andrewrgross

I don't want to say "none", but I think of the film "Captain America: Winter Soldier" as having some of the tightest writing in superhero comic book movies. It's something of an outlier a case study imo of strong storytelling that the whole thing is so competently put together. There are far fewer suspensions of disbelief than most superhero movies, imo.

Oof.

I remember when reading this story this was something that had confused me. The articles reported the IDF killing an entire squad of medics, and then the article had this one guy saying, 'We had our lights on! They knew who we were!' And I was wondering why and how there was an entire group of medics slaughtered, and just one survivor somehow speaking to the press. It was never really mentioned in the articles I read why or how this guy wasn't decomposing in a shallow grave with the rest of his group.

I guess this is why. He pleaded convincingly, and they weren't certain if he might be an Israeli citizen, so they arrested him instead of executing him. That is fucked all to hell, but at least now I have the answer. Shit.

Agreed.

There's also not much reason not to use supports. A tree support wouldn't as much time or material at all.

Everyone needs a little support sometimes.

Yeah, I feel like that's a good deal. Especially if I get credit. I mean, I'd still do it if it was anonymous, but can you imagine the popularity of being the guy who cut off his fingers for world peace? Frankly you'd be kind of a monster not to do it. So many people lose hands for nothing at all. But being the guy with the robot fingers who gave the world peace and joy? Sure, sign me up. Sounds rad af.

I want to second this, and go further with a hot take: I liked Graber's answers a lot.

I think skepticism of her and the entire artifice of VC and big tech is totally warranted. But a lot of people in this section seem to basically say, 'no matter what she says I don't trust her and I'm certain that BlueSky will be another bad actor.' And I think that's an overly simplistic take.

It's true that there are no trustworthy CEOs. You shouldn't trust Graber. It will always be a mistake to pin hopes of good management of a platform on the magnanimity of any business leader. However if we want to see a new era of decentralization but are honest about the fact that most users are more likely to join big, corporate-styled platforms (in the short term, at least) then the ideal platform is one that attempts to build their business model around portability.

It's totally true that BlueSky isn't there yet. But they're basically building a set of escape hatches for users. Cory Doctorow talks a lot about how restricting users from leaving a platform is a key requirement to enshitify. So if BlueSky uses a protocol that at least has the potential for this, they're creating an incentive structure that really does serve a purpose. They may later on try to reverse course. But at least for now, they're doing the thing that gives users and the third party developers the best chance of escape if things go bad. And that is exactly what I want to see from a big tech platform.

I thought it was built on activity pub.

I'm gonna go over to my Mastodon account and try to reply to you. One sec.

Overall, I like the options today a lot better than what we had 10 or even 5 years ago.

I am glad that both Mastodon and Blue Sky exist. I would like both to be successful.

Oy. I really don't want to see what happens when we're faced with an actual challenge. This is... yikes.

The words and actions described in this article are so bewilderingly, shockingly evil that I had to check them against the sources in Israeli news. I already know Dropsite News is credible and reputable, but I still couldn't believe that Netanyahu and Smotrich would just say the quite part out loud like this. This is so, so, distrubing.

I guess the silver lining is that Netanyahu has acknowledged that there is some kind of red line. Apparently, if he put on a swastika armband and started shouting 'Gas them all!', there are senators in the US who would actually apply some kind of sanctions on Israel. I wonder who they are. Lindsay Graham, for instance, would cheer like a banshee. Fetterman would surely jizz his dirty gym shorts. But Schumer or someone called him and actually said that there's something he could do that would cost him an actual price.

It's... it's head spinning. Yesterday, I returned from a quick grocery run, and my five year old son ran out giggling to see what I'd brought home. He was just filled with effervescent joy that I'd gotten blueberries, blackberries, and rice crispy treats. And it just broke my heart because I couldn't not think about children dying from starvation who are fundamentally no different from my son. There but for the grace of god go all our children. It's like drowning in slow motion. It just haunts me that these people are capable of exterminationism of this kind.

But yeah... apparently, they're only allowed to exterminate the Palestinians if they don't say overtly 'We will kill them all with starvation'. They still need to say 'We are fighting a war of defense' in order to get permission from their US backers. Good to know, I suppose.

Keep up the pressure. Even they know that they can't achieve their final solution if the world rises up and stops them.

I just want to give credit for the excellent writing in this article:

The demonstrations took place following the announcement earlier this month that Israel would launch a full military occupation of the entire Gaza Strip and impose the mass internment of the population in concentration camps under armed guard, as a prelude to forced marches through the desert or deportation by sea. This is backed by US President Donald Trump, who concluded his Middle East tour in Qatar Thursday by reiterating his administration’s plan to annex the Gaza Strip.

Every newspaper should be using the words annexation, forced displacement, genocide, etc without qualifiers.

Yeah, seems like a pretty big oversight for the author... [Checks byline]... no author credited.

Great. Very real. Much news.

Yeah, I came to say this same thing.