@staringatclouds @RolloTreadway jes, its the intensity of the training, just try to jump as fast and high like a cat for 5 minutes related to your bodysize
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain".
That does explain why I enjoy "slice of life" types of movies for more than the obvious escapism. Watching nothing but evil makes one paranoid, and nothing but pain sad.
Like many things in life, binaries only go so far. (Digs up another Makoto Shinkai anime he hasn't seen yet.)
@markwoll Oh yeah, I asked this too. Basically you'll always feel some discomfort and soreness, especially if you are pushing yourself. You just have to watch for escalating pain or new kinds of pain.
the secret is not more or less, but BETTER NSAIDs. ::tv ad chine::
At some point, because uniform chews you up, I was taking almost 7g (yes) of ibuprofen a day. By then, that caught attention of a mil doc, and they put me on a relatively low dose of naproxen.
It worked so much better. I am also NOT actively trying to grind my knees and lower back to shreds, so that helps, too.
So think optimistically, don't push it. Just try to embrace the positive, and always be kind to yourself. If you are in the mood - push it a *little bit* that time, mostly for the psychological benefit. Assert your right to mold yourself the way you want.
I need to do strength exercises and have been unable to convince myself. “Where are the dumbbells,” I ask, innocently, knowing fully well I just need to find them once to do this task in perpetuity.
I go to a weekly gym session run by a local football club, led by physiotherapists from the local hospital and designed for people like me, with dicky knees or hips or backs. I suffer the next day or so, but I can move better than I could a year ago. I think it's all about tailoring the workouts, and I'm grateful for my short term suffering.
@dabertime And it is true, it does help, but I never seem to know the line between This is helping, and that was too much, and now everything is worse lol
Job #1 is to learn to listen to your body again. That interoception was drilled out of most of us by capitalism at a very young age.
Those are three very different kinds of pain. But I think there are a lot of people whose ability to distinguish among them was lost when they were toddlers.
Reuters reports that during recent U.S.–Russia talks on peace in Ukraine, Washington floated possible energy incentives for Moscow. Proposals included ExxonMobil’s return to the Sakhalin-1 project, U.S. equipment for Russia’s Arctic LNG-2, and even the purchase of Russian nuclear icebreakers.
When Britain’s former deputy PM took a job at Meta, nothing could have prepared him for the ‘cloying conformity’ of the tech world. So why does he still think social media is a force for good?
I read #Clegg’s latest bid to redeem himself (there is a huge swathe of Millennials (and others) who I assume are never forgiving him and the Lib Dems for getting into bed with the Tories)…and remembered that his perspective on life comes from studying anthropology at Cambridge.
He thinks he’s giving an objective account of the Silicon Valley Tech Bro tribe…by having lived among them. Maybe he just needs to rewatch Mean Girls and recognise his character. As if…
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has installed a right-wing researcher who pushed false claims about the 2020 election to a position
You're too late for the lemons. I went through a brief lemon juice phase 2 years ago at least where I was obsessed with all things sour, and I didn't know anything more sour than fucking lemon juice.
They did the mash They did the Mongrel Mash They did the mash It was a dog pound smash They did the mash It caught on like a rash They did the mash They did the Mongrel Mash
President Donald Trump's criticism came a day after Cracker Barrel told customers the company could have better handled its controversial logo rebranding.
It is easy for a ruthless regime to pick off individuals, companies and organizations one by one and make them bend their knees.
Expecting them to defy the fascists on their own is a bit naive and unrealistic on our part. We are are in a very dark situation. We seem to have no master plan (they do). We are still reacting to daily events rather than anticipating and preparing for them.
Much as I loathe everything MAGA, the old logo had personality and the new one was bland, so it was probably for the best that they dumped the redesign. I would rather see Trump crowing about this "win" than about all his other frightening crap.
Cracker Barrel, hours after President Trump called for the restaurant chain to return to its old logo, relents and announces: "Our new logo is going away and our 'Old Timer' will remain." crackerbarrel.com/allthemore
No reason to check this store out if I ever run into one then.
What did they even sell anyway? Sourdough hooch or something?
The Universe changed a stupid logo change into massive publicity such that it got my attention and I thought, "Huh, I don't know who the hell these people are but I may have to check that out someday." They chose irrelevance instead.
Welp. I wish they had, like, talked with him for an hour or two about it and distracted him from other people. But maybe people can flood his feed with how grateful they are to him and distract him that way? (No, I can't.)
