To be honest this is only phrasing from people that have never lived under totalitarianism. If you have and then you managed to move or overturn it, you count your lucky stars every day about the ways you can actually affect outcomes in your life.

Of course you are only one voice, but the fact that you’re allowed to organise groups to address grievances is a revolutionary idea that most people that have it barely appreciate it - they think it’s natural and self evident, in fact it isn’t for most of the world.

I’m also in possession of original hand-written letters by Jesus Christ himself, inside the original envelope complete with the “par avion” stamp that my neighbour gifted me.

This assumes a benign state/host. What I would want from the law is enforcing interoperability and transferability between networks - a portable identity that can be transferred in the first sign of trouble to a different provider.

“Where are you coming from?”

…suspect smoking pipe…

“Alright then, keep your secrets”

Not quite. It’s just easier to jump in to mechanics you already know, rather than try to reconceptualise the structure and learn to navigate new pitfalls: oh I need to select a server? Which one is the right one? Oh I need a client, which one? Oh I can’t quote retweet? How do I find interesting people to follow? Is this the right handle in the right server or am I following a bot?

In this timeline he already killed Trotsky and Che is female (or I can’t tell who the person in the beret is).

My first thought.

I use LocalSend pretty much everywhere within local networks I trust

Yes - but here the words “flying car” do a lot of heavy lifting.

They feed people some expectations about an techno utopia as well as operating costs, availability, complexity, range, noise, maintenance none of which match reality.

Because we’ve been building “flying cars” for 70 years with nothing to show for it other than prototypes. Or in this instance not even that - a render.

The idea is too sweet and the investor money from the gullible too ready to flow so we rehash it every decade or so, ignoring physics and logic.

Fascinating, even if a gruesome thought if you reverse the analogy.

The system is geared towards negative presumption of the recent past even as it glorifies and reveres the long past (ancient philosophers and religious figures).

Just in case most of us figure out that anything we think of as new or intractable problems are things that we knew about and were deliberately ignored or actively campaigned against by the same forces that do it now.

I knew that terf is used as a generic term for trans hating people, but I thought today would be the day I find out what the acronym stands for other than T for Trans.

If you were like me, it turns out all my guesses were wrong as it stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

It’s all fun and games until Hansel and Gretel show up at your elderly grandmother’s sugarcrete house.

So many

Wow. Unbelievable work and attention to detail - sent it to everyone I know who would appreciate it.

Don’t think it’s as easy as that. They’d now need to ask to join, then for the EU open negotiations, then put the terms to the people.

Or they could ask the people if they should go ahead and negotiate to rejoin, then risk failing in the negotiations as the terms won’t be as favourable as they were when they were in their special position last time. (Though given current geopolitics maybe the EU would be a lot more accepting of previous terms, don’t know).

Either way there’s a lot of political risk there.

“I can’t believe the fucking idiot we helped put in charge is an actual fucking idiot surrounded by other fucking idiots. Wait, what does that say about me? Erm… probably nothing.”

Then they’ll send their kids to live and study in Europe like third world oligarchs do with their kids, “I want all the benefits of liberal multiculturalism and rule of law for my offspring but not for my subjects”.

Sorry, it was not my intent to offend, I’m never looking for an argument - just look at my post history.

I got that you gave credit for what you found novel, and cracked a couple of jokes which were quite amusing, even though I wasn’t sure if you were actually considering them as possibilities or just having fun but even without that part it I would just have answered on the merits of your position without argument.

I don’t usually share laughs with people I argue with and I started my reply with a laugh to show that I’m sharing your willingness to argue in good faith. Maybe it came across mean spirited.

I’m really confused about what part of my reply was confrontational. I get that most of the conversation’s content is usually non verbal so perhaps you read it in a confrontational tone that was not intended - it was more ribbing or amused incredulousness in the spirited discussion intent and not at all “how dare you” or yelling.

Now on to the merits of the discussion:

Look, pulling Ancient Rome and churches and flowers and birds as an examples has a common thread, and that is to argue my conclusion in the last comment. That in any environment of competition for resources were attention plays a role in their distribution you’ll find advertising.

If the examples from recorded human history are to be cast aside as too soon then what about pre human examples from nature.

That was the crux.

Now you find the floral and animal examples as irrelevant because you make a claim that they are symbiotic so they benefit both parties - but I don’t find that convincing as there are not just two parties, or only those examples and also that was not the point.

The point is the competition for resources where attention plays a role in the distribution and how advertising emerges between competitors and the audience that will provide them with the desired resource or the means for it.

Whether it is to the benefit or the detriment of the receiver or an unsuccessful advertiser that is not very relevant. After all not all human advertising is detrimental, most is symbiotic. Buying this pack of chewing gums vs another or none, or this mouse trap or spending your time listening to one genre of music vs another doesn’t necessarily hurt you and might even benefit you in some way.

But a more apt comparison if you want the yard stick to be non beneficial advertising are the million ways that advertising in nature has ill intent - leading one of the parties to their demise: from Venus flowers, to angler fish, to camouflage, to fake mating calls, to fake food and hundreds of other examples.

But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence

Current forms yes for sure, as most of our current communication methods are new.

But advertising in general? That simply cannot be true. Yes the earliest examples we can find are from early human civilisations a fraction of the estimated age of humanity (however you want to define it, but let’s say Homo sapiens) but if you want to argue that…

The advertising people are referencing here is the modern kind targeted at humans in order to manipulate them.

…Modern brained humans were not trying to manipulate other humans in non mutually beneficial ways, either with whatever form of communication was available or with other traps when nature does it at its most basic forms and when I see little kids do it to each other from a very young age then the onus of the argument requires to either explain in detail how are humans not a part of a nature where this naturally emerges or what a society without advertising actually looks like.

It’s a bit late over here so let’s hope my rumbling is somewhat coherent.