gaael

@gaael@beehaw.org
2 Post – 73 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Funnily enough, meeting far-right people increased my far-right-ophobia.

They are people.

Calling them monsters and dehumanizing them separates "them" from "us" and prevents us feom trying to understand how a real person, with intellect, feelings, a family, a social life etc. can get to the point where they do such things. If we don't collectively at least try and understand it, we have zero chance of preventing it from happening again.

That being said, I'm not at all making excuses for their actions, which I find seriously violent, disgusting and worrying.

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Off-topic below.

Btw, I saw some posters here still use the slur "cunt".

It's my understanding that depending on which country you're from (eg Australia or UK) this slur might not carry a sexist connotation in the mainstream culture, so I don't think any of you used it with the intent of being sexist.

Nevertheless, in the feminist circles I belong to, uskng a word that describes the genitalia of AFAB as a slur carries a sexist charge whether it was the intent or not. So we try to create new slur reflexes for ourselves and tend to use other words that do not carry an offensive charge towards a discriminated category.

Please do not take this as a personal attack or an attempt to tell you how to speak, I just think we can do better as a community if everyone spots the stuff they are the more sensitive to and explains to the others why they see a problem.

On-topic. Elon, please get lost in outer space in one of your stupid rockets.

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In a capitalistic world where your right to stay alive is determined by the money you make, replacing himan jobs by machine ones is a real problem.

If what was happening was "ok so the machines are gonna do that so you're gonna have a lot more free time but you still get your wages", I for one would be happy.

But what's happening is more along the lines of "well I hope you didn't just get a mortgage because here's the door hahaha don't be sad think lf the extra money the shareholders are going to make" and it's a real problem.

Just because it's logical that shitty bosses take shitty decisions which impact negatively other person's lives doesn't mean we can't be upset and vocal about it.

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Well, I find that really sad.

Whatever mistake they make, I think people living with constant fear of the threat posed by a totalitarian regime known for its violence against its own people deserve our sympathy.

Amended title: Rental giant to take a huge step back in climate change fight and generate more GHG to protect their bottom line.

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Hey OP. Kudos on acknowledging your feelings and expressing them ;)

TL;DR: your reaction makes a lot of sense, don't stay alone with this, lots of empathy

Where I speak from : I'm a white and socially cisgendered male, 35 yo, living in France. I had the chance to go to university and to have several educations.

I have been a climate change and biodiversity collapse educator and activist for 3 years, and I'm currently struggling with crippling adhd, depression and anxiety after a rough burn out.

I try to base my opinion on the IPCC reports which I regard as the best science consensus provider on climate-related matters (more on the IPCC at the end of the post).

In my opinion, being terrified by climate change is a very appropriate emotionnal response.

What scientists say about the amount of suffering climate change already inflicts to hundreds of thousand is hard to fathom, and imagination fails to grasp how much worse it's going to get in the coming decades.

To my understanding, humanity as a species is not under threat, and we will not all die in 50 years. But a huge amount of people already suffer and die from climate change and it's going to get much much worse. As usual, the less privileged you are (and the less you contribute to climate change), the worse you have it.

CO2 emissions keep going up when scientist agree that they should be cut in half by 2030 and divided by 3 or 4 by 2050.

The IPBES (same as IPCC but for biodiversity) current analysis reinforces the "we're in deep shit and we're diving faster and faster" feeling.

And while individual action is absolutely necessary, it is by large insufficient without structural collective change.

I also feel terrorized. And so angry. And more sad than I'll ever by able to express. And so fucking frustrated.

I found that sense of community is what keeps me going. I met some great people in environmental ngos, and getting together to do something about it is a great feeling. Having a drink together and ranting about how hard it is to witness our collective failure makes is really not as bad as doing it bu myself. And crying among friends feels a lot better than crying alone, for me.

So I wish for you to find people around you who understand the world in the same way you do, who care as much as you do. I wish for you to find safe spaces in which you can stop pretending it's ok, in which you don't need to explain yourself, to have a debate about whether or not climate change is a big deal, in which you can let your emotions flow. I wish for you to find meaning, belonging and even happiness in action.

