Posts by sean@blacksun.social
(DIR) Post #AQDQyJlkJvjRCPeybA by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-03T00:11:37Z
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@gme @anneapplebaum 😂 Nice try. He can come back to the US any time he's willing to stand trial for his grave and traitorous crimes.
(DIR) Post #AQEx9j3s12qQWDa4W0 by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-03T20:06:11Z
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@ruud thanks for the heads up!
(DIR) Post #AQF9UMNAlXh7gMDNqK by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-03T22:13:12Z
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@tofugolem @bnmng Right they must be confronted on a legal and physical level. But not in our bar.
(DIR) Post #AQIe5QsWYaJMTCLvqC by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-05T07:57:25Z
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@thetitanborn Anybody who says "no politics" is no friend of mine.You are absolutely correct. Antipolitics is pure privilege.
(DIR) Post #AQLC1OStNDC0aHWrlw by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-06T18:46:02Z
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The term "femicide" describes the hate, revenge, and grievance-based killings of women.But it suffers the same problem as the phrase "violence against women," in the sense that it's passive voice and therefore avoids naming the perpetrators: MEN."Violence against women" is MALE VIOLENCE."Femicides" are MALE-GRIEVANCE-MURDERS.Male violence is an embarrassment, a weakness, and a disgrace to all men. We should actively police every form of misogyny, wherever we see it.#feminism #femicide
(DIR) Post #AQPIzFJbthJRwHwyzA by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-08T19:34:38Z
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Tryna get my FB peeps to participate over here ain't easy. Corporate social media knows how to addict and retain its customers. I've found that even when people enthusiastically sign up for #mastodon it's a heavy lift getting them to engage.#fediverse #mastodonmigration #mastodontips
(DIR) Post #AQhv6YflcSVv6bVSkK by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-17T19:13:34Z
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So true it hurts. People think by granting misplaced loyalty to sociopaths, they might eventually somehow fail upward and reach the top of the heap! Totally daft.
(DIR) Post #AQpNiStXhtCb0sX75M by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-20T21:47:05Z
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What gets worse every #newyear is the hangover of unsolved problems from the previous year.#climate is the worst by far causing #droughts #floods and #crop failures#trumpism / #fascism is a close second#UkraineWar drags on#wealth and #corruption are destroying #accountability and #democracy and #inequality is getting worse#pollution and #overpopulation #womensrights and #lgbtqrights are under assault#religion continues to warp minds and destroy livesWhen will it get better?
(DIR) Post #AQpsdm67yqWdhXfAuW by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-21T15:39:54Z
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@h4890 @Mokurai Capitalism / libertarianism has only one endpoint, and that is feudalism. Wealth concentrates every year, unless it is reduced by progressive income and wealth taxation.It's a simple formula, r > gMeaning that the rate of growth of investments is greater than the growth of GDP. Every year the rich get richer and the working class gets by with a smaller share.Why would we double down on the very system that has led us to this point?
(DIR) Post #AQpw26yaJ4E3GbQnCK by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-21T16:17:54Z
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@h4890 @Mokurai "Libertarians" always end up lying. Bye now!
(DIR) Post #AQwFO3vVOE7WFyvm6q by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-24T17:08:38Z
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Note that I am using a screenshot to share this toot, when I really should be able to quote toot.Welcome to the first #fediverse #culture war. And it's really heating up. This morning someone compared new masto arrivals to "expats" trying to change the culture of the nation they immigrated to.Which is highly ridiculous.The beauty of an open source platform is that it will evolve to be whatever the majority of people want it to be.That includes code forks and third party tools. That includes things like deciding whether or not to use CW's for everything. Or getting rid of the 500 character limit. On masto, everyone can decide how to behave and everyone else can use their right of free association to follow or not follow them. Imagine that?Whether it's quote toots or an algorithm to sort your timeline, or a functional text search, people will eventually build what they need. No one is objectively right or wrong about what should or should not be included in the fediverse.I think it's important to recognize that various features of centralized platforms exist for a reason. Some of them are harder to implement here, such as link preview. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Why not cache the link preview of a given post on Its home instance, for example?If you really support open source decentralized media, that also means giving up trying to control how the culture changes.
