NinjaSaves

You either think mandatory car-free cities are a terrifyingly dystopian idea, or you've never experienced human culture outside of dense urban areas.

Exactly. If you're skeptical of gun ownership, go to England and start voicing controversial opinions, or to Australia during a viral pandemic, and see how quickly you realize that "any old fool could be armed" is unbelievably important to ensure everyone keeps their basic ordinary human rights.

If you think "no cars" is a good idea, live under a government that takes away your right to public transport. It may not happen right now where you live, but if they need leverage against you, they could use that, and there would be nothing you could do.

A new government comes in and limits your ability to use it. What now? Car-free cities seem nice until they're used as leverage. No cars means massive power for a tiny number of people.

Not everyone is a troll when they disagree with you.

My biggest point on car free cities is that it is supported fervently by the people who would gain massive amounts of power over others if nobody had a car. If you're dependent on public transport, it can be taken away from you as leverage.

Facebook practically invented the dark triad of addictive UI elements that are currently partially responsible for driving us all constantly insane (violence for the last 4 years, the attack on DC, etc. ad infinitum):

1.) Animated or colorful icons with incrementing numbers in some context. This is huge for the addiction factor. 2.) Infinite scrolling. Also for addiction factor. 3.) Relative Timestamps. Everything is more immediate and you feel the need to stay on longer.

So, hopefully their employees stay safe, but as far as the company is concerned... Occasionally, to continue to have a republic, we have to slay a dragon or two. I can think of three, actually.

I think what Facebook is very good at is developing features and app elements that Increase User Engagement(TM). Which is some thin PR language on top of the truth: Facebook develops their apps to maximize user addiction and subsequently enact a lot of de-facto peer pressure to constantly expand their install base without them even having to try. Built-in word of mouth plus peer-pressure.

Facebook conditions their userbase to need the app in their life, whether because your pictures are all there or because your family is on it, and beyond that it doesn't really matter if they listen to their base. They've got them already.

Maybe the userbase thinks facebook addresses their users' "needs" (strong word for it), but that's more of a commentary on FB's propaganda team and black-hat UX than anything else.

It is precisely this that mass-produces the sort of angry young white man that attacked DC. People thought I was being too dramatic when I had been saying this for the past four angry years (for everyone): Stop frivolously accusing young white men of being "racists," and being "Nazis." Don't use those words to beat people over the head with it. The political mindset that enables the use of those words as blunt weapons against those we hate is resentment-based and vengeance is its goal.

The use of these terms as bludgeons in a lot of these youth cultures combined with a culture that makes young men feel increasingly isolated with its habitual treatment of them that is at best arid and at worst psychologically abusive. "They'll be alright," everyone reasons. "They have everything given to them by default." By whom?

In my guesstimation, it amounts to gaslighting. Young angry white men feel deprived by society of anything to grasp, or to believe in, or to look forward to, or to work toward. Then they're told that, even though they were among the first generation that was wholly ready to forget about race and ignore it as a social factor... they were told, oh no, you're always racist. In fact, irony of ironies, you're racist by blood and birth. How sustainable is such a social environment before legions of terrified young men start picking up the label that has been thrown at their feet and wearing it as a badge of honor because it's the only possible identity they have left? "Fine, I'll give them something to treat like shit."

Plus, those are not the sorts of words (racist and Nazi) we should risk over-using and numbing people to... We kinda want them to keep their sting. So, let's not morph them into a weapon to justify treating our fellow humans poorly. I think doing that might actually mass-produce neo-Nazis.

This is unbelievably concerning because Facebook is pre-installed on many phones now, and Facebook's apps send your out-of-app SMS messages to Facebook. This is part of the reason I quit the app; Literally gathering up my texts and keeping them on their servers without my knowledge or direct consent is an overwhelmingly huge violation of privacy. This is why I recommend everyone download a copy of their Facebook data. If you still have an account, you shouldn't.

You may have noticed that The Squad & Co. has been exhorting violence for 4 years. The violent idiots on the 6th probably just assumed that's how things go now: you lose, you get to be violent now, and the news will quietly sweep it aside and call you peaceful.

This is more of a comment on our broken communication and information apparatus as a species than on anything political.

"Achieving reparations" is difficult language for me to accept. It is "thinking past the sale" that does not treat the subject with the necessary fair-minded big picture consideration.

It's not clear that reparations are a good idea in practice, or something to be "achieved," or even strived for (they might do more harm in practice to the group they intend to protect, as many well-intentioned and politically extremist ideologies do) not to mention any considerations involving whether it would be possible to sustain, or affordable, etc.

Be careful with your thinking if you care about being even-handed with your empathy. Being empathetic is a fantastic thing, but don't allow cynical people to hijack your empathy.

In my experience, Google is only mostly magic. This is probably the fault of the Linux community. Too often the process for how to fix something in Linux is listed on a website as a few cryptic commands, then "and you've got it from there, right?" when you're completely not done yet and there are still several steps to go that they done explain. Its infuriating.

"PHP rant [1]" makes it seem as though there is an array of PHP rants, possibly containing the frequent complaints devs have about PHP and its occasionally poor implementation.