Take good care of yourself, the wolrd needs you in good shape !

Btw, compiling and summarizing together papers about the mechanism and impact of climate change is exactly the job of the IPCC. They take in account thousands of papers from all the fields related to climate change, write a draft an publish it, wait for questions/criticism/corrections to be sent by all the scientists who want to contribute (for several months) and then they correct their draft and publish the final version. I recommand reading at least the key points of the "Summary for policymakers" of the 6th assessment report..

I never wondered about the conditions of videogames workers, but I'm really happy that they get better thanks to this movement !

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My dislike for brave is mostly about its chromium base - chrome being the embrace - extend- extinguish offensive on the web from google.

Really sorry to read this. Thank you and kudos for being able to communicate like you did.

I hope you manage to take your time and take care of yourself. From my burnout experience, I can say it's likely we usually underestimate (by a lot) the amount of time and distance we need before coming back.

Please don't feel you have to come back next week because you said so, and don't feel like you owe us anything in terms of communication / visibility - it matters so much less important than giving yourself the healing space and time you need.

I also hope the admin team finds ways to protect themselves.

Off-topic only, has nothing to do with the content related to CP2077 and the muskrat

So, based on some comments here, it looks like I came across as trying to ban language, to forbid words, to restrict your free speech.

As stated in my original post, this was and still is not my intention. I have not attacked personally the persones using "cunt", nor have I said no one should say that.

I just shared a reflexion, because that's why I sign up on social media platforms.

I am happy that some people felt safe enough in this community to explain why they think my views are incorrect, I actually learned some things thanks to you.

I'm not trying to ban the "cunt" word from language - and if I was, it would be so laughable to think I could have that kind of influence.

I just believe that the words we use have an effect on people. And I think it's worth it to sometimes pause and wonder which words we are using and if we can use better ones.

I'm not going to engage further on this topic in this channel, it's probably not the most appropriate space.

So, I'm not a specialist in any field relevant to the things we are discussing. I have opinions, which arise from a lot of factors most of which create a confirmation bias that reinforces my opinions. This is why I'm grateful when people who disagree chose to engage in conversation to explain me how I was mistaken, so thank you for that.

Situational stuff I think is relevant I'm a white privileged person (parents paid for my education, never got hungry one day in my life), I'm perceived as male in public space and most of my social circles (the unsafe ones). So I've had it easier than most my whole life, and I have no first hand experience of being part of a group that has to live through daily violence from a racist culture. Your post gives me the impression that you have that experience, and that really sucks - this should not happen to anyone.

The point I was trying to express I think calling them monsters is a way of dehumanizing them, of distancing ourselves from them. Doing that, we become blind to how they became who they are today : at least some of them were probably once people we could have known and not hated. We also become blind to the possibility that one or several of our friends, family, neighbors, colleagues... which we don't hate right now could go down the same paths.

I'm also convinced that their actions must be punished, and that we need to try and prevent them from harming people. This can be done legally, but sometimes the law is not enough.

The points you made - I agree with almost everything. I agree with almost everything you wrote. I seems to me that the only disagreement we have is about calling them monsters or not.

Thought experiment for you then. How do you resolve the issue that arises when a person or group of persons live just down the street from you who claim that the core belief of their very being is that people “like you” shouldn’t exist, or should, at the very least, go away, preferably across a large body of water.

I really with I had a good answer to this question, because I've been struggling with it for some time. Best I could come up with was :

  • harmful and hateful actions need to be stopped, so alerting law enforcement when possible (usually fails because legal system and law enforcement harbour a lot of racism), alerting public opinion to raise support, offering safer alternatives to the people targeted, demonstrating support to decrease risks/increase security - anything short of direct fighting which terrifies me
  • hate speech needs to be opposed, and that's where I feel I have the best impact and where I feel kind of safe - thanks to my privileges and part of my education, I'm quite good at making racist opinions difficult to maintain publicly outside of far-right circles
  • it's important to support targeted groups, to let them know they can have allies, they can ask for help - in my country, if you only have the dominant media (mostly racist right) and the hate groups talking to you, you can easily feel like you are alone and no one cares

I feel like this is well summed up by the sign you posted : we need to be there and to take action to protect targeted groups and people.

