I can learn from smart but evil people. That’s why I read some of them.

But most people can’t even learn from smart but virtuous people. Most people just don’t care about evidence at all, and will trumpet some bogus finding that’s obviously false over mounds of available and well-gathered substantiation if the shaky and incorrect data comports with what they and their tribe wish to believe.

You can see this with climate change, the efficacy of facemasks, the excessive mortality rates due to Covid-19 and in so many other areas.

Just as with the truth of how very well propaganda works, the fact that people just do not give a single fuck about evidence was something I only really learned well and truly as an adult. Both were very disappointing revelations and keep me apart from other people more than any other factors.

With the non-shitty versions of Firefox which still supported proper extensions, I could right-click a link and open it in another browser in nearly no time. This is impossible in the new “improved” Firefox. It used to be two quick clicks, like this:

Now the process is:

1) Copy the URL (which is harder as it’s all hidden now).
2) Open the other browser.
3) Do shortcut for new tab (keyboard or button).
4) Paste into browser bar and either do “paste and go” or hit enter.

It seems somewhat minor I admit but I just timed it and the easier way when Firefox worked correctly took me less than one second and the crappy new way takes me seven seconds. In other words, the more “secure” Firefox causes me to spend seven times longer to do the exact same task. This is something I do probably 10-20 times a day so if I take the average and say I do it 15 times, the “better” Firefox is costing me an extra 90 seconds a day.

There are 365 days in a year. Therefore, the new Firefox is costing me 32,850 seconds a year, or 547.5 minutes a year, or a little over nine hours a year. And that’s one extension, and not even my most-commonly used one!

Fuck Mozilla and fuck the Firefox developers.

Oh, great. Microsoft has enabled Microsoft 365 to spy on workers. https://t.co/sRjsGG8fMu

— Roger McNamee (@Moonalice) November 24, 2020

This is the future of nearly everything, and we are doing nothing at all to stop it.

Many (perhaps most?) liberals seem to want this, even.

1939 Zephyr Lincoln Coupe.
Isn’t it beautiful? pic.twitter.com/9zf39E23p5

— Cat Perry ♿️ (@CatPurry9) November 26, 2020

Well, kind of. That car has been very extensively modified.

Here’s what they looked like new (this one has been restored to near from-the-factory condition):

Still a beautiful car but the first photo is not at all representative of what a Zephyr actually looked like.

The only reason for Biden to reach across the aisle is to punch that vile ghoul McConnell in the fucking face.

My mentions are full right now of people saying "sex isn't a need" and if a man's wife stops having sex with him, he'd better get used to masturbation.
This is… Such a heartless take. Sex is similar in need to social acceptance, and nobody is this angry about social acceptance.

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 23, 2020

And the weird thing is that this absurd assertion is primarily a liberal take! The conservatives react unhelpfully, but they at least understand how strong the sexual urge is (yes, in both women and men) and how it’s an actual need in the vast majority of humans.

I really don’t know why liberals have such trouble distinguishing immediate needs (air, food, water) from other needs that are just as vital but not immediately and obviously harmful due to their lack. It seems like they must be lying when they’ve told various groups things like, “No one needs sex/love/social acceptance,” etc (Some liberals do even claim no one needs social acceptance, usually when talking about incels or undesirable men). How can anyone possibly believe any of this and say it with a straight face?

Aella is exactly right here. We’d never tell anyone, “You don’t need friends or social relations with anyone.” It’s equally cruel and heartless to tell anyone, “You don’t need sex or lovers or sexual contact with anyone.” What an impoverished world some people wish to live in.

I’m just rehashing, essentially, the works of several different philosophers here, so don’t think any of this is original — though I’m restating their points quite differently.

Anyway, identity bullshittery and the digital age go hand in glove. They are complements of each another and catalyze one another as well. Existing as we do more and more as avatars in the digital realm, one’s identity (like gathering armor and apparel in an RPG) becomes relatively of greater import. This identity construction and maintenance is a way to make one’s self distinct and to belong to a tribe at the same time. Furthermore, it gives one the feeling of “choosing one’s choice,” even though the actual choices at hand are carefully constructed and very limited in nearly all ways — but it appears expansive, and that’s what people care about.

In this digital netherworld that is liminal to the meatspace one and where both are merely in a darkening umbra beneath an algorithmic monolith, identity is the constrained yet “chosen” marker of who one aspires to be, what one aspires to achieve, rather than what one is. And because this aspiration now is all we have, it’s defended even unto death itself — real death, not an avatar with a hundred lives defeated by a pixel balrog.

This is why identity is so powerful and so dangerous.

there's a lot of backlash to the casting of an autistic character with a neurotypical actress, and imo if the backlash has any effect it's gonna be closer to the industry just deciding to never portray autistic characters at all. https://t.co/GpXsimHdK6

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 21, 2020

Aella is right. What’s next, only a waitress can play a waitress, only a welder and play a welder?

Identity bullshitery is just absurd and it hurts the people the “liberals” believe they are helping.