Just a smol with big opinions about AFVs and data science. The onlyfans link is a rickroll.

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Cake day: October 11th, 2023

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  • It’s depressingly predictable that this article doesn’t talk at all about the push to restore the Brazilian military presence in Ecuador. That was a huge aspect of the national discourse around this topic that is strangely ignored in pretty much all the english-language reporting on this issue. It feels very much like this was written not to celebrate the victory for Ecuadorian independence, but to claim a loss for the US on a topic I do not know if a single major american news outlet has even mentioned. Most people in the US can’t find Ecuador on a map, the trump officials doubtlessly included. It’s a damn miracle Kristi Noem managed to land in the right country. There was little real push from the US to even allow bases again, which is part of why this failed so spectacularly - nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.



  • I have a pine phone - they’re super neat because linux on a phone! but… not really usable yet. Not getting texts, random bugs (they fixed the one where you could only receive calls, not make them, but that took a year or more), incredibly laggy UI even just trying to navigate,the battery life is abysmal, the battery management hardware is lacking and the software is even worse, the UIs that exist are poorly supported, basic apps are decently represented but anything not built for mobile is going to be godawful to get working (esp. through something like waydroid), the UI stabbed my puppy, the devices are so underpowered you’re gonna be unable to do things like have two apps open at once or have a video playing in one tab while trying to navigate in another…

    The pro phone has supposedly improved the hardware issues, but it’s new and niche enough that I haven’t seen much of a consens emerge (or hardly any in depth testing at all, really). Fairphone is much more usuable, still not without it’s glitches but much better than the pinephones.





  • Absolutely! It’s not about binaries, and I’m not and never have been advocating for a regime change.

    You yourself have described them as socially conservative:

    their social conservativism isn’t intrinsic to being Yemeni but is a consequence of nationalist resistance to imperialism

    And I continue to agree - and the reality is that right now, as a consequence of the imperialist system they’re forced to exist within, they are a socially conservative government that supports authoritarian actions as a consequence of outside pressures. I don’t think either of us think they intrinsically are that way, but they are that way right now - and the result is a situation I am absolutely comfortable describing as a “nightmare” for queer people to live within.

    I don’t think that every aspect of Yemen is a nightmare, nor that it is a nightmare for every Yemeni citizen. But it is for some of them, and carrying that through as a description since the originating topic was based on the plight of queer yemeni is not particularly unreasonable.








  • Well… yes.

    That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time. To borrow your langauge: Reducing the situation to a simple binary (good/evil, “peak”/“struggling”, etc.) itself reinforces an imperialist narrative that removes the realities of the situation. By ignoring the actions they take that are negative, we allow that binary narrative to be forced upon them, removing any semblance of agency and reducing “conservative authoritarian nightmare” from a criticism of their government to a criticism of the country as a whole.

    They cannot free themselves from imperialism if we use imperialist ideas like “Good vs. Evil” to quantify them.


  • I don’t believe I’ve made any such claims about yemen being “bad” nor that that would somehow justify imperialism. I referenced your use of pronouns to point out that you also can understand that supporting a cause is more complicated than simply ticking a box labeled “Support/Depose”, because you have a vested personal interest in the multifaceted nature of the topic.

    My point throughout this has been that we should not excuse the bad things just because good things exist - that was the entire reason I called the US “The paragon of humanitarianism” or somesuch. It’s undeniably true that they give out more humanitarian aid than any other country, but that simple claim is both clearly not the full picture, nor does it somehow mean we should ignore their crimes.

    If we’re going to support progressive social movements in Yemen, we must inherently accept that there is a state that warrants us progressing from. They are a socially conservative authoritarian nightmare, who tortuously put to death people extremely similar to both you and I. And yet despite that I still support their actions here. We should not hail them as a paragon of human rights, because they clearly are not, and doing so would invalidate the work of so many people who stand their lives against the social order in their country to try and secure a better life for people who have done nothing wrong. But we should also praise that “conservative authoritarian nightmare” regime’s actions here, because they have done something undeniably good.

    The world is too complicated to have true paragons, and doing so oversimplifies reality to the point where we become comfortable with tragedy just because the binary says we must be.