Seems like a softball win for TFG. Out of the blue a conservative favored brand made a silly branding decision and TFG got to express himself and the fake change goes away.
Tells me a whole lot more than that about them. They've drawn their line in the sand and told those on the other side they're willing to kill them to ensure the world is more populated with those who think like them.
Johnny is a joker (He's a bird) A very funny joker (He's a bird) But when he jokes my honey (He's a dog) His jokin' ain't so funny (What a dog) Johnny is a joker that's a-tryin' to steal my baby (He's a bird dog)
The biggest trick the (far) right pulled off is to convince many people that anti-fascism is politically left. It isn't. Anti-fascism is a politically neutral, foundational requirement for any non-fascist society. Yes, you can be conservative AND anti-fascist. You should be. That is the bare minimum. If you are conservative and do not loudly oppose fascism, you are almost a fascist yourself. Simple, innit?
You're rebranding Conservatism in a way that suits you, instead of what e.g. Paxton shows in his The Anatomy of Fascism: Conservatism is the grand enabler of fascism.
If EUropeans were (properly) taught in schools or had proper cultural references/pop culture about their common past not passed through the Hollywood filter, perhaps one look at Konrad Adenauer or Alcide De Gasperi's wikipedia portraits would be enough. "You know who really fucking hated nazis? This guy. Does THIS guy look like a hippy to you?"
@davey_cakes @clintruin idc because he's not relevant to us. I was talking about *EU*ropeans and the need to de-hollywoodise our understanding of how our Union started for a reason. Anglos are the main characters in enough Hollywood films but no longer any kind of characters in our Union.
@zbrown @davey_cakes @clintruin The Council of Europe doesn't count. If we ever have the kind of EU-wide civics ed we need, he'd be a footnote. Perhaps older students can then get into details of how the Brits later pushed the Council of Europe in an attempt to sabotage the actual proto-EU, but that's advanced studies.
@Veza85UE @davey_cakes @clintruin the literal EU themselves cite Churchill, the Council of Europe pre-dates the EU, and what harm is the Council of Europe supposed to have done exactly? Provide a flag for the EU? Moderately effective enforcement of human rights that has improved the lives of millions?
Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung frei zu äußern. Das inkludiert das Recht, von diesem Recht keinen Gebrauch zu machen.
Natürlich ist mir jeder lieb, der sich entsprechend äußert.
Aber es ist sehr wichtig, dass dieses Recht, sich eben nicht zu äußern, absolut respektiert wird. Warum? Das wirst du sehen, wenn die Faschisten dran sind und sich nicht äußern oder pro forma positionieren verdächtig wird. Und das ist leider kein exklusives Rechte-Dings.
so you're saying that the only way for conservatives to not be labeled as fascists is to loudly support anti-fascism. Does that apply to other groups as well or are you targeting conservatives specifically?
@biscuit_overlord No targeting here, except: if you declare yourself to be not „anti-fascist“, then you are, by definition, fascist and should be excluded from the political debate. This is the tolerance paradox: you are entitled to any opinion unless you hold the opinion to abolish any other opinion. It is on display in the news daily, right now.
@axeln my point is that OP stated that being a conservative doesn't mean being a fascist, and yet only states that conservatives must loudly reject fascism in order not to be labeled as fascists themselves, but why only conservatives? Also, we're losing sight of the real problem here. Everyone is fixated on what Trump's doing, but he's not the problem. The problem is that millions of people voted for him. If I remember correctly he won the popular vote. That's the real problem.
This is the same game as convincing STUPID that WOKE is bad. It involves fundamentally misrepresenting, redefining what a good word means changing it into something evil that appeals to the target audience for political advantage. And it can’t be over emphasized how important STUPID and self-serving is in this equation. Anti-democracy power struggle? The capitalism end game? Keeping stupid guessing? It all seems related. 🤔
Which raises questions... were the Republicans always like this and we just didn't want to believe it? Remember the McCarthy era description of people the right accused of being communists as "Premature Anti-Fascists"?
@axeln similar parties are popping up all over europe, hence my point that Trump (or any other politician) is not the problem, just a consequence. The question to ponder is why do so many people feel voting for them is their best choice?
This is a bad take in my opinion, since it has nothing to do with propaganda tricks. Conservatives will always be much closer to fascists than anti-fascists, because they value capital and private property way more than they value individual rights and freedoms.
@JakeKb Property is an individual right without which all other liberal freedoms can't survive; because the opposite of private property is statism.
