• 3 Posts
  • 156 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • He did do what other rich folk do. Based himself in a tax haven and, initially, tried to challenge extradition.

    Not many rich folk end up on trial. But even fewer end up absconding with their cash, never to be seen again. He is the normal kind of rich folk: he assumed he would get away with it because he is a born-rich kid who has never faced a consequence in his life.




  • That just forces everyone who wants/needs the bigger ecosystem to leave Mastodon and join Threads. It’s daft.

    The beauty of the Fediverse is that different instances can make different choices and people can choose their instance based on the choices they prefer. The Fediverse is not a monolith and demanding that it become one is just wildly missing the point.





  • Please don’t draw parallels between this self-serving nonsense and trans identities.

    You haven’t linked the CNN article you mention so it’s difficult to respond to your post, even after mentally stripping it of nonsense.

    We tend to end up with defined ages for eg driving, consent, criminal responsibility, etc because it is difficult to use more nuanced criteria. In practice, the law does (or can) take nuance into account (except for things like being able to have a driving licence or legally buy alcohol). Sometimes that is for good, humanitarian reasons (eg an adult with learning difficulties who cannot comprehend the consequences of their actions) or for misguided, vengeful reasons (eg trying a child as an adult because of the severity of their crime), or just plain prejudice (eg treating Black and/or poor children as greater threats than white, middle-class children).

    There’s no easy way to draw lines, and no easy way to allow nuance while excluding prejudice. But “whatever the accused decides is convenient for them, personally, right now” is never going to be a criteria, for obvious reasons.


  • Ablism would be something like planning a company outing, and choosing the location up a tall, steep hill when other options were available, specifically because you don’t like the fact that your coworker has asthma.

    It doesn’t have to be deliberately malicious to be ableism. It’s often just thoughtlessness.

    The social model of disability distinguishes between ‘impairment’, which is some functional limitation, and ‘disability’ which is created by barriers to people with an impairment. Most of those barriers exist because their designers just didn’t think about it and/or were not required to. The building with steps and no ramps, the information provided by written sign only, the flashing lights which can trigger seizures. They’re not (usually) a product of irrational hate, just ignorance and carelessness, and in some cases a conscious refusal to cater for a minority need because of costs or aesthetics.

    The effect on disabled people is much the same, whether it was deliberate or careless, of course.


  • It’s an interesting question.

    Musk was forced to buy Twitter after accidentally promising to do so in legally binding terms. So, to a very great extent, there is no endgame, just the endless flailing of a rich kid who can’t comprehend just how much luck (rather than genius) got him where he is.

    But, his supporters are primarily far right authoritarians, and his partners in Twitter include some extremely authoritarian regimes which have an interest in being able to suppress speech (and have had more help to do so with X compared to old Twitter). And his idea of free speech is being able to say whatever he likes without criticism, which means silencing any ideas that could possibly be construed as criticism, whether directed at him or not. The standard far right nonsense. If you point out the existence of racism you’re attacking white people. If you point out the existence of sexism you’re attacking men. If you choose not to advertise on a website promoting far right ideas, you’re attacking him personally.

    Is he trying to turn Twitter into a more successful version of Gab or Truth Social, or is that just a by-product of his peculiar psyche? Is it with the intention of influencing elections, or is it just that his particular type of narcissism happens to be very useful to authoritarians? Are the ideas of the far right anything other than extreme narcissism anyway?

    He’s not an evil genius but evil clowns can do a lot of damage too.



  • Two of us running a quiet little wine bar, him behind the bar, me taking a break at the back of the room. Three lads come in and we both recognised them as the ones who had trashed one of the rooms upstairs the previous week. When my co-worker refused to serve them, one of them grabbed a bottle and hit it against the bar, trying (and failing) to break it for a weapon.

    I saw red. All 5’4" of me advancing in fury, yelling “get out” repeatedly at the top of my voice. They looked at me, froze for a second, then scrambled out the door.

    I was quite impressed with myself until I turned round and saw one of our regulars, a great big bear of a man, had heard the commotion and come in from the back room to see what was going on.