" without providing substantive answers to the other points raised.

• Question from @mozz:

  • Original Questions:
    1. "Where in the report did you find information about how the hostages were treated?"
    2. "Can you explain more about the logic, why this would follow?"
    3. "What parts of the report are there that debunk the entire report?"
  • Response: Linkerbaan did not provide direct answers to these questions. Instead, they repeated their assertion that Israel is blocking a UN investigation without engaging with the specific questions asked.

Section 1.2: Repeated Evasion of Specific Queries

• Throughout the conversation, Linkerbaan consistently evaded specific queries about the details of the UN report and evidence presented within it. Despite repeated requests for clarification and specific details, Linkerbaan’s responses focused on a single point regarding Israel blocking investigations, without addressing the nuanced questions posed by other participants.

Chapter 2: Misrepresentation

Section 2.1: Misrepresentation of Sources

• Claim about the UN Report:
  • Original Claim by Linkerbaan: "Not sure why you keep citing a report that has no legal base. The only thing Patten concludes is that there is grounds to do a real investigation."
  • Misrepresentation: Linkerbaan's statement downplays the content of the UN report, which included findings of reasonable grounds for sexual assaults occurring, thus misrepresenting the conclusions of the report to undermine its credibility.

Section 2.2: Misrepresentation of Other Users’ Statements

• Interaction with @mozz:
  • Claim by Linkerbaan: "You have dodged every question the last time around and you keep dodging the question."
  • Misrepresentation: This statement misrepresents @mozz's engagement, as @mozz provided detailed responses and posed specific questions that Linkerbaan did not address substantively.

Chapter 3: Positive Engagement

Section 3.1: Points of Constructive Dialogue

• Acknowledgment of Counterpoints:
  • On a few occasions, Linkerbaan acknowledged the need for a thorough investigation and expressed concerns about the suppression of evidence, which can be seen as a constructive element in their engagement.

---

(To be continued, 1/2)

mozz, 15 days ago

Second message portion (2/2). This is the recommendations. If you want to keep talking with me, you can start with this section, answering some of the unanswered questions and following the recommendations on how you can engage more productively in the conversation. If you're open to doing that, then sure! Let's rap.

---

Chapter 4: Recommendations

Section 4.1: Questions for Linkerbaan to Address

• Substantive Responses to Specific Questions:

  • Provide direct answers to the specific questions posed by @mozz, particularly about the details of the UN report and the logic behind Linkerbaan's assertions regarding the treatment of hostages.

• Clarification of Evidence Claims:

  • Clarify which parts of the UN report allegedly debunk the entire report and explain how these sections invalidate the report's findings.

• Address Misrepresentation Concerns:

  • Respond to accusations of misrepresentation by either substantiating claims with concrete evidence or acknowledging any inaccuracies in previous statements.

Section 4.2: Steps for Productive Engagement

• Engage with Nuanced Points:

  • Engage directly with the nuanced points and specific queries raised by other users to foster a more informed and balanced discussion.

• Provide Clear Citations:

  • When making claims about the UN report or other sources, provide clear citations and quotes to support these claims and allow for transparent verification by other participants.

• Acknowledge Other Viewpoints:

  • Demonstrate a willingness to acknowledge and consider other viewpoints, even when they conflict with personal beliefs, to facilitate a more respectful and constructive dialogue.

---

This structured report aims to objectively assess the engagement of Linkerbaan in the specified comment chain, highlighting areas of evasion, misrepresentation, and providing constructive recommendations for future discussions.

mozz, 15 days ago

Why are you rejecting my good faith efforts to help you with productively engaging in the conversation

I typed up a whole report just for you Linkerbaan

mozz, 15 days ago

Honestly I was pretty impressed with the level of detail and accuracy it was able to come up with.

And yes I know that looking for productive conversation with this person is looking for sandwiches in a pigpen. I do feel like I wasted a little too much time on it yesterday, but I'm just entertaining myself at this point; this kind of thing is funny to me.

mozz, 15 days ago

I hope I have at least brought some entertainment to your working day. Have a good one