Just a little technical note;

White phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon because it operates primarily by heat and flame rather than toxicity, making it an incendiary weapon. Its use is governed by Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW)

Not saying that it can’t be used in bad ways but it has legitimate uses in combat areas (mostly as a flair) so the issue of supply, etc is not as simple as were it an actual chemical weapon

Yeah I think that people should be a lot more willing to pay someone to contribute to open source than they are to pay for usage of closed code. It really should be seen as the best form of charity, like when I donate to an open source project that makes a good education tool what I’m really doing is donating that tool to every school in the developing world and every student that wouldn’t have been able to afford a paid version.

I think that we need to get into a world where showing off which projects you support is a way of flexing, like all these super rich attention seekers need to start funding development teams for apps ‘oh yeah I was so annoyed the librivox app didn’t have ai search tools that I paid two PhD students to implement it, apparently it’s been a real boon for foreign language learners and literary academics but I just use it to find me historic novels similar in theme to events in my own life, you know it suggested shadow over innsmouth, I don’t know what it’s trying to say!’

People need to see that it’s much better to buy something for everyone in the world than just for you, especially because it makes it possible for other people like you to repay the favour and pay for further improvements which benefit you

I hate kier but not voting for Labour would be stupid, protest votes or non votes don’t count any the only people pushing that idiocy are the rich right wing because they don’t want you to vote against them

Everyone just thinks ‘oh look these people are too dumb, busy, or disconnected to vote oh well’

You can still resist and work against a system you voted for,

Wow your country sounds horrible and toxic, I hope things get better and it evolves to the point where people can live their own lives without needless bullying and abuse for trivial things.

But he’s British and we have a good NHS so that’s kinda a weird argument

I hate the royal family but for reasons that many sense

About 27 bees, assuming we’re talking the new spring of 2024 giant bees

Yeah I could never get into everything being spread around and jumbled up, I have my own rapid and jumbled stream of intrusive and inane thoughts, I don’t need to see everyone else’s.

Really though I just hope the people who enjoy it find a good replacement, because if those idiots start shitting up the rest of my internets I’ll be pissed.

Conspiracy loons are wild on Facebook so I know what you mean, it’s so hard not to poke them occasionally. I like that the feed is so broken you just start getting the most insane things - block as many shitty pages as you can, like all the ones that post about how a guy with one leg drove a truck 19 hours a day to pay for his grandsons double cancer so that means poor people shouldn’t get hand outs. Then you start getting into the real weeds, oh and block the bot farm ones, you’ll recognise them they post pickles comics and no human could bring themselves to do that.

When you start seeing Indian mechanical engineering memes like ‘how to design flat roof pitch common mistake 💯 slope degree 13.5° ☑️’ you’re getting close, you’ll start seeing things like ‘today it takes us two years to build a family home but ancient people could do it in three weeks’ the comments will be full of people who know every facet of whatever conspiracies the post is somehow referencing, which is normally a lot.

‘normies don’t realize how much easier life was when we had sonic resonance construction tools, if they did they’d rotate the sixth tower of Thomas Tesla to reopen the Elizabethan Toltec free energy portal’ and you think they’re just in their own world but everyone will be replying ‘yeah, robin Williams was killed because if you watch Mrs doubtfire at the same time as eyes wide shut the dialog syncs up and they warn biden will cover up the free energy machine’

Except of course they can say it in 20,000 words if they feel like it.

Exactly, and thousands of other highly educated and skilled people - I can’t think of anything worse than having to put up with Elon then getting told your life’s work is rubbish just because he’s associated with the company you work for.

SpaceX has been doing incredibly well at rockets, just because you only know about tests that ended in explosions doesn’t mean that’s how everything goes

You hate musk, I get it but that doesn’t mean everything he associated with is automatically bad

This is a common confusion though when people say serfs worked only half the year that is working for their owner and doesn’t include all the other work they need to do to live - to actually eat and have a basic life involved a lot of toil.

Of course not for rich people but that’s never changed.

Will humanity ever stop repeating tired old jokes from monty python and Douglas Adams?

If yes I can die happy that things get better, if no I can welcome oblivion with joy

If you’re trying to say the way ryker throws his leg over a chair is the cause of me becoming a communist programmer then I have to tell you that you are sorely accurate.

Babylon 5 is our last best hope, or we could look further afield - Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive far, far away, amongst the stars.

Jesus, just call me out by name if you’re going to be so specific

Ok so when you compare things it doesn’t mean that you think they’re identical, for example if i compare the similarities between the number one with the number two I’m not saying that 1=2; they are both sigle digit integer values and someone can say that without equating them.

The statement made was that Christian music fans and nazi music fans share a trait, though the trait is expressed differently - that trait being that they are very easy to identify from outward appearances and that it would be hard to know one without knowing about their beliefs. People who listen to Christian music tend to wear crosses and talk about Jesus a lot, Nazis get swastikas tattooed and talk about Hitler.

That doesn’t mean they’re the same in every regard or morally equivalent, I have a lot of things in common with Hitler and so do you, if someone pointed out the fact we all have respiratory systems that doesn’t mean they think we’re culpable for genocidal war crimes.

You literally said they should have no rights, I get that you hadn’t thought about what you were saying but I really think it’s important to think about the implications of things we say.

I’d link that clip everyone always uses about the law Vs satan but it’s overused, surfice to sau dehumanising humans isn’t a thing good people do - and yes I know it’s popular to at the moment but when I was a kid everyone thought calling things gay as an insult was a great thing and we as a society grew from that so we can grow from this.

Maybe if you read the comment that you replied to which explained the analogy then you’d know

So you’re saying for example a woman gets brought up in an environment where she’s raised as a nazi you think that it’d be acceptable for someone to rape and beat her?

I don’t really think you do, I’m not going to bother listing other examples but you get the point - what you’re saying is not only absurd but it’s clearly not what you actually believe.

All people are people, it’s that simple and there’s no more to it.

I had an arcos jukebox before the first iPod came out, every time they’d release a new version it’s big feature would be something my jukebox had always done. Except it didn’t have an awkward spinning selector wheel or celebrity endorsements.

I could connect it to the cd player and record the whole thing as mp3s, I think it even used to split the tracks automatically but I might be wrong. Plug it into usb and it’s a HDD ready to have anything copied to it without hassle… No need for shitty iTunes, no complaints about wav files and never found an MP3 it couldn’t play.

I remember thinking that surely people will realize over priced and feature limited products are an insult but no, the kids of the future I had so much hope for turned out to be gen z who care more about brand recognition than anyone ever before. I still think the feature rich generics will have their day, maybe generation alpha…