(DIR) Post #AQwHhJBX5CsKzTjTaC by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-24T16:36:39Z
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@mhoye With the large #Mastodonmigration that's currently happening, so-called "expats" will soon far outnumber previous citizens.Since this is a completely open source user controlled platform, it will become whatever the majority wants it to become.Since the #fediverse isn't just Mastodon, expect many third party tools and future forks of the original code, including versions that support things that we need like quote tweeting and an algorithm to help sort the timeline and a functional text search.It's unreasonable to expect so-called new arrivals to not change the culture. Because that's how culture works.No one's objectively right or wrong in terms of whether these options should exist. The whole beauty of an open platform is that it evolves.
(DIR) Post #ARHDiSmMZzTntoq2Ai by sean@blacksun.social
2023-01-03T20:12:36Z
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Republicans are too full of shit to even govern their own party. They should never be anywhere near power of any kind.What a bunch of absolute morons.And this was AFTER McCarthy made a concession to allow either one, or a mere handful of House members to challenge and remove him as speaker anytime.He handed MAGA his balls and still couldn't get it done.So now we have the People's House entirely being held hostage by the tiniest sliver of the UltraMAGA insurrection caucus.Basically nothing will get done without #gaetz #greene #boebert #gosar #biggs and #jordan Gonna be a nasty two years in the 118th Congress.#mccarthy #maga #insurrection #speakerofthehouse
(DIR) Post #ARI6r0nrSPevDdd0Xg by sean@blacksun.social
2023-01-04T05:40:48Z
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Why do all these young white male incel killers look the same?#evil #rage #privilege
(DIR) Post #AROA5nawJVGNPO5PZg by sean@blacksun.social
2022-12-28T21:09:29Z
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Epic, hall of fame shit. Apparently this is now (metaphorically) hanging in the #Louvre#smalldickenergy is not #bodyshaming it's toxic behavior shaming. Fuck Andrew Tate and every #climate #sociopath who flexes their intentional destruction like he does.Sick burns like this are a great way to end the year.#shero #greta #yougogirl #andrewtate
(DIR) Post #ARRmy8oveaokgC35vs by sean@blacksun.social
2023-01-08T21:43:03Z
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Why wasn't #Brazil's new government prepared for the inevitable fascist violence?It had been discussed for months. Just as #Jan6 was discussed for months here in the US before it happened. Where were the security forces?How do all of us here on Mastodon in the #osint community know about these things well in advance, yet the government and intelligence services of Brazil were 100% flatfooted?Give me a fucking break. it's way too late in the game for this level of incompetence. I'm tired of rattling off all the usual suspects of provocateurs behind fascist plots. Bannon, Flynn, Trump, Putin, blah, blah, blah and yet they keep getting away with it. Yeah, we know who they are and what they're trying to do. We know they never change, and they never sleep.So why aren't the institutions of #democracy more pro-active? Why do they wait until these plots become kinetic? GAH!!!😡 😡 😡
(DIR) Post #ARfOvbCoqp7m3uxoUi by sean@blacksun.social
2023-01-14T17:39:01Z
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Apparently we have to talk about the Republican "gas stove" #IdiotBall This is the sudden outbreak of right wing pearl clutching and chest beating "You can prah mah gas stove from mah cold dead fangers."No one's taking anyone's gas stoves away. Which is what makes this an idiotball.Here's what's really going on. There are two issues with #gasstoves. One of them isn't about gas stoves at all. It's about methane. Methane, or natural gas, is used for cooking, comfort heating, water heating, power generation, and making plastics, among other things. CH4 is the chemical formula. Meaning that this molecule has multiple 120° angular molecular bonds. Which causes it to resonate intensely in the atmosphere, trapping heat. The primary greenhouse gas CO2 has a single angular bond. Which means that methane is much more powerful at trapping heat than CO2. It turns out about 20-80 times more powerful, depending on time frame. Fortunately methane degrades over a period of a few decades. Unfortunately, during that time it creates intense atmospheric heating.Production of methane creates massive leakage, as much as 10%. So in order to tackle climate change, methane production must slow and eventually stop.That means that over time, gas ranges must be phased out along with every other gas appliance and power plant. That's going to take a while. But since buildings last many decades, we need to start now.On to the second part of this equation, gas stoves themselves. Let's get something really straight here--I need people to really understand this. Because even among liberals, there's still way too much wailing and gnashing of teeth about gas stoves.