I have very recently been diagnosed ASD, and in my childhood I think a toy pretending to have emotions, but in fact not having them, would make me much more anxious than no such toy at all, just me jumping around imagining things.

Cats and dogs would be easier. Or soft toys.

It works the way that the happy tentacle owner and Balrog and Orcs were working together to exterminate Balin’s expedition.

Technically it’s not how it happened in the book IIRC. Nobody was throwing corpses into that well. Just stones. And it wasn’t in the hall of Mazarbul. It was in some guards’ room near the gate.

Their entry into Moria, bothering the nice guy guarding it, was enough to wake the Balrog.

This is really, really sad. It’s also sad for the Orcs, BTW - they expected a real battle in their lives. Frustration all around.

“Cognitive” is not a term applicable to extrapolators.

One would expect kids with autism to be more picky about their emotional support, not less

Did they grow up in an Amish house? How is that possible

What I don’t like about our time is that it’s interesting in some baroque way. Lots of gruesome shit happens, Barry Lyndons occasionally float up, but in general it seems boring and depressing.

I guess it’s winter.

So sad YouTube died, it was such a useful service.

Well. In general the difference between some armed men and some other armed men is that they may have different bosses treating you differently.

That text just lists a set of comorbid traits of similar movements.

It’s vague from author’s viewpoint, but also quite specific as compared to how the word “fascism” is being used today.

I can agree there are regimes that fit there, but they are small. Nothing mainstream in USA is fascism. Putin’s Russia isn’t fascism. Even Turkey and Azerbaijan are not fascism. They all have fragments and elements of fascism, but that doesn’t mean anything.

I think everyone is focusing on that mechanism too much, equating it to despotism, tyranny, evil and death. All of these exist very well outside of fascism. That something isn’t fascist doesn’t mean it’s better.

That essay is about totalitarian regimes with cult of personality, cult of sacrifice and irrational youthful power, hierarchical structure, deification of technology, all that. I also advise you to read his “Foucault’s Pendulum”, a wonderful read, except with my ADHD I haven’t yet finished it. Its atmosphere is focused on literal fascism and its roots, but the atmosphere of Stalinism (which I know better) is not too different.

They are not attempting to regulate big tech. They are attempting to use fear of big tech to more easily regulate what they want. Successfully.

I dunno, is it just me getting older or is our time very similar to Star Wars EU in the Coruscant Nights novels time period? Late Clone Wars, early Empire. After its early period Empire had less and less need to pretend.

If they wanted to do something about big tech, they would have. Have you seen what Israel did in Gaza and how its NATO allies were all fine with it? Do you think the governments of those countries wouldn’t be just as ruthless if they needed to get big tech to behave?

The difference that gives them potential to spark riots is the same that made them preferable to random forums for governments. It goes both ways, they can plant their own misinformation and they do. They can sleep well knowing that most of public discourse works in systems where all voices of reason are silenced naturally, which prevents most of threats to them.

They are not attempting to regulate big tech. They are attempting to use fear of big tech to more easily regulate what they want. Successfully.

I dunno, is it just me getting older or is our time very similar to Star Wars EU in the Coruscant Nights novels time period? Late Clone Wars, early Empire. After its early period Empire had less and less need to pretend.

If they wanted to do something about big tech, they would have. Have you seen what Israel did in Gaza and how its NATO allies were all fine with it? Do you think the governments of those countries wouldn’t be just as ruthless if they needed to get big tech to behave?

The difference that gives them potential to spark riots is the same that made them preferable to random forums for governments. It goes both ways, they can plant their own misinformation and they do. They can sleep well knowing that most of public discourse works in systems where all voices of reason are silenced naturally, which prevents most of threats to them.

Fascists are a movement from 1920s Italy. You’ll see things clearer if you don’t try to classify them by tired labels.

That said, even if you are wrong here, there’ll be a lot of “worse”, I think.

Our governments view their own citizens as the enemy.

Their citizens generally don’t consider them better people or some kind of aristocracy, with right to power over the rest. That is in conflict with what they themselves think. Some people I’ve met included.

Correct. When people don’t have said false sense of security, they don’t talk about important things.

Which is why things common in the olden days, like reading one’s mail and wire tapping, wouldn’t give results as good as bugging apartments or, even better, hotel rooms, restaurant tables.

I agree with you about their wet dreams, but I think it’ll even out in the end to the same situation as before. Targeted attacks - as efficient as it gets. Attacks on everyone - hardly useful, because false sense of security is not something to last long, just like exclusive knowledge of a backdoor.

Frankly a person with such persistence trying to get a tool they never justly need should get punched in the face until they get smarter.

I mean, there already are laws about what should be surrendered to them in legal proceedings and how. That’s not impeded by any encryption. That everybody has right to remain silent is already a rule, encryption just reaffirms it with math.

What they are trying to create is a tool for illegally violating people without being detected, thus not causing outrage and not having to justify it.

It’s literally an unprecedented penetration of government structures and agencies and political groups by criminals who want to use those organizations to spy after others. By thieves. They should all be found and put in jail.

The most natural authentication mechanism for humans is a key. That thing you carry with yourself. A physical key containing, well, the actual secret (shouldn’t be retrievable, should be used for decrypting access request and signing the response) that, maybe combined with your password (another natural for humans authentication mechanism) or maybe, yes, TOTP, gives you access.

Like those “security keys” Imperial officers in Jedi Outcast carry with them. Maybe a bad example.

Phone numbers are used as identifiers because governments like it, nerds don’t like it, and normies explicitly like what nerds don’t like and also want everything to be insecure, they call it “having nothing to hide”.

Also “normal and social” people have that idea that their social prowess is more elegant, smarter at ensuring their security that those dumb and boring nerd technical solutions. So them always choosing things logically opposite of sane, like social media instead of forums, and phone numbers instead of any other identifier, is literally a matter of principle. It’s really not that hard to use something else. They do the stupidest possible thing technically to prove a point that you only have to do the smart thing socially. I mean, in Galileo Galilei’s case the other side of the disagreement is generally considered right, but that’s not an argument effective in society.

I should admit that I’ve been doing the opposite - the stupidest possible thing socially to prove a point that only technical sense matters, which is why nobody would send me encrypted mail except Facebook with its notifications, and nobody would write me in Tox, and nobody would even contact me via XMMP. Which is why I’m now using TG, VK, FB, WA and Signal for communication, of these Signal is secure, and WA is kinda better than the rest of them.

Your own police - a regulated force you can sue, but not resist.

A gang or a mob - likely butt buddies with your own police, but there are possibilities to use law and police against them, and they can’t put you in jail for resisting.

A foreign police - like a gang or a mob, but also reliant on a foreign nation state for resources, those including intelligence about you, technical means (like some targeted spyware attacks maybe), more likely to be able to just kidnap you or murder you than a simple gang or a mob. Another level of professionalism.

Yes, they are. It’s like demolishing dangerous construction. Guns to extinguish lives on firm trajectory to extinguishing yours are part of just guns to extinguish lives. When you solve this human problem with some technology or philosophy smart thing, let me know.