cabbage
@cabbage@piefed.social
- Comment on Disgusted 1 week ago:
Yes, it intentionally breaks with human history, which has been largely built around and fought over borders for a really long time. What people argue is that it’s not human nature but learned. We organize ourselves locally and in communities, there’s nothing natural about patriotism and nation states.
I personally think they are correct in fundamental parts of their criciticism, but that doesn’t make it a realistic goal work towards any time soon. What we can do is to question the premises we are trained to accept and to think critically about how we should structure our societies going forwards.
Arguing we can’t abolish borders because of Russia and America is a bit like arguing nukes can’t be abolished because of the need for nuclear deterrence. It might make some degree of sense as a practical argument, but not as a normative stance.
- Comment on Disgusted 1 week ago:
The no borders crowd doesn’t want America to be anything more than a geographical term. There wouldn’t be borders and there wouldn’t be states. Possibly some sort of global federation would be acceptable depending on who you ask.
They’re right in principle. Borders are man made and lead to a bunch of conflict. The nation state is an arbitrary unit that has gained an absurd amount of power.
In practice of course few people would say we can just abolish borders over night and hope for the best. But criticizing it by saying that Putin would do this or that doesn’t work because Russia wouldn’t exist in this scenario and Putin would just be some powerless random guy with rapidly declining mental abilities.
- Comment on Disgusted 1 week ago:
The entire Russian war of aggression is about moving lines on a map in the first place. It’s a text book example of the stupid shit people start doing precisely because of our obsession with borders.
- Comment on Will this allow people to comment on my posts? 1 week ago:
I’ve seen some blogs using threadiverse posts as their basis, and honestly I don’t se many downsides. The content can be spread around the fediverse if people find it interesting, markdown allows for all kinds of text, it’s long form by nature, and the comment section is integrated into the whole thing.
Pixelfed is for pictures, not blogs. Write.as would be a more natural (but probably less social) alternative.
- Comment on Nietzsche foretold all of this 2 weeks ago:
I don’t read him as worrying primarily about the immorality. As far as I remember his problem is more that atheism is amoral, if anything. The main concern is the lack of meaning. Humans crave rituals and spirituality. Now that we killed God we have nothing to turn to; how do we bury our dead now that God himself has died.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
It’s hardly one-sided when you consider what Nietzsche had to say about religion. Take Christianity:
Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life.
Or more generally:
As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.
His father was a pastor whereas he had a profound distaste for the church. Presenting him as a defender of religion is not accurate at all. I guess it’s easy to misrepresent him because there are a lot of nuances going on, and his writings also don’t always align perfectly.
- Comment on Nietzsche foretold all of this 2 weeks ago:
For anyone unfamiliar, his sister was a Nazi, and after he died she managed his legacy in the worst possible way.
Nietzche had an interesting relationship to Jews and Judaism, informed over time by his own personal relationships in ways that probably didn’t influence his philosophy for the better. Parts of his work is about what he considers to be strong cultures, at which point he praised Judaism for being a particularly strong culture. Later in life he was less positive.
This of course comes on top of his thinking about religion, which is less one-sided than often portrayed: God is dead, we killed him, but importantly that was in all likelihood a huge mistake.
So the Nazi connotations are partly a result of his sister’s management of his legacy and unfinished/unpublished works after his death, part how Nazis ended up using his works long after his death.
He ended his life living with his sister in a rather fragile state, with his great writings behind him. Judging him by his death bed would be doing him and his work a great injustice. But even then there’s no evidence to indicate he was some sort of proto-Nazi.
- Comment on How come Pornstars don't teach Master Classes? So the average joe or joness can improve relationships and get better orgasms. Who would be better than pornstars? 2 weeks ago:
Sex and porn are very different things. A lot of young men enter into sex imitating porn, and the results tend to be terrible.
In reality good sex is more about communication and trust than about being able to pull of crazy stunts. And once you have a good connection with someone exploring stuff is part of the fun, not something you’d like to outsource to a professional.
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
Here we very much disagree in our understanding of American history, but that’s another debate. :)
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
I care more about privacy and security than I do about throwing a few bucks at Google’s hardware division.
And I’m more worried about surveillance capitalism, the rise of fascism, attacks on software freedom, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and modern day slavery than I am about extremely targeted local security threats. But I also respect that others have different threat models. Some journalists and community organizers in [aspiring] dictatorships need higher security standards than I do, and they are only able to meet these standards because enthusiasts choose to make it a priority.
I live in Europe, and I don’t find it very difficult to avoid overly evil shit. I wouldn’t travel to the US, and if I did I wouldn’t want to bring any personal electronics with me.
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
And yet they have the entire industry in the palm of their hand.