****All #combustion produces harmful byproducts.****The same reason why it's bad for you to smoke cigarettes, is the reason why wood fires are harmful, is the same reason why you don't want to breathe diesel exhaust, or leave your car running in the garage, and the same damn reason why you really don't want methane burning inside your house.I don't know why this is so difficult. CH4 combined with oxygen creates CO2, or in the case of incomplete burning CO which is carbon monoxide, which is a poison. But oxygen isn't the only thing in the air. 80% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, which at high temperatures can form nitrogen oxides.I know everyone loves cooking over a flame. But while you're doing that, it's also creating basically something equivalent to car exhaust fumes indoors. An exhaust fan can help, but not everyone has them, and they don't always work. I once lived in a rented home that had the exhaust fan ducting into the cupboard above the stove. Because builders are lazy and people are stupid.The primary concern about gas stoves might be for asthmatics and sensitive people. But no matter who you are, having high levels of CO2 and CO and NOX in your home is not good.The fact that we've had gas appliances for a century doesn't matter. People act as if because we did a bad thing for a long time we should keep doing that bad thing.Wrong.Gas stoves are going to have to go away. But if you have one now, and you really want to cook with gas so badly that you're willing to keep poisoning yourself, you'll probably be able to keep it for decades.And that's what makes this an idiotball.Any regulations would impact new construction only, obviously. Can you imagine the government trying to confiscate literally millions of gas stoves from millions of homes and commercial businesses? Not going to happen.Now that we've got the idiotball out of the way, let me talk about electric stoves. They are much much better than they used to be. Especially if you have an induction range. Heat control is precise, and fast. I have one. I had to learn how to use it, but the learning curve was not steep.Whatever the learning curve might be, it's far less of a change than, for example switching from a gasoline car to an electric car. A minor inconvenience at best. And this is what Republicans are experts at: making a mountain out of a molehill.Remember how they always talk about manly men being manly and not letting anything bother them? And then they pull this absolutely ridiculous snowflakery. As if any of them were actually cooking in the first place? No these wankers make their wives cook. Unless it's barbecue. Oh, and by the way, barbecues will all eventually need to be #electric too. But that's a whole other story...
(DIR) Post #ASgkCBhAQ2wV0E8I1Q by sean@blacksun.social
2023-02-14T23:58:31Z
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I've written a few long posts in the past couple of days debunking the argument from ignorance, which is a core component of the republican war on science. Another front is the exaggeration of the so-called replication crisis. Yet a third front is the attack on university education which at its core is an attack on the scientific method. Everything we're suffering as a nation traces back to the substitution of dogma for evidence-based policy.Here are just a few of the consequences, and they are devastating.-The war on the economy: President Eisenhower was the last Republican to fully embrace Keynesian economics. Since then, Republicans have embraced the tax and spending cuts known as trickle down or supply side economics. Which is unscientific dogma that has proven unsuccessful, and they know this. But then they don't actually succeed in fully implementing the spending cuts, and make up the difference with deficit spending, leading to a 30 trillion national debt. This has stifled US economic growth for decades. And left us with a hugely unequal society, that has tilted power away from the people and put it in the hands of the wealthy.-The war on public health: from gun violence to vaccinations to the opposition to single payer universal healthcare, Republicans have ignored scientific data regarding outcomes, and suppressed the study of how to improve public health for decades. *This has killed millions of Americans.* At least a million from Covid, and another million and a half from gun violence during my lifetime. That's not even counting the number of people who've died from not being able to afford health care, including mental health care, and treatment for addiction. One of the biggest menaces to public health is poverty, which has been exacerbated by the war on the economy.