Forum Federato

And when all these mechanisms — the “more just, more human systems” I’m talking about — fail to do their job, what can we do? Go to war, I guess? But I’m not happy about that. I don’t like war.

I am quite willing to celebrate a world without Kirk if in fact that’s what we get. (Last I heard was “critical condition.”) But I can’t get •that• happy about it. Whether we celebrate his death or denounce gun violence — both are important, both are appropriate! — we must above all notice the failure of everything that should have prevented us from even getting here. •That• is the real crisis.

/end

When social opprobrium fails to stuff a turd like Charlie Kirk into some powerless far corner of society where he can’t hurt people, that’s when a turd like Kirk gets shot.

When democracy and the law fail to reign in corporate greed and harm and cruelty, that’s when you get a Luigi.

When the press and civil society fail to stop a rising authoritarian, that’s when you get WWII.

6/

The pearl-clutching centrist crowd likes to imagine that shaming and shunning are the slippery slope that leads to political violence.

They have it backwards.

Shaming and shunning are the •alternative• to political violence. So is meaningful democracy. So is a free press that remains steadfastly grounded in reality. So is a judiciary that applies the law, however flawed, with actual judgement and justice.

5/

The first tragedy here is that we’ve all even heard of Charlie Kirk in the first place.

That dude should have spent his long useless life holed up in his basement ostracized by his neighbors, shunned, shamed, legally constrained, and anonymous to almost everyone.

4/

The assassination of a vile person indicates a failure of all the more just, more humane sorts of systems that should have stopped such a person from ever being in a position of power in the first place. Popehat compares celebrating political violence to celebrating war, and I think he has a point: both war and political violence are an indication of failure.

3/

Charlie Kirk is/was a vile person whose presence in this world made it worse. A world without him is a better world. If he dies, just as with, say, Osama Bin Laden, my feeling will be “good riddance.” I’d celebrate his death, but…not so much his assassination.

2/

I have complicated feelings that are not entirely dissimilar to Popehat’s thread here, but are…well…more complicated.

1/ https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p/post/3lyiwvin3g22n

I will say this in defense of AI: their AI-based support blew me off much more promptly than a human would have.

The sad irony here is that I’d probably have shelled out the $12/mo for the lowest tier paid plan, but now I refuse to just on principle.

Anyone have any similar-shaped products to recommend (semi-structured shared documents, shared on a team, live editing, low friction)?

We have Google Docs, which will be…fiiiiiine, whatever, but I’m always interested in good alternatives.

I was considering using Notion with students to help keep some of their projects organized this semester, but it’s become AI-bloaty in a way that is meddlesome and annoying.

I wrote to them to see if I could turn off the AI features, and got a mildly snotty AI-generated response about how they can only be disabled for Business- and Enterprise-tier plans, but if I don’t want those features I’m “not required to use them.”

“Pay us to disable the crap you didn’t want” was…a nonstarter with me.

This computer science professor agrees with @dnsprincess. The humanities are crucial.

I mean, it cuts the other way too: a lot of the credulous nonsense about AI would melt away if people had a better idea how to think about software systems and mathematical models, what they really do and don’t do, how to look at them critically.

The key in my view is people having multiple ways of seeing and not narrowing themselves.
https://infosec.exchange/@dnsprincess/115140939294365490

Going all-in on AI is going just great over at GitHub / Microsoft.

Top three community discussions for the year:
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions?discussions_q=is%3Aopen+sort%3Atop+created%3A%3E%3D2024-09-04

@adelinej
“Give them the black eye” means “discuss this with in our various social circles and express outrage so as to damage their reputation and keep attention on it.” It is easy to underestimate just how real and how impactful that kind of social shift can be.

@cockneylaurie
I mean…we should not be surprised, but we should still be outraged. It’s important not to skip that crucial step; assuming outrage and immediately moving past it is how complacency and acceptance set in.

And yes, there are ample alternate hosting options for the Streisand Effect to kick in. But we have to be sure to give Google and the Trump admin that black eye, every time.

@cockneylaurie

“maybe he should just use Linux”

Spelling out the point of the snark there: the the post is not about what platform he’s using; it’s about the behavior of the US government and Google.

The headline here is that

(1) the increasingly authoritarian US government demanded that Google suppress videos serving the public interest because those videos are embarrassing to government officials, and

(2) Google readily over-complied with that request, deleting not just the videos but the entire channel.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/fda-official-youtube-videos

@davidcelis Thank you.

My response (including screenshot in case they nuke it / me):
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/171322#discussioncomment-14263534