To be fair, variety makes groups more resilient. If Signal were to ever become compromised somehow, people who use other apps like Session will be okay.

It’s not a zero-sum game, either – people can use Signal and other apps.

hell yeah 🔥🔥🔥

It has to do with the societal consequences of how them “valuing their time” impacts people. Nurses refusing to do volunteer nursing has little impact on the overall system of access to healthcare.

Healthcare is heavily regulated through legislation, and is going to be free or paid or corporate or not corporate largely as a result of the legislation. Nurses can’t just do what they want. People who are concerned about the state of healthcare should therefore change things by targeting legislation, not by targeting nurses.

Creative work is not like this. Creatives refusing to do do volunteer creative work means that either they will charge for their work, which creates a barrier to access, or they will use (and push others to use) platforms like YouTube and TokTok that make money from ad data.

The former choice results in class differences in access to art, and the latter choice results in everyone using platforms that have proven themselves to be hostile to minoritized groups and progressive causes. These outcomes aren’t legislated – they are the result of creatives choosing to “value their time”.

In otherwords, creatives choosing to “value their time” means that they will happily enforce class-based restrictions in access to art, and will happily support conservative corporations and surveillance capitalism.

And I practice what I preach, too. I have spent thousands of hours developing free software and making free educational materials for people, donating my labour to support progressive causes and supporting others who do the same. Creatives who insist on charging for their work are a ball and chain on the movements I support. They are leeches and class traitors.

Creatives should value other people. Fuck their time.

No, my point specifically relates to creative work. You said in your comment:

under our current economic model people require money to survive and if they do not get money for doing their creative work they might not be able to continue making that work.

This is false, basically. They can do other types of work. Creative work can be done without making money for it. Plenty of people have a day job and make creative work in their free time. The same option is not available for most other types of work, such as government, doctors, lawyers, etc. If you try to do these types of jobs outside of the framework of a regulated business, you’ll get the book thrown at you.

The issue I’m getting at isn’t “are you responsible for the actions you take to make a living”. Rather, I’m getting at the issue of “does creative work require becoming an employee of a capitalist company, thereby siding with its shareholders in having a vested interest in increasing that company’s profits regardless of the societal damage caused?”

The answer to that question is a resounding “no”. Creatives need to grow a spine and get a day job.

you’re not a leftist unless you have daddies money to support you wasting 100 hours on a 20m video.

I didn’t say that, though. Clearly it’s not worth engaging with you.

It is not selfish to want to be payed for working on something like a video that in some cases takes hundreds of man hours of work to complete

Yes, it is, if your desire to get paid causes you to remain on corporate-controlled social media, to the detriment of society.

Not to mention, plenty of people can and do put hundreds of hours of work into projects that they don’t ask for payment for.

“Content creators” who get paid through advertisements are class traitors whose interests are aligned with the capitalist class. They will fuck over society to make a buck for themselves.

As someone who uses generative AI, I don’t use it out of some mindless obedience to corporations, but rather because it can massively reduce the work needed to perform certain tasks.

I think the fight against AI is a losing battle. Better to push for regulations in energy usage. (And no, I don’t give a fuck about artists’ intellectual property. I think intellectual property rights are holding humanity back in order to enrich a few artists who falsely and arrogantly believe themselves to be original thinkers, and who furthermore believe that being an original thinker gives them the right to prevent other people from spreading their ideas or thinking of the same thing.)

basically it’s not that religion has aided studies, but rather studies have made it despite religion

In some cases, sure, and in other cases, no. For example, Buddhism is supported by nine other fields of knowledge – the vidyasthanas – including such things as grammar and logic. Religious teachers draw examples and ideas from these fields when giving religious teachings. One must study these other fields to become a “learned one” (pandita/mkhas pa).

This is a living tradition that continues to the present day. For example, the Dalai Lama has heavily promoted education in modern science among Buddhists, and has co-authored several books on the connection between the two.

The idea that religion is just some anti-educational brainrot is, ironically, anti-educational brainrot. Religion definitely can function that way, but it cannot be reduced to it.

Not to be Muslim-phobic, I am aware if the rich history of debate and science in the Middle East, but the material conditions have changed now, conservatism has been on the rise since the 70s.

Yes, we seem to agree here. And if you acknowledge that material conditions influence how religion plays out, then you must acknowledge that it is not really intellectually honest to reduce religion to one form or another. Religion isn’t inherently either intellectual or ignorant, it is subject to the material conditions that it appears in.

