The top comment on this thread contains a conversation (argument) about Chomsky’s view on the term “genocide,” as well as his verbiage discussing Serbian-run concentration camps.

I listened to Understanding Power fairly recently and it definitely changed my outlook and broke me out of the lull of neoliberal self-satisfaction, and helped introduce me to other leftist writers. So I’m a fan of Chomsky’s, but it doesn’t sound like he had that good of a take on the Bosnian genocide. He seems to only reserve the word genocide for the Holocaust so as to keep its significance, and despite supporting a UN fact-finding commission that did find Serbia was running concentration camps, he refers to said camps as “refugee camps,” instead, and seems to infer people had the freedom to stay or leave as they please (even if this was technically true, I doubt it was practically true).

So, not a good look for him, even though he had other viewpoints that I’ve been strongly influenced by.

Have you happened to read the book? He has a chapter dedicated to his decision to call it technofeudalism rather than capitalism, hypercapitalism, technocapitalism, etc. Basically he’s saying profits have been decoupled from a company’s value, and that it’s no longer about creating a product to exchange for profit (which, in his words, are beholden to market competition) but instead about extracting rent (which is not beholden to competition – his example is while a landowner’s neighbors increase the values of their properties, the landowner’s property value also increases).

Anyways he describes Amazon, Apple store, Google Play, cloud service providers, as fiefdoms that collect rent from actual producers of products (physical goods, but also applications), and don’t actually produce anything, themselves, besides access to customers, while also extracting value from users of their technologies through personal information. They’re effectively leasing consumer attention in the same way landowners leased their lands to workers.

It sounds pretty accurate to me, but I haven’t had much time to chew on it. What’s your take on that idea?

Actually, you’re not being clear, at all. The article you linked, yourself, notes that the 37 murdered political candidates were local government candidates murdered between September and May, not national candidates. Far cry from your insinuation that 37 of Claudia Sheinbaum’s political opponents were murdered so she could win by the hands of the cartels.

Sorry, buy-it-for-life

I kinda like the idea of a phone that is usually small, but I can make big by unfolding it if I want to. But I do agree that the fewer moving parts, the sturdier and more BIFL. It’s just that BIFL is not really attainable anyways in the current state of the phone market due to software support obsoletion.

I’d like to see a small eink phone or the tiny matchbook from Her.

“You are shredding the UN charter…with your own hands.”

As he shreds the UN charter…with his own hands.

Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.

In the same way that I think it’s noble when people try to live waste free, I think it’s noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it’s unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.

I dont really fuck around with the GUI stuff tbh…I’ve always just done ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

I guess my issues with the installer have mostly stemmed around the software raid and manual partitioning. Simply installing on a single drive isnt bad.

Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I’d rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I’m already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don’t do much customizing because I’d rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.

Granted I’ve never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I’m up and running. I don’t want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.

I don’t know, unfortunately. GF watched it on Netflix while she was in Portugal. Then we watched it together in the States, by means of the high seas. Matey.

My GF recently introduced my to a show called Please Like Me. It’s out of Australia from a comedian named Josh Thomas.

Don’t look at the IMDB score or anything like that – this show is pure art. It’s got a lot of heart and the cinematography is better than it has any right to be.

Please Like Me is honestly better than Fleabag in that it is a dramedy that covers real issues, but it resolves more satisfyingly and feels more grounded in reality. It is so good and nobody has heard of it.

I love Ted Lasso season 1, and season 2 to an extent is also very good, but it kinda lost its footing in season 3, IMO.

The longer episodes are not as tight, writing-wise, and the story suffers a quite a bit because of it. Still a good show, but it went from “This might be one of the best shows I’ve ever seen,” to “Yeah it’s not bad, but…”

Hoffman is one of my favorite youtubers. Great presentation, lots of knowledge, straightforward. I know he is the most popular coffee youtuber and that may peeve some people off, but he is the most popular for a reason – because he’s the best.

His aeropress videos really helped me make the best cup of coffee I have ever made – every time – even though I don’t use his exact method. A couple hours watching his videos is well worth the time.

Hey! I’m not on the toilet.

right now…

US colleges after 10,000 Palestinian children are killed: “We need to stop antisemitism on campuses at all costs!”

Dude. I found a working baratza preciso at savers for $11 a couple days after I realized the same thing and decided I’d start hunting for an espresso grinder.

It was the perfect confluence of timing, interest in making different style coffees, and unwillingness to spend a fortune.

Undoubtedly my best thrift store find.

Now I can get pretty much like 75% of the way to real espresso (won’t get crema, but whatever) with my free secondhand aeropress and my $11 grinder. It’s amazing. Another $15 for a milk frother and I’m making yummy cappuccino style drinks easy peasy

There are a lot of weird cringey exchanges in this show similar to this that end up being stylized writing to trick or subvert the viewer. You should continue watching

Problem is usually wars are justified by money or lies or politics, not by things like “defending democracy” or “stopping a genocide”

Those justifications are usually made up at the time it becomes convenient or politically necessary to enter a war.

First heard that in The Boondocks. Lol

Obviously this article is meant to cast the Pope in a bad light, but honestly I’m not going to fault the dude for invoking historical figures who proved to be beneficial to his own order.

I mean, how many times do people invoke the image of Teddy Roosevelt in the US? Dude was hot for war, all the time. Or Abe Lincoln, who, prior to freeing the slaves, would claim that whites were still superior to blacks (depending on his political audience), and would advocate for the relocation of blacks to another country, similar to the US government’s efforts made against Native Americans.

Invoking historical figures is so often a bad move, but how can you fault a person for not knowing these things? Roosevelt and Lincoln are gods in the US. Andrew Jackson was the king of the free man, a paragon of libertarianism, rose straight up from the ground to the presidency. But I’m sure the Native Americans felt otherwise.

As for the Pope thinking the attack was provoked by NATO and not wanting to condemn Russia, well that’s kinda horseshit. Because Russia deserves condemnation for preemptive war in the same way that NATO deserves blame for outfitting more bases along the Russian border, and the US deserves blame for their interference in Ukrainian politics in 2014.