The idea that fascists value private property contradicts history. Germany's Nazis, Italy's fascists and others, such as Romania's Iron Guard were considering themselves socialists and had strong, virulent criticism of capitalism.
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” — Mussolini
@alexelcu @JakeKb I give you a little benefit of doubt here that you simply don't know.
Nazi criticism of capitalism was not socialist, but a fundamentally bastardized version. I can recommend you the excellent essay "National socialism and antisemitism" by Moishe Postone.
Basically, Nazis said that capitalism had two distinct spheres. They criticized the abstract, Jewish, profit-driven, international, artificial finance capital and tried to eradicate their human representatives. They loved the concrete, natural, industrial, manufacturing capital, so they cooperated with that capital, crushed worker organization and provided slaves.
The German Reich was no worker's paradise nor a worker's state.
And by the way, there is no private property without a state.
@skaphle Since 18th century, socialism was understood as social and political reforms advanced by the state in order to improve life for citizens. Only later, after the advent of Marxism, it began to mean social ownership of the means of production.
You have no capitalism without a free market. Oligarchies are not capitalism. Yes, you need a state, regulations to keep market free and taxing of externalities. Which is why it's in the centre of political spectrum.
@alexelcu @JakeKb Are you talking about a specific country? Can you name concrete examples about the "center" of the political spectrum?
The countries I'm most familiar with are Germany and the US. The US is a two-party system oligarchy that refuses to keep the market free of monopolies and to price in climate and health externalities. In Germany, the center is the social democrat party, spineless bureaucrats who refuse to price in climate externalities, which gets worse further right. Revolving doors between parties and industry are common. White-collar crime is tolerated to the tune of 100 billion Euros a year.
@skaphle I know, but there are examples of externalities being taxed, such as land use or water consumption.
Taxing greenhouse gas emissions is hard as it shakes society, making people poorer (for now). We rock the boat enough, we get populism & fascism, e.g., AfD in Germany, or Trumpism.
We may not have time for incremental reforms, but the alternative may be society tearing itself apart. This is Edmund Burke's conservatism 🙃
@skaphle The centre in western society is (classic?) liberalism on which our democracy and capitalism are based. Political ideologies that respect liberal values and want gradual reforms instead of revolution are close to the centre.
For example, Trump's administration does not seem at the centre to me, and the Republicans, realigned for Trumpism, seem to be going against Anglophone conservatism. I hope US citizens see the danger in what's happening right now.
@alexelcu @skaphle @alexelcu Every post you made proves my point. In your posts you tried to equate nazism with socialism, which indirectly legitimizes nazism and discredits many antifa groups that defend their communities against nazis and would identify as socialists. You also supported neoliberal policies that widen the wealth gap and create an environment where fascism can grow. Liberals and centrists like you will always enable fascism in the end, even if unwillingly.
@alexelcu @skaphle Sadly, I don't think he is a troll. Many people have the delusion that they are resisting fascism by staying in the middle and both siding. People who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.
@biscuit_overlord The other side is of course doing the same, that is the whole point of the fascist take over. The main struggle today is not left vs right, but fascist vs anti-fascist. See eg Liz Cheney, John Bolton. They are not left in any conceivable meaning. Of course, people should be allowed to vote. But it should not be possible to vote for fascism, ie it should not be possible to vote for the abolishing of voting.
@biscuit_overlord Yes, I agree. And exactly because of that, it becomes more important than ever to exclude the fascists from political discourse to allow for that answer to be found. If you allow the vote for the (fake) easy way out, how can the actual hard solutions compete?
@axeln do you really think that's a solution? What's stopping the other side from doing the same? Also, I'm confused. what do you mean by allowing to vote for the easy way out? Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to vote?
growing up in Portugal in the decades that followed the revolution, antifascist was a word used by the far left (communist) parties. In Spain the word "facha" was used to denounce anyone that was a "nacionalist". I'm a socialist myself but I think it's become a token word to cancel any debate with people from across the aisle.
Sure, #conservatives in liberal democratic societies are anti-fascist. You can't want to conserve parliamentary democracy/monarchy/individual liberty/the constitution and support fascism.
There is the problem however that #fascism is a bit of a slippery term. "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’" Orwelll cautioned. Conservatives do care about law and order and tradition, and some people will call them fascist for doing so.
@axeln and what's stopping people with influence start calling whatever party they don't like fascist to remove them from the board? This is not a solution. People are very susceptible to propaganda, I thought we'd learned that at least by now.
