ianonavy

Ableism. As disability advocate Imani Barbarin says, if bigotry is the goal, ableism and eugenics are the toolkit. If you look at the history of any form of systemic bigotry, the justification for human atrocities almost always boils down to “well these people can’t contribute to society, so they don’t deserve to be a part of it.”

Color is mostly a biological sensation. In low light, humans lose color acuity because rods are activated more than cones. Objects reflect the same wavelengths, but our cones can’t activate due to low energy. Does this mean color fades in low light? It depends on the physiology of the perceiver.

Humans have three color receptors peak-sensitive to red, green, and blue. Dogs have only two: yellow and blue. This means they can’t distinguish certain wavelengths. To dogs and colorblind humans, red and green look the same because their receptors are activated similarly. Color isn’t just a property of light; it’s a biological perceptual experience.

A signature only tells you where something came from, not whether it’s safe. Saying APT is more secure than Docker just because it checks signatures is like saying a mysterious package from a stranger is safer because it includes a signed postcard and matches the delivery company’s database. You still have to trust both the sender and the delivery company. Sure, it’s important to reject signatures you don’t recognize—but the bigger question is: who do you trust?

APT trusts its keyring. Docker pulls over HTTPS with TLS, which already ensures you’re talking to the right registry. If you trust the registry and the image source, that’s often enough. If you don’t, tools like Cosign let you verify signatures. Pulling random images is just as risky as adding sketchy PPAs or running curl | bash—unless, again, you trust the source. I certainly trust Debian and Ubuntu more than Docker the company, but “no signature = insecure” misses the point.

Pointing out supply chain risks is good. But calling Docker “insecure” without nuance shuts down discussion and doesn’t help anyone think more critically about safer practices.

You know container image attestations are a thing, right?

So the end result of this is… companies race to burn fossil fuels into plastic to take water away from municipal or agricultural sources, remove as much safety filtering as they legally (or illegally) can “because it’s cheaper and more competitive” and buy up as much water rights and other water bottling companies as they can with the centralized capital because economies of scale mean better margins. And then once they have a monopoly, they jack up the price and screw over everyone who doesn’t have free water in their taps (which is everyone because the cities all got priced out and had to sell their water rights so now people have to buy bottled water).

Regulation in this scenario doesn’t work because the water companies are operating in some country across the world which has no money or army to enforce its laws. Or the local politicians are corrupt. There is no competition because people don’t have any real choice: they have to drink water which means they have to buy it from some company (as opposed to getting it for free as a human right). That is the big lie we’re all told about capitalism: that competition is a given in every market, government regulation is “in the way” and that the free market will somehow lead to the best outcome for all. At least for water (and also for web browsers), that is patently and obviously not true.

Edit: link formatting

Nooooo some of my favorite science education channels are PBS 😭

And there is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can't be improved with pizza.

Why not ask whoever is taking care of your cat to send pics / videos?

I don’t entirely agree. TikTok isn’t just silly dances, thirst traps, and trends—it has played a significant role in community organizing and coalition-building across social movements. Consider the university Pro-Palestine encampments or mainstream news reporting on social media reaction to the United Healthcare CEO’s killing. Neither is solely attributable to TikTok, but the scale and nature of discussion on the platform have demonstrably influenced real-world conversation and activism. Another example is Keith Lee’s viral restaurant reviews transforming the viability of small mom and pop businesses overnight.

What sets TikTok apart isn’t just its massive reach (150 million monthly active users, nearly half the US population) but also its algorithm and features that enable collaborative, asynchronous discussion. Unlike YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, where content is mostly one-off entertainment with fleeting comment sections, TikTok fosters actual conversations. Features like stitching allow users to directly respond to others, creating an evolving discourse where users can trace context. At times, entire feeds become dominated by discussion of a single topic—sometimes celebrity gossip, but often major events like October 7 or the United Healthcare CEO killing. This level of organic, large-scale discourse doesn’t happen the same way on other platforms. A great example of this dynamic was when TikTok users collectively decided to migrate to the actually Chinese app XiaoHongShu specifically to spite the US government. That didn’t just happen—it was discussed and coordinated.

In my view, TikTok is a national security threat not because of unproven claims about data leaks or state-authored propaganda, but because it provides an already restless and dissatisfied population with a real platform to discuss issues and organize. If a decentralized, open-source alternative existed at scale, TikTok itself wouldn’t be necessary. I acknowledge that TikTok—like any centralized platform—has real issues, particularly around privacy and censorship. But until such a decentralized alternative gains traction, TikTok remains important. And even then, I doubt the US government would be any more comfortable with a decentralized version, since it still wouldn’t give them control over what discussions take place.

Generally agree, although worth noting that which side you pass on depends on which side of the road people use to drive in your country. In the US, driving on the right means overtaking on the left. One could say that generally the advice is to drive in outermost lanes (closer to the road shoulder) unless overtaking in lanes further from the shoulder.

94% AI generated per zerogpt.com

I lurk in my city’s subreddit. It briefly closed as part of the protests, but the Lemmy community that was created at the time is inactive.