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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • a healthy democracy requires others to have privacy. people like investigative journalists need to be able to blend in with the crowd and expose government wrongdoing

    blending in the the crowd is the important part: if everyone cares about privacy, nobody sticks out for caring about privacy… but if nobody cares about privacy, the investigative journalist suddenly looks really obvious and can be targeted much more easily

    if someone doesn’t think they have anything to hide, that’s fine (wrong, but fine) however they can help to make sure the government acts appropriately simply by not splashing data around everywhere for all to see







  • i’ve seen the bullet points from that article riffed in different ways, but i think that’s the most important part:

    • They know you rang a phone sex line at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
    • They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
    • They know you got an email from an HIV testing service, then called your doctor, then visited an HIV support group website in the same hour. But they don’t know what was in the email or what you talked about on the phone.
    • They know you received an email from a digital rights activist group with the subject line “Let’s Tell Congress: Stop SESTA/FOSTA” and then called your elected representative immediately after. But the content of those communications remains safe from government intrusion.
    • They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local abortion clinic’s number later that day.


  • for clarity, i think that the worst thing anyone’s been able to decisively prove about telegrams encryption is that it’s vulnerable to replay attacks… which in the context of privacy rather than full security isn’t suuuuper problematic

    that’s not to say that there aren’t other flaws; that’s kinda the point behind “rule number 1: DONT INVENT YOUR OWN CRYPTO”: you just don’t know what flaws there are… AES (etc) has had a LOT of eyes on it

    but for the most part, the negativity with the crypto boils down to what-ifs



  • change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change

    social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system

    the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that

    within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system

    you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath

    vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few


  • both sides support israel, 1 side is on the record as having said that israel’s reaction is overboard… no action still, but both sides are not the same

    i’m absolutely not pink washing… republicans are horrific to queers… given that you’ve even suggested that, you’re pretty much beyond reason, but i will say: just look at the don’t say gay bullshit in florida… culture wars cause huge increases in suicide rates amongst the queer community

    im not got blue no matter who; im vote in the way that’s most likely to produce a positive outcome in things you want to change… on every metric and category, right now, that’s getting as many people as possible to vote democrat… id suggest people look at republicans if they had policies that weren’t detestable around:

    • equal opportunity (queer, women, race, wealth, etc)
    • environment
    • social services

    … but they don’t



  • well, as far as the EC goes the democrats have a vested interested in removing it… the republicans would fight tooth and nail to keep it because there’s no way they’d win honestly, but that’d be the single biggest help the democrats could hope for

    and as far as voting systems go, that’s why yoh start locally… afaik there are some places that use alternative voting systems to vote in the federal election… a big change is, you’re right, basically impossible… but small changes? who knows!


  • i’m not talking about doing nothing, but point your effort where it can make change… voting 3rd party is a hopelessly ineffective way of making change… it’s a dream, and that’s it. it makes you feel good, and that’s it, but it’ll never EVER change anything… that is just the mathematics and sociology of how the voting system works

    work towards changing from first past the post and removing the electoral college (there are effects to do both of these things that ARE making progress! some of them are even close!)

    only THEN can you vote 3rd party and not have it a complete waste

    but in the meantime, i beg you, vote for the party that isn’t actively campaigning to persecute minorities, who gave you at least a half way form of socialised healthcare, who’s at least trying with green energy, whose policies and positions are at least internally consistent for the most part

    and most importantly, vote for the party that isn’t trying to make it harder to vote for anyone else, because you can be sure that gerrymandering, fucking with the supreme court, playing bullshit political games with voter ID all makes it harder to vote in a 3rd party candidate too


  • okay, well if the republicans had their way i’d be tortured forever in conversion therapy, there’d be no movement at all on green energy, the solution to homelessness would probably boil down to if you’re going through a rough patch it’s execution time, christianity would be mandatory

    both sides are NOT the same… 1 side is mostly inept, and the other side is actively trying to persecute people, to which i’d say

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.



  • okay, but now you’re fighting game theory and maths

    that’s just not going to work out well

    it’s irrelevant what you want at the end of the day… voting for some “best” option is only useful if it’s even remotely likely to happen… don’t get me wrong, if it’s a slim chance of a great outcome that’s one thing but the odds of everyone deciding to do the same thing at the same time are basically 0

    sure, vote how you like, but you’re more likely to win the lottery than to have a 3rd party candidate elected and i think we can all agree you don’t buy lottery tickets because you think you might win