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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 1h

I have so much admiration for someone who both undergoes this sort of road to Damascus conversion and is willing to be honest about it.

Partisan @partpartisan.bsky.social · 7h

TIL Penn Jillette no longer identifies as a libertarian.

Good for him.

In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass." He went on to elaborate, "[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."[57]

In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. "The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change" adding "Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, 'It's just rich white guys that don't want to be told what to do,' and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate."[58]

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 15h

I don't know if it was widely understood pre-Twitter, or even if it's widely understood today, that most graduate students are not actually students, but in fact grossly underpaid entry-level college employees.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 15h

There's a remarkable similarity to the college sports problem.

Some college athletes really are talented amateurs just getting out there in the spirit of competition and bettering oneself.

Some college athletes are profit centers and employees of the college in all but name.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 22h

To speak directly to your hypothesis, corpses *used* to be people, and as such we have a deeply ingrained instinct that they should be treated respectfully, but that instinct has more to do with the dignity of the living than the corpse itself.

Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 22h

I think what you're on to here is that we're discomfited by expressions of sadism even when there's no victim. "Don't make a point of rubbing everyone else's nose in your sadism" is a perfectly valid rule.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 1d

I really don't see how ICE can be permitted to survive as an organization. It is important that America have immigrations and customs enforcement, but I don't think America should tolerate Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 1d

It's crazy that DC has followed up possibly the best Batman movie of all time with the best Superman movie of all time, and as far as I can tell is poorly positioned to take advantage in terms of a DCU reboot.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 1d

It also doesn't! I suppose all I'm getting at is that there's no risk of a legal movement to grant your guitar personhood or a cult arising that follows all its advice, so if someone wants to imagine that your guitar has feelings, it's safer to indulge them than with AI.

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Reposted by Grizwald

mallow @bajablastenjoyer.bsky.social · 1d

real "last of our kind after our home planet got destroyed" hours lately im ngl

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 1d

I think that people who experienced the Internet Before have to act as monks preserving the illuminated manuscripts until something better eventually emerges

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 1d

Given the specific dangers of AI, there are problems with anthropomorphizing it that don't exist with, say, a guitar, so this sort of well-meaning sentiment can't be accommodated.

It is *impossible* to be mean to a computer. You couldn't do it if you tried.

lena @lenazun.bsky.social · 1d

why are you fighting so hard for your right to be mean to computers? just be nice to all objects it’s a better way to live.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

So, Hades II. I would have been happy with another entry as good as the first game. I was not prepared for "spiritually the same, bigger and better in every other way."

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

It's only a mech if you pilot it, final ruling. If you wear it, it's armor and is practical.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

I completely agree with this, it's just a bit of an eye-roller coming from people who absolutely intend to criminally harass these guys if they ever find out who they are.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

The fact that this reaction is 95% of my timeline heartens me greatly.

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Reposted by Grizwald

Planescape Torment Nexus @mightycw.bsky.social · 2d

*rubs temples* we really gotta have an internet-wide HR training that "death threat" is, for very good reasons, a more expansive category than posting "I personally will imminently inflict lethal harm upon you"

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Reposted by Grizwald

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 2d

no no no you don't understand. it wasn't a death threat. it was a *deniable* death threat. deniable!! why are you banning me!

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

Okay, but what do you intend to do once you find out their names, bluesky? This kind of discourse is very much spiritually related to the "it was just a small death threat" discourse currently running in parallel on here.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

Blessed with the distance of not knowing or caring about anyone involved: the internet is full of people casually making death threats because they think a fig leaf of deniability makes it permissible.

Death threats are evil and it's good to see one treated seriously, with a permaban.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

It's not just that he's a decent dude with reasonable political beliefs, he's also articulate, knowledgeable, quick on his feet, and he has the courage to talk to people who disagree with him.

I wish him well and mostly just hope Dem elders don't back another insider with no campaigning chops.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

I can't judge whether he's competitive in a general election, but he's remarkably competitive in (very) early primary polling, and IMHO he's one of those candidates where - if he's not ever nationally competitive - it's kind of an indictment of the American soul.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

The in-group here would be so, so much happier migrating to a subreddit over which they have mod control.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

To which all I can say is, grow or die. Bluesky is a money-losing proposition right now because unlike reddit, this place isn't one of a million forums, it's the entire product, and it's not appealing to a critical mass of social media users.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

The most they can do is use block lists to isolate *themselves* from the changing Bluesky culture at large, and rage at people on here who most intensely personify what they hate, and that's exactly what's happening.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

As I've said before, Bluesky is basically a subreddit, with the critical difference that the in-group doesn't have the banhammer that they'd normally be using right now to protect the culture they've built.

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Grizwald @grizwald.bsky.social · 2d

I think Twitter was big enough, fast enough that the idea of an in-group locking down its culture was faintly ridiculous.

Bluesky was small enough, for long enough, and deliberately built along a sufficiently narrow ideological affinity that an in-group actually did lock it down.

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 3d

I think that the central tension really running through this is simply the mismatch between the people who started Bsky and the people who later migrated here. This has become a kind of cultural frozen conflict underneath the site. It keeps generating new flashpoints but it's actually the same thing

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