For me it’s a no-brainer. I don’t buy products from Google, Amazon, Musk, Zuckerberg, or anyone else who obviously want to do me harm. Any path towards a better world sold to me by the people who are busy destroying the current one will be treated with immense scepticism.
I don’t see much point arguing further why I wouldn’t buy my privacy respecting hardware from Google or de facto Flock. We probably have different priorities.
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
I use a degoogled Fairphone. No money going to Google when I bought it, no data going to Google while I use it. You can also buy Fairphones new without Google Android.
more harmful than even throwing a couple bucks back at Google directly for hardware that will probably end up costing them more money than it makes them when you remove all their spyware.
This seems delusional. Even if they don’t run on huge profits from selling their devices you end up supporting their market dominance.
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
While there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism yadda yadda there’s still degrees of bad. I would not buy from a company who is actively building the infrastructure of the fascist surveillance state. By Google phone here I meant a Google brand phone, not a phone that comes with Google Android. Buying a Google Pixel second hand is good obviously.
Basically I think it’s worth trying to avoid buying things from people who want to do you harm, and when compromises have to be made it’s still worth settling for less evil. Motorola and Google are not that.
- Comment on Phone and OS Recommendations 3 weeks ago:
Motorola is also involved in the surveillance industry, both with their own direct competitors to Flock cameras and as the owners of a company named Avigilon.
I wouldn’t buy a Google phone in pursuit of privacy, and I wouldn’t buy a Motorola one either. Sending money that direction defeats the purpose.
- Comment on Google Maps Reviews in Germany are utterly pointless 3 weeks ago:
We’re moving towards that! Short story keep an eye on CoMaps in coming weeks, long story here
- Comment on Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party’s Left Wing: ‘We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist’ 1 month ago:
America is pretty much a game of twisting the ideas the nation was founded on into the opposite of what they were intended to mean. Much like American Christianity. It’s a batshit country.
Adam Smith didn’t want unchecked capitalism; he argued that capitalists would immediately conspire to fuck everyone over when given the chance. Somewhere else he used the invisible hand as part of a metaphor for how specialization and trade between nations causes mutual benefits. The american political thought propaganda department took these two words out of context and made Smith the hero of unregulated capitalism, because the “invisible hand” of the market will solve everything.
It’s the same thing over and over. Jesus said love thy neighbour, American Christians are chanting build a wall. America was founded in direct opposition to kings, the current president is bragging about being one while hiring judges as hitmen who insist on taking the text of the constitution Very Seriously.
All of American society is a distorted lie at this point. All of it.
- Comment on What does non-gui mean ? 3 months ago:
ImageMagick is amazing for command line image manipulation, but the use case is of course different. It’s great if you need to do the exact same operation to a bunch of pictures, such as rotating or rescaling.
- Comment on I'd like to change my last name and want suggestions 3 months ago:
Or Hacker, which is a surprisingly legit name.
- Comment on Y'all ever have intrusive thoughts about accidentally dropping stuff in storm drains? (particulary when you have your phone out) And like if that happens, wtf is someone supposed to do? 4 months ago:
My intrusive thoughts usually revolve around yeeting my phone off a bridge or a boat. I’ve managed to contain myself so far.
As for storm drains, I lost my keys down a deep one a few months back. Went to the hardware store and bought strong magnets and a wire and got them out after a lengthy fishing expedition.
- Comment on Let's say hypothetically I wanted to leave the US permanently; 5 months ago:
To find jobs in Norway, try searching for the word “jobbportal”. At least some of these sites allow you to sort for English language jobs.
- Comment on Can someone break down the real differences between kbin, mbin, Lemmy, and PieFed? I know they're all in the Threadiverse, but I'm not sure what the draw is to use one over another. 5 months ago:
If we can have fewer nazis at the price of a slight inconvenience for users who were born in 1988 and for some reason want to have their birth year in their user name….
Yeah, I’ll take fewer nazis, please.
I’m fine others may disagree, but let’s at least be honest what we talk about when we talk about “controversial moderation”.
- Comment on Can someone break down the real differences between kbin, mbin, Lemmy, and PieFed? I know they're all in the Threadiverse, but I'm not sure what the draw is to use one over another. 5 months ago:
It seems Ernest recovered, and just decided to step away!
Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I had to step away from actively working on Kbin and leave its further development to the community. Nevertheless, I am happy to see the project thriving, with a dedicated group of users and contributors who continue to push its vision forward.
Open-source has always been important to me, and while I am no longer involved with Kbin, I still believe in the power of community and the potential of open technologies to shape the future of the internet.
- Comment on Can someone break down the real differences between kbin, mbin, Lemmy, and PieFed? I know they're all in the Threadiverse, but I'm not sure what the draw is to use one over another. 5 months ago:
Again, what exactly are you talking about?
