I built my cute and tiny PiHole server today and that made me happy since I can preemptively clear garbage on my network and prevent some potential tragedies from happening to the clickier of the people who live with me. Since I am the IT person in the household I think of it as a time saving measure that will likely save me from having to have credit cards cancelled.
Some things I read today while waiting for progress bars to move:
This and the fact that the victim of this garbage has to publicly call out the non-anonymous harassers makes me fucking sick. The toxic and douchey tech bro stereotype exists for a very good reason; the tech bro is the absolute embodiment of entitlement and makes me fervently wish for another technology crash, despite the fact that it would hurt me in the worst ways possible, just to make these fuckers see that sometimes when you act like like a tantruming four year old there are potential consequences beyond being punished with diversity training purchased from a 3rd party that is likely a frat house for the types that would be actually need this sort of coaching to treat the people around them like fucking people. As the stereotypical white tech guy: I am so fucking sorry and wish that there was something more concrete that I could do apart from waxing poetic with my grab bag of four letter words. I wish I knew how to do more.
While I’m 100% in support with the ideas behind The Polite Type and wish wholeheartedly that the Covid-19 virus would be replaced with a virus that fixes whatever broken part of the human brain that allows people to demean other people, I’m not sure if this implementation is the best possible implementation. I’m not going to talk shit about this project because I respect the ideas and motivation behind it but I’m doubtful if any of the people that would normally type out the word ‘slut’ in reference to another person would actually have revelatory moment as result of their words being dynamically changed while they’re typing them. Maybe I’m far too cynical for efforts like this but I sincerely hope that the cynicism is entirely offbase and that at some undefinable point in the not so distant future that people can just start being decent to the other human beings that their words might reach. As always, there is hope behind the doubt.
You should check out this Noam Chomsky video where he runs down the every increasing potential for nuclear war which only compounds the hopelessnes we’re already feeling due to the pandemic, the endless killing of people of color by police, widespread unemployment of service workers with little hope of meaningful recovery or recompense before these issues escalate into hand-to-mouth problems when folks are worried about where money for food is going to come from, and the usual myriad of problems that come along with living in the United States in a time when we’re hovering over the precipice of utter collapse and the utter relinquishment of all of the qualities, expectations, and freedoms, for and from, that have distinguished this country thus far. It’s a debasing time to be an American and it doesn’t seem like there is going to be any reason to stop white knuckling until the clownish sociopath currently in charge of the country is (fingers double and triple crossed) is replaced with a different brand of sociopath that is better at approximating empathy for people outside their immediate socio-economic bubble. It’s all so fucking depressing.
There is no stable place to comment on this from but apparently Tim Tebow is a QAnon guy now. It is quite possible that we should just shut this planet down now and cut our losses. Every day just becomes that much more oppressively stupid.
