Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2h

I have an Oral-B IQ or whatever and it's hateful, but in the way that all electric toothbrushes are hateful. I've been using it for months and I can't figure out how to use it without dribbling.

It also requires constant disassembly and cleaning or it builds up gross yuck so don't recommend.

1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 3h

Good morning

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 23h

Sorry, I shouldn't be a buzzkill, it's just a topic I'm personally invested in and pretty bummed out about.

2

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 23h

No I think you're pointing people in the right direction, or at least the best direction we have - if nothing else these open platforms have a more plausible data export story than the corporate-owned ones. It's just that most people are going to find migration much more fraught than promised.

1 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 23h

(and moving your post history is DOA, but that's a secondary concern)

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 23h

As one of the few people who actually moved a fediverse presence to completely different software, the Mastodon monoculture has already practically embraced and extinguished migration on the Fediverse. Most people don't realize how fragile and out-of-your-control moving your followers is there.

2 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 23h

Yeah. I just wish the people building these learned less from the Californian Ideology and crypto-libertarian "sovereign freehold" ideals, and more from the pre-Internet digital citizenry movement built around community timesharing servers. So many systems encode the seeds of their own precarity.

1 2

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 1d

Good morning

1 4

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

Good morning

2

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

It's nothing to the RSI they suffer from roaming the internet, ceaselessly discovering new people to aggressively, even obsessively not care about. Poor souls. Just minding their own business, replying at random, when out of nowhere someone imagines that they care, and they must defend their apathy!

1 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

I too grew up on the extremes of sincerity culture and it's an awful place. It's like an acid bath for every "inessential" custom that "merely" binds society together. And it elevates intentions over everything.

1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

Sincerity is so overrated. Coming from a partly fundamentalist background, it's painfully clear that Western progressivism has failed to deconstruct this poison pill. So we hobble ourselves with a lack of ritual AND a lack of meaningful truth. jessitron.com/2025/10/05/r...

Ritual & its Consequences: book summary

I like how they make the title sound like ritual is a problem. Our culture believes that, I liked to believe it, and so the book is more appealing. (book on amazon, pdf excerpt) The book is not abo…

jessitron.com

1 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

I'm thinking about this in light of my years in that camp and... yeah, I find this plausible. In particular, the venn diagram of "libertarians" and "people who are good at Governance" is two circles fleeing each other at relativistic speeds.

Spooky Laminariales Fax Machine 📠 @kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social · 3d

Libertarians go power crazy quicker than most anybody. Their whole political ideology is based around the awful and unjust things they know they'd do if they could.

1 4

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

Ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for Tiramisu

1 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

Oh yeah sorry the above reply is still bizarre and vaguely botlike. I'm just so used to that kind of addled reply on the socials. And I wanted to rag on Scalzi's gross burritos.

2 1

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

I dunno... I'm terrified about what's coming down the pipe for keeping my kids' healthcare, and I'm nowhere near the worst case scenario for these cuts. Millions of people who, sadly, don't give two shits about Portland are about to get the shock of their lives in 3 weeks and they need to know why.

4

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

As far as it being a "dirty business" - well, there I can only guess it was a reference to @scalzi.com's well-known burrito blasphemies, and the reasonable assumption that if he were to own a church it would be for purposes of spreading that filthy gospel

2

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 2d

Maybe they interpreted it as "owns a church organization"? Which TBF if I hadn't followed the saga of the Scalzi church building I would have too; I was very much raised with "a church is PEOPLE not a building" and had lots of exposure to landless churches

2 1

Reposted by Avdi Grimm

Hex Anderson @dexanderson.com · 3d

This is the thing I wish I could get through a lot of Dem politician's heads. Your colleagues in congress believe you are demonic. And they mean that *literally*.

Talia Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 3d

i do not respect this belief but it is enlightening to wrap your head around the fact that a significant number of your political rivals believe you are literally in league with satan, and act with concomitant zeal and brutality

6 140 670

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 3d

Good morning

2

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 5d

something something Western hyper-individualist fragmentation cult something something

Maladroithe @maladroithe.bsky.social · 5d

I once pointed out there are many Jewish rites and ceremonies that can ONLY be performed in a group; and gentiles telling Jews to abstain from those rites and ceremonies if there isn’t a sufficiently anti-Zionist congregation in driving distance is insulting, and some dude called me a “z*o cunt”

This Is Completely Unprepared, and I Am Real @jsx.bsky.social · 5d

1) my synagogue openly calls for an end to the genocide in Gaza, and it doesn't stop of us from receiving threats and requiring security.

2) "just don't go to the only synagogue(s) in your location on Yom Kippur" is a ridiculous ask of observant Jews.

2

Reposted by Avdi Grimm

Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 5d

I'm not a big fan of Jack Dorsey but I have to admit that one of his better ideas was, instead of getting into posting wars with users, he would go off to a yoga castle and eat hallucinogens for two weeks

38 540 3K

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 5d

I'm just here to say your current account name is pretty great

Reposted by Avdi Grimm

This Is Completely Unprepared, and I Am Real @jsx.bsky.social · Nov 3

CHRISTIANS: this verse in the old testament says X
JEWS: It doesn't say that
CHRISTIAN: maybe. Who knows?
JEWS: we do. That's not in the Hebrew
CHRISTIAN: no one knows what the original language means
JEWS: Yes we do. We can read it.
CHRISTIAN: It's lost forever

29 230 1.2K

Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 5d

"Look we only architected and built a mob colosseum and poured millions into getting people to use our mob colosseum. If mobs are gathering and listening to demagogues with none of the usual social barriers to listening to hate speech, that's a social problem and thus out of our realm"

6