Political ethicist. Podcast host of ReImagining Liberty and The UnPopulist’s Zooming In. Prior: Think tank scholar. Buddhist and radical liberal.
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Published at
2024-06-17T20:49:52+02:00 Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Every Marvel movie is just a trailer for the next Marvel movie. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The GOP should've quit with the weird furniture thing after Clint Eastwood berated a chair, but they didn't, and look where it got them. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Curtis Yarvin is dreary reactionary philosophy for people who mistakenly imagine themselves smarter and more rational than everyone else and who are quite bad at thinking philosophically. It's good to see his influence on the contemporary far-right getting attention, because it underscores just how intellectually empty the movement is. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It's always mattered, but in times like this, it's particularly important to focus on the quality of your character, and the quality of the character of those you associate with. Practice kindness and harmlessness, and don't make excuses for people who consistently practice their opposites. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This is the tactical problem of culturally right-wing authoritarian urges like national conservatism: "The problem is America lacks a monoculture. To fix that and achieve cultural unity, we need the state to forcibly impose one. And it should be *my* favored culture." npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The end of Google Reader and the rise of social media combined to kill off blogging as a thriving social community. Then newsletters arose to replace blogging as a personal, longer form platform. But email is a bad replacement for RSS-based readers because it's cluttered and email fatigue discourages frequent writing. I'm hopeful the #fediverse can bring back blogging, reduce reliance on short post social media, and give us the old RSS ecosystem, but with social engagement and discovery. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ A thought experiment to help clarify some of the issues regarding whether training and using AI tools amounts to theft of artists' and writers' work. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/ai-theft-thought-experiment npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Politics needs more emotion, not less. Today's show is a conversation about how thinking more emotionally can make politics more humane, and why trying to abandon emotion in the name of reason is a mistake. Listen here: https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/need-emotion-politics-a5a4 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Showed my daughter the 2018 film "Searching," and, man, does it hold up. Just a master class in embracing constraints to tell a terrific, nail-biting, and authentically emotional story. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ There are plenty of novels staring Sherlock's brother, Mycroft Holmes. But they all seem to cast him as basically another Sherlock, solving murders and other mysteries. This is such a missed opportunity. Mycroft should instead be a George Smiley type spy master doing dreary espionage things. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I know it's trendy to blame rising rates of youth mental health issues on social media, but have we considered that kids got more anxious and depressed as we saw a decline in the popularity of third wave ska? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The fact that Meta keeps moving forward with ActivityPub federation is one of those big deals most people won't realize were big deals until it pretty much changes everything about the social web. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/25/24185226/meta-threads-fediverse-likes-replies npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Hasn't it demanded enough already? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Of course he approves. He's a rich guy who grifted politicians into stealing money from ordinary people so Tepper doesn't have to pay for his fancy building himself. https://www.yahoo.com/sports/panthers-owner-david-tepper-issues-021016625.html npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ A philosophical question: Assume these companies didn't pirate the files to train their models. What's the ontological difference between this and a musician buying song on iTunes and then recording a near identical cover? Other than one's a person and one's a computer. https://www.404media.co/listen-to-the-ai-generated-ripoff-songs-that-got-udio-and-suno-sued/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ A quick overview of one kind of bad argument common in political debates. Namely, not recognizing when your argument proves too much. https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/worst-argument-politics npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ If you're using Bridgy Fed to bridge your Mastodon account over to Bluesky, is there a way to take ownership of the resulting Bluesky account Bridgy Fed creates? E.g., what if a different, better bridge comes along, or a bridge gets built into Mastodon itself or Bluesky itself? Would you have to start over and lose the followers you gathered that Bluesky account Bridgy Fed created? #fediverse npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Writers