-The war on secularism: religious privilege and the rule of law are diametrically opposed. The law protects everyone, religious privilege only protects the few against the rights of the many. The first amendment is ambiguous as to which should take priority. The free exercise clause has been used to enable public funding of religion, grant exceptions to anti-discrimination and civil rights law, and allow individuals to circumvent both the law and corporate policy based on conscience clauses. Science (basic logic, really) proves that secularism grants the most religious freedom. In fact religious freedom can't exist without it, because the infiltration of government and law enforcement with a single dominant religious point of view means that minority belief systems suffer discrimination.-The war on atheism: Estimates of the percentage of the US population who don't believe in any gods ranges from 4 to 30% or more, depending on how the question is asked. Yet there's only a small handful of politicians who will admit to being atheist. Even at the lowest end of the figure of 4% atheism, there ought to be at least 17 US congressman and 4 US senators who are willing to say they don't believe in god. Usually there's zero or one who are willing to publicly discuss non-belief. And this is largely the result of the argument from ignorance. Which makes people *at best* say they are "agnostics" meaning they can't know whether or not God exists. It's a basic misreading of probability. And a failure of representation. -The war on education: This goes along with the war on science, but it's also its own battle. Basing educational policy on best outcomes would require early sex education, teaching accurate history, and exploration of critical thinking and power dynamics in society. All these topics have been suppressed, leading to the dumbing down of education, and the production of graduates who are trained to work menial jobs in corporations, but not trained to be citizens.-The war on the climate: we've known for decades that unchecked global heating from the burning of fossil fuels would eventually kill billions of human beings. This isn't even controversial. Yes you heard that right, I said billions. Climate change has humanity on the path to extinction. This is undeniable, and even the early stages of climate impacts have been devastating to the population. Over 300 million people live in parts of the world where at least for parts of the year, it's too hot for unprotected humans to survive. These no go zones will only increase in the future, leading to mass migration, wars and refugee crises like we've never seen. All because Republicans have successfully introduced doubt of climate science into the minds of just enough of the population.I could go on but you get the point. Once we allowed power to overrule knowledge, we lost our way as a nation and a world. We will never find it again until we restore knowledge and science to its rightful place, as determinant of policy.The argument from ignorance is constantly used to raise just enough doubt about the reliability of science to justify not following best practices when they conflict with the desires or bank accounts of powerful people.#ignorance #waronreality #sabotage #goptraitors #gop #fascism
(DIR) Post #AUBt7TrCQcQHrK81ce by sean@blacksun.social
2023-03-27T22:33:20Z
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Fkmurka. School shootings are planned massacres and until we change our laws to bring down the per capita rate of gun ownership, we can expect more of the same. No other country has the problem because no other country has this many guns per person--and not by a mile.#gunviolence #weaponsofwar #massshooting #schools #murka
(DIR) Post #AXMocLYKeQrqtvydTE by sean@blacksun.social
2023-07-05T00:07:29Z
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THE JULY 4TH DELUSION (WE ARE NOT OK)In 2012, neuroscientist Sam Harris wrote an op-ed called "The Fireplace Delusion." You should look it up and read the whole thing. But I'll summarize it briefly here:Combustion always produces harmful byproducts. And the combustion of wood indoors is particularly harmful, being 30 times as carcinogenic as cigarette smoke. Not only is having a fire in a fireplace harmful to the occupants of the home, it's harmful to all nearby residents!What's also universally true is that people love fires in fireplaces. It feels--literally warm and fuzzy. It ties us back to our primal roots. No one wants to hear that the practice is harmful. And they will fight you tooth and nail about it.Harris' op-ed was an obvious allegory for "god" belief. In it he recommended the cleaner alternative of fake logs and a gas fireplace. This is a bit like switching over from religion to "spirituality." Demonstrably less harmful. But still not harmless. As we've now found out, even gas stoves produce elevated levels of toxic benzene that have measurably negative health effects, especially for children!The analogy maps almost perfectly onto religion and spirituality.Phasing out gas stoves is the next step to improve indoor air quality. Predictably, the same usual suspects who love combustion--and worship "gawd" or the "universal spirit"--are furious.Combustion hits all the same notes as religion. It makes people feel good, it's deeply embedded in cultural