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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • But it may be something to work towards to, isn’t it? Or at least get rid of these societal taboos?

    Where I live and grew up (Germany), there isn’t that much of a taboo on nudity. I liked showering in my gym for example where there is only a shared (gendered) shower. Since starting my transition I wouldn’t feel welcome in any gendered shared public shower however. I would really like to stop hiding my body but instead feel more included among cis people. One day I hope…

    I still prefer going swimming naked (if there are not too many people around) because it avoids gendered swim wear. At most lakes in Germany you can find people going swimming naked or with swim wear. Just coexisting :)




  • Well, obviously by living in the UK or a European country you benefit from (neo)colonialism and capitalism quite a lot. People here do have a certain responsibility, although more so in making their government and the involved economy take responsibility for their actions. It certainly is a strange position to be in, because you cannot really live ethically under capitalism. But we should still strive to change this, to abolish capitalism and to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. Just seeing that the world is unfair and continuing to exploit people for your own good is imo unethical.

    Btw occupation is definitely not only based on military force but more often than not by capitalist exploitation. And occupation doesn’t work in a way where you have one distinct group of people conquering some land or people. It rather is the combination of administrative and economic power, i.e. various companies exerting pressure, to maintain control over a people. So yes, if a company is benefitting from the capitalist exploitation of these people and is therefore continuing this exploitation, I would think they are in part responsible for the situation. And it would be unethical to support this domain with your money. Of course, it is a question of degree, because it certainly isn’t as bad as directly giving the Taliban money but worse than giving the money to a less problematic country.

    It is a bit like paying ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola or Nestlé for a hypothetical service. Do you really want to support them? If you have a choice, use something else. If you don’t have a choice, protest against not having it.


  • As I understand it, this isn’t a resolved conflict in the past but rather an ongoing one. So yes, it does matter if you decide to give an oppressive British company or the Taliban money. And apart from that, as a German, I’m very much aware that we are not responsible for the wrongdoings of our ancestors but are responsible not to forget and thus repeat them. People who were victims under colonialism or any other form of oppression deserve at least recognition and compensation. Just continuing to live with the current condition shaped by oppression means supporting the oppression.


  • I think they just gave an example for how podcasts often feel to them. And I can relate, most podcasts feel like the podcaster assumes a certain norm and presenting topics as absolute truths. Someone here mentioned darknet diaries for example and I tried listening to this podcast but was deterred by his assumptions of how everyone wants to accumulate money and how he is obviously very oblivious of his political bias (i.e. trying to be apolitical but thus supporting a government’s military and political decisions). I guess this problem of thinking one is apolitical while actually talking about highly political stuff is more prevalent in cis male dominated spaces like tech (imo because of the combination of less empathy, a more self-centered viewpoint and a confidence in one’s own correctness). But as given per example by the other commenter, societal norms at large give people the feeling that they are correct in their views and that things just are a certain way (e.g. sex differences, certain experiences etc). Well, just wanted to give my mustard to it ;)


  • Interesting video. Although I strongly disagree with him on why “mastodon diehards” don’t want to federate with meta “because they just don’t like the company”. He mentioned it himself in the video that big companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc actually adopt a certain protocol just to make it obsolete and destroy the competition. This is a real threat with many previous examples to draw from. Why would he frame it as if only some mastodon nerds want to block meta because of some silly reason? This is misleading at best.

    He also fails to make the connection that the example of the 90ies would just repeat if big companies adopt the new protocol. Someone develops a new protocol to escape the walled garden(s), big companies come in and erect a new walled garden. What about this is any good if we cannot keep it open for everyone and away from corporal greed leading to enshittification?

    Statements like these make me be very wary with this channel. He is pretty oblivious and naive of capitalism.

    (And also interesting to see that Abigail Thorn doesn’t want tumblr to join the fediverse)














  • I guess it adds to the problem that it’s very context specific. When you are in your country talking in your mothertongue with someone, you would probably only say “the south” to refer to the south of your country (or another by society predefined south).

    And while we are on a mostly English-speaking platform inhabitated by mostly US people, I’ve heard US people throwing around US specific terms in a lot of different contexts/countries without checking the context they are in.