and artists demand a moral imperative to support them as creatives and artisans, while happily buying mass produced bread, shoes, and furniture, and without demanding a similar support for artisan bakers, cobblers, and carpenters. This unacknowledged discrepancy speaks to a degree of snobbishness about how their craft is elevated and more quintessentially human than that of other artisans. #AI https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/ai-new-sliced-bread npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ In my first newsletter of the new year, I talk about why I'm actually cautiously optimistic about 2024. Read it here: https://aaronrosspowell.com/newsletter/a-new-year-and-a-new-home/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub17qa…dwyx https://substack.com/@hamish/note/c-45811343 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub16sj…66sp Doesn't Wordpress.com have native email newsletter support? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Substack's leadership is engaging in "normative sociology," which, Robert Nozick joked, is "the study of what the causes of problems ought to be." Nazi ideas are a problem and #Substack *wants* the solution to be platforming (and monetizing) those ideas, so Nazi ideas are exposed more broadly, and receive more criticism. Of course, the data and historical record are overwhelming that this isn't at all the solution, and only makes the problem worse, but Substack has an interest in ignoring that. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Here's a bit more about how I have Substack set up, and so what I'm looking to reproduce on #WordPress. At Substack, I publish everything as supporter-only, but then use their “unlock” feature to set a date at which the essay or episode becomes public. This automatically sends a second email to all my free subscribers. I see how to send posts and podcasts just to paying members. But is there a way to do this automated unlocking and notification to free subscribers? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ With Substack's risible response to calls to remove Nazi, I'd like to accelerate my move off the platform, preferably going to #WordPress. But I'm not sure how to reproduce my setup and subscriber model there, and so would live advice from the community. I publish both essays and podcast episodes, and subscribers get early access to both. Is there a way to do this within Wordpress that doesn't involve posting each essay and podcast twice, but instead unlocking and email them at a specified date? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I stumbled across this tabletop game that is supposed to help you get better at Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. And, based on the description, I'm not sure the author knows what the word "accomplice" means. https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/455447/Choose-Your-DEI-Adventure npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I have a new essay, called "Politics for Good People," beginning the project of building a coherent whole out of the last year or so of my writings on politics and political ethics. https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/politics-for-good-people npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ If you make jokes about prison rape—yes, even if it's about Proud Boys going to prison—you are an unethical person and need to put effort into morally bettering yourself. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub1tlr…yjxy I'm pretty sure I'm not required to report that. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Was reminded of how one time on Twitter I casually remarked that polygraphs are total pseudoscience and don't actually work, and my mentions got flooded by angry representatives of the polygraph lobby, which I didn't know existed, but in retrospect it was obvious one would exist and patrol the internet looking for people dismissing the myth their clients' income depends on. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Thus, responding "What's it like to not believe in Zeus?" to "What's it like to be an atheist?" isn't analogous to responding "What's it like to not watch hockey?" when asked "What's it like to not watch football?" Rather, it's as if you answered "What is it like to not believe the universe has purpose and meaning?" with a flip "What's it like to not believe in unicorns?" It not only fails to answer the question, but evinces an unhelpful dismissiveness of the underlying concern. /end npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The religious worldview is one of a universe created and guided by a divine being or beings. It is one where the supernatural is an omnipresent fact about reality, and not a mere contingent fact, but *the* fact central to the very nature of existence. Further, it's the fact that provides not only an explanation to reality, but gives everything within it meaning, as well. /3 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The unstated, and perhaps unconscious, move in the "I don't believe in your god just like you don't believe in Zeus" rejoinder is interpreting "What's it like to be an atheist?" as "What is it like to not believe in a particular god?" when, instead, the actual question being asked is "What is it like to not believe in *any* god?" In other words, the atheist here is effectively substituting a question about *qualitative* difference for one about *quantitative* difference. /2 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This is representative of a pretty common atheist rebuttal of religious faith but, as an atheist who sees value in making the case for secularism, it's one I wish they'd drop, because it's not actually that helpful. A 🧵 on why: npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This essay is astonishingly ignorant of political history and theory. Goldberg is "surprised" by Ahmari's arguments because she's apparently entirely unaware of the history of fascism. The positions Ahmari maps out just are fascism—or proto-fascism, depending on how one approaches definitions and intellectual history. There's nothing surprising about them, rather they are a well-studied and not-at-all-new political ideology that's been around for well over a century. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/opinion/columnists/sohrab-ahmari-social-democracy.html?unlocked_article_code=kQ4-irLwrj7odIV8oCBkhfEMI16cB1kIbRLrIZUHQpvcQV6brm-6lzXdST36kR3PrWfjTBGLDZ2CB6EpdwgfDDhsfIBxdaxiTxdXH8zPDQtTf6r1gYtMK4USjHijlX5Mi8EGm2FpIm7aD4jAWacIIRhGN1YoquK-SXOL9KVpBmBXVE8-zOuI3VjCQdiryzT_oJxA6Xeyg-Kgutuk2ktalC11oxjHlhkmiJelxIC5sfJAQLfhcPBiDaJPOLHRvAo80qPOZgY6alFxTTclBSk30CCQC1jJXaYBUztSwaSHJOwtGxLDUSuU3gbGGgDPJkI4tf8l1iohoIA4Zx6heVRwXoIUYsQAkbUMMtDtFI1iYXoLiiQ&smid=url-share npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The owner of X routinely shares antisemitic memes and chats uncritically with, and signal boosts, white supremacists and Nazis, though, so I'm curious how they'll enforce this policy. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ If your response to Arkansas banning AP African American studies in public high schools is only "The answer is school choice," but you gnash your teeth at woke classes and programs in public universities—where students freely choose which school to attend—and demand they be abolished, consider that your stated commitment to liberty is merely opportunistic, giving way to statism when you see an opportunity to advance reactionary cultural values. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub1grd…km72 Don't worry, they can walk you through it all over the phone. Just be sure you've got the needed tools and implements ready to go. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This doesn't surprise me at all. It is insane how much it costs to eat out in Denver. https://www.kunc.org/news/2023-08-11/colorado-is-the-no-1-state-for-restaurant-inflation-customers-are-seeing-it-in-menu-prices npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The culture on the far right is the "I studied the blade" meme blown up into an ideology. Musk, Trump, etc., all playacting a cartoon masculinity and toughness, while lacking the self-awareness to understand just how silly they look to everyone not bought into the same fictions and, in particular, to those they're most desperate to impress with their act. And they then read the snickering reactions not as evidence they're being silly, but as evidence that they've succeeded in being threatening. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Hypothetically, if you're a dad waiting in the high school parking lot while your incoming freshman does her check-in, what music would it be most mortifying music for you to be blasting with the windows down when she walks back to the car? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Clarence Thomas really ought to resign. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Regarding right-wingers celebrating the loss of the World Cup team, protesting your country's symbols, or refusing to participate in its symbolic rituals, when you believe it is perpetuating injustices *is* patriotism. Blind and unwavering devotion to the flag, the national anthem, and other representations of the American state isn't patriotism, it's subservience—and America's founding document was a rejection of subservience. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Forty years ago, the Ghostbusters taught us that saving the world requires not just battling the supernatural, but also regulatory overreach. But now Biden, having forgotten what nearly claimed New York City, is threatening their business model. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Among my many frustrations with the Hanania affair and its fallout is the asymmetric response in libertarian circles to right-wing ideas vs left. If you say lots of racist stuff and push "race realism," too many libertarians will bend over backwards to defend you or explain away your indiscretions. But if you say "there might just be some systemic racism" or "maybe some social justice concerns are valid," those same people will decide you're corrupt or irrational and not worth listening to. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub1vqm…ccpx Thank you! npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I didn't write this essay with people rushing to defend their continued association with an outed white supremacist in mind, but it definitely applies. https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/surround-yourself-with-those-who npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Lawyer friends, what're the chances Trump talks—or Truth Social posts—his way into pretrial detention? (Or at least having his phone taken away?) npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ With the reporting on Richard Hanania's white supremacist writings, here's your reminder that Scott Alexander, another darling of the same people promoting Hanania, back in 2014 was talking about how he'd use his hugely popular Slate Star Codex blog to push the same white supremacist race science (along with far-right neoreactionary philosophy). npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Richard Hanania writes white supremacist stuff openly now, so it's no surprise he did it under a pseudonym in the past. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-hanania-white-supremacist-pseudonym-richard-hoste_n_64c93928e4b021e2f295e817 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub1tgc…nnu8 Except if you ignore the @ one, the notification dot never clears. So in this image, I'm scrolled all the way to the top of my notifications tab, but your reply, while marked at read in that tab, is still marked as unread in the dedicated mentions area. I have to click over to that and scroll to the top there, too, to clear that dot. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It drives me nuts that Ivory has two notification tabs (the @ one for just mentions, and the bell one for mentions plus everything else), but doesn't maintain state between them. So if I have a bunch of new notifications, I need to scroll through both tabs—and so see all the mentions twice—in order to clear the new notification dots on each. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I'm reading Garrett Graff's wonderful "Watergate: A New History," and it's such a delightful telling of all the oddball morons in the Nixon White House. But it's eye-opening realizing how those guys were the height of competence, thoughtfulness, and craft compared to Trump and the total shitshow staff he surrounded himself with. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It is obvious that in the current political climate, the far right is a *much* larger and graver threat to liberty, prosperity, and peace than the far left. But the contemporary libertarian movement has long built its brand around believing and arguing the opposite, and so even when they're not transparently downplaying the threat from the right, particularly the populist right, they're engaging in disingenuous bothsides-ing. This makes them far less effective in actually defending liberty. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ One of the reasons the far right has found so much purchase—besides that far-right views are just more popular among Americans than we want to admit—is that so many of us insist on pretending mainstream figures must be some short distance from the center, and not fascists or nazis. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ People's unwillingness to use accurate labels to describe the far-right is an unhelpful sort of faux-civility. Describe a person's views accurately, people will say "Yes, that describes them." But if you point out they meet a standard definition of fascism, they'll say, "Oh, that's going too far." npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub143c…zypm Definitely not a new strain. But the sorts of people it's showing up with is new. Less the hard right, and more the Slate Star Codex reading set. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It is profoundly disheartening how many in libertarian and libertarian-adjacent circles have, through "rationalist" reasoning, come to embrace casual misogyny (via evolutionary psychology) and casual white supremacy (via "race and IQ" theories). npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub1h86…hnkd Maybe some, but it'll be a vanishingly small number. Most people don't care about the network's political squabbles. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Note that this also strongly incentivizes against Mastodon instances defederating from Threads. Those that do defederate will inevitably lose users to the servers where you can still interact with Threads' enormous number of accounts. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ If Meta sticks to this, it presents an opportunity to Mastodon to draw a large audience, even in the face of Threads' huge network effects. I.e., people who post news and politics stuff (including breaking news) do that on Mastodon, and people on Threads who want that stuff then follow them. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I understand why Meta bootstrapped Threads with its Instagram graph. Billions of users is appealing. But it turns out that people who are popular on Instagram posting selfies are just tedious when they have to write, and building a new social network almost entirely around influencers and brands might be fun for the sorts of users who mostly want to reply to celebrities, but for the rest of us, it's a dreary experience. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Played with Threads for a bit and deleted it. It clearly launched early to take advantage of the Twitter troubles. But even still, it's awful, and better than ever using it would be to just stick to another Mastodon instance and wait for federation. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ One of the (dumb) arguments against acceptance of transgender people takes disagreement about the definition of “man” and “woman” as dangerous to a functioning society. Setting aside that this argument depends first upon confusion about the difference between gender and biological sex and, the idea that we need to agree one this particular ontological fact is very odd when the people making the argument doesn’t say the same about other ontological (and metaphysical) disagreements.