I agree that there are problematic systemic conditions that give rise to far right ideologies like white supremacy and it’s close extension, fascism. We definitely need to address them. But these conditions are not just the result of modern sociological paradigms, they have specific historical origins and are passed down through culture and tradition, and that is not something you can defeat through just argument and social ostracism

I completely agree with you. I even believe it's too late for some people - we will never be able to bring them back to more a more tolerant/empathetic view of the world.

I think the first thing to be done is to prevent hateful actions/speeches by making them socially and legally inacceptable (and sometimes violence is needed to achieve that) because the most important thing is to protect the people who endure the hate. And at the same time but on a different scale we need to adress systemic conditions and problematic culture and tradition.

you sometimes just need to force the monsters out.

That's the only point where I disagree with you : I'd say we need to force the people who act like monsters out, as I've tried to explain in the beginnning of my comment.

We can try to do all the other preventative measures first and we should, but some peoples’ ideaologies are so deeply engrained into their identities, there is no convincing. For some, there’s no talking to them, they don’t engage in dialogue genuinely, they twist Democratic forums, insisting on being heard while advocating for policies that ultimately aim to marginalize and silence others, constantly playing the victim while insisting the strength of their ideas on the sole basis of their opinion being fact.

Completely agree.

A simple saying sums up my feelings on the far right and their fascist dreams. It was popularized during Trump’s Muslim ban

I'm so grateful people like you exist and stand up. I don't know you personnally, but seeing people like you and the ones in the picture helped me get out of my privileged apathy and start trying to make things better.

It's not just right now : this president has been here since 2017 and most of the core ministers are the same since then.

They have been cracking down on civil liberties from the start, but they make it more and more obvious since 2022 (because there is no re-election possible after 2 terms). Using anti-terrorist special legislatilns against environmental and himan rights activists, making demonstrations repression ever more violent...

At the same time, to guarantee that pseudo-centrist (actually right wing) keep getting elected, they have worked to make the far right more powerful. This way, in every election, they can end up being the "rational" choice.

Thanks for this educational post, TIL I learned something interesting (and sad/infuriating).

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Looks like a nice ARPG, but it seems to integrate an "always online" bullshit requirement, can someone who actually has it confirm or rectify ?

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Thanks for posting, really interesting read ! I had never thought about it.

I wonder to which extent the described mechanisms also make it more difficult for men with a higher-than-average-pitched voice and thus contributes to the patriarchal vision of what a man(tm) should be - in this instance, of how a man should speak.

Thank your for your very interesting opinion.

What is supposed to be the difference between capitalism and garbage ? Asking for a commie friend.

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I have no source for you, just personal experience. In my small circles (irl and online) which are not statistically significant, we usually use :

  • "iel" for third person singular, used the same way as "they" in the singular form
  • "ellui" also used for the third person by someone who wanted the feminin "elle" to come first
  • "ol" is also used for the third person, mostly by people who want to get rid of the binary "il" and "elle" sounds of "iel"
  • "elleux" for the third person plural, used the same way as "they" in its usual sense

Maybe this wikipedia page could be useful ?

Just FYI: from my experience as a native French speaker and a French resident, these neopronouns have a hard time existing outside militant and lgbtqi+ circles. Our most popular media (which are right-wing/conservative) regularly paint them as a problem, an attack on the "mothertongue" etc. and I've faced violent reactions from people I gave my pronouns to.

Kudos to you for including them in your signature !

Edit: typos.

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You are right, I should not have assumed that.

And I should actually not have used this description, because vulvas are not exclusive to people Assigned Female At Birth, as another commenter pointed out.

Fun-ish activity : ask goblin to break down one simple task, then to break down the smallest subtask, rinse and repeat ! Got some funny end results - nothing false per-se, but absurd in-length description of a seemingly atomic action.

Running on that VM, I really enjoyed Flight of the Amazon Queen a few years back. Warning: it's an oldie containing lots of sexist moments - I'm not sure I would enjoy it as much today.

