Thoughts on an article on "Flaking"

On the Normalisation of  Antisocial Behaviour

   This is something that has been hypothetically grinding my gears, although I was not affected by it yet: The benefit of having no social circle anywhere. But I see what people are posting online, and it's not looking good, which is why I would agree with the author of this piece.

    I don't condemn those who have to opt out spontaneously because of unforeseen events, but those are also not who the author condemns. They speak about those who opt out in the last minute because they changed their mind. And that is only when they will call to notify about their absence, instead of being no-shows and AWOLs. This is just plain antisocial behaviour and cannot be justified anyhow. If you think that you don't want to attend a soirée or a party, that's fine, but give the host or whoever you meant to meet some leeway to plan ahead, rather than pushing them off minutes beforehand. 

Community Notes and Fact-Checking

 Community Notes are better than you may think

    I think that everyone has heard of Zuckerberg's plans to discontinue fact-checking cooperations in favour of Twitter-like community notes to delegate the service to the users of Meta services[1]. Many have complained that he thus gave away responsibilities for the paddling of misinformation and disinformation, more specifically its combatting, to the users, implicitly conceding to incoming POTUS Donald J. Trump. To be fair, on that latter point, I agree to some degree, although I also believe that he tries to play it cool with him as he may remember that he threatened to imprison him on the basis that is either pure retaliation or an unofficial lèse-majeste[2]. Whatever the reason may be--perhaps Ms. Telnaes was right and gradually more wealthy entrepreneurs and businesspeople kneel before the authoritarian president not only to be left alone but to appeal to him for personal or corporate benefits[3]--, but what I want to focus on is to take up the cudgels on behalf of community notes as a means of fact-checking. They are much better than their reputation gives them credit for.

Murder is bad

 On the Murder of Brian Thompson by Luigi Nicholas Mangione

   I am currently thinking about staying off Facebook for a while until the community here has found another issue to bad-mouth. You could imagine what I am thinking of at the moment, and to be honest, I find the title of Robin Hood attached to Mr. Mangione quite appropriate, because unlike those who attached it, I have read at least the Pyle book; while I haven't read the older English ballads of Robyn Hood and his posse, the theme doesn't really change, and he fit the predicate of chaotic evil. The same applies to Mangione.
   Luckily, the feuilletons have been saner than the online communities that found their new 'folk hero' in the bourgeois computer science graduate who couldn't help himself looking briefly into a camera to consequently be identified at a McDonald's. The police have later found what was called a 'manifesto' but is actually just a short handwritten note in whiche proved that he didn't understand how the healthcare system works¹ . As the above-cited Economist piece writes:

Trump and the Language of Hate

How Trump's Language likens that of Classical Authoritarians

It makes sense to allege Donald J. Trump of equipping a language comparable to that of Adolf Hitler¹, especially since he has become more fond of likening his political opponents to vermin and the likes; he is only one tad away of calling them a disease begetting the American popular body² (Volkskörper), if he hasn't already--I don't keep up with his public iterations, online or offline. Overall, it is needless to say that his speech has become more dehumanising by the minute, after having become more ressentiment-laden during the Biden presidency³. We know that he has blamed incumbent POTUS Joe Biden for the two assassinations⁴ (and the one that was firstly suspected and contradicted later), as well as his VPOTUS Kamala Harris who he likes to call "comrade", although he has yet to prove either of the two implicit allegations: That Biden instigated assassination attempts against Trump--so far, he has only once made a remark that affiliated Trump to (semi-)Fascism⁵, and even that has been uttered years ago, while Trump usually refers to presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a Socialist, again totally unsubstantiated⁶. Altogether, if there is one candidate in the presidential race tainting the other with hateful language that had the potential to provoke violent actions, it would be Mr. Trump.

Reflections on the excerpt from Aleksei Nawalny's “Prison Diaries”

 From the excerpt:

“Having spent my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone exactly the same thing I shouted to those who gathered outside the court when the guards were taking me off to the police truck: Don’t be afraid of anything. This is our country and it’s the only one we have.

"The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. That we will surrender without a fight, voluntarily, our own future and the future of our children.” [1]