Sharecropping is optimistic. They’re laying the groundwork to have a larger prison population that the government can rent out to the landowners.

I agree. I think with a robust enough proposal, there are a lot of people with power who would be willing to get on board. Some people though… they’ve shown that they’re willing to kill huge numbers of people to maintain and expand their power, and I don’t know that that kind of powermonger can be dealt with gracefully. And I think an internet-native global democratic movement would have to be started by people with internet access, and one of its goals would have to be providing, to the best of its ability, internet access to everyone.

Genuinely, I think the “other” in this case is the extinction of the human species. It’s very scary to me that there are people like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are in charge of nuclear arsenals. Do I think they are going to start a nuclear war? At this point the best I can do is “hopefully not 🤞”. But the longer we roll the nuclear armageddon dice, the better our chances that we’ll eventually wipe ourselves out. And the predicament that Ukraine finds itself in currently is proof that no nation with nukes should ever give them up as long as there’s a real threat of invasion by another nation. And as technology advances and we find more efficient ways of harnessing huge amounts of energy, that arms race will only escalate. I think the only long-term solution is to find a way for all of us to disarm and find a stable way to prevent rearming, or in other words, world peace.

I think there would have to be a constitution with an enumeration of basic rights, and unfettered access to the global internet would have to be one of them. I’m leery of biometrics, for one, not everyone has eyes or fingers, and two, biometric signatures can be spoofed and if someone can spoof your biometric signatures, it’s hard to prove your identity. I think there would have to be some kind of managed citizen ID, something that can be replaced by your local government if it gets compromised.

I think direct funding would probably have to be a big component at the start, especially before the government is able to levy taxes. But capital power tends to favor itself and lead to increased inequality. The fundamental assumption of one person = one vote would have to be able to ultimately overrule the wealthy for it to be a real democracy.

I have a similar thought about 100-1000 person groups at the base level. I think the basic unit of organization would need to be geographical, for a couple of reasons: one, I think it’s important for us as humans to be able to meet and talk to your fellows (and your elected officials) in person, and two, I think a purely online bloc would be vulnerable to technological capture. Like, an attacker could MITM an entire bloc and manipulate how they vote. I think interest groups / parties / factions etc. will still happen but I wouldn’t want to organize voting around them.

They both refer to behaviors or attributes associated with children, but “childish” has a generally negative connotation and “childlike” has a generally positive connotation. e.g. “childish behavior” is usually something the author judges inappropriate, where “childlike wonder” is usually rendered as a positive (if often infantilizing) attribute. Similar definitions, but quite different in implication.

When the apocalypse comes I will of course let people use my stores of micro USB and VGA cables, but I’m gonna be real smug about it.

Whoever proposes a coherent Quantum Theory of Homosexuality is gonna win a fields medal.

Seriously thank you, I remember watching this when it aired and occasionally have wanted to look it up but forgot the name.

You also reminded me of the uproar when “The Sci-Fi Channel” rebranded to SyFy lol

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the best time to flip out about fascism is ten years ago. Second best time is today.

the hardware / games compat problems were definitely real, at least for me. the number of times I’ve had to dive into config files to fix a hardware problem has dropped way off since I first started using linux. It’s very much better now.

Unfun fact: Rabbits actually can scream, I have had the misfortune of hearing it. It’s not a sound you forget.

I like this; I have a lot of commands that I don’t use often enough to justify an alias, but still need to rerun all the time. thanks!

I didn’t know this was a thing. tyvm.