@biscuit_overlord No. I don't want to be forced to accept to "live together" with people that want to overthrow fundamental human rights. Tolerance has limits. Those who act against fundamental human rights have no place in society. @axeln
@axeln also, being unwilling to debate anyone because we're supposed to fight them is not going to solve anything. All it'll do is exacerbate this us vs them feeling. At the end of the day we still have to live together, whether we like it or not.
this is not true. Anti-fascism is inherently left-wing because any serious anti-fascism necessarily includes a rejection of the values that underly fascism: A desire to oppress racial minorities, women, queer people, disabled people and anyone they consider to be lesser.
And unless you want to strip the word "conservative" of all real meaning, any conservative anti-fascism has to be inherently hollow, since conservatism agrees with these underlying values of fascism.
i've had to explain to some people on the right that if they felt attacked when someone said "fuck nazis", it was a them problem, there are actual (sometimes self-described) nazis out there, they don't need to stand in solidarity with them because the left doesn't like them either. Yes, some people on the left will sometimes use the word too easily, and that's a problem, but unless there are hints that it's the case in that particular situation, they shouldn't assume that.
when discussing the kind of people the statements should apply to, they agreed that they were nuts, and didn't share their ideology, they just are not really aware of these people existing and supporting the same politicians as they do, as people will often have rose colored glasses about their political family and ignore the problems. So they think that the left is insane, because it calls the right-wing fascists, they think it's about them, not the actual nazis out there.
the reaction of people to the term "antifascism" is really g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ alarming.
I'm frequently wearing a neutral black t-shirt with "Antifaschist" written in white and a few days ago that triggered an encounter, where a guy reacted with shouting "so you're the opposite of me". People started to be proud of being fascists again 😟
Let's try this: all the isms, ist's, ey's are of no value, we can fight all F'ing day over this faction and that. What is important, is that the government whatever you call it allows for indiviual freedom, compassion and seeking to have equity of all people. Capitalism worked between WWII and mid 70's it was controlled by rule of law so it had limits, when you remove limits is when there are problems.The conservatives of that time were more liberal than many liberals of today.
@RebelGeek99 Sometimes a word gets co-opted and attached to negative connotations. Antifa, short for Anti-fascist is one of these terms. Long ago the right successfully equated Antifa with an imaginary quasi militant left organization and since then use of the term has been subject to this mis-interpretation. Ask a normal suburban left of center person what they think of Antifa, and it will congure images of bomb throwing anarchists. It is too late to fix this.
Absolutely clown shit. Conservatism is the establishment of a permanent underclass, it cannot function without that. Conservatism is the establishment of laws that protect but do not restrict the upper class, and that restrict but do not protect the lower class. Conservatism is the foundation and the root of fascism. Conservatives who claim to be anti fascist are like candy shops that claim to be anti cavity. It’s only plausible deniability because liberals demand that plausibility.
Yes, conservatives are almost fascists. News at eleven.
Maybe a little more serious in the interest of debate, what do you think conservatives are? In my view and experience, conservatives believe in heterosexual marriage family as the basis of society, the right of capital to exploit workers, competition as a natural state, and where people get rights and value via their passport and ethnicity. Those values are adjacent to fascist values, which are essentially the same but in overdrive and antithetical to left values of free expression of love, worker organization, solidarity and universal human rights and equality.
Studies have shown over and over again that the best anti-fascist policy is investment in public services and social security, and conservatives hate that too.
the problem is you can't be anti-fascist and racist, anti-fascist and *phobic, because fascism relies on the fearmongering and hate of a scapegoated collective to advance their agenda (or other non-egalitarian mechanisms). If you are not *phobic, the left has a much easier chance to resonate with you, whereas conservativism, which in the US by the definition is non-egalitarian, resonates with fascism with ease; they kinda had it coming.
Antifaschistische Aktion in Nazi Germany were communist, and the social democratic Iron Front (three arrows) were enemies. Iron Front was anti communist and antifascist, so the AFA who were communists saw them as enemies.
Not to be confused with UK AFA and ANL!
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist so the nazis, fascists, and communists would all have come after me - but I support antifa within our current political context. Solidarity against the common enemy, fascists are scum.
I disagree, anti-fascism has a specific political meaning that historically is absolutely left. Historically, most antifascist partisans were collectivists, communists and socialists.
If you just mean anti-fascist as a word game, that's another thing altogether.
@ianrogers It appears to me that you are not up to date with this topic. It is true that it started with socialists etc in Italy against Mussolini but even at that time some conservative and catholic groups started calling themselves anti-fashists. With the WWII the complete British conservative party does.
