"Critical Infrastructure" I consider critical: clean water, electricity, transportation, shelter/housing, access to food.
Helping billionaires become trillionaires on the corpse of the planet's biosphere is not, imo, critical.
@apicultor @robustjumprope @faye @mae okay I’m actually going to take your point at face value here.
You don’t need to have read Du contrat social by Rousseau to understand social contracts, but it helps. Your point is fundamentally invalid because there is no social contract. What contract do we have between each other?
You have no rights to see my posts, nor do I have any rights to see yours. You have no rights to federate with my instance, nor does my instance have any rights to federate with yours. There is no social contract because there are no social obligations. There are only social privileges — federation is a privilege granted by honour.
You are clearly confusing a “social contract” with the concept of “social norms”, which refers to the cultural and social mores of a group. Whether this behaviour breaks social norms is one that is debatable, but since a social norm depends on person to person, this is where you may have a point. However, social norms does not a social contract make.
If we want to consider social contract theory more closely, then the only “social contract” on the Fediverse is that between yourself and your Instance administration. But even that is not a social contract — that is a literal contract that you have agreed to with your administration.
Furthermore, a social contract in a true sense refers to the rights and obligations of a person as part of a governance group. If you do not abide by the laws of the land, for example, then you have broken the social contract between yourself and The State, and therefore end up in prison.
To really conclude, however, that you’re totally fucking wrong: a social contract is between a governing body and the governed. There is no governing body on the Fediverse. There is no social contract because rights are not federated, only privileges.
And even so, a social contract between the governed and governor is not a true contract because you are forced to abide by it and cannot escape it.
Ergo, you can log off any time, mate, and I suggest you do.
The World Series: brought to you by AI & gambling.
This feels fitting after the past few days~ :woozy_baa:
You used AI? Gross.
I asked my neurodivergent friends online. They're way more accurate and use far less water.
Mostly because they forget to drink it.
For neurotypicals approaching us in good faith, I think it can actually help some of them to try closing their eyes when talking to an autistic person.
Without practice, a lot of neurotypicals genuinely have trouble not focusing on facial expressions. Ultimately though, neurotypical people can learn not to do it, just as autistic folks can learn to read facial expressions.
Not sure it could be more brutal, the direct erasure of the natural world for the proprietary and digital. Not to mention done by a corporation in service to a foreign superpower.
Apparently another 150,000 more trees were felled at their Otanmäki site. Both for AI data-centers.
The wood from neither site can be sold, as they were cut down illegally, and to rub it in, Google stripped the top soil of both sites. Totally denuded the land.
But hey! She and I were friends once, & it looks like I have my friend back.
Also with everything I am having to understand & accept about my brother's behavior, my "loyalty" to him gets smaller all the time.
What a selfish fucking person.
She told me she's happy the family is reaching out & she's very open to reconnecting especially for the sake of Niece but she's scared because she's grieved her relationships with us once & doesn't want to go through it again.
Completely understandable.
She mentioned family loyalty. I said on that front she doesn't have to worry, because we choose Niece. If it's between my brother & his daughter, we know which one needs us to be a caring, protective family. It's not the 37 year old man.
I talked a while with my former SIL tonight about grieving the loss of the person I had thought my brother was & the relationship with him that doesn't actually mean anything to him.
It just gets worse & worse. She hasn't wanted to "hurt his relationship" with his family (& wasn't sure what we would be able/willing to hear from her). The truth of their marriage is darker than I wanted to believe.
What an abusive POS.
#Spotted While Roaming in Aotearoa New Zealand:
A woman (30s?) is playfully biffing her partner's rump with two bunches of broccoli while he's trying to pay for their groceries.
Doing comic book "BIFF! BAM!" noises.
Giggling when he playfully growls that he's trying to focus.
"POW!"
A woman (70s?) in a fluffy pink dressing gown is walking onto the porch of her pretty white cottage and calls out to the flitting birds in her garden: "Good morning small chaps! Are we going to have a good day today?"
