The site is a giant shithole, but as the saying goes even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Mainly due to his political views.

I am just curious, what exactly were these political views? And why do you think they are legitimate and not demagoguery?

The reason I am asking is that while living in the US, the impression I got is that most polemicists were demagogues. It was a method to get money, grifting so to speak.

This was a while ago, but I vividly remember several nominally anti-abortion politicians getting caught getting their mistresses pregnant and then pressuring the mistresses to get an abortion.

It’s incredible that the fellow got fired over such a truthful and insightful comment.

I was in the US in my late teens, and one thing I realized almost straight away was how shallow American polemics about any socio-political topics were. American “free speech” polemics (among all other polemics) to me seemed like an attempt to act out and engage in theatrics that had nothing to do with the concept of free speech (which is actually an extremely complicated and nuanced topics).

There is a silver lining to this, I think at least some people (on the margin) might stop treating local polemics as undeniable truth.

Perhaps this will push Europe to take their security a bit more seriously (and take sober attitude towards the russians), but it’s going to take a complete change in thinking and some bold and brave actions.

While I genuinely hope this will serve as a wake up call (not in the seemingly fake and preformative way done by the California governor) for the locals, from my time living there I have my doubts, it seems that Americans are a bit too well off and risk averse to take action.

Perhaps it may make sense to share a vignette from an Asian country I was travelling in.

We took the train from a regional capital to a smaller city. A week later, we were on our way back to the regional capital to catch a plane.

We go to the railway station and find out that Maoist rebels bombed the railway. So we we find a driver with an off-road vehicle to travel through the jungle road (it was in a terrible state, don’t think a regular car would have managed) to the regional capital.

On the way through the jungle we approach a group of burned out trucks with the military surrounding them. We ask them what happened. The military said the Maoist rebels stopped the trucks, let the drivers go (I believe they were actually treated well and the military said they were dropped off at the nearest village completely unharmed and with their belongings). The truck drivers were merely employees and get shit pay with significant dangers (trucks are often heavily overloaded, you constantly see them crash because of this).

So you might say, well what does this have to do with the US? While I don’t support Maoists (even though they likely had good reasons as that region was particularly corrupt and did not benefit from broader national economic growth), one has to admit that they definitely are not risk averse and are willing and able to go through.

To cite another (fictional) example, it’s like that scene in The Godfather 2 where Michael Corleone sees the commitment of the Cuban rebels and realizes that the Batista regime is not going to hold after he sees the Cuban rebel blow himself up to take out the goon leader, rather than face arrest (and likely torture and death).

America is not that kind of place (for better or worse).

P.S. Note this is not doomerism, nothing is final until it is. That being said nothing in this world comes easy. Freedom is not a mere polemic statement. Freedom requires painful, scary choices and immense sacrifices.

I am not astronomer, but I get the impression there are likely a lot of large trans Neptunian objects that yet or be discovered.

Ah, I see what you mean.

Personally, I think they switched to scamming pretty early (medicine is one area where IMO “fake it till you make” doesn’t work), but never figured out a proper exit strategy for the scam.

Wasn’t Theronos more of a cut and dry scam?

Oceangate wasn’t a really scam, more like the CEO thought his shit didn’t smell and got himself killed over this.

Head dev of Lemmy (he actually spends most of his time supporting russian and Chinese propaganda) claims that North Korea is a great place to live.

He also supports the killing of Ukrainians and the extermination of Ukrainian culture and identity and is a huge fan of russian genocidal imperialism.

It’s all documented here:

https://sh.itjust.works/c/meanwhileongrad

Corbyn is a genuine committed supporter of russian genocidal imperialism!

He is the perfect example of preformative and retrograde western “leftism”.

But you do take any scepticism of A16Z as an immediate sign that one is a “purity obsessed leftist”. This is not reasonable.

OK, so you are saying that I started lying in this thread, I actually believe substack is full of Nazis, but I decided to temporarily back down from this view in order to try and “win” this discussion.

You can agree that substack is not full of Nazis and it’s a viable platform, while also recognising that they are an American tech company that received money from a VC firm that is commited to authoritarianism, corruption and criminal schemes.

