Michael

We don’t have a hate boner. We see “decentralized” being thrown around like a buzzword and we know that it really doesn’t apply to their platform.

It’s like the Libertarian Party taking the word “libertarian” and flipping the meaning to describe their ideology.

It’s a distortion of the spirit of the word and actual libertarians obviously want to clear up the misunderstandings that result from being introduced to the concept of libertarianism through such a group.

Agreed.

I believe action can come in a lot of different forms. I very often give advice online, barring my ability to do anything in the real world - due to my body not cooperating. There’s a lot on my list for myself, the people I love, and the community around me.

Advice still isn’t the same thing as direct support and intervention, despite giving helpful tips and (hopefully) life-changing advice to probably hundreds of people by now.

If I was pretending, I would’ve already deleted my account. I don’t choose to lie. I recently moved to a new area and I have checked out my opportunities for volunteering, but unless I travel to a major city (which I am unable to currently do), my impact will be minimal unless I spearhead an organization or group myself. I live in a very rural area with relatively few homeless or overtly disadvantaged people.

But, of course, it’s okay to disagree. And, it isn’t a big deal at all. I chimed in to not virtue signal, but to be the person that I am, and to show that the world may not be as cold as your (valid) perspective sheds light to.

I believe your experience is what you make it. I could easily fall into doom and gloom and let that be my reality, or I can open myself up to the idea that people who care are limited by their reality, but given the time, opportunity, and means would help others out.

A vulnerable person could read your perspective and hurt themselves or worse. That was my specific reasoning for response. Hope that makes sense.

Hope probably requires action too, otherwise nothing backs it up and grounds it into reality.

Thanks for chatting, sorry it wasn’t worthwhile for you - it was worth it for me.

I’ll keep working on myself, and when I am the shining beacon that even you could stand beside, maybe we could have another chat about caring and action.

Thanks.

I caught on to his bullshit pretty quick when he came into the public eye - before his stroke. Is there a lot of evidence pointing to his past misconduct?

You’re saying you don’t do anything to help them but you want to seem like you do.

I am not doing well. It’s not an excuse and it doesn’t make me lesser. I am working to be healthy. You are free to perceive reality however you wish, I choose to believe the world is a friendly place. If I was healthy, I would be able to do more for myself as well as others.

I have experienced some pretty terrible things. I know very well that life can be unkind, but I still persevere and I’m working towards healing. Thanks for your feedback, not everybody is the saint you expect them to be, but it doesn’t make them lesser or bad.

Considering that I have volunteered my time to help and feed the homeless when I was healthy, and have volunteered a significant amount of time in my life, I’d be willing to if I had an organization alongside me.

Why do you feel the need to purity test me?

Well considering that a lot of people suffering are experiencing economic problems in my country or problems with their environment; like not being able to receive health care and suffering from treatable physical illness, or not being able to get out of sticky situations with abusive people or dynamics, or having employment issues, or being homeless/in debt and so forth - I can’t exactly give them a place to live or give them money because I really have none to give.

In those cases, what can I personally do for them? Of course I can listen, I can give solicited advice, and I can point them to the resources they have access to.

I advocate for those resources to be more accessible for all. Health-allowing, I want to volunteer my time and become more politically active.

For me, I have a stigma to medication because the side effects are terrifying. I almost died from SSRIs, I got very ill and also suicidal. On benzos, I got paradoxically anxious and angry after cessation/when I wasn’t taking them (I am not an angry person). I took them as prescribed - always.

I only got more and more unstable after taking various psychiatric drugs, and everyone in my family who has taken psychiatric drugs was not better off for it. Seems like suicidal ideation is a common reaction for those in my family. Perhaps there is a genetic cause for it, like how we metabolize drugs.

I don’t know a single person in my life who has had a good experience, but if you or someone you know has had a good experience, I’m happy for you. It’s just unfair to say it’s magical thinking when there are real life reasons why people are hesitant.

See Soteria Houses. Schizophrenia or psychosis is not always a permanent state that requires medication for the rest of the patient’s life. Soteria Houses achieve remission in individuals with little to no psychiatric medication. They use antipsychotics for stabilization, in controlled doses, and usually (to the best of my knowledge) only for a few months - though every case is different.

I care, and I know a lot of other people do as well.

I read enough of OP’s comments and looked at their past commenting/post history and it was pretty clear that it was a cry for help. It wasn’t for karma - they deleted their account. OP was nothing but polite and responded to many comments.

Of course, I do realize that there is a lot of junk, especially on the front page.

It’s not hard to give somebody the benefit of the doubt, be compassionate, and direct them to services and resources that can help them. It takes much more effort to be hateful, doubtful, and judgemental.

OP’s last comment was them admitting that they should be institutionalized, they also admitted that they were probably being lazy given the massive amounts of comments accusing them of such behavior.

OP didn’t give off the air of being unable to live independently, they just couldn’t do physical chores, like taking out the garbage, because their heart rate would go up to 200~ upon standing.

If OP just hired a cleaning service - problem solved.

Everybody deserves kindness, compassion, and empathy.