Lots of us wanted neither, we juqt settled for 5 more years of "Macron the dipshit that is covertly racist" to avoid 5 years of "Le Pen the dipshit that is overtly racist". And we hate every minute of it.

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Thanks for this.

I'm still refining my mental model of "federation" - it's so different from my usual centralized reference frame that even if I understand the vulgarization/explanation when I read them, the images and reflexes my mind has about social media are changing slowly.

Privacy kind of matters to me, so I'm grateful for content that helps me understanding better how it works and doesn't work in a federated setting.

I also think that, as pointed in comments, educating ourselves (the users) and reminding ourselves that privacy is also our job and responsibility is something important.

Anyway, not brining anything new to the discussion, this is mostly an appreciation comment.

I started and finished Stray today. It's a bit short (5.5 hours) and imo not really replayable, but I had a really nice time with it. I found it akin to Outer Wilds in the sense that you get to discover the lore as you progress in the world. I recommend picking it up if you get it on sale (the full price is a bit much for the duration).

I use Olaucher and it works great for me. You just long-press any app in the drawer and you get the "Hide" option.

It's of course FOSS, I use the F-Droid version.

It's entirely text though which I like, but maybe that doesn't fit your needs - no icons and no widgets.

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Solasta - Crown of the Magister cRPG trying to replicate the feel of tabletop RPG as well as possible IMO they did it really well ! Not everything is perfect of course, and it's more combat-centered than my tabletop experience, but I'm really enjoying this first playthrough (playing in coop with a friend).

Divinity - Original Sin 2 RPG with a turn-based combat system, a somewhat open world and interesting storylines I stopped playing on normal and started again on tactician, I was getting bored by the fights becoming too easy during act 2.

I like the idea of wasting telemarketing company resources, but we have to remember the people calling us are actual human being forced into shitty jobs where they suffer abusive management thanks to capitalism. So "torturing telemarketers" sounds bad to me, as does being rude to them or leaving them to talk into silence.

I usually pick up the phone, announce that I will hang up in 20 seconds, wish them a good day and then block the number.

I used to get 1-2 call per day, now it's more around 1 every 2 or 3 weeks.

Thanks for posting, this puts words on things I've been struggling with for a while now.

Yeah, I've got the same thing with playing previous games in the series. This summer I've tried playing BG1 and then BG2 prior to BG3's release - and I did not go very far (did not like the UI).

You are absolutely right, I should have thought of it. Thanks for the correction !

Just finished Firewatch, and I'm a few hours in Outer Wilds. I enjoy having no way to really fail, and discovering the story bit by bit.

Started Torchlight 2 in coop with a friend living abroad, it's fun to see a non-blizzard Diablo with a Warcraft 3 aesthetic. Still trying to figure out which mods we want in the long run.

And almost at the end of It Takes Two in couch coop with a friend, we've laughed a lot so far !

French resident here. The current government has been abusing anti-terrorist and emergency state legislation for years against environmental ngos. The police repression of any kind of strike and protest has become more and more violent since 2017. They are using the 2024 Olympic games in Paris to establish precedent in mass surveillance and tracking in public spaces. They sell weapons to anti-democratic countries.

So this does not sound like good news, I would really not feel safer once they get one more tool at their disposal.

I didn't get to the end of the article, I stopped when I read this :

The Greek government has also to deport all illegal immigrants, especially those who are Moslem who may be working for Turkey tasked to cause as much destruction on the country as they can. Fires are their secret weapon.

This looks like a racist and paranoid piece of "opinion" supported by zero fact.

I do not believe this article has its place in socialism and I have reported it to the moderation.

Thank your for your very interesting opinion.

This was very informative, thanks !

Not yet but it's on my list of privacy stuff to try. Do you use it ?

Thank you so much for making it :)

Happy to help :)

Iel clearly has the most tractiin, enough to get included in one french dictionary recently.

"Elleux" does actually replace all uses of 3rd person plural.

Thanks for your support :)

Thanks for your answer, but I'm really not interested in buying on Steam. I should have been more precise : I can easily find linux-native games lists, but I'm having trouble finding them on the high seas. I agree with @Aram1s@lemm.ee's explanation of why they are not very present.

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