Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

🦝 ugh what am I going to do with all these websites

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🦝: starts another website

"who would have thought that building a militarized police state that outdoes stalinist Russia would end up being used to oppress people?"

Almost everyone.

The socialists saw it from a mile away. Everyone from anarchists to tankies to social democrats all realized it. Left liberals also mostly got the memo as well, to their credit.

The GOP intended to use the police state for their authoritarian capitalist pet project, and they were among its architects. Of course they fucking knew, they're far right freakazoids who get a hardon from killing Black people and Middle Easterners.

The only people who didn't get the hint were centrist liberals who thought it was for "public safety" and "fighting drugs" and "eliminating terror". The Democratic leadership is generally high on official US propaganda, and really they've politically suffered for it.

i want an indestructible flipphone running modern android and i want it to not be made by a company complicit in crimes against humanity

„Fandom and the multimillion dollar business of monetizing volunteer work ” is my newest blog post about Fandom (big F), wikis, volunteer work and capitalism. If you have the time and any of those topics interest you, give it a read.

https://frisk.space/posts/fandom-and-the-multimillion-business-of-monetizing-volunteer-work/

#wiki #volunteering #Internet #moderation #Fandom #capitalism

https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/how-denial-of-airborne-covid-transmission-broke-the-world/?s=09

Respirators are so effective that United Kingdom research has indicated their use by the public would have dropped the rate of COVID transmission by an estimated factor of 9, compared with 0.6 for surgical masks. A factor of 9 is enough to put SARS-COV-2 into exponential decay, meaning the virus would have been highly suppressed for as long as respirator use continued. The exponential math of viral spread also means that perfect masking compliance would not have been required to achieve suppression.

@maskup

#CovidIsAirborne #WearARespirator

one of the worst parts of our modern scam culture is how it's designed to make you feel guilty when you fall for it

you heard an interesting fact that was actually propaganda? Your fault. Fell for an image? Your fault. Got scammed money wise? Your fault

but that in itself is the biggest scam of all

“Where do you get your ideas from? - by Joel Morris”

https://joelmorris.substack.com/p/where-do-you-get-your-ideas-from

> So if you put out an episode once a week, and you make it to being one of the world’s most successful podcasts… you’ll be paid enough for a pizza per episode, provided you don’t go for any side dishes.

The modern media economy is unsustainable

I have been playing with a new term: "slop huckster"

A slop huckster is more than someone who likes to play with generative AI, or has some arguments for why they've been able to use it productively

Slop hucksters argue that generative AI means you should stop doing creative and productive things, kind of likes to rub it in your face that they can make creative persuits useless

The attitudes of slop hucksters resemble incels, a kind destructive bitterness stemming from jealousy

I guess it's possible the issue gets accidentally fixed or becomes irrelevant, but something about *closing* a perfectly valid issue report because nobody from the project has checked it out rubs me the wrong way. Similar to closing an issue as WONTFIX does versus a more precise “out of scope” or “design conflict.”

It really turns me off as a potential contributor who is trying to help, and makes it less likely that I would actually stick around and help with that much needed issue triage.

I get that issue trackers are hard, but I feel like stale bots that *close issues* come off as so hostile. I shouldn't have to come back to the issue tracker every month to confirm, “Yes, this is still an issue!” to prevent the issue from getting closed.

Tag an issue as “stale” for easier triage—that’s fine! But “oops you aren’t engaged enough, sorry, your issue doesn’t exist anymore” feels like a bit of a slap in the face. Especially if it gets closed as “not planned.”

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!"

the entire point of that idiom was that you *can't*, it's straight-up impossible

"Just one bad apple"

. . . spoils the rest of the barrel; it's the *opposite* of an isolated problem

Any other idioms we've gotten completely backwards?

one of the most insidious things about the whole narrative around disability, benefits, mental health etc in the UK is the way that it gets into the heads of benefits claimants too. This one spent its whole life hearing about benefits scroungers, about how folks are just not working and just leeching off the state, about how things need to be stricter.

This one does not have major physical disabilities. It has severe long term mental health issues and disabilities (cPTSD, OCD, ADHD, DID, autism, depression, anxiety). Its mental disabilities do not present in the way that it is "expected" for mentally disabled folks to present. It is capable of appearing as "able" and "intelligent" to those who do not understand things. It claims PIP, Universal Credit, and the LCWRA health component due to all these issues. Even pre-cuts, this works out to less than minimum wage. And that's all it can get.

It absolutely is not capable of work. It can often barely hold a conversation for more than a few seconds without freezing up if it is at all stressed. It has panic attacks. It has days where it can't leave the house because of its paranoia about being attacked. It communicates in ways that are not typical and often considered impolite or totally not understood by neurotypicals. It cannot exist in spaces that are "unclean" to it. It has attempted work experience and had to have somebody come and collect it from "work" twice in a 1 week internship because of a breakdown, and this was back when it was in a much more stable position and its baseline state was better. It can't focus on a task that has been given to it by an external entity. Stress can cause it to dissociate so much that somebody else has to take control of its body. And so on.

But yet, the narrative has got into its head. What if it could work. What if it *isn't* actually disabled. What if the government are right. What if it is claiming benefits it shouldn't have. Because on its very, very best days, it may be able to put in a half day of work, at a push, if adjustments are made. It sews this doubt and internalized ableism that is really fucking annoying to clear out of its mind.

So, to everybody spreading that narrative: stop. Living on benefits is a nightmare, and claiming them is even worse. If you think that it's too easy to get PIP, go try and claim it. Attempt the thing you say is rampant. Enjoy the nightmares and getting nothing.
And to all the disabled folks: your needs are real and valid. You should claim as much as you can from the government to help you. Don't let this bullshit get into your head.

nerdy folks who like talking about their interests