@paninid there is this twist in our betters’ vision where what starts as a statement of sad necessity transforms into a competitive impulse to demonstrate a willingness to be cruel, as a marker and qualification for leadership.

@maikel (thanks!)

it really is a story about corruption:

“‘There is a big wealth concentration in the world, which means that those people will more and more demand more exclusive products and more exclusive projects,’ Ziad El Chaar, DarGlobal’s chief executive, told real estate developers in France this year.”

oh, and Trump too, of course.

ht @dangillmor

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/politics/trump-real-estate-deal-oman.html

@maikel (on what service do you leave reviews?)

@tequila0341 i get trying to keep perspective, but i never find that cheering.

@jockr maybe? i’m hoping maybe there is something else.

@dpp yeah, we were all hopeful and well-intentioned. but we paved a road.

i’m at a phase in life where the human condition comes to seem ever more tragic with each passing day and year.

i’m looking forward to arriving at a different phase of life.

@dpp absolutely. taxation is a good and important thing, as much as possible it shouldn’t be an adversarial or bitter process.

@admitsWrongIfProven @phillmv i'm only just beginning to play, but i have an account now on https://programming.dev/ and am excited about https://programming.dev/c/scala

i follow the group both via rss feed and here on mastodon. i've tried following myself as a user from here, but it shows up as 'requested' and i haven't figured out how to approve myself, or if it's even possible, over there. users have rss feeds too, which is great.

@admitsWrongIfProven @phillmv i’m enthusiastic about the prospect of fediverse neoreddits, kbin or lemmy etc

@failedLyndonLaRouchite ( i guess i mean a secondary definition, "imperfectly formed or formulated" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inchoate )

@phillmv it's easy to mock some of the tetchiness on the fediverse about who to federate with and whether mastodon.social is too big etc but we've learned liminal space are such fragile spaces and we've really know idea how to govern and protect them.

twitter has substantially replaced the once inchoate public square with some hybrid of pro wrestling match and unscrupulous tabloid. when i think of the fraction of my life i gave to that site, of all the musings i posted to help make it, i just want to vomit and repent.

@dpp My experiences with the IRS have generally been professional and reasonable. I don't doubt that people have nightmares. It's a complicated tax system and stakes are high and not everyone at any large organization is going to be superb. But my own experience has been that I've been treated fairly, given the tax code. (I have had the experience of misunderstanding the tax code, suffering a significant unexpected, felt-unfair loss. But my tax accountants flagged that, never interacted w/IRS.)

Well put by #KevinDrum: "companies in similar industries have entered into a toxic equilibrium where all of them offer lousy service in identical ways." https://jabberwocking.com/corporate-bureaucracy-is-the-worst-bureaucracy/

#ViaRSS

“draculizing humans” is a great coinage for so much of contemporary life. https://masto.ai/@stavvers/110575703012108949 ht @GreenSkyOverMe

a kind of simultaneous comment on meta (facebook) in the fediverse and certain strands of yimby-ism. https://g33ks.coffee/@tiesselune/110570685977057183

@wingo there’s a real challenge. it’s not just about who is here. Twitter is structured as an influence game, there are important people and you make progress, for your cause or career, by getting your words seen and endorsed by them. arguments are perceived as consequential and get quite bitter. mastodon is antihierarchical, antiviral, “nice”. it rejects influence games. then by definition, it is a short lever.