Skip Navigation

Posts
3
Comments
147
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • More extracts from that same podcast:

    In each case, right up until the moment I received evidence to the contrary, all this misinformation, these supposed facts, felt true to me. I had believed them for decades and I had accepted them in part because they seemed to confirm all sorts of other ideas and opinions floating around in my mind. Plus they would have been great ways to illustrate complicated concepts, if not for the pesky fact that they were, in fact, not facts.

    That's one of the reasons why common misconceptions and false beliefs like these spread from conversation to conversation and survive from generation to generation and become anecdotal currency in our marketplace of ideas. They confirm our assumptions and validate our opinions and, thus, they raise few skeptical alarms. They make sense and they help us make sense of other things.

  • A short list of things you didn't realize were false, stolen from the most recent episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast (on Intellectual Humility, Sept 14 2025):

  • Text of the executive order:

    DESIGNATING ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

    Executive Orders September 22, 2025

    Section 1. Antifa as a Terrorist Threat. Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists. Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members. Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech. This organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism.

    Sec. 2. Designation as a Domestic Terrorist Organization. Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.

    Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

    (b) This order shall be published in the Federal Register.

    DONALD J. TRUMP

    THE WHITE HOUSE,

    September 22, 2025.

  • Now hear me out. Instead of a space elevator...

  • Sadly this doesn't seem to be working (as of Mon Sept 22 2025, 01:11 AM UTC).

    Update (Wed Sept 24 2025 17:17 UTC): It works!

  • It's a lying game.

    Republican politicians and thought leaders pretend they are the victims of unfair persecution ("cancel culture") and censorship in order to 1) encourage a sense of righteous indignation in their base, and 2) create pretext for them to perpetrate actual unfair persecution and censorship when they're in power.

    "If they can do it, why can't we?"

    Half of the Republican base doesn't recognize this happening, and the other half doesn't care because it's working.

  • Salt & Straw had a prosciutto and melon flavor last month. It was outstanding. Salt is magic.

  • This is heavy.

  • You were directionally evolved by monsters who resented artists’ ability to create value through pure expression. Mimicking the conjuring of that value was at once a parlor trick, then a means to undercut the livelihood of anyone not willing to explicitly and finitely explain the art they created (thus giving it metric to be measured by and value-assigned).

    The wax ring and plumbers putty are set. Keep the caulk dry for 36 hours and try to not touch it or it could crack.

  • Based take from Gabriel Bell.

  • I remember when Hulk Hogan got hurt, but I never thought the entire act was a fake. I’d always presumed that it was a legit injury from a performance mistake because a dangerous move was either served or received incorrectly, and the marketing machine just used this turn of events to its advantage.

    My little brother was genuinely concerned and sent him a letter. If the injury was faked, coercing young fans into a letter writing campaign is pretty shitty.

  • Convenience store.

  • Newsom is a conservative-sliding turd who is actively abandoning left-leaning causes by paling around with anti-trans bigots in a cynical and harmful attempt to ride the Overton Window's continuing shift to the right.

    Fuck that guy.

  • This is very valuable context.

    For citations, the only references I see to "pronouns" in their github project is in a section called "Human language policy" in CONTRIBUTING.md (link). Here's the relevant part:

    In Ladybird, we treat human language as seriously as we do programming language. The following applies to all user-facing strings, code, comments, and commit messages: ... Use gender-neutral pronouns, except when referring to a specific person.

    That sounds pretty cash-money to me.

    There's one additional reference in a pull request discussing whether or not to use "we" when referring to recommendations of the engineering team (as in "we recommend" vs "it is recommended"). Minutia.

    I'm not as interested in litigating this matter than I am in putting it to bed (along with any and all definitive citations and evidence such that I can refer back to this comment thread in the future when the question inevitably comes up again.)

  • I think this may be the issue to which you are referring:

    https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/

    While this is troubling to read about, this narrative’s lack of evidence or references keep me from accepting it at face value. Old mastodon chatter (and perhaps deleted posts or scuttled instances) may be difficult to retrieve, but GitHub discussions shouldn’t be hard to find.

    So I’m withholding judgement for the moment.

    UPDATE: Commenter lime!@feddit.nu wrote this terrific comment that provides confirmation of the above narrative, corrective action that the LadyBird engineering team has taken taken, plus some vitally important context of the entire kerfuffle. A+ work.

  • For those holding out for a hero: https://ladybird.org/

    Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine. Driven by a web standards first approach, Ladybird aims to render the modern web with good performance, stability and security.

    • 3 (tots)
    • 2 (curly)
    • 6 (zigzag crinkle cut)
    • 4 (waffle)
    • 7 (wedges Jo-Jo’s)
    • 5 (sweet potato)
    • 8 (onion rings) - tied with sweet potatoes; they’re both lost and in the wrong part of town
    • 1 (shoestring) - potato chip sticks with more steps

    Missing: coniques.