Yeah, I guess that's just more responsibility on us as individuals...hurray -_-
Thanks for engaging with me on this, I feel like it did clarify some things in my mind just having to justify myself. I appreciate. I hope I see you out there again Beltalowda.🖖
He left in 2020 because they wouldn't allow him enough " editorial freedom". The end of that conflict should put you at ease with the intercept.
Yeah, this argument is getting at what's underlying my concern I think. There is a huge vacuum of trustworthy authority right now. It seems like institutions have been lighting themselves on fire left and right. This may be a problem that simply comes from the existence of the internet. 50 years ago everyone just trusted that Walter Cronkite was telling them the truth every evening, he was a big arbiter, likely because they didn't have any other sources of information the internet makes available. He may have been acting in good faith, he may have been parroting defense department talking points, who knows. Now we have a website to cater to every intellectual pretaliction. That isn't helpful to find definitive truth. Add to that, over and over we've found existing authorities to be completely self serving (e.g. the government lying about WMD in Iraq, CDC obfuscating it's funding of gain of function research early in the pandemic, recent revelations of perhaps long running corruption concern in the supreme court). Maybe that's because they've gotten worse, maybe they've always been like that and we didn't have enough information to notice it. So, like you said, all of this is happening and we no longer have arbiters to sift out this wheat from the chaff as it were. That's a huge problem.
So what's the solution? I certainly don't want Republicans to be removing books from their shelves because they deem them "harmful to the children" or whatever the fuck. But at the same time, I don't want self serving billionaires (the shitshow that twitter has become) or newly revealed corrupt institutions making those decisions for me either. So what's the solution?
I think right now it's basically an unsolved problem, with all of us just floating around to the sources that suit us best, allowing for the divides between us to absolutely explode in breadth and width (I have family that has strait faced told me that COVID was created and released on purpose to kill Republicans...shit like that). I know that I've struggled with who to "trust" consciously. And maybe that's the real difference between our perspectives is just that. Maybe that's what this all comes down to is that you don't trust American right wing institutions (rightfully) and I've lost faith in all of them. I don't know what the move is, but we need to figure something out fast.
Isn't the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I'm just saying someone shouldn't decide for us which ones we can engage with.
I'm pretty far on the left and I'd debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn't trying to say that they're the same, I just think it's important to be weilding the same analysis for "allies" as for "enemies". Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.
Oh we're 100% on the same page about books, there is no equivalent to that with the dems. But I was talking about the larger idea of censorship, not books specifically. I don't think that you can say with honesty though that specific institutions are specifically attending to drive narratives in ways that Democrats want them to. Cable media is an easy one, tech companies are another. Shadowbanning and suppression of specific topics have and are happening, and are censorship. They algorithmically and explicitely tamped down legitimate persuits like discussing lab leak, until it actually became the most feaseable beginning of COVID. They suppressed the hunter Biden bullshit (I'm not taking that on its merits, just saying it happened, and near an election).
On another note, I'm not your enemy here. I responded to something that I thought I could add something to. You obviously did the same. We can make Lemmy a more healthy place to talk than Reddit was.
Yeah...totally...hate it when that happens😒
Was aksing myself the same question🤔
The other commenter is comparing FSA to HSA which is right I think. I think FSAs work for some people (I never understood who though) but there's literally no downside to an HSA. It basically can end up as another tax sheltered investment account, if you have enough money/luck to be able to pay off your healthcare costs out of pocket.
Like everything in the US, it's amazing for people with money. Less useful for those that don't. But at the very least it provides a buffer for the insane deductibles that US persons need to pay to keep living.
For me using signal wasn't about becoming Jason Bourne, it was about changing the threat model. I don't have any dilusions of grandeur that I can't be owned if I'm targeted, but you know what? My calls and texts aren't stored with my phone company with a direct link to the Government and advertisers. That may be low hanging fruit, but that's dealing with most of the issues the average user is going to run into. I'd suggust that the step from SMS to Signal is of greater benifit to a normal user than from signal to something more advanced. And, fwiw it's open sourced and audited, which gives me more confidence than something like imessage or WhatsApp, despite similarities im encryption schemes.