WatDabney

joined 11 months ago
[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 11 points 2 months ago

So... Meta's "plan" is to dodge responsibility?

Gee whiz... I sure never saw that coming....

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 months ago

Just be patient.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 months ago (11 children)

With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

People on every single relatively small forum ever in the history of the internet have gotten frustrated and angry when other people do that, because it's spammy.

Do you not know the history of the term "spam?"

It's from a Monty Python skit

That's what the front page of a forum (or the inbox of an email account) looks like when someone "spams" it - like "spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam."

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 months ago

The part that really gets me is the news media taking him seriously.

I keep waiting for a moment when some reporter is going to start talking about Trump's latest, then just stop in the middle and say, "You know? That's it. I just cant do it any more. This guy is a blithering lunatic and I'm done pretending he's not."

Not like I actually expect that - I'm much more cynical than that. Still though...

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 80 points 2 months ago (6 children)

This is an example of a thing I've said repeatedly about Trump - I'm willing to bet that he's 100% sincere about this. He's not dissembling or diverting - he actually, sincerely believes that he had every right to interfere in whatever ways he wanted.

Why?

Because he's a near-total sociopath. I don't think that concepts of truth and falsehood or right and wrong are even coherent to him. I think his entire measure of everything is wholly personal - if he wants it, then it's right and if he doesn't, then it's wrong, and if he believes it, then it's true, and if he doesn't, then it's false. And it really is that simple. It's not that he lies, but that he lives in a fantasy world in which whatever he believes is true and whatever he wants is right.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 months ago

Pretty much.

Don't get too hung up on the name - it's just a personal bit of shorthand. What I'm talking about is the actual phenomenon. Parrish's paintings are just the closest popular representation I've seen of it.

It seems to happen most often in late summer, when (in my area at least) afternoon thundershowers are relatively common. There are times when the clouds will roll in, but they're not dense enough to bring rain, and just at dusk, the light through those clouds is diffused but oddly clear, so in spite of the fact that the light level is low overall, colors, and especially blues and greens, really pop.

In HSL terms, it's essentially 100% saturation but only maybe 30% light, and since the light shifts toward red/orange, the blues and greens are the colors that stand out the most.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

What I call Parrish light - the distinctive tone that's prominent in Maxfield Parrish's paintings.

It's a relatively subdued but clear reddish orange that I see most commonly with relatively uniform but thin thunderclouds at dusk. It makes blues and greens much more vivid, in spite of the fact that the overall amount of light is relatively low. And it's glorious.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 months ago

If he’s trying to say “Biden wanted this but Trump already started it”

Which "he?"

Zuckerberg blames it exclusively and entirely on the Biden administration.

that tells me BOTH parties requested it. Hence, if you don’t like Biden because of this, you don’t want Trump either. And of course, vice versa. In short, this policy is not unique to either party or administration.

Exactly, but that's explicitly not what Zuckerberg is saying. He's saying that it was entirely and exclusively Biden, which is a lie.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Why did Zuckerberg choose now to make this announcement and publicly reveal the inside play?

There's actually a tidbit that the author notes that points at the obvious reason for it.

In his letter to Congressional investigators, he flat-out said what everyone else has been saying for years now.

In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content...

The author then goes on to say though:

A few clarifications. The censorship began much earlier than that, from March 2020 at the very least if not earlier.

What's significant about that? Trump was president then.

So Zuckerberg is rather obviously trying to pin entirely on the Biden administration a set of policies that were already in place under Trump.

To what end? Obviously to do the same thing he did in 2016 and 2020 - to overtly promote Trump.

This particular one certainly not coincidentally plays into the whole Republican narrative that the Democrats are oppressive and dishonest, which in turn is meant to provide a context for their intention to dispute the election results when Trump loses. Zuckerberg is simply doing his part to further that narrative.

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 29 points 2 months ago

Just the opposite. I'm the one who goes off to do something else at family gatherings because they just talk and talk and talk.

Though it's not so much that they talk so much as that it's just the same stuff over and over - alternately, my brother slavishly regurgitating right-wing techbro quasi-libertarian bullshit and my mom reciting in excruciating detail some anecdote that's maybe vaguely related to the topic at hand and that she's told countless times already, because it's her go-to every time something in that vicinity comes up.

And what I wouldn't give to know them less well...

[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why do you people RANDOMLY scatter ALL caps words through EVERYTHING you write?

Is it SOME sort of Pavlovian THING? Like you see a SENTENCE with a random assortment OF all caps words, and THAT says to you that IT'S the kind of FAKE truth you PREFER?

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