Andy

Whaaaaaaaaaa???!? /s

You know, I think the reaction by conservatives to climate change is fascinating by all that it can tell us.

First, environmental preservation has not always been a politically left issue. It’s got a lean that way because it often impacts how the commons are used, but there’s plenty of reasons why ecological conservation has found a home on the right in the past. And in this case, we’re talking about preserving habitability and stability of our civilization. There’s plenty of reasons why one could imagine this finding support of some kind on the right. Their solutions might be market-based neoliberal bullshit. Yet they’re not really even messing with that stuff (at least any more). They just want to kill this whole conversation with fire and throw it in a volcano. Why?

If you really drill down, I think the reason why people on the Christian Nationalist right in particular are trying not to acknowledge or deal with a civilizational threat despite the reckless madness involved is because they have a better understanding of what all this means for the future than most liberals or even leftists.

It means that their favorite “-isms” – Nationalism and Capitalism – are both facing mortal threats if this issue is ever addressed. They’ll phrase it as saying that climate crusaders want to impose Marxist open boarders and ban their very way of life. But while I don’t want to validate the most absurd parts of their fearmongering, they are fundamentally correct in some sense. Any successful response to climate change is inevitably going to upend the way we concentrate power and wealth, the way we pursue economic growth, and the way we draw boundaries across which people trade and migrate.

And most people will find the solutions quite persuasive. Why should jobs, the rich, and corporate dollars move freely, while people are trapped while they drown? Why should we watch a food system capable of feeding all crumble to protect the tastes of a vanishingly small minority of the extraordinarily selfish? Why can’t we all just live comfortable, modest lives with the abundance currently being hoarded?

If MAGA adherents genuinely believed it to be a hoax, they’d just fight for greater scientific inquiry. But all together, their actions – though terrifying – amount to a clear beacon signaling a recognition of the greatest weak-spot in the rise of neofacism.

If people learn about solutions to climate change, Christian nationalists expect to lose.

Food for thought.

Well shit

I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.

If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.

First, thanks for that explanation. That’s interesting.

Is there a good place to learn more? I can see why having custom feeds and 3rd party moderation tools are good, but I still have a lot questions.

First, is there a genuine benefit to dissociating a users identity from their server? I think the connection between users and their home instances are a brilliant innovation. They seem to bring village culture back to the internet. They help people associate within networks below just the global level. I think the atomization of people online has been a part of why there is so little trust.

I don’t understand how any of these visions fundamentally differ from Mastodon.

Decentralized? Yep. It’s got no center. Open source? Yep, you can fork it and make your own if you want. Unmoderated? Sure, if you want that, you can set up an instance and host whatever illegal content you want. You’ll have a lot of legal problems and most people don’t want it, but the option exists.

Is there any point besides money and crypto bullshit? If you want to post short comments that your friends can subscribe to that isn’t controlled by a big corporation that gives your data to the government… well we have that. It exists. It’s pretty okay. Go use it.

I discovered this point a few months ago. I left my laptop’s native power cable somewhere, and I was pretty concerned because I needed to use it. And someone plugged a USB-C in and I was like, “Wait, what? What did you just do?”

The guy explains that most laptops can charge using any ordinary USB-C cable. And I was just astounded. It’s so simple and intelligent. It’s like… maybe there is hope for our civilization after all.