Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 61

Engels and Marx famously inferred that history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce. Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially arrived at farce.

@Wolf480pl I suppose so. Although I feel the need to point out that Orwell's critique (and mine) is targeted at certain intellectual habits, not the content they are focused on. So while many people treat both feminism and men's rights as "nationalisms" (by the definition in Orwell's essay), that doesn't mean there aren't rational and reasonable versions of both these discourses. Indeed, in my experience there definitely are, and they are much more compatible than the "nationalist" versions.

@Wolf480pl good question. Using the broader definition of "identity politics" in which white nationalism and men's rights are included as examples, I'd say it's as good a term as any for what Orwell means by "nationalism".

I'm sure I just heard a British politician quote the #MontyPython parrot sketch in the House of Commons. Funny, I don't remember taking any psychedelic substances today ... ;-P

@zig
> c) what do you use it *for*?

> I don't.

Does anyone?

@Wolf480pl it's worked pretty well for Americanism, for decades if not centuries. It's arguable that none of the "nation-states" could have formed and aggregated the power they have over the last few centuries without it. I agree with Orwell that it's overall a bad thing for humanity (and, I would add, the health of the biosphere). But we underestimate its effectiveness at our peril.

@zig ok, so:
a) how do you use it? Does it work through a web browser or do I need to install client software?
b) is it an application, or a middleware for running them over?
c) what do you use it *for*?

@lj_writes I agree and Orwell acknowledges that it's not the ideal term for what he's describing. I don't like the term "tribalism" because it implies that it's a problem specific to indigenous people who organize in tribes, when in fact it's much more common among modern and post-modern populations. I prefer terms like "polarization", "partisanship", or "fundamentalism", depending on the specifics of the use case.

@Wolf480pl are you reading that quote in the context of the earlier quote?
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/101832585615024666

As Orwell uses it here, "nationalism" means something closer to what we might now call "fundamentalism", or what a classical liberal might call "tribalism" (although as I think we've discussed before I have problems with that term).

@aral I'm aware of the holy wars that constantly rage for and against programming languages. But AFAIK JS is the only one that results in code being downloaded and run on the users computer on-the-fly. As onPon's article points out, that makes proprietary JS code effectively impossible to replace at the user end with free code. These are not trivial issues, and implying that they are suggests a failure to understand the scope of the problem.
@danjones @alcinnz

@aral as for the claim that the FSF's criticisms of Javascript are a ...
> ridiculous and ill-informed stance against a programming language

I note that they're far from alone in seeing JS as a problem. Plenty of experienced engineers have serious problems with it too. A quick selection off the top of my head:
* https://soc.freedombone.net/objects/20b82117-001c-478a-92e7-19a90897f63a
* https://hackernoon.com/the-javascript-phenomenon-is-a-mass-psychosis-57adebb09359
* https://onpon4.github.io/articles/kill-js.html
@danjones @alcinnz

@aral I share your concerns about open source events being sponsored by Google, as do FSF, but they can't control this. As for approving of child-killing drone software, that's FUD worthy of Microsoft. FSF have often spoken out about the use of freely-licensed code to do much less anti-social things than that:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

Perhaps you could respond to the concerns laid out in 'The Javascript Trap' with some substance, rather than resorting to whattaboutism?
@danjones @alcinnz

@Wolf480pl for whom?

@xurizaemon @lightweight from memory, every time I've done a speed test on a standard home-or-garden net connection, the upload bandwidth has been a tiny fraction of the download bandwidth. Am I wrong in thinking these would need to be at (or close to) parity to run a server used by more than a tiny handful of people at a time?

@xurizaemon @lightweight I haven't looked into it for a while, but when I was chief tech and bottlewasher at Oblong in Welly, trying to set up in-house hosting for activist services was one of my more ambitious goals. From what I remember, the net connection we used explicitly banned us from running servers on it (plus our bandwidth was capped), and we never achieved it.

@xurizaemon @lightweight are those IPv4 or IPv6 addresses? (or is that a silly question)

@solariiknight the long-term picture is hard to envision. First, we have to ask how long we can continue with computers at all, given the massive energy cost of mining their raw materials and manufacturing them, and of transport across the entire supply chain involves. If computers can be sustainable, that will probably require radical decentralization of their production, which probably requires a non-corporate way of organizing hardware production and recycling at scale. It's a #WickedProblem

#GeorgeOrwell wrote these 'Notes on Nationalism' in 1945. Almost 100 years later, it's mind-boggling how much has changed, yet how much has stayed the same.

"Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied."
- George Orwell, 'Notes on Nationalism'
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat

@lightweight can OpenStack work with #DynamicDNS? If so, you might not even need a static IP. But you would need an ISP that provides sufficient upload bandwidth for a server to work effectively, and one that doesn't ban the use of servers on their consumer-grade connections and require a much more expensive server-grade connection for that. You're in a better position to know than me these days, but I'm not aware of any ISPs in Aotearoa offering that. This is a big part of what needs to change.