@Nowhereman @ianrogers In my humble opinion there is a very clear cut between anti-fascism before the end of WW2 and after. While before it has clear origins in revolutionary/anarchist movements, WW2, especially here in Germany, where I live, moved anti-fascism from revolutionary to a fundamental axiom. Fighting fascism and totalitarianism became part of the definition of establishing a democratic society. Ant-fascism as civic duty, demanded by the constitution. And that makes it neutral to me.
@Nowhereman That's a good explanation. I myself did not grow up in Germany but my nascnet understanding of antifascism was heavily influence by the punks vs skinheads type of antifascism I saw going on in Germany as a teenager. It definitely lacked political depth but its immediacy inspired me, as we had our own nazi skins problem in Canada at the time. I agree that antifascism is core human decency and should not be evaluated against a political spectrum.
being anti-fascist after the inception of fascism was about the most American thing you could do.
There’s a not pretty history of America reluctantly pretending to be anti-fascist and joining in for WW2. Once they did join the rally cry was anti-fascism. The fascist dictators must be stopped.
The ones who cheered for eugenics and kindled friendship with the fathers of fascism left a long lived line of power that we are now being ruled by today.
She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election.
Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.
==
Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election (and a protege of lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who tried to help overturn those election results), has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee election security.
Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts are concerned.
now that direct election rigging is enabled it means that your democracy is gone. the only recourse to get it back is to take anti-democratic action to eliminate all the elements that have sought to lock power away from fair voters
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." — JFK, back when a Kennedy in government wouldn't wreck our health
Organized abuse of office & subversion of the executive branch of power, implanting insurrectionary, anti-constitutional Trump loyalists. Almost none of Trump's nominees deserves to be confirmed by Congress!
DOGE accused of copying entire Social Security database to insecure cloud system Cloud copy of database "lacks any security oversight," whistleblower alleges. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
DOGE accused of copying entire Social Security database to insecure cloud system Cloud copy of database "lacks any security oversight," whistleblower alleges. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
Larry Ellison & Peter Thiel have the basis for a state surveillance system that is saleable to any despot or oligarch on the planet. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
The Trump administration has tapped Palantir — the notorious data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel — to compile information on people in the United States for a “master database,” creating an easy way to cross-reference…
Kasparov's book, "Winter Is Coming", describes the descent of Russia from the hopeful aftermath of the Soviet collapse to the rise of Putin's savage kleptocracy. It was published a year before Trump rode the money train to power in 2016, but we didn't take heed.
From the size of rulers' portraits to the dangers of creeping corruption, Garry has much to offer that is worth our consideration.
Many of you are too young to remember the Kent State shootings by the National Guard because of Vietnam Protests
The Kent State shootings (also known as the Kent State massacre or May 4 massacre) were the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio, United States. The shootings took place on May 4, 1970, during a rally opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces, as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus and the draft. Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom sustained permanent paralysis. Students Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, died on the scene, while William Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna shortly afterward.
(Music And Song Courtesy:Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)I DO NOT MAKE ANY MONEY OFF OF MY VIDEOS I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS VIDEO OR ANY MUSIC IN THIS VID...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that Canada will keep troops in Latvia through to 2029, as part of a mission to deter Russian aggression in Europe
🇧🇪🇺🇦 “Belgium is ready to send troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire,” — Foreign Minister.
———
🇧🇪🇺🇦 «Бельгія готова направити війська до України після припинення вогню», — міністр закордонних справ.
Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action Advocates fear such settlements will "financially ruin" the AI industry. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
Both as an author who has had multiple books ripped off by AI trainers and as someone who hates generative AI just on principle, I see no problem with any of this.
I don't even feel like being bothered to post a "playing the world's smallest violin for them" on this one. That's too much work. They'll just have to imagine it. They can use their image diffusion systems to generate an image of it I guess.
The so-called "AI industry" has no actual path to profit, as what they're trying to sell is basically a novelty, one that's unfit for 99% of purposes it's being shoe-horned into.
And if your "industry" relies on dismantling copyright and stealing from others, it deserves to die.
The "financial ruin" these grifters are truly afraid of is that the money-hose from credulous and/or greedy investors to keep this otherwise unprofitable bubble inflated will be turned off.
Favourite comment: Everyone else is told they must buy a book to read it, or borrow it from a public library with the special exceptions allowed for libraries. Businesses can’t skirt the law because it’s inconvenient or expensive.