A small human (3?) wearing a Spiderman costume bellows: "WHOA! THAT DUCK IS HUGE!" as he points at a big duck swimming on a lake.
Junior Spiderman Avian Scientist looks around to see if anyone is noticing the majestic massive bird in their midst.
A young human (9?), wearing a school uniform is sitting on a park bench while playing an ocarina.
His friend is humming the song that she thinks he SHOULD be playing.
But NO!
Three Blind Mice is what he's playing and that's final.
A tiny human (2?) wearing a corduroy jacket, a polo shirt and cargo shorts marches into a cafe while holding his lunchbox like a briefcase.
He sits across from Gran.
Unpacking a sandwich with absolute gravity.
He's got important lunch business to attend to while Gran drinks her coffee.
(Continued Below)
I think it's sad that "wanting to be special" is seen to be something self evidently bad and shameful.
I guess it's another way to say "you think you're better than me"?
Same for "wanting attention". Leaving aside the fact that not wanting attention is a pretty common autistic attitude, so what if you do want attention? It's a pretty basic human need.
If I were in charge of the US Federal Government, I would do a lot of things differently. Unfortunately, I'm not, & no one with any power has ever had any interest whatsoever in hearing what I have to say.
There's certainly something to be said for changing the government entirely, but that's a long-term group project, not something I personally am currently able to do all by myself.
You know what's spooky about radios?
The static.
The static is always there. It's all around you right now, like an omnipresent ghost. Static is the default, and it's going on everywhere, all the time, whether or not you measure it by building a radio to ever notice.
The static only ends when someone pushes organized radio waves out into the air to displace it.
As soon as the signal ends, the static rushes back.
RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/117484079903893654
In case it's unclear, my concern about Republicans interfering in the election is not that our Great Nation™ is falling into disrepair or something.
I think it's reasonable to be upset & concerned about the possibility of a fascist government interfering in elections even if you're not a big fan of everything related to those elections to begin with.
It's not a great situation to be in.
@artemis I'm from outside of the US, so take my view from thst perspective please. That being said, Dems will keep on doing the almost the same that Trump is doing for the rest of the world. What I constantly read that worries the most to usonians is the fact that Trump started mirroring the US foreing politics interventions inside their country with ICE and DHS. Biden, Harris, Obama, and the previous ones did the same imperialist shat that Republicans are doing rn worldwide, and also their deportation numbers with ICE were no opposites to what Trump is doing, only changing the violent way on how they're executting it.
In order for Dems to really change Trumps politics is to go against the US imperialist core basis, and quit the benefits that all usonians recieve by exploiting, invading and controlling the rest of the world by foreign interventions HISTORICALLY. But that's not what the Dems want, they just want to be the ones in charge to recieve what Trump is recieving for doing the same. The only difference they could probably make is return to DEI politics which I do understand that is super important, but regarding big tech, enviromental, healthcare, and other regulations they'll keep on looking the other way just so they can keep on lobbying the same way they did prior to Trump, but with all the PR so ppl won't have to worry. Meanwhile bombing, blocking, militarizing, vetoing the rest of the world. They'll keep on calling 'terrorist' whatever confronts them, they'll keep on funding genocide and de facto goverments, they'll keep the blockades on Cuba. They only campaing by saying that they need to fight Trump bc that's all they can promise to do, to win so Trump can't. But they won't promise anything besides thst because "it's too complex to change stuff, it takes time, our hands are tied".
When *billionaire* Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker is sending messages asking me to donate money to Democratic candidates, I can't help but feel something is backwards here.
Like...even if I wanted to give money, & I gave the most I thought I could reasonably waste on a political donation, the amount would *literally* be pocket change to him.
JB, buddy, can you just give them the $50 for me?
Honestly I'm not even sure how much Democrats want our votes. They seem much more interested in our money.