Ableist people also include people that idealize not being ableist. They come up with excuses like, “I’m not being ableist, I’m just giving you hard love!”, or, “You need to do what I say and do it exactly how I say because I care about you!”.

There was a reddit thread on the frontpage recently where many people were dog-piling on a severely disabled person. The person was diagnosed with moderate autism with intellectual disability, a severe heart condition, severe PTSD, and ADHD.

Many people came into the thread to say that OP was making up their disability, that OP should be institutionalized if they can’t comply with the unreasonable (and harmful to OP’s health) demands from their relative, they accused OP of being a troll because their doctor wouldn’t give them bad advice (OP bought $30 dollars worth of alcohol every couple months to entertain with friends with their doctor’s blessing), they shamed OP for not getting a job when they can barely stand up on their own two feet (and OP’s doctor/therapist/psychiatrist say OP can’t work), and so forth.

OP’s aunt was fining OP (who is on a limited income of $1000 a month and charging OP $500 a month for rent) $200 dollars for every instance of them not doing their chores exactly how their aunt wanted and behaving in the way that the aunt wanted. OP was a formal tenant, and living in a split unit and was mostly independent, though unable to do things like take out the trash. If OP reached fines totaling $2000 dollars, OP’s aunt threatened them with institutionalization and/or homelessness.

Commenters said how sick OP’s story made them (the sickness being directed towards OP), how bad they felt for OP’s aunt, they commented how OP’s aunt’s demands were completely justified because her resentment built for many years from “putting up” with OP, they said how disgusted they are were at OP’s “laziness”, and many chimed into to say how they are also disabled and OP doesn’t deserve special attention or care because OP is a grown adult. Most repeating constantly that they weren’t being ableist.

Some people even coaxed OP into detailing their sexual relations with others, while questioning OP about their heart condition.

It was truly heartbreaking to witness an incredibly vulnerable person being abused to that degree by their relative and hundreds, if not thousands, of redditors. OP eventually deleted their reddit account.

💯%.

I hear you. I just wonder, will it be worth it in the end to for them to see to it that society rots and capitalism “wins”, by shutting down discourse in the limited places that it is able to exist?

I’d reason that it won’t be worth it. I just wish they could see it that way too.

That nuance is not important - it’s not worth wasting your breath on. If people focused on root causes of the dysfunction and the change needed to solve the issues plaguing our societies - we’d be much better off.

The nuance isn’t lost to me, I just don’t care to quantify it and then shout it out to the heavens. It makes no difference to me whether Elon Musk is worse than Bill Gates. They can duke that battle out themselves if they care to.

I’ll reiterate the point from my other comment. Value judgements are a waste of time, energy, and our voices.

Whether or not Bill Gates is worse than Elon Musk is just as important as to whether Tom Cruise is a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio. Neither value judgement is worth my breath. It’s a pointless exercise.

We are reaching a critical junction in our timeline where these billionaires can not and should not exist any longer. We’ve learned our lessons, their benefit and merit is irrelevant because even the best billionaires sit silently and are complicit. They have power, influence, and wealth - all the ingredients needed to directly affect change.

At best, they throw around pennies that don’t address root causes and play the PR game, or play the blame game by focusing on individuals who are absolutely not responsible for the root causes of various issues that plague our societies.

If engineers/developers directly involved with Microsoft have called out Microsoft, and they were quickly silenced and fired, I’m more inclined to believe them versus a supposed lack of evidence.

Older reporting: https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/

According to the documents, the AI services that the Defense Ministry purchased from Microsoft include translation (about half of the average monthly consumption during the first year of the war), OpenAI’s GPT-4 model (about a quarter of the consumption), a speech-to-text conversion tool, and an automatic document analysis tool. In October 2023, the army’s monthly consumption of AI services provided by Azure jumped sevenfold compared to the month preceding the war; by March 2024, it was 64 times higher.

AI is a commodity that’s being developed by the few. They are shaping it to do things that are not for human benefit, like war and surveillance. It’s the truth. They are responsible for their choices and actions, they are consciously making this technology.

If you read the bottom part of my response, you’d hear that I’m just calling out the bullshit you’re peddling. You don’t really care, you’re focused on purity testing impassioned individuals who feel strongly about these subjects.

Microsoft is making the decision to directly sell their AI to that state and its military. It doesn’t change the fact that every being on earth shares responsibility as well. But I don’t have a direct ability to stop Microsoft from choosing to sell their proprietary technologies to support a country in surveilling, targeting, and killing innocents.

I will do everything in my power to voice my opinion and convince others that AI shouldn’t be used for war. I don’t want to live in that world and I’m sure many others don’t as well.

As for Linus, his stances about the use of his technology in war is pretty clear. He doesn’t like it, but he can’t stop it. His software is open-source. There’s a big difference between open-source software you give to all for free (for the benefit of all of humanity) and proprietary software that you provide only with payment.

I think making value judgements on individuals is a counterproductive use of our time, energy, and voice. That’s what I’m trying to point out.

If we focused on root causes and the change we’d like to see to solve those problems, we’d be smooth sailing as a world already.