yep. www.threads.com/@ruthwarewri...

The people who mocked my wife's miscarriages were banned. None of the people who claimed I was a genocide-denier without evidence were banned. The woman who flooded my replies with dead baby pics was not banned. The people who showed up in my replies to other people to yell at me were not banned

It's about anger, it's about pain, and it's about punishing the non-believers, yes, but it's also about controlling the congregation. It's not remotely surprising to me that a bunch of the same people you can find commenting in my thread from July are now commenting on the Rodericks thread.

Dogpiles exist to give everyone a nice hit of dopamine, but it's also a way to punish outgroups AND as a way to keep the ingroup in line. After all: if you see the horrible shit the ingroup does to the outgroup, you're incentivized strongly to not end up in the outgroup.

The greater good, of course, in this case was "making me as miserable as possible". Because the most fundamental thing to understand about dogpiles is that they have leaders and they have followers, and every single follower knows that they could be the one at the bottom of the next pile.

I'm personally quite excited to see all these people building open source apps like @bookhive.buzz on AT Proto, because it's really, really easy for non-technical people to engage with these services with their AT Proto-based accounts.

Wrote a column today about yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court decision to reduce Alabama's Black representation in Congress. Bottom line: we're going to save our country, however long it takes.

You just don’t know the person on the other side when you make up mid-tier internet villains. I don’t care what marginalized group you’re from, it doesn’t give you a pass to be this wretched. I too am angry I can’t direct my anger to, say, Stephen Miller’s face, but this guy isn’t his proxy.

do I still got the sauce.... #lupiniii

i've been hearing "it's the last gasp of white supremacy" "they're going hard because they're panicking, they know it's over" for 26 years

exactly *because* they see liberalism as the default, that it shows courage or integrity to attack liberals and pander to conservatives.

I propose 'weak liberal' theory. it's not that they are secret conservatives, it's that their own liberalism is genuinely weakly held, being a byproduct of their social and class environment rather than stemming from actual beliefs or values. So they always perceive the right as 'valid' and believe

Look, if I can’t trust the wallet inspector then I don’t know who to trust

And this is what drives me nuts about so many of my fellow progressives: Assumption that dumb macho bullshit means “he’ll fight for me.”

Malloch the Damned #1-2 - The Gay Son of Satan Horror Comic www.kickstarter.com/projects/dea... @davidbooher.bsky.social @winstongambro.bsky.social @letteringbear.bsky.social @cerealpancake.bsky.social @comicuno.bsky.social @philfalcowrites.bsky.social

... the expectations, not to some abstract finding about price levels across the economy, and those expectations are determined by a composite of social and direct experiences.

I also pointed out that he should be explicitly talking about *expectations* around inflation — expectations, of course, are ultimately socially mediated. I think this is where the Stancilview of the vibecession can be reconciled with Morris’ findings: people’s reactions are tied to...

For example, here's @gelliottmorris.com arguing that record low sentiment in the 2020s is due to prices rising, but relatively higher sentiment in the 1980s was because people were used to prices rising. That predicts sentiment will be higher now as inflation increases, since people are used to it.

Democrats are doing something we've been begging them to do, so please pay attention.

Please check this out! It’s extraordinary.

And I think a big part of ending the gold rush is demystifying the tech.

My position is that we can’t put the genie back in the bottle as far as the tech existing, so the question is how do we mitigate harm (e.g. moratoriums on developing new models, energy efficiency requirements, restrictions on what they can be used for?), and who should enforce it?

There are a whole host of defensible moral positions that don’t involve misrepresenting what the tech is and what it’s used for, but most of them do require basic understanding that a combustion engine and a Ford F-150 are two different things.

Gundam Wing dares to ask a question no piece of media, and certainly no Gundam series, has asked before: What if Gundam pilots were homosexual boys?

Since we're all talking about dogpiles now, and I had mentioned my own experience dealing with them a few times in the last couple days, I figured I'd write a longer thread explaining my experiences with them and specifically why they're specifically worse than just "a bunch of people being mean"

That Israelis were actual victims of sexual violence by Hamas does not mean that Palestinians are not actual victims of sexual violence by Israeli guards. There's a logical fallacy in assuming only one can be true. No nation has a genetic immunity to human cruelty.

"Keeping people unemployed during a slow recovery led to the Republicans taking power." Okay, full speed ahead next time "Well, it turns out that people across the political spectrum hate inflation more than anything else." Ah

i'm reading it and I think a takeaway could be that, because the right will never stop eroding our gains on persuasion, we have to never stop persuading as in, we can't view gay rights, etc, as "settled, it's over, deal with it," we have to constantly make the case bc they won't stop making theirs

I’ve seen so much wishful thinking about GOP maps backfiring by making GOP seats light red to target Dems—this is largely false. They mainly packed Dem seats more efficiently, reduced dark red seats to “only” solid red, & made vulnerable seats no bluer. Dems may still win the House—this isn’t why

If a violin plays in the woods and no one is around to hear it, is it playing?

Fascinating article. melmagazine.com/en-us/story/...

Senate hearing: "Mr. Secretary, how on earth did you cut the, uh, reproductive organ off of an animal that doesn't even exist?" That unique gravel voice: "Well, uh, it doesn't exist *now*. You're welcome. Also it was delicious."

Chupacabra slides into the Cryptid Club like he's a regular. Says hello to the piano player. Asks for his usual. Everyone seems to know him already. Meanwhile Mothman is still waiting on his invitation.

Ley lines are actually a modern invention!

It’s fascinating because the chupacabra feels like it should be an old myth and it’s literally a mid-90s thing

reference.mp4

I think a lot of how people talk about public belief is like getting excited every May because we’ve finally beaten the cold once and for all, and then falling into a depression every October as it comes creeping back. I think it betrays a profound misunderstanding of the systems at play.

We get stuck in these cycles of triumph and despair because we want to see public opinion as an argument we can win, rather than an ephemeral creation of the social and informational structures and incentives that exist at a given moment.

as someone who worked on bg3, I fully agree - it's so utterly hypocritical how these platforms treat sex and eroticism - they want to make bank off big releases (and payment processors conveniently look the other way when this happens!) but strangle entire swathes of content from indies

Lottie is sleeping with one of my husband's t-shirts, as she always does when he's away. She carries it from room to room, then gives it back to him when he returns. Heart-melting.

Belugas

Enara for gravetender 🌱 #vgen

Roger Rabbit lied to me?!!!?

i'm so tired of being ruled by pedophillic gambling addicted apocalyptic death cultists can we yeet them into the pits of hell already

Osaka high court ruled on may 8th that forcing a non-binary person to keep their biological sex on their family register was an infringement violation of the ”spirit” of Japanese constitution (art.14), thus opening toward a discussion of a third gender in Japan. digital.asahi.com/articles/DA3...

With Supreme Court ruling on Same-sex marriage coming up, there are many interesting cases of judicial action in Japan atm.