instagram stories which are screenshots of twitter posts? reddit front page? no, i get all my news from one trusted source: richard stallman's political notes.

Submitted by twovests in just_post

i'm half joking. i'm really frustrated at the news aggregations i have available

meanwhile, this guy and his site:

  • posts several times a month, usually several times a day
  • RSS feeed
  • quick summaries with sources
  • webpage loads instantly and without javascript
  • RSS feed
  • no advertisements, so it's not like i'm even supporting stallman financially
  • regularly has actionable calls to action
  • RSS feed

the problem is that richard stallman is very creepy and bad in many ways. but the evils of viewing this one guys webpage pales in comparison to having an instagram or twitter account, so i do not care at all

i wish i personally had a timeline of political events to refer to, and every time i wish i had that, i remember someone else who shares most of my documentation philosophies and many of my political leanings has done just that

he's fallen short of saying what israel is doing is genocide, e.g. in november he said

"Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting "the genocide of the Palestinian people." I think that is somewhat of an exaggeration — Israel is indeed committing mass murder of noncombatants Palestinians, but that is not the same thing as genocide."

he also says (feb 3rd):

it is absurd to condemn a person totally for a disagreement over the level of condemnation Israel deserves for killing 25,000 Palestinian civilians.

and just yesterday, feb 4th

So far, what Israel has done to Palestinian civilians in Gaza is violent killing of many civilians, and imposing great privation. To call it "genocide" is an exaggeration. But if Israel continues adding to this crime, including by knowingly causing famine in Gaza, the crime will grow to become genocide for real.

i think he's wrong not to call this a genocide, but i do appreciate the very specific words he uses.

but most of all, i appreciate the steadfast dedication here. in his very first political notes from 2000, he promotes the "free burma coalition" (burma is now myanmar), and has had political notes about israel committing slaughter and torture since 2001

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Comments

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anethum wrote

ah yep that page is upsettingly good

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flabberghaster wrote

The worst things about stallman stem from the best thing about stallman.

He is extremely principled. But that doesn't mean what it does to most people. He has an idea, and he follows it to its conclusion. When it comes to software I'm glad someone is there to never compromise on anything, and stick to his guns to an incredibly annoying decree. This is the same reason I have a soft spot for Norman Finkelstein. Not afraid to be so, fucking irritating when he knows he's right and everyone else is falling short. I respect it and I hope that for all my faults, I have the same strength they do for my own convictions.

But he also follows that philosophy of never being gold he's wrong in the workplace harassment realm. Which I do not like.

I don't think it balances out at all. I think he should have his theoretical justifications for saying he thinks necrophilia is OK but he should just keep those things under his hat. However for the same reasons, he is not ever going to.

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twovests OP wrote

Replying to flabberghaster (#18,246)

I basically agree with this. I highly value consistent and principles-based thinking.

I used to be the same way as Stallman (starting with premises and following them to their conclusions, however uncomfortable.) But I think we differ in that (1) I wouldn't post about them, (2) I make compromises all the time for convenience, and (3) living life means using imperfect logic and heuristics over incomplete information to minimize the costs of decisionmaking. So it's super silly to imagine oneself as being equipped to start with the "right" premises and to be able to follow them to absolutely correct conclusions.

I honestly think necrophilia is a great extreme point for discussion, but only in places where people want those annoying Big Philosophy Debates. (Reasoning for it being good for discussion: It has a big disgust-to-actual-harm ratio, AND participants can rest assured they're all mutually uninterested in the act. I wouldn't think, "Oh, zeldamaster2002 makes some good points, but do they have unsavory intentions with a corpse?")

That said, Stallman has advocated for the ethics of CSAM, pedophilia, incest, etc. too, so, yuck. ("Uh, does zeldamaster2002 have unsavory intentions with a sibling? They're really invested in this debate.") A lot of the arguments for these assume the event happens in a vacuum, or under extremely and infeasible contrived conditions. I overall think a good ethical law/rule should be an ethical heuristic, and even if we can imagine a scenario where necrophilia is good, it's astronomically more likely to be harmful, so it's good to prescribe against it.

At the very least, this thinking isn't reflected in his political notes. I think he at least has the capacity to weigh matters by importance (whereas I spent 45 minutes trying to summarize my position on necrophilia, an issue which will never matter in my life), but maybe not be expertise. (His posts about disabled actors are about as long as his posts about iOS 14's EU app store changes.)

I think I sympathize with Stallman to a degree, as an autistic "bad ending" I've avoided. I'm quite autistic, but I feel like I've been able to far better internalize the mechanisms and utility of how people interact well enough to get by.

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