|
Top-level
 I feel like there's been a massive rise in "gonna act like an arsehole because I can" over recent years. It's worn me to the bone. It's relentless. We've built a world where people have decided it's no big deal to literally destroy other people because their personal gain is more important. Everything is under siege. All the time. You can't just opt out and go listen to waves on the beach. Some arsehole is gonna find you there too and find a way to make life shit for you. 39 comments
And this is just that section of the world where nobody is dropping bombs on my home, or shooting children in classrooms, or banning access to abortion and other healthcare. We are living in the worst timeline. If there actually was a multiverse with different planet earths then ours would be the one that nobody else wants to visit.  @leon @ewen H. Beam Piper, 1950s and 60s SciFi author, wrote 1 book and a series of short stories in his "Paratime" series all with this exact plot. The first civilization to discover alternate probability time travel monopolizes the technology and colonizes all the time lines where humans never developed or went extinct, and manipulate more primitive cultures to exploit specific resources. Endless worlds sliced finely like pages in a book, with similar groupings around major global events.   @leon @Urban_Hermit @ewen @bruce @Urban_Hermit @ewen yes, clearly a giant, if he can pipe entire h-beams like a small urchin pipes a penny whistle @leon @ewen I think he didn't like his first name, Horace. His SciFi stuff, as in space ships & alien worlds, he wrote every book within one continuous 5,000 years of future human history. He is considered to be the guy who originated the concept of a federation of planets. But there were entirely different eras: a Federation era with colony worlds & a unified space navy (most of his novels), a Space Viking era of reunification after a dark age, an endless Empire era - fascinating speculation.  The responses and support here on Mastodon has been just marvellous today and if ever I needed a reminder of the good side of humans, you all were exactly that today. Thanks peeps.   @ewen Be thankful you lived to your years without dying of plague and polio. His photos were stolen, a big deal! PS  there's something icky & unattractive about living through a world plague where we all lost people close to us to death or disability & thinking, "so grateful it wasn't me who died, too bad about the rest of you suckers"  I feel like all of us who want better have to become more "militantly kind." That is favor helping people rather than enriching billionaires. Take whatever meager resources we have and channel it away from anyone who is not helping to those who are. This is me typing off the top of my head this morning, with no idea of the logistics involved, but it's something I personally aspire to do more of, any way I can. I don't know if we can change the world with little acts of kindness, but we can definitely change our little corner of it. Every bit of kindness matters. Yes. We need to be actively kind to others. I'm listening to the audiobook "Hope For Cynics" by Jamil Zaki, it's an evidence-based book about the science of human goodness. Take a look/listen, it's certainly helped me quite a bit. We need to create community and learn to trust again. @ewen why did we create a world with so many wolves? I wonder how many people around me make their living in ways which are fundamentally dishonest? More than zero. I work for myself so I have had decades to learn to avoid the toxic people in my sphere of connections. It genuinely surprises me when I am reminded that such folk are still out there. @ewen “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” ― Carl Sagan. @ewen Ugh, this sucks. Seems like the public sphere (or rather, the open web) has become weaponized to such a degree that it's becoming hard to exist on there. I wonder whether the DMCA takedown requests are some crappy LLM-to-court-filing scripts that some shady outfit is running in the hope to shake you down. Indiscriminate patent trolling, now coming for the rest of the web. I don't have any good solution for you unfortunately, but I share your outrage. Someone has an Only Fans account that at some point stole a bunch of photos (of Norway in this instance) and the list of websites they're claiming against read like a shopping list of stolen loot. My website doesn't even appear on the first page. @ewen @moritz_negwer www.hurtigruten.com also has some lovely pictures of Norway. @ewen @moritz_negwer And then they apparently assume that you will file a DMCA claim against them to get to your images removed? Seems like they chose the most antagonistic way to do this. This is the next level up from Marco Verch, who would merely sue people who incorrectly credited his CC2.0 images. Calling them leeches is an insult to leeches, they have uses. Hey hope things get resolved quickly for you. A slightly amusing thing for me though was when an external agency tried to argue against what I recommended and provided a (poorly written) contractors report to support their end. Half the uncredited references I had written (for work, so no name). Requested they provide the references to confirm. Probably got three times what I earn too I bet.  @ewen Hmmm... could be why Macquarrie dictionary has named enshittification, word of the year for 2024. In this instance they've managed to highlight just how many sources they steal from. Will there be consequences for the thieves though? Rarely. @ewen Legal consequences are rare and that really hurts but there are other consequences. Materialism is glamorous but unsatisfying. The arrogant can't see their faults and so their relationships to things and persons sour but they don't know why and can't escape. You know the deep contentment of work, creativity and community. Users/abusers cannot experience it and unless they change, it haunts their inner life even though apparently successful. The times are dark. Guard your light. There was someone I knew peripherally years ago who ran Etsy shops where she stole other people's images and made...I think stickers...her first shop was shut down and she started a new one. It was entirely just a side hustle she'd learned about online. It wasn't even especially profitable. It brought her extra money on top of her warehouse job. It was shocking and yet, I think that's what a lot of it is. People who want a way out of their own trap within the system.  @ewen There seem to be people who have adopted "professional arsehole" as their personal mission  |
Gregory's Server
I was chatting to a nice lady yesterday about her computer. She couldn't work out how to attach a different keyboard to it.
All the while I'm thinking "how long before someone hacks your Windows OS and cleans out your bank account?" She has no idea how exposed she is. One click on a dodgy email and her world could be flipped upside down.
How did we end up creating a world where people are thrown to the wolves like this? How badly have we screwed this up.