@kentwillard a problem is that the word "right" doesn't encourage balance. the core definition of a right is that it's something enforceable even over the objection of others. it's a trump card.

obviously when multiple "rights" conflict, they can't all trump one another. there has to be either a choice, or some balance struck that limits the exercise of some rights to help exonerate others.

but often, if something is a "right", people take its limitation or abrogation as a *prima facie* wrong.

[tech notebook entry] (Library + Script) vs (Application + Config File) https://tech.interfluidity.com/2023/11/14/library--script-vs-application--config-file/index.html

#scala

are there any Fediverse / open projects that aim to fill the TikTok niche?

how that could be done without invasive surveillance strikes me as… non-obvious… but i wonder if it's a thing people are working on. i know people who'd like to make TikToks, but prefer they not be, well, TikToks, or Facebook Reels, or YouTube shorts.

@SteveRoth just like in economics, the zero point often means less than we think, in life there is no neutral. trying to avoid "undue influence" is more a matter of conformity with expectations or hiding in behavior that can be considered widespread and so "normal" in that sense.

but for a country like the US — perhaps not uniquely, perhaps also for China, or India even — there can be no normal. our choices have outsize effects and will always be contested, "undue" to someone, I think.

@SteveRoth more of a stretch than Pakistan 2022 or Ukraine 2014? (I don’t consider these events US-orchestrated coups, but I certainly know people who do.)

“Recognizing that the administration’s hands are tied as long as Netanyahu’s coalition remains, Biden officials have again begun to inquire into whether a more moderate government could be formed in Jerusalem, a former US official familiar with the matter said.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-stances-frustrating-us-attempts-to-rally-arab-support-for-post-hamas-gaza/

// suppose US officials informally exert influence to accelerate a transition to a new Prime Minister. would that constitute a US-backed coup, in the way some claim Imran Khan’s ouster in Pakistan to have been?

@realcaseyrollins @gsymon yeah. that's my interpretation too, of trump both then and now. he is more narcissist than ideologue. i don't think he has much in the way of social or political views beyond a suite of inchoate resentments. but he admires, tries to appropriate, tactics he perceives as effective at accumulating power. hitler was a successful propagandist. trump wonders if he can't win from the same playbook. i do think he'll be more authoritarian in a new term tho, bc he was humiliated.

@gsymon @realcaseyrollins yeah. i might have been (was in fact) skeptical of the stories alone, but in combination with Trump’s remarks coming really quite close to Hitler’s, I’m persuaded.

@admitsWrongIfProven Thanks for the corrections! https://github.com/swaldman/drafts.interfluidity.com/commit/08d929d2e8ab10e48f6eedaa450f1e50d4ea6847

@realcaseyrollins I support big government, but not authoritarianism. I don't think Trump is into a national housing service and single-payer health care though.

Re Trump overtly imitating Hitler, we have this (old) story https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8 and some pretty direct lifts https://boingboing.net/2023/11/13/trumps-veterans-day-speech-mirrors-hitlers-statements-almost-word-for-word.html

I disagree that authoritarians pursue smart military strategies in general, but I'd agree Trump would think they do.

@realcaseyrollins i hope we don't get to test either's substance. i do think trump intentionally borrows hitler's rhetorical tropes. i don't think it's (necessarily) because he's a hitler clone in a policy sense, it's because he admires authoritarian power and seeks to emulate techniques of those he sees as successful.

trump : hitlerspeak :: desantis : woke

they both think (well desantis thought) they had an easy cynical formula for persuading, and they pour it on.

but you can in fact be too cynical about the much maligned US electorate, and both of them are.

one of them might still win, because the US system makes every election a weighted coinflip and candidate idiosyncracies can only weight things so far.

but brilliant communicators or propagandists they are not. trump's skills have notably declined.

[new draft post] Pluralism or magnanimity? https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/11/13/pluralism-or-magnanimity/index.html

@ttpphd 😢

@deshipu each compilation unit should be called a “piece”.

“We want interop so that our users are free to move. So our products compete on the basis of performance, features and price, and not lock-in. This is as basic as the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take.” @dave https://this.how/standards/

if you think advertising incentivized firms to vacuum up all your data, just wait until you see AI.

@admitsWrongIfProven i don’t have any special insight, but i guess i’d say political formations like Netanyahu’s, or AfD’s i guess, tend to be somewhat mire patriarchical then better ones… i don’t think sex predicts virtue, but liberality broadly takes some virtue to sustain, as we are all finding, having a harder time at the moment sustaining it.

@admitsWrongIfProven i just think he’s an absolute catastrophe of a leader, for Israel and the world, and that his replacement, especially if Israel can muster a genuine mandate for a more civilized coalition with a new leader, is likely a precondition to escape from what now are cycles of violence, hatred, and dispossession.

i have come (despite political-science well-actuallies) to be a huge fan of term limits. long tenure leaders are almost uniformly catastrophic.