tradition, and it's massively harmful not only to practitioners, but also children and bystanders.Which brings me to July 4th.You know where I'm going with this. Same issue, same cultural pushback. "How dare you question our most important national holiday?!? What's wrong with you?!? If you don't love America, GET OUT!!"But what is July 4 really about?Well, first, it's about nostalgia. The ultimate nostalgia, really. Since it commemorates the very first event in the history of our nation. The problem is, the nation we built following the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, was wildly unjust. It may or may not have been an improvement over British rule. Consider a living example of what might have been:Canada represents the alternative road not taken by the US, as a nation that remained a British colony. I think the outcome speaks for itself. Canada has a parliamentary system of government that is far more proportionally representative than the US Electoral College, and especially our malapportioned Senate. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms is far superior to the US Bill of Rights in many ways. But chiefly, it was updated in 1982 to reflect modern realities, including an explicit non-discrimination clause. It also applies equally to all provinces, not just the federal government. So the "state's rights" argument is moot. Canada also gained universal health care in several stages in the years between 1962 and 1984.It also bears repeating here that the United Kingdom abolished slavery in stages between 1807 and 1838, decades earlier than the United States.Following the Revolutionary War, the American people gained their freedoms in fits and starts, with many significant reversals. The Bill of Rights wasn't adopted until 1791. And it contained no language of non-discrimination. As such, it only applied to white men. Equal Protection was established by the 14th Amendment, which wasn't ratified until 1868, *nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence.* Women didn't get their turn at citizenship for another 52 years!! The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, but the proposed Equal Rights Amendmend (which would have been the 27th Amendment) languished from when it was first proposed in 1923, to 1982 when it passed its final deadline for ratification, unratified.It's such a simple thing, really. "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."Why is this controversial? We know why. The religious patriarchy. The most important "freedom" on which the US was founded, is the "freedom" to discriminate. Every other modern democracy recognizes female equality, but for the USA, that has always been a bridge too far.Over the past 60 years we've tried to build legislative and judicial frameworks to support civil, women's, and LGBT rights. Brave Americans have fought and died and dedicated their lives to these pursuits: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, Griswold v. Conneticut in 1965, The Fair Housing Act of 1968, Roe v. Wade in 1973, Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.Each and all of these acts and decisions have come under furious assault from conservatives. In 2013, SCOTUS invalidated key portions of the Voting Rights Act, and only a year ago overturned Roe v. Wade. Last week, SCOTUS gutted affirmative action and ruled against key non-discrimination precedent for public accommodations.This is infamy of the highest order. Which is why there is absolutely nothing to celebrate this July 4th.What does celebrating July 4th actually mean? A quote from Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men, sums it up best:"Teddy told me that in Greek, 'nostalgia' literally means 'the pain from an old wound.' It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It let's [sic] us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved... It's not about what happened, what's going to happen. No, it's about... it's about when you -- It's not about technology, it's about the human heart, about the desire to go back home again."And that's the whole enchilada, right there. July 4th is an orgy of nostalgia for an America that never actually existed. For that fireplace that's actually poisioning you. For that religion that makes you believe you can survive death. That you are OK, that everything is going to be OK.Don Draper continues:"Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK."But we're not OK. We're a nation that routinely hates half its population. We're hurtling headlong into climate disasters for which there is no longer any solution. We're facing an armed citizenry that routinely commits public slaughters of children while continuing to insist that gun ownership is "OK."And here's the final irony: Mass shootings peak every year on July 4th and 5th. That's "OK," because we can't hear the carnage, over the din of millions of exploding fireworks.#july4 #civilrights #fireworks #canada #samharris #scotus #madmen #dondraper #massshootings #era #ClimateCrisis #fireplace #gasstove #religion #spirituality