AnarchistArtificer

Fucking hell, I love these cool people

I don't disagree, but to lean into your analogy: I worry that we don't have any viable long term solutions here, and I'm very nervous about how that will affect the fallout from a ban. My own stay in a mental health ward comes to mind, because it took years after that point before I was able to get the kind of support that helps someone build wellness long term. The hospital stay did the job, in the sense that I'm still alive, but my mental health was probably worse in the initial aftermath.

(This comment brought to you from the UK, where the Reform party (not nearly as bad as the AfD, but still racist shits) made heavy gains in recent local elections.)

"But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing."

Man, this is peak modern society, and the absurdity makes me laugh. I don't mean that in a derisive way, more in a "wow, making democracy work is haaard ". Hopefully this will lead to something positive though, even if I'm anxious that banning a party like the AfD may lead to some things worsening.

I did an internship at a bank way back, and my role involved a lot of processing of spreadsheets from different departments. I automated a heckton of that with Visual Basic, which my boss was okay with, but I was dismayed to learn that I wasn't saving anyone's time except my own, because after the internship was finished, all of the automation stuff would have to be deleted. The reason was because of a rule (I think a company policy rather than a law) that required that any code has to be the custody of someone, for accountability purposes — "accountability" in this case meaning "if we take unmaintained code for granted, then we may find an entire department's workflow crippled at some point in the future, with no-one knowing how it's meant to work".

It's quite a different thing than what you're talking about, but in terms of the implementation, it doesn't seem too far off.

It reminds me of how apparently firing squad executions used to have only some of the guns loaded with live guns, and the rest with blanks. This way, the executioners could do some moral gymnastics to convince themselves that they hadn't just killed a person

"You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That's the association I have for that sensation."

Oh man, this comparison is going to stick with me; it's one of my favourite things I've read in recent weeks

I'm not at home at the moment, but I actually have this small one to hand. These three photos are the same tesselation, just viewed [from the front/from behind/backlit]

front back backlit

Whilst automated tools can help on this, there is a heckton of human labour to be done in training those tools, or in reviewing moderation decisions that require a human's eye. I think that in a world where we can't eradicate that need, the least we can do is ensure that people are paid well, in non-exploitative conditions, with additional support to cope.

Actually securing these things in a way that's more than just lipservice is part of that battle— I remember a harrowing article a while back about content moderators in Kenya, working for Sama, which was contracted to work for Facebook. There were so many layers of exploitation in that situation that it made me sick. If the "mental health support" you have access to is an on-site therapist who guilt trips you into going back to work asap, and you're so hurried and stressed that you don't have time to even take a breather after seeing something rough — conditions like that are going to cause a disproportionate amount of preventable human harm.

Even if we can't solve this problem entirely, there's so much needless harm being done, and that's part of what this fight is about now.

They're a minority, to be sure, but you're right that there are Israelis who were fighting apartheid and continue to fight against the ongoing genocide. We just don't hear about the good people who are resisting evil from within Israel, because that's counter to Zionist rhetoric.

Edit: made it clearer that I'm agreeing with you

I wonder if we'll ever find out why they did it.

Damn, that's cheap. In my part of the UK, $80 would get you a quarter ounce of what my peers consider to be decent, but would probably be crappy by California standards.

I have a bunch of origami tesselations stuck on my window. They're made with translucent paper (similar texture to tracing paper, but lighter), so they catch the light beautifully