What’s your logic here? I am genuinely curious.

You are ranting against “left orthodoxy on purity”, yet you yourself are demanding acceptance of A16Z specifically.

The claim that they are somehow really committed to “free speech”. I don’t believe this. Heard these sort of polemics a lot when I lived there (both on an instituinal level and from individuals).

Me not trusting their alleged commitment to “free speech” doesn’t necessarily mean I think Substuck is particularly bad or that one shouldn’t use it or read it.

It’s not circuitous nonsense to highlight that statements made by Americans companies (and many individuals for that matter) about “free speech” are often shallow, performative and unconvincing. From my perspective, this is a factual statement.

This has nothing to do with the % split between leftist or rightist bloggers.

I don’t deny VC money may be necessary evil. A16Z is not the only VC company there is.

I am just pointing out that not trusting Substack’s claims about their alleged passion for free speech and seeing more nuance than “A16Z investment is a necessary, end of story! No discussion allowed!” does not make one a purity obsessed leftists that thinks substack is full of Nazis.

The piece about Substack making nazi blogs to stir up drama was not meant to be taken seriously; I was making fun of American startup culture (and many startups do engage is super sketchy behaviour, perhaps not substack though) and the bombast with which free speech polemics are often marketed.

I am not American (although I have lived there, and have traced extensively and have many good friends); I did not find American polemics around freedom of speech to be in the least convincing.

Absent convincing evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to be sceptical of Substack’s claims. People in other countries get severally beaten up (or even killed) in an attempt to do real journalism - that is a commitment to free speech. Not some drama about blog hosting.

I do have some exposure to silicon valley go-to-market strategies. It is not at all “nonsense” to speculate that in theory a startup could engage in a guerrilla marketing (especially using free speech copytext, which is extremely fashionable among their target market).

Where did I make any claims about how the A16Z money was used? Sure, it likely was used to fund journalists on the platform, including people who do good work. It is a good thing that they are getting paid.

I think you misunderstand my worldview, I have nothing particularly against substack.

I just don’t buy the colourful story about “commitment to free speech” (not sperixi to substack) and the uncritical view of the A16Z investment.

For me personally, the A16Z investment is a much bigger issue than the Nazi blogs. From my perspective, it means the management is comfortable working with criminals (pump and dump and pyramid schemes haven’t yet been made legal in the US, have they?).

Performative claims of support for “free speech” is pretty standard stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a part of the go-to-market strategy (it would be funny if they created the Nazis blog themselves to stir things up).

It’s funny how Americans technology oligarchs love propaganda copytext that includes terms like innovation, change and disruption, yet they are all vapid and lacking any imagination.

In a perfect world, all media organIationa would have their own instances (tied to their domains) for each network type (threadiverse, micro logging, video, short form video) and these instances would be used for both content distribution (official NYT mastadon feed) and for validation of journalists.

The non-profit foundations that manage these networks could provide managed services to raise more money for development (beyond donations).

I’m not sure that just dropping multiple bombs in the same spot wouldn’t work.

I have no clue whether this approach would or would not work. I am assuming the question would be how many times you need to drop bombs on the same location to target the facilities.

I was just going the info in the article saying that haven’t touched Fordow.

Sounds like the strike was significant, but decisive. In particular, they can’t to target the plant in Fordow.

If anything Israeli action reduce the likelihood of any deal and increases the possibility of the aytollahs quickly rebuilding nuclear infrastructure (article implies they have the capability) and going full nuclear.

I thought I don’t know any modern rock/metal hits because I stopped listening popular music around 2005 or so. I guess my assumption was wrong.

But I also think 90s and early 2000s were probably the peak for the American music industry in terms revenue as share of cultural spend and in broader significance.

That being said it was a different time, I think there are less “hits” in terms of broad listening these days in general.

Fascinating article, I would have never imagined a mosh pit could trigger smartwatch/smartphone emergency service alerts.

As a side note, when was the last big hit by Korn? I feel like it’s been at least 20 years.