I read this fascinating thread while listening to Qobuz and by sheer coincidence, this track came on and it seems horribly appropriate:
#IfYouTolerateThisYourChildrenWillBeNext Manic Street Preachers on Qobuz https://open.qobuz.com/track/55341288
https://mastodon.social/@sellathechemist/116075306722957554
@… - The Russians cannot be trusted. At best the Russians will buy time, and then have another go.
When will European governments call a spade a spade and really push to disconnect from Russian oil and gas? If that means buying it from the US interim so be it. But then really push hard for energy and military security.
Russia is NOT going away. Nor is its hatred of Europe which is why the've been waging war on us in myriad ways for the last 20 years.
4/end
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/14/alexei-navalny-poisoning-death-russia-frog-toxin
A: "I don't understand how you're so relaxed when you don't hear from the kids. Everyone in my family is like, 'msg me right when you get home!'"
me: "Ah, [13yo] is fine. He went home and is 100% watching videos when he's not supposed to be, hoping we forgot about him so that he can get away w/ as much screen time as he can. If he were stuck on the subway or something, he'd have messaged. Actually, I'd be more worried if he DID message.&qu…
#FotoVorschlag 'Adventliches' / Advent
My wife was gifted two #Lego sets. And this was one of it. It fits super cool to the season and into our appartement.
Happy third #advent if…
from my link log —
Connecting an ASR33 Teletype to an ESP32.
https://www.revk.uk/2020/12/connecting-asr33-teletype-to-esp32.html
saved 2020-12-08
Western Digital said on its Q2 earnings call it had "pretty much sold out" its 2026 HDD capacity, and that the consumer sector accounted for 5% of total revenue (Muhammad Zuhair/Wccftech)
https://wccftech.com/western-digital-has-no-more-hdd-capacity-left-out…
farewell to my one true book format. #books
We have reached a stage where we have to turn to the jesters for truth.
From: @…
https://flipboard.com/@thenewsdesk/cel
I have the distinct impression that we could use most American "sci-fi" TV series (which seem to have a kink for post-apocalyptical scenographies) as a diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum.
For a moment, let's leave aside the tons of right-wing propaganda "hidden" in plain sight, and their excessive reliance on boring & worn out tropes (religious & cultish bullshit, irrational lack of communication & excess of anti-social behaviour, all vs all, ultra-low-iq characters*, psychotic & irrationally treacherous characters*, ultra-inconsistent character development used to justify "unexpected" plot twists, rampant anti-intellectualism...).
What could be used as a diagnosis tool is the incredible amount of strong inconsistencies that we can find in them**. It throws me out of the story every single time; and I suspect that it takes a certain kind of "uncommon personality" to feel that way about it, because otherwise these series wouldn't be so popular without real widespread criticism beyond cliches like "too slow", "it loses steam towards the end of the season", etc.
Many of those plots start in a gold mine of potentially powerful ideas... yet they consistently provide us with dirt & clay instead, while side-lining the "good stuff" as if it was too complicated for the populace.
Do you feel strongly about it? Do you feel like you can't verbalize it without being criticised as "too negative", or "too picky", or an "unbearable snob"? Do you wonder why it seems like nobody around shares your discomfort with these stories?
* : I feel this is a bit like the chicken & egg problem. Has the media conditioned part of American society to behave like dumb psychopaths as if it was something "natural", or is the media reflecting what was already there? Also, could we use other societies as models for these stories... just for a change? Please?
** : Just a tiny example: a "brilliant" engineer who builds a bridge out of fence parts and who doesn't bother to perform the most basic tests before trying it in a real setting and suffer the consequences: the bridge failing and her falling into the void. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.