The lead developer recently started a thread in the Piefed meta community specifically to open for people to ask questions about these things. In full:
I have received word that there are people combing through the PieFed code looking for anything that might be harmful. This is excellent and can only make PieFed better and less harmful. We appreciate their interest in PieFed and look forward to answering any questions and showing people around the code. Please join us at https://chat.piefed.social or https://matrix.to/#/#piefed-developers:matrix.org.
There’s no need to listen to rumors and amateur speculation when we’re right here and happy to help. Come on in, the water’s fine!
Nobody managed to come up with an even remotely critical question there.
If you have an issue, ask in !piefed_meta@piefed.social. If the community agrees your concern is valid I can guarantee you it’ll be addressed.
- Comment on Can someone break down the real differences between kbin, mbin, Lemmy, and PieFed? I know they're all in the Threadiverse, but I'm not sure what the draw is to use one over another. 5 months ago:
Also multi-communities is a pretty central feature. A list of differences with Lemmy is maintained here.
- Comment on Can someone break down the real differences between kbin, mbin, Lemmy, and PieFed? I know they're all in the Threadiverse, but I'm not sure what the draw is to use one over another. 5 months ago:
Piefed is Lemmy with cross-posts collapsed to one thread, and controversial developers (moderation defaults)
Would love to hear which moderation defaults of PieFed are so controversial. Your phrasing seems to indicate that Lemmy developers support for Putin and Xi Jinping is no more controversial than Piefed developers’ preference to silence trolls and fascists.
- Comment on Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare 5 months ago:
Yes, absolutely. They are digging their grave with their transition to being an AI company and it will absolutely catch up with them eventually.
- Comment on Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare 5 months ago:
This is not being ignored my Microsoft
My impression is that Microsoft won’t care all that much. They are primarily a cloud service provider at this point, and while they will try to squeeze Windows users for as much money and information as possible before it goes down for good they have no real interest in keeping on developing Windows. It’s just not where the real money is at.
It doesn’t make sense outside the world of capitalism, but we see again and again that big tech companies are happy to kill even profitable services if they are not their most profitable services. Microsoft’s revenue these days comes from selling cloud office solutions to (seemingly) every company on the planet. Even their own cloud runs on Linux, meaning that Microsoft themselves makes more money off Linux than Windows these days.
Windows is now in the extraction phase of enshittification, and Microsoft will profit as much as they can from it while they still have market power while spending minimal resources developing the product. Windows has effectively been declared dead already, and remains as a sofware zombie just like Facebook. Windows 12 is not going to be an improvement upon 11; it’ll be another fuck you to the customers, and the beatings will continue until customers leave for good and Microsoft are finally relieved of their side gig of making an operative system.
- Comment on Is Kagi Worth It? 5 months ago:
I paid for the lower plan for a while. It didn’t have nearly enough searches included for my use, and the higher plan was too expensive. Especially since I just wanted search, none of the other products they were busy developing.
Search results were good. Recently I’m using Qwant and I’m happy with that as well, so right now I don’t miss having access to Kagi at all. With the limited number of searches it was more of an inconvenience than a benefit the period I was using it.
There are some questionable things about Kagi. A few years ago the CEO reeked out this tweet showcasing how Kagi AI could call out the BBC for being too mean to Elon Musk, which is honestly enough of a red flag for me to steer clear.
- Comment on Why are people so rude on Reddit compared to the Fediverse? 5 months ago:
rude disgruntled noises
- Comment on Why are people so rude on Reddit compared to the Fediverse? 5 months ago:
Large userbases, and the “somebody is wrong on the internet” effect. If we like something we see we’ll possibly like/upvote it and move on with our life, if we see a problem we’re far more likely to jump on and interact. So a hundred people might read something and be neutral towards it, and it’s enough to have one asshole react poorly to ruin the mood completely.
The same dynamic works for reply guys, and sadly the fediverse is in no way immune. But hopefully there are more people on here who are aware that it’s a community building exercise, and who make an effort to leave a positive footprint. :)
- Comment on With regards to cutlery, do you prefer a spoon or a fork for eating cake? 5 months ago:
I moved to Denmark a few years ago, and have been picking up a line of cutlery whenever I see stuff I need in red cross stores. I have small tea spoons, big tea spoons, and one tiny cake fork.
I prefer the smaller tea spoons not only for ice cream cake, but anything served with ice cream. So typically that’s also a lot of pies. The fork is better for dry crumbly cakes, but the spoons are better for creamy cakes. I wouldn’t eat a tiramisu with a fork if I have a spoon available.
The bigger tea spoons I mostly only use for yogurt and stuff like that.