For anyone wondering if the article has anything new to say regarding whether or not the Trump admin will actually listen to this judge: No, it doesn’t. This article is largely pointless.

In fact, I’d argue this article is worse than pointless, since it still calls this a “crackdown on illegal immigration,” which is blatant lies that no reputable news organization has any business repeating. The last goddamn thing we need right now is the BBC spreading Trump’s excuses for what is increasingly becoming literal murder.

Probably worth mentioning that another alternative called TopAnswers.xyz exists as well—both Codidact and TopAnswers mention each other in their homepages, which I find pretty neat.

Definitely interested to see how both of these sites pan out. StackExchange has been a powerful force for good over the years, and it’s been sad to hear it starting to slide down recently, not that I should be too surprised since they got bought four years back. I’m eager to see what a properly open-source and nonprofit community can do on the good template that SE once set.

I do wish either of these sites could host in a different country than the UK though; I’ve heard more than enough by now to feel that hosting a tech project in the UK is scarcely any better than doing so in the US, privacy-wise. (Though for that matter, TA uses Amazon for hosting, which is probably the worst of both worlds.)

This is a very fair point and I agree that a solid, proven assurance of information survivability is vital to something like this. Frankly, though, if StackExchange is shitting the bed (as it seems to be if GenAI is being accepted there) then I think it’s important to get a good alternative running regardless. Still, that in turn makes it all the more important to keep the pressure up on the survivability issue so it doesn’t get ignored.

This. After reading “huge surplus of money,” I was expecting a 5-digit figure. At current running costs, $6k is two years of runtime, but this assumes in turn that expenses never increase and no emergencies occur, which is extremely unlikely over that time period. Better to save it, I think.

Of course, this all depends on what causes got suggested. I can’t think of anything that’d be both worthwhile and (relatively) cheap, but who knows? Maybe something matching that description will come along.

It’s also worth noting how much funding Beehaw is currently getting on a monthly/annual basis. I tried looking at the Open Collective page, but there’s no easy figure or chart there to look at that I can find.

Well, considering I never voted for Trump, am against bigotry in all its forms, don’t want to deport people for having the wrong skin color, believe that free healthcare is a human right, hate capitalism, etc… I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I very much am not like the fascists currently in power or the people who voted for them at all.

How is it fair to criticize me as though I’m the same as them when I’m fighting against them? Does my being born here somehow make me deserving of scorn?

I get accused of being a bot all the time now because I still enjoy writing long-form posts

From cecilkorik, who I was replying to. That kind of bot accusation scarcely ever occurred before LLMs entered the picture. You posted too hastily here and missed a huge chunk of context.

Yeah. I hear you there. Problem I usually have is that the odds of an accusation tend to scale less with posting style in my experience and more with level of disagreement, or whether or not the poster has personally witnessed something. Basically, “I didn’t see this with my own two eyes/dislike you, so this is obviously bot behavior.” It’s a conspiracy theorist-like attitude, and it’s predated LLMs entirely.

Nonetheless, I’m not happy that an entire new form of bot scrutiny has been introduced, and I absolutely cannot wait for GenAI/LLM hype to die the fuck down.

And more! The current discontent at the Democrat Party and the pushes for reforming it have all the more chance of success if the Republicans start fracturing at the same time.

I honestly have no idea how to respond to this. Did you read my comment and its context? Because I can’t figure out what point you’re even trying to make, so it really feels like you didn’t.

I swear to God, some people these days will cry bot if someone so much as blinks unexpectedly. Chill.

If you want to shit on America the country, I’m with you. I could hardly disagree with the top comment in this chain; America is, after all, racist, bigoted and fascist right now. The nation, and especially the government, deserve all the vitriol.

But please don’t shit on Americans writ large. Too many of us hate this just as much as you do, and we really don’t appreciate being lumped in with those who enabled it.

Thank you! Absolutely insane that this article mentioned that 128 Democrats were so spineless but almost entirely refused to tell us who. (Not unexpected, mind you, but still insane.)

there’s a full third who had a choice and refused to do anything

We’ve got at least two options for blame when it comes to the last election:

• Politicians who wield actual power and use it to do nothing (at best)
• Voters, largely struggling to survive, wielding little power, even in aggregate, due to a rigged system

I live for the day people blame the former instead of the latter, though I know I’ll never see it.

I misremembered it as being about Iran back then too, but yeah. It’s the War on Terror excuse all over again.

Iran

having nukes

Experts disagree

Man, where have I heard this one before?

I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.

To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:

• I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
• If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
• Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.

But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.

For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.

I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.

the only real “leftist infighting” I’ve ever really come across.

gestures wildly at the thread we’re in

I don’t think it’s just tankies doing it!

I think it’s a very common belief amongst forums like these to look to logical fallacies to root out dishonest behavior, in the hopes that it’ll provide a nice and easy way to deduce when someone’s a grifter. That you can tell if someone’s a liar – or for that matter, real – by applying them sufficiently.

The problem is, humans are fallible. They fuck up. Innocently. Constantly. It’s normal to make fallacious arguments, and doing so should not cause you to be automatically marked off as a robot, troll or spy. Some examples for your given fallacies:

• Oversimplification can also occur if someone is tired and does not want to go into rigorous academic detail for their argument. Alternatively, they may simply not know the detail to begin with.
• Genetic fallacy can occur due to simple human anger; if someone feels that their interlocutor has made bad-faith arguments frequently before, they’re inclined to ignore what that individual has to say outright, likely without even reading it. (This one has happened in this thread, several times)
• Strawmen happen all the time and extremely easily, because people will inevitably end up making assumptions about the position of others based on previous discussions they’ve had. If you spend enough time arguing a point and getting response X, you’re going to start assuming that the person you’re talking to about that is implying X, even if they haven’t said it and never intended to.
• Ignoring refutation happens plenty simply when people get defensive. Admitting you’re wrong is hard, and it’s much preferable to instead change the topic or find some other way of pretending you were never disproven of anything. This is inherently a logical leap, and that’s why it leads to often dumber positions.
• With regard to ad nauseam: If someone finds a particular point very convincing and easy to understand for themselves, they may find it confusing as to why you don’t agree on it. This can lead to them repeatedly trying to explain it more thoroughly and in different words under the assumption that the way they said it was why you didn’t get it. I’ve done this a lot in my past.

With those examples out of the way, I just want to emphasize the fact that you should never pretend the presence of logical fallacies is a guarantee of bad faith, much less use it to dehumanize others. If we let ourselves do that, we’ll all tear each other apart under the mistaken assumption that we’re rooting out an evil that has no promise of even being present at all. To err is human.

If you’re so worried about Trump being elected, maybe you should push for Harris to adopt better policy so people are more comfortable voting for her, rather than shaming people for not wanting to vote for the lesser of two genocides.