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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: February 24th, 2026

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  • Okay, so we’ll break it down in increasingly narrow boxes :

    1- Hatred of religion in general

    Religion has been and continues to be a tool for legitimizing power structures. As such, they’re associated with the oppressive systems they’ve historically upheld. That goes from state structures like monarchy to modes of production like slavery, reaching whithin family dynamics, like patriarchy. Atheism was until recently broadly criminalized throughout the world. Atheism, or at least secularism, is a feature of many ideologies that arose since the late 18th century to uproot these systems, while religions are claimed by ideologies that arose in reaction tooto these. Politically, religion is therefore seen as conservative .

    2- Hatred of Abrahamic religions

    Some see these religions (Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Judaism) as inherently more oppressive than other, because they see it as a sin to worship gods other than their, and do not permit synchretism like other religions do. This is a big debate, and it doesn’t hold true to the same extent for all Abrahamic religions, but I’m not getting into details on this.

    3- Hatred of Christianity

    There are religious people who hate christianity for theological reasons, but I’m once again more interested in the political aspect. Many hate christianity for its role in colonization and association with western imperialism. It’s basically the first two points applied to specific circumstances of christianity : How it came to eradicate paganism in Europe and attempted (sometimes continues to attempt) to do the same globally, how, using colonial means it erases cultures. Same can be said of Islam to an extent, and you could say the main difference is that Christianity has been successful more recently and more globally. But then again, while they’ve had the same attitude towards paganism, Islam has historically tolerated more religious in their states, as long as these were “religions of the book”. Tho it’s true that the situation has come to be a bit reversed on that point…

    4 a- Hatred of Catholicism for theological reasons :

    Idk about the details, but part of a reason why the reform happens was that catholicism was seen as drifting to far from true belief and focusing on preserving and enriching itself as an institution. Other accusations include being too close to paganism due to the cult of saints and the continuity with Roman institutions (diocieses that predate the christianisation of the empire, nuns too similar to Vestal virgins…), and the fact that at the time, the mass was always in Latin although most people didn’t understand it.

    4 b- Hatred of Catholicism : Post-colonial reasons

    Point 3 applied to former colonies of France, Spain and Portugal, for which evangelisation was purely Catholic. the Catholic church continues to wield large power there, and some people consider its influence a remnant of colonialism. However, it is interesting to note that catholicism can be seen the opposite way by people from catholic countries for which a protestantprotestant country is seen as a greater or more recent oppressor (like Ireland or Puerto-Rico).

    4 c- Hatred of Catholicism : Structural reasons

    Catholiscism has a strict clergy hierarchy, moreso than Protestantism or Islam. Some see this as wrong in itself for philosophical or theological reasons, but even if that is not the case, this means the Catholic Church, more than others, can be perceived as an institution with agency and responsabilities. More than others, they’re expected to answer to their past positions and to solve their ongoing issues, something it struggles with as it doesn’t want to alienate the more concervative parts of its clergy. Also, this leads me to the next point :

    4- d : The pedophilia thing. This is already very debated in the other comments, so I’m not gonna get in the details, but clearly not a good look.

    4- e: Catholics in majority protestant country

    Ecumenical debates pass over the heads of most christians, who just go with the form of christianity that is the “default” in their country/region. But what about those raised in families that hold on to their religions where it is a minority? This point seems important to me because a lot of the debates about Catholiscism I see online are really about catholicism in the USA, where it is a minority. In such countries, catholics will usually be seen as more pious and conservative than other christians, and quite often they’ll be, for several reasons :

    • Principle of selection: A family that is just vaguely christian, upon immigrating, could’ve converted to better integrate. If they didn’t, it’s either because their specific belief was important to them personally, or because the community in which they integrated was mostly of other catholics, making it a solidarity factor which in turn increases its importance.

    • Sense of responsability : If holding a belief is an active choice rather than going with the flow, believers will tend to give it more mind. They may feel they have more of a personal responsability to uphold it. This can culminate in what’s known as “siege mentality”: People who feel like an important part of their way of life or their belief system is threatened will react with fervor, oftem violence. This is why so many religious or political speech relies on tropes such as “They’re trying to steal/destroy/corrupt our thing!”


  • I think there’ll always be an issue depending on how dependent a project is on a company. Because the main risk isn’t that some bumbleling idiot of a CEO will run the projects and his company to the ground, but that sensible people will take decisions that serve their own interests, but not the interests of users.

    Free software creates a framework wherein companies may have an interest in the success of a project and contribute to it. This is a good thing, insofar that to companies, the project is just a tool that needs to work well and to the programmers, the company is just one of several contributors.

    In a community driven project, those who take decisions are the programmers who directly contribute to it and who are also usually users. Their interests are closer to those of all other end users. They want the project to work, and that may also be what financial contributors want.

    However, if the software is a product of the company, they’ll intend to extract value from it directly. The interest of shareholders will supercede those of programmers and end users. That is why they may take decisions that are bad from a user’s perspective, not because their dumb, but because they have other interests in mind.
    Inserting adds is a good way to get fundings from add companies at the detriment of users.
    Adding suscription tiers is a good way to extract wealth from part of the users. Adding AI is a good way to secure loans from banks that speculate on the AI bubble, and maybe even from companies like Nvidia, interested in making the bubble last and grow.

    It’s not a matter of being sensible or not, it’s a matter of whose interest you’re sensibly serving.


