HarkMahlberg

On the one hand, one of the things we often tout about the Old Internet was the ability for anyone to run their own website, forum, blog, etc, free from corporatization. On the other hand, running your website is a responsibility on your part, and in the convenience-focused Internet we have now, seems to be a forgotten lesson.

On the third, mutant hand growing out of our back, fedi software should be designed with security-by-default, i.e. no open registration, to prevent the forgotten lesson from being a huge problem.

In the wild, it’s far more common for them to just spin up a bunch of accounts across “good” instances (particularly those without registration applications) and coordinate.

In 2023, this happened to a ton of unsecured Misskey instances who then proceeded to spam most of the Fediverse. It was just a troll in reality, but revealed that the Fediverse is no less vulnerable to coordinated, sophisticated attacks (and with how politically minded it is, there’s plenty of incentive for nation state actors to do so).

The papers we hold up and say “this will be the foundation of our government, society, and economy” can say anything we want, but none of the words on the page matter once the people in the system abdicate their responsibilities to point at something wrong, refuse to participate, and work against it.

SOX controls are the result of the Enron fraud, but those are also just words on a page. The US Constitution is just words on a page. SCOTUS may very well rule this year that the US government cannot deport native-born, tax-paying, passport-holding, lived-here-all-their-lives US citizens.

Watch as the Trump administration does it anyway. It’s all just words to them.

Well there’s the disaster that was hexbear…

Wow… That’s quite the journey. Thank you for sharing it.

It’s particularly enlightening is that the diversity of information presented to you is what helped you change. Not just one “gotcha” quote from some online commenter, one snippy remark about a noticeable hypocrisy. Not one source of disruption, but many. I think that’s fascinating, and extremely helpful for those of us with family who only get their news and opinions and politics from one place.

Again, thanks for telling your story.

They’ll willingly catch leprosy if Trump told them to.

I know, I didn’t mean to sounds argumentative with you. You presented the facts clearly for the OP who asked their question. :)

This is why I would have crossed behind but, did he make eye contact with you? A Pillars are so fucking thick nowadays cars have blindspots forward of the driver. And frankly some people should have never passed their driving tests and we would have public transit to get them where they need to be.

Had a guy pulling out of a parking lot while I was walking on the sidewalk, with him waiting on the sidewalk to pull into traffic. He actually bothered to back up a bit so I didn’t have to walk in front or behind him. It wasn’t necessary but a cool gesture. We could all do a little more of that in the world.

The supreme court stacked with Trump and Bush appointees, the ones who were installed there explicitly so they would abdicate their responsibilities and dissolve the separation of powers.

When people say they want Democrats to fight harder, what they’re asking for is for someone to use the same dirty tricks as Republicans to defend their democratic institutions as opposed to tearing them down. To that end, we ought to wipe our ass with SCOTUS’s ruling on presidential immunity. Merchan should have sentenced Trump anyway. Let the Republicans appeal back to SCOTUS, and then wipe our ass with their decision a second time.

It’s distasteful to stoop to their level of dirty tricks and stall tactics, but playing by the rules is what fascists always count on to seize power. Even if we have to break our own rules, we should fight them with everything in the proverbial arsenal. The country and its people will not survive if they have their hands tied behind their backs by the paradox of tolerance.

It is worth pointing out that other governments have prosecuted and removed their presidents, prime ministers, and other heads of state, and their government still function.

This article covers a good assortment of those cases, from Sarkozy to Netanyahu.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/heres-when-other-countries-have-prosecuted-former-leaders

Unfortunately it predates South Korea’s most recent crisis, and Netanyahu’s use of the war in Gaza to stay in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Yoon_Suk_Yeol

Last I checked, Isreal, South Korea, and France have not collapsed or lost any functionality by those events.

The argument US conservatives love to put forth is “contacting Georgia’s governor and asking that he conjure up enough votes to help Trump win, that’s an official presidential request, it was totally kosher” is wrong, and no other words other than “wrong” need to be used to describe it. Asking a governor to rig an election is not “the exercise of a constitutional power [that cannot] be infringed on [by] holding the individual personally liable” because it is not a constitutional power being exercised. It is just corruption and authoritarianism.

You gotta actively try to reach that kinda score, it’s almost impressive. You have to go out of your way to be a jackass.

Yesss, go bankrupt to own the libs!

I missed an opportunity to say the bunkiest of funches, and I’ll never forgive myself.

hear ye hear ye, behold the funkiest of bunches

I’m with you. I used to build maps, models, and textures for Battlefront 2 and share the files for free on Filefront. I got into programming for the joy of creating things that make people happy, or solve some little problems they have. I still make mods, the communities are out there and I’m glad I found them.

But tech evangelists and bro culture ruined the idea of programming as a career for me. The greed of late stage capitalism infected our industry the moment Facebook hit the scene, crypto accelerated it, and AI may as well be the final nail in the coffin. It’s no longer a worthy or noble profession.

Yeah that about sums up how I view the rest of my life playing out.

If it helps you sleep at night…

Yeah I can tell you’re not commenting to convince anyone, you’re just commenting to vent your frustrations. I get it, no worries. I mean the world is pretty shitty right now, and if you’re thinking Canada and China and equally evil authoritarian regimes, yeah I guess all us commenters are equally not worth the effort. Have a good weekend mate, keep up the good fight against… everyone.

Despite all your raging comments in this thread, I still don’t know what your stance is. The weak straw man argument isn’t helping.