Let's face it: Social media is a voluntary, emotional and logical roller coaster. It's okay to step off the ride every once in a while. Some days, you are not tall enough for the ride anyhow.
It's easy to slip unconsciously into the idea that your people, your community needs you, needs your feet ready to go at the hamster wheel at a moment's notice. That's also how you know it's time to let someone else drive the wheel for a while.
I have it a bit easier on Mastodon than I imagine you do because there are maybe a few dozen people that actually care about the things I post about. My volume levels are lower when I go off on a tangent.
Even so, I have to remind myself sometimes I put myself out here because it is supposed to fill a desire to connect and converse with folks I want to learn from and about.
FWIW going forward I will personally try to like every Mushroom pic you post...
With respect, I'd take this further. If social media is annoying you in any way, it's a great idea just to forget it. People lived, very happily I might add, before it existed. The question for social media is the question for any other form of tech. Is it benefiting me more than it's burdening me? If so, it's great. If not... Nobody has ever threatened me to keep posting. I am nothing special, the community will live, again very happily, without me. That last may not apply to @briankrebs but it applies to the vast majority of people, certainly to me. If it doesn't apply, then we go back to the benefits and burdens. If I am really doing good work on SM, it is benefiting me and that benefit gets balanced against the issues it's causing like every other benefit. If that benefit and all the others is overbalanced, then nobody forces me to keep posting/reading/liking, the world is full of things to do. @pixelate
Yes, I've been doing that for several weeks now. I read a science fiction trilogy that was kind of depressing, but good. Now I'm reading a book I've had for thirty years, but I've never had the time for it before.
I hate to say it, but the Fediverse is, even (or perhaps especially) without the influence of anyone's financial best interests, still an echo chamber. Even if I agree with the rest of the echo chamber, it still is one. I know I can come here and post a perfectly reasonable take, and have a bunch of perfectly reasonable people agree with me. That's why I rarely say anything about politics here. If and when I do, I get very little if any pushback from anyone who isn't trolling. That's just the thing: I don't come here because no one ever challenges my ideas, and I don't think that actively trying to avoid ever having one's ideas challenged is healthy, frankly.
fwiw totally serious: i have appreciated the engagement you're willing to endure, knowing the mentality of people that would be provoked by thoughtful and honorable positions and values.
you were not screaming into any void, you were a harmony that at least i benefit from a lot. i felt less alone. encouraging people in my field to be critical of their work and actions. AND you bring important information to people that make better decisions occasionally because of it. 💗💗💗
"...if you want a search experience without AI-generated images, without Search Assist answers, and without Duck.ai prompts and entry points, start your searches on noai.duckduckgo.com instead of duckduckgo.com...."
They've had this for a while actually. I think we should all use the URL because it hopefully sends the message that we want nothing to do with any of that, but it's definitely not a good sign that we have to do this in the first place to (hopefully) get it through to them. Such things should be opt in (or, you know, not at all, no one needs a search engine with """AI""" """features""" — no one) not opt out.
If there's a way to trick Firefox or Chrome into doing this by default, I haven't found it. Firefox has a SETTING for it, but when you add the site, it insists it's an incorrect URL and I need to fix it. Chrome just has check boxes for "popular" search engines, and no visible URLs at all. There may be something farther down in the weeds to enter it manually, but I haven't found it yet if so.
@jstevenyork Yeh I use this method on Edge and Librewolf for both DDG's html and noai subdomains and it works. I think there was a gotcha for html, but it was obvious when it broke.
Okay, thanks. That seems to work. Being somewhat dyslexic, typing in character-based gibberish like the end of this by memory, even when that's just looking from one window and typing in another, is very challenging for me. (And the reason that modern password rules and second factor authentication sometimes make things nearly unusable for me. I can make and even remember truly strong passwords, but with MY rules. Theirs often break my brain.)
That's exactly what I already tried, and exactly what doesn't work. Didn't realized I needed a fully formatted http url, but that doesn't fix it either.
I went to noai.duckduckgo.com and made a search for "test." Then I cut the resulting URL from the left, up to where "test" was. I pasted it into the search URL setup in Firefox, inserted "%s" where "test" had been, and it works for me in Firefox in Linux Mint. [Edit: After also selecting it in the drop-down at the top of the screen of the Search section.]
@mikemccaffrey There's a certain class of AI image which makes me retch or feel seasick (the "uncanny valley" effect). But, I would rather not trigger that.
Putin's IBS
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content