thank God I am not American

And by the way, the French are the ones who know how to get shit done. We’ve probably started too late to stop the slide before it gets really bad over here.

Let me try one more time.

Do you think Angela Davis dodges this question, or do you feel she thoroughly, satisfyingly, answers it? It’s not a long clip.

Because as best as I can tell, you will again decide that you decide how those being actively harmed should respond and what is an acceptable response from those people, and again characterize her response as advocating violence, rather than recognize how such a viewpoint does nothing but empower those who seek to oppress.

Every word she speaks is in support of her summation at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnDONDvJVE

You did an awful lot of arguing to demonstrate that you still didn’t really read it, and by read I mean digest it, nor fathom why I suggested you start there.

Because you are defensively pearl clutching about entirely different things than the most relevant bit to your arguments here, which is how ridiculous and harmful it is for those in a position of privilege to clutch their pearls about whether the protest actions of those being actively harmed and killed might not be convenient in their timing or execution.

And when you reach the point of recognizing why such pearl clutching is actively harmful to others, instead of reflexively insisting it’s not what you are doing, or insisting that it isn’t harmful, quite a lot of other things will fall in place.

Good day.

The party of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele approved constitutional changes in the country’s National Assembly on Thursday that will allow indefinite presidential reelection and extend presidential terms to six years.

USA right now: Don’t get any ideas, Trump!

Beyond words…

I’m not as in the loop these days - are some Linux pundits still trying the “maybe MS isn’t as bad as they used to be” line or have we learned again now?

You can pretend NYT has no influence on popular opinion and therefore politics, and ignore their misrepresentation of the genocide if you wish, but that doesn’t cause your argument to magically become valid.

You should do some reading. Start here.

https://letterfromjail.com/

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

Look, whoever gets filthy rich doing what I’m about to suggest doesn’t even have to pay me. Maybe name a street Octopus Ink Lane and I’ll know we have an understanding. That’s enough for me.

Here’s your money maker:

If there can be a city that isn’t going to allow nonwhites or queer folks, then there absofuckinglutely can be a city that doesn’t allow magas or registered Republicans.

And all but 77 million of us would love nothing more than to live in just such a city.

There you go, just remember the little folks when you are rolling around in your swimming pool full of cash.

I was the right age at the right time to have been really into peak 80s punk, but was far too oblivious to pretty much everything that made it special to appreciate it at all at the time.

I can certainly tell you what has kindled my recent interest to explore the genre, and it wasn’t because I was pissed off about pronouns and DEI. Now to click the link and see if the article tries to suggest some other reason…

😁

I think my point is kinda that the whataboutism poster I blocked might have needed a reminder that the idea that “no one cared until it was Trump” is just another pro-Trump attempt to rewrite history, and untrue on the face of it, because it has never been difficult in the age of MS dominance to find knowledgeable people expressing these concerns.

However, and going back to my original comment and my underlying frustration that I’ve entertained this whataboutism for this long, like all examples of whataboutism it’s nothing but a waste of time where we all circlejerk about how of course we all cared about it even before Trump while simultaneously failing to call out the original statement of “no one cared until Trump” as the obvious bullshit that it is, on top of being whataboutism.

So now I get to walk away smugly congratulating myself for how thoroughly I’ve exposed the whataboutism and the bullshit, meanwhile all the time you and I spent thinking about and typing this could have been spent thinking up creative methods of civil disobedience, or otherwise doing something more valuable than impotently demonstrating what an inane point was made in the first place.

So next time, I’m just stopping at Goodbye, and the downvoters can fuck themselves.

Edit - typo or two corrected.

I’m holding my breath for the pinephone to be ready for primetime. I check in on it every so often to see what the current buzz is.

My money is 90% on “banana republic” level horseshit shenanigans.

Something something none of my business kermit drinking tea meme 😁

Edit:

Terms I previously did not understand in detail for $1200, Alex. Even more applicable than I realized to where we are clearly being herded by Trump and Republicans and the oligarchy currently.

A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites.[1] The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by exploiting labor.[2] Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property. At the same time, the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury.

I’d hope current events would be the counter argument. Take your pick regarding country/continent and event. I’m being intentionally vague to ensure I don’t run afoul of the rules of the sidebar, but there are legitimately many examples currently, some mentioned by others in this discussion.

I should add that events such as “You’ve been doing X which has always been legal for your entire life, but now worldchangingevent or policychange has happened and it’s no longer legal, and they are persecuting people for it” have always been pretty plausible hypotheticals. We just have modern, current examples of how wrong that can go now.

I haven’t used a Microsoft product in my personal life in twenty years. One of the primary reasons for that is that I don’t trust them with my privacy. People (gestures broadly at the tech space) have been expressing similar sentiment for decades.

We are not a monolith, and some people have cared about these things while others have not.

For those who only just began caring, I find it entirely reasonable that when the top of the pyramid wasn’t Trump, someone who there are a great many reasons to distrust, they weren’t as worried about it.

If you didn’t care about it until recently, only you can answer the question you have asked.

All of which is far more of an answer than the sheer whataboutism merited.

Goodbye!

Well, you are entitled to your opinion.

Once upon a time that would have been my sincere reaction. It’s a shame that I had to learn police have been shitting on their own integrity pretty much since their inception.

I’m guessing the admits part and of course Trump is the current (quite jutified) bogeyman.

My assumption for many years now has been that the answer to any question involving MS giving access to your data is “yes.”