You speak of mahaviharas, but Buddhists I have met are just as conservative as the average religious person when it comes to women’s rights, feminism and gay rights.

Yes, most old religions have unfortunately inherited prejudice and closed-mindedness from broader society. Although, I think you must also acknowledge that educated people can be bigoted, and we see this among non-religious people too.

Mansoor al-Hallaj was executed for saying ‘Ann-al-Haq’

A religious person being executed on religious grounds for challenging the religious state isn’t exactly an indictment of religion – both sides were religious. It is an indictment of religious ideology being enforced by the state.

I don’t believe that religion is unique in this regard – states also use capitalism, liberalism, and other ideologies to repress proponents of competing economic + political systems. This doesn’t make economics + politics bad, and it doesn’t make religion bad either.

That rational thought survived when people were religious is hardly to the credit of religion

This is not true. In a Buddhist context, rational thought was taught by Buddhists like Dignaga and Dharmakirti. They studied and promoted logic + reasoning specifically for religious reasons.

such things happened anyway and under the sanction of religion

Yes, as I’ve said, religion includes both sides. You cannot erase the religiosity of the people that the state was trying to repress.

As long as religion is under an institution, it is the nature of institutions to cling to power and hence, suppress dissent.

I agree, with the exception of more decentralized and countercultural religious groups. When religious groups accrue great power, it’s a dark day for everyone. But I don’t think this problem is unique to religion. I think it’s a problem with having power over others.

Plenty of educated religious people are converts. I was raised atheist and converted to Buddhism in my late teens. The same was true of many of the other students in my university’s religious studies department.

The fact is, being religious doesn’t depend on lack of education or childhood indoctrination. People will still be religious in the absence of those things.

Religion is “built” by the actions of countless religious people. There is not a single cohesive force shaping its development. Religion has also been used for education, political liberation, charity, and emotional healing. Reality is complex.

Not really. If you read about the history of medieval universities, madrasahs, and mahaviharas, you will see how deeply and widely religious people have studied throughout history. It was customary for religious scholars to learn all kinds of topics, such as grammar, logic, and medicine.

Religions are made up of people, and have accommodated all kinds of people. Some are wise scholars, and others are ignorant conspiracists. Religion can’t really be boiled down to one side or the other, though I understand how the rise of fundamentalist Christian fascism might make this hard to see.

And into yours. Do you think the “reality” they’re presenting is honest?

Even if they’re not lying, they’re definitely not telling the truth.

That’s fair enough, and sorry for jumping to accusing you of dishonesty. To be honest I’m totally shocked that you and so many others in this thread have had such an easy time installing software through the CLI. I have had loads of trouble for the same user case as you, to the extent that I’ve had to completely give up on installing a variety of programs that didn’t have GUI installers available.

Our experiences are totally opposite, so it makes sense that we have opposite stances on the CLI.

I’m talking about installing ordinary programs via the CLI in the 2020s. I have had loads of complicated installs for software (no LLMs) just for personal use in the last 5 years. I’ve heard the same story from other people who’ve switched to Linux.

I think what’s happening is that people who insist that the CLI is easy just don’t tend to run into the problems I’m talking about, whereas for CLI haters it’s the norm.

That is an oversimplification and you know it. Why is it so hard for CLI people to be honest?

Installing software on the command line is often a nightmare, requiring multiple commands and throwing error messages that you can only find mention of in one unresolved thread on some obscure forum somewhere.

Plus, there are so many different commands that you have other CLI users saying that they need to pull up reference tools to remember how to do different actions. I have only ever needed to that once or twice ever for GUIs.

Get real.

The Friendica UI is terrible, unfortunately. Way too complex.

To expand on your second point in case anyone isn’t sure what you mean:

Different browsers render webpages slightly differently, because they use different “engines”. The most popular browsers are Chrome or Edge, both of these which use the Blink engine, whereas Firefox uses a different engine called Gecko.

Web developers want their websites to work for most people, so they develop websites that are optimized to run in Blink, which means they sometimes don’t look as intended on Gecko (Firefox). It’s not Firefox’s fault that developers are doing this – of course developers want to reach the most users possible. There’s nothing wrong with Gecko, either – if it were more popular, then developers would build sites for it instead of for Blink. But, this issue of sites breaking can sometimes turn people off.

(Conversely, I develop for Firefox first, so sometimes webpages I make don’t render properly in Chrome/Edge. That’s not ideal, but I don’t care much. I think Gecko is the better + more consistent engine, and I’m not interested in chasing mass appeal.)

No we’re not. Why are you speaking for other people?