The 'why' is what I am wondering about. If I were an evil fascist I would fill this place with bots to keep the lefties arguing with the void instead of going outside for direct action. Other than that, curious programmers watching their creations interact in the wild?
Why would I want to waste time to discuss with synthetic entities online? I care about what real people think and have to say and I enjoy the interaction. I don't like the idea of just talking into a void without anyone real on the other end.
I'm German and terrified. I find it difficult to grasp that the playbook that was used in Nazi Germany is right there to compare, how the whole thing happened has been taught in schools to several generations in a row, there's memorial places to visit - the whole wealth of information is there so it doesn't happen again!!
And here we are, and it is happening again - in what seems an even more overt way than old Adolf ever dared to pull off. They just built a concentration camp in Florida and are loudly bragging about it. People are randomly being kidnapped from the street, based not even on their immigration status but their skin color, by groups of unidentified thugs. All while the media - even international media - still seem to be unable to call "Fascism" to what is happening.
I would have hoped that us being the eternal Nazis would at least have a deterring effect on other people to not fall into the same trap.
It was probably a range of plants and fungi seeking interaction with a species that could care for them and bring them to new places. Maybe wheat and yeast ganged up to control the apes? However the first plant humans propagated were fig trees, and apparently the first plant we grew in a gardening context was the bottle gourd (pot to ferment stuff in!) Maybe we find out one day which of those fuckers are responsible for us having credit scores and 9-5 now!!
A lot of fermented stuff like bread, cheese, wine and beer most likely started as "stuff forgotten in a pot" - not very complicated. In case of bread you need: two stones for milling the grain, a pot to mix it with water and store it, and then a fire to bake it. Not medieval tech, but way earlier.
Beer has been known since at least the bronze age, there are recipes known today, but the initial stage was, yet again, mill some grain, mix with water, forget in a pot.
Wine: forget some fruit in a pot.
Source: Reading history, plus my ADHD brain keeps forgetting stuff in the kitchen. I accidentally invented soda one of these days, because sometimes the forgotten stuff gets fizzy, too (you do need to invent the hermetically closing jar for that though, open clay pot doesn't work in that case)!
Btw one of my crazier theories (although I'm not the only person considering it) is that it wasn't us domesticating the world, but that we were domesticated by yeast. So it was inevitable that we kept producing vessels and feeding the fungus with sugar in ever more refined ways. Fungus wants to grow.
I feel you. I'm older, and some years ago I decided to get off facebook. All the people I loosely connect with in my region are on there, events get announced there, my hobby groups are there. I felt very superior to all those who kept using fascist social media, and told myself I was better off without it. I also became very isolated from other humans and spent 24/7 with the same person and with my animals. It was great for a while, but ultimately I went back to using the blasted site. I believe it can be healthy to spend time away from the algorithm especially when one is a little too hooked, I don't think it's good to isolate from others forever and get too hung up over how and where most people like to interact.
I'd say I now use the site with more self awareness - when I realize that the algorithm is fucking with me I get off. I also make an effort of engaging with people I like in real life, through shared interests and activities. I still hate facebook with a passion and to not feel too bad about using it I post a lot of political stuff to try and radicalize my friends on there.
I'd say don't suffer too much for your idea of social media purity. If it helps you connect with others, use it. If you feel you are too hooked, go touch grass.
I built a solar tracking system with light sensors for a solar cooker. It worked beautifully on a cloudless day but sometimes got confused when there were some clouds. Some weeks later I realized that my glorious invention was trying to find something we know the position of at any time during the day. Considering the time and money spent and how smart I had felt for building that monstrosity made me feel very dumb afterwards.
Cutting down the Amazon rain forest, mistreating your workers, mistreating animals, perpetrating genocide, driving a country into fascism, to just name a few. There's probably more stuff I'd consider evil.
Here's a rather specific example of greenwashing I had to do with, of the kind that's a bit silly and very wide spread and almost impossible to avoid, but has a huge impact on where I live: I was doing a translation for a paper producing company. Their brochure was describing how they were caring for the forests that produce their paper and how they were championing the protection of the environment. They made it sound like they were planting and caring for some kind of fairy tale forest full of wildlife and biodiversity. The reality: all they ever plant is eucalyptus monoculture that by now covers half of the country and is one of the main causes of wildfires getting worse every summer.
Another example that I do not have personal experience with but that I imagine must be very difficult to navigate is being a programmer and working on some tiny snippet of code for something that has the power of causing unimaginable harm to society - like most of financial and stock market stuff, or election winning manipulating algorithms.
Water is a limited resource and even tech like desalination doesn't solve anything if you have nowhere to put all the salt. As long as our tech includes BS like water-guzzling data centers to run AI for creating stupid fake cat videos there's not much hope. We're monkeys with technology and some species wiser than us should probably take our monkey toys away because all we use them for is causing more damage.
Humans are nice to each other as long as they can afford it. Limit their access to clean water and food and they will turn into bloodthirsty monsters, like any animal will do.
The entire list of mental disorders is made up - people have just grouped certain symptoms together and gave them an invented name. This can be useful for categorizing and treating people, but ultimately your mind is your own and nobody can really say what's going on inside. I have diagnosed myself and find categorizing myself as autistic useful - although I hate the idea that whatever goes on in my brain is considered a disorder, so I prefer the term neurodivergent. I'd use official diagnoses where they are useful for getting help and support, but always take them with a grain of salt. Psychiatry is not an exact science and both diagnosis and treatment are often not much more than trial and error.
Be especially careful when you are a person who has every reason to be angry about something in their life and someone tries to diagnose you with something like "Is-angry-for-no-good-reason" disorder, as it used to be the case of women suffering from 'hysteria' and abused teenagers getting diagnosed with personality disorders.
I was forced by my idiot ex husband to go to a wedding of family I didn't even know while one of our horses was at home dying of colic. Spent the day crying, was stared at disapprovingly by strangers and ended up eating some pink dessert with surprise salmonella. Returned home to a dead horse and three days throwing up with diarrhea.
I hate weddings and only have been to two including my own, so that would leave my own as the best one, getting married to the above mentioned idiot. Just us, our kid and my parents at the civil registry, then burger king. Fuck weddings, for real. Best day of my life my arse - I've always thought how awful that sounds because it means it only gets worse from there (and it did).
I could still mention a third wedding I refused to go to because idiot husband was too drunk to drive us there safely. Had to flee with the kid and hide at a friend's place for a week to escape his rage (shouldn't have returned, but was talked into going back by that 'friend' and the idiot).
Weddings trigger the shit out of me to the point where I make sure to not have friends who'd ever consider having a wedding and inviting me to it. I'm now proudly non-monogamous and happy among people who don't have to make a big expensive thing around pretending they want to be together forever.
Probably the best option. I love the interaction with real people here, hope it remains that way!