Oude nerd (hij/hem) uit de V.S. Mijn baan is bij een groot bedrijf in California, maar ik woon in Utrecht.
Public Key
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Published at
2026-09-17T10:58:08Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I'm guessing the lack of an 8x zoom isn't a worry for you? :) npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon OMG those things were such a challenge to program. "Can I finish typing in this code without accidentally flexing the motherboard in such a way that the system resets and I lose all my work?" The answer is, yes, if you spend enough time. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon No idea what's going on here, but yay! :) npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon "A well-regulated person can still be trapped in an intolerable arrangement. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Reminds me a bit of the Khumbu (Nepal). npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Why do they need to be _here_? Why can't they be on their own instance that we don't federate with? Is it wrong for me to want to be able to read my site feed without being triggered? For wanting neighbors that I like? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Spam blocking software is a _really_ bad model. I not want that here. Free speech has to be balanced with consent. If I do not consent to listen to some asshole spew hatred, I should be able to avoid hearing that. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon How this relates to substack is of course still a matter for debate: there _are_ alternatives. But each of the alternatives I've found is (a lot) more work and has less reach, as far as I can tell. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon The only quibble I would make with this is that if you are doing what makes sense, you shouldn't beat yourself up about it. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon A lot of people I admire, e.g. Amanda Litman, Anand Ghiridaradas and Waleed Shahid, use substack. Why are you right and they are wrong? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I ask these questions because I know how easy it is to use substack, and also how easy it is to use alternatives like Ghost. I'm actually trying to decide what to do about this—this isn't an idle set of questions. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon A related question is, given that substack actually appears to work better than its competitors, how much does it cost us to not use it, both in terms of ease of use and in terms of reach. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I guess this is the Nazi bar analogy, and I sort of get that. But I have a few questions. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon 🦙 Animal #952 🐞 npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Every time you post one of these it reminds me to go to https://lingule.xyz/ and do the puzzle there. I've never actually tried the animal puzzle. It's still kind of a fun bit of random parasocial solidarity. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Is this on the nuclear article? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Voting has been effective in changing things, but e.g. in the U.S. the electorate isn't organizing effectively, and so indeed voting feels pretty futile. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Again I think we are almost agreeing. What matters is the character of the people who are deciding how the laws get enforced. I think you are suggesting that we just get rid of them and then things will be okay, because there's nothing to enforce. I'm suggesting that we take effective collective action to change the way they are enforced. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon All of their power comes from us. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon No. But in their best sense (and I know that's not the only sense, don't get me wrong), laws are our collective story about how we think things should be done. The civil rights act was a good story, and it made a difference. Roe v. Wade was a good story, and it made a difference. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I'm asking you what, specifically, "stopped obeying the police" would look like. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon We used to have the civil rights act. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon From your picture I assume you've lived through the same years I have. As far as I can tell, things are quite a bit worse now in the U.S. and many European countries in terms of human rights than they were when I was born. Is that not also your impression? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon What would that look like, specifically? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon We’ve been saying no continuously for my whole life in various ways. It hasn’t worked very well so far. Just standing up and saying no is not a power move. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Also, you talk about the state like it’s some independent entity, but it is in fact an emergent property of our society. We are the hardware on which it runs. So it’s not so simple to say “without the state” things would be better. It’s not wrong, but it doesn’t really help, because it’s not actionable. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Indeed so. But it’s actually the exact same grift. The recycling grift is that we should treat each other as enemies on the basis of whether we recycle, rather than recognizing that recycling of plastics at least is entirely a propaganda campaign to get us not to address the problem at its source. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Taking ownership of it is actually not only a form of self harm, but also sadly tends to support the status quo, because it leads us to ineffective responses to the situation. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Maybe the thing to do now is stop taking responsibility for something that isn’t on you. I honestly do not know how to stop this other than enough of us saying no. Until enough of us understand that we need to say no, and do it effectively, we are stuck paying the vig. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Right. So how is that end state better than the status quo? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I guess the question is, if those police and military budgets vanished overnight, what would all the furloughed soldiers and police do in their spare time? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Ze lijken zo lief als ze de kop van een bloem zitten op te eten, met een gelukkige uitdrukking op hun kleine gezichtjes. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon How does this relate to Markup News? npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Yeah. I'm not even remotely an expert in this area, so I'm not sure how much it matters, but it really feels to me like this "no deflation" thing needs a bit more nuance. Otherwise it's just a license for profiteers to print money. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon And of course speaking as someone who is starting to notice retirement age looming, inflation really really sucks for retirees. Every time there's a big inflation hit, you see a burst of old people suddenly re-entering the job market despite real disabilities, because they have no choice. We saw a lot of that in 2008—I haven't noticed if the same thing happened in 2021/2022, but it would surprise me if it didn't. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I am not convinced that negative inflatiion is always a bad thing. Of course it's bad for homeowners when prices go down, but that in itself causes serious problems—we can't have more housing, because prices would go down. If you owe money, again deflation is bad and inflation good. But prices dropping because they rose due to profiteering doesn't seem like it would be a problem for anyone other than profiteers. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon What would get Biden credit would be if the average rate of inflation over the past couple of years had gone down, but for that to happen, the rate of inflation now would have to be negative. That's what people want, and quite reasonably so given the immense profit-taking that occurred in 2021-2022. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon I don't think your take on this is quite right. In 2021/2022 we had a tremendous amount of inflation, and recently we've had a more normal amount of inflation. However, at no time since 2021 have prices dropped. When the rate of inflation is relatively steady (e.g. varying from 2% to 3%) you can say that inflation is moderate, but that observation simply doesn't apply here, and it's not because the definition of inflation has changed. npub1mpgtesgtvqnq808l30ty6yk724w8rzcau97s3zfnt22fg8gdpj4qsfe8sw Ted Lemon Wow, that really taught me a lesson about clicking on "show me".
