aljazeera has also been under threat of shut down in israel for the last few days. not saying that report is wrong, just important to take the whole context into account.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-communications-minister-seeks-shutdown-al-jazeera-bureau-2023-10-15/

‘clear’ according to the IDF? some other western intelligence org? clear to people with a vested interest in that narrative?

as far as i’ve seen there’s been no trustworthy analysis of it and i doubt there ever will be.

HD SimAnt? sick.

Well, my life would have been measurably better had I never opened that link.

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding here that seems suspiciously like a bad faith argument.

I was in 3 car accidents over the course of three years, all of which the car I was in was totaled.

The worst of the three was one of those secondary, peak rush-hour accidents. I was on a two lane freeway (two lanes one direction, two lanes the other with a cement divider in the middle) around rush-hour with a pretty heavy amount of traffic but moving fast. I was going between 60 and 70 and in a really good mood. I’d just spent the whole day making music with one of my best friends with crazy vintage equipment and I was on my way to play a show that night. I was daydreaming and looked away from the road for a second, looked back and saw break lights. So I tapped my breaks, but then in a split second I realized those break lights were coming super fast. I did the exact wrong thing and slammed on my breaks. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I was hit from both the front and the back. I was driving a tiny two seater from the early 90s, not exactly the safest car. I felt around myself and I seems to be all in one piece. No pain anywhere. Iwas able to squeeze my way up out of the car, bewildered. I didn’t seem to have any injuries at all. The car looked like a crushed tin can. I went to the hospital just in case and it’s a good thing I did because as the shock wore off I discovered I had a bruised rib that was making it very hard to breathe. But that was my only injury. They gave me painkillers and sent me on my way.

I spent the next year in a fog of painkillers and existential despair and confusion. To this day I have trouble driving and I frequently question whether I’m actually alive or living out a dream in the dying seconds of my mind.

Do it! It took an extremely long time for me, but I was also stopping and exploring constantly so that added a ton amount of time to the trip.

The combination of gratification, pride, and relief I felt completing that final jump to Colonia is hard to describe.

And the amount of stuff I FD’d along the way is mind-boggling. 100% worth it.

I can’t tell you how much I love that Denmark has hillbillys who drive hatchbacks and are called fuckin’ Brian as a slur.

Ahh, yes, of course. Forgot about that. I graduated 2010 so that wasn’t really on my radar at the time.

Another favorite was “no flat billed hats”. I’m realizing now a lot of it had a very “we don’t want gangs. Well, all rappers are gangsters, let’s watch some hip hop music videos and just rule out everything they wear” vibe.

I wish I could remember the specifics but my high school had an extremely ridiculous dress code policy at one point. Mostly targeting girls, of course, but also had weird shit like “no large/long coats.”

What I do remember perfectly though, is that a friend of mine and I, angrily pouring over the details of the stupid dress code, realized that capes were perfectly fine according to the code as written. So we both got huge capes and that was like a whole year of high school.

I mean, yes, but I think “sometimes” really underestimates role money plays in a capitalist world. Money is power. People who tell you otherwise are trying to sell you something.

I’m glad I’m not the only person thinking about this. I had no idea about the Saudis owning Twitter like that. All decisions made by the rich are for Money^TM. Usually it’s Money^TM in either the form of growth (profit, short term) or investment (power, stability, long term). Some of spezs actions are easily explained by Money^TM when you take into account LLMs mining reddit. But that does not explain being so insanely hardline with their API. There was absolutely a resolution to that that was profitable and didn’t continue giving away “their” information for free. This is where I think a 3rd Money^TM comes into play: existential investments. These are actions they take to ensure the other two forms of Money^TM continue to function the way they want them to. Such as tanking the two most significant online tools for organizing collective action against them.