Nearly 12 hours of Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose (1959-1960)
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[Meta/CW: I honestly can't immediately tell how much of this is just rambling, so feel free to ignore any of it that doesn't seem relevant or sensible.]
@clarfonthey FWIW, one thing I've learned just in the last couple of years is to be aware of the difference between an emotional argument and a rational one -- as in, which type of argument is this?
In my case (and I'm guessing in yours, too), I tend to only assert my position if I believe I have a pretty firm rational basis for it -- but this is not necessarily true of everyone.
...and if it's the case that the other person is arguing more from an emotional reaction than from evidence, the next question is whether we want to wade into what's behind that (do we have the resources and is it worth spending them).
There's pretty much always a truth behind an honest emotional reaction, even if the reaction is misdirected (due to being based on a misunderstanding or even misinformation).
The value of trying to engage rationally with an emotional argument, I'd say, is that even though the emotions may be misdirected, there is the potential for you to learn the truth of what is driving it. (Knowing that someone believes an untruth is itself a truth.)
If the emotions are in line with the reality of the situation, then you have a new rational argument to consider (even if the other person didn't explicitly state it).
If the reaction is not in line with reality, then you may be learning two truths: (1) the belief that is triggering the reaction, and (2) the knowledge of a potential pattern.
(By "pattern", I mean: Where one person has had an emotional reaction due to a misunderstanding, there may others who do so as well -- so it may be possible to work out a counterargument, or a counter-presentation, that will resolve this disagreement more than just this one time.)
@MichaelWhelan When I click on 2/2, I see 1/2 above it -- so probably just a transient issue.
@vantablack Are those the ones that pretend to be people but everything they post is sort of disjointed?
@amcooper We will just have to see how things go; it's difficult to come up with a response-strategy without really knowing which direction the attack will be from.
If I used my phone to record music and mixed it on inexpensive hardware running free software, would that be cyberpunk? :blobcatthinking:
@amcooper That's what I'm wondering too. It's not yet clear to me what the mechanism of enforcement would be -- or even technically could be, beyond governments blocking access to IP addresses or seizing domain-names.
@openrightsgroup The question in my mind is how this will affect fedi.
I do know that I bloody well will not ever require age verification here on TootCat.
@rnd I'm now thinking of Mork from Ork exclaiming "fly and be free!" as he flings eggs into the air.
@artemis There's a song by Billy Joel which includes two lines I always found very affirming and healing:
I know you're an emotional girl
It took a lot for you to not lose your faith in this world
What I got from that is "it's okay to have strong feelings, to be sensitive -- there's a lot of messed-up stuff out there, so of course you're going to have a reaction to it".
@0xabad1dea Possibly they are updating "trusted" boot signatures? I seem to recall that being a thing...
Welcome to the Instagram Instaban club! I was banned right after posting my first comment on a friend's post in Threads, no actionable reason given, and my appeals (which included the requested photo) were denied.
(This was before the push for ID laws started being a thing.)
@rnd If politicians are proposing bad policy because it seems like an easy political victory, then I call that malicious (in that it puts personal power as a higher priority than making good policy).
The system is in many ways set up to reward such choices, but that doesn't make them not-malicious.
[added] ...but, perhaps more to the point, they're not truly grassroots/populist movements -- they're movements driven by someone who stands to gain by offering a solution that sounds obvious but is actually awful, not by people arriving at that solution on their own and then organizing to push for it.
@Serena Yeah. One of my own servers -- and all the sites on it -- have become hopelessly sluggish as a result, and I'm having to migrate everything onto a larger number of servers to make them usable again.
I don't think CloudFlare is a good way of handling this, though -- especially when it makes the problem worse.
What I want to try (experimental, may not be sufficiently effective): https://wooz.dev/BotID
TFW you can no longer access StackOverflow because the bot-check they put into place to stop LLMs from scraping their content and driving users towards using LLMs instead of actually reading StackOverflow loops endlessly and won't let you in.
Guess I'll have to ask an LLM. :blobcatupsidedown:
@rnd Yeah, but who is pushing those populist movements? Why is "do anything, even if it's stupid" gaining traction over "what are good ways to solve this problem"?
Maybe I'm being naïve about how most people are, but... my sense is that whenever there's a mass movement to do something stupid, there's usually a lot of money which has been spent to clear the path for it.