  • What was that joke about Firefox again? “We’re the browser beloved for being the only one not hitting our dick with a hammer. Now, you’re probably wondering why we brought this hammer and and took out our dick. Well you see…”

    More seriously, I think until the bubble pops, writing “AI” anywhere is a way for companies to attract fundings, and that money is too easy for many to pass.

    That’s why I tend to trust community managed distros over corpo ones. I don’t see Arch or Debian pulling this bullshit.

    Tho, I’d still be suspicious of the other big private company, Redhat; which is very involved in maintaining Systemd.

    Honestly, if it comes to this I’ll distro-hop as far as I need to escape AI.




  • If we exclude Musk, no, it’s not worse than Instagram. Musk is a pretty big deal tho. Now, the Zucc is pretty evil too, so anyway I’d say Instagram and Facebook are fair contenders for worst platform.

    Personally I deleted Twitter as soon as the purchase by Elongated Muskrat was confirmed. I deleted Facebook and Instagram more recently (I hesitated longer because I was using it more to communicate with irl acquaintances). I still use WhatsApp, until I can get some people I need to keep in contact with to start using Signal or Telegram (I know I’m not gonna get them on Matrix or xmpp, not worth trying), but it’s also owned by the Zucc so it bothers me to keep using it.


  • This really depends on how you define bugs, and I keep seing different definitions. The most restrictive one: Just the infra-order hemiptera (insects that generally have two pairs of wings, with the anterior wings covering the posterior wings while overlapping with each-other a bit… But some of them lost their wings altogether, like fire bugs). That includes stinkbugs, cicadas, and aphids but excludes other infra-orders of insects (butterflies, wasps, beetles, grasshoppers,flies…)

    A broader definition is simply synonimous with insects.

    Then, many definitions are polyphyletic (which means some bugs may be more cloaely related to some none-bugs than to each-other). A common one could be “land arthropods” and would include insects, arachnids, myriapods and isopods (which are crustaceans) but that’d still exclude limules, which are mostly aquatic. That would, however, now include some species of hermit crab and not others, which is too counterintuitive, so maybe explicitly ban decapod crustaceans from being bugs? Then again, I saw people refer to shrimps as bugs, and they’re also decapods. You could add a size constraints, but the smallest crabs are smaller than the biggest true bugs (even by the narrowest definition).

    Then, you could drop the “land” constraint and go back to a monophyletic definition by making it synonimous with arthropod. That definition would finally include limules.

    But then, so are crabs, so are sea-spiders, and so are all the extinct guys like trilobites (which are more related to myriapods, crustaceans and insects), eurypterids (aka sea scorpions, more related to limules and arachnids) and radiodonts anomalocaris (less related to extant arthropods than they are to each-others).

    trilobites

    eurypterid

    anomalocaris

    radiodonts

    Ok, maybe we can exclude radiodonts by taking the crown arthropod group. But triolobites and eurypterids must definetely stay!

    By this broader definition (whether or not you keep radiodonts in it), the biggest bug ever known to have existed would’ve been jaekelopterus, one of the eurypterids, at 2.5 meters long! jaekelopterus


  • Fun fact: Finnish and Estonian are both Finnic languages. Meanwhile, the other Nordic countries mostly speak Scandinavian languages an the other Baltic countries speak Baltic languages, which are part of the broader Balto-Slavic group. So really, from a linguistic perspective at least, Finns and Estonians are more similar to each-other than to any of their neighbors. And also pretty similar to Hungary (Magyar being a Finno-Ugric language).







  • Among the classics from the 60s, I’d also add Thelonious Monk, Arts Bakey, then the Headhunters, and Sun Ra’s Arkestrs. That’s a period with a lot of diversification (free jazz, bebop, funk jazz, Afrofuturism…). Earth Wind and Fire is also funk jazz.

    There also Tito Puente from Puerto Rico, which leads me to transition to the caribbeans. Outside of the US, you have of course Compay Secundo and the Buena Vista Social Club, and also Juan Pable Torres in Cuba. Caribbean Sextet in Haïti. While we’re in the Caribbeans, Ska is also derived from jazz and Rocksteady and Reggae are in turn derived from it, try older Ska bands like the Skatalites, that’s where it’s most obvious.

    In Africa there’s Manu Dibango from Cameroon, who blends some trafitional music influence, also Mulatu Atatske from Ethiopia (who’s still alive and kicking), then you have the whole Afrobeat genre starting in Nigeria with Fela Kuti (early Afrobeat is still really close to jazz, though modern Afrobeat, which is closer to hip-hop).

    That’s those I know best among the classics (I’m not sctually a huge expert despite my tirade, I may have been exagerating a bit because I got defendive and also as a joke). But if you search almost any country name and add “jazz” after it, you’ll certainly get a result (the only time I failed was when I tried Bhutan, and I still think they likely have jazz somewhere, it’s just hard to find).

    My favorites among the recent ones are Shabaka Hutchings from the UK and, Thurgo Théodat from Haïti (not super famous, but really good, I’ve actually heard him play live). Mulattu Atatske has also done stuff recently, and sun Ra’s Arkestra still exists.

    Also, since nobody plays jazz alone, once you found a jazz player you like, a good way to find more is to see who they’ve played with. If it’s a band, see the members and what other band they’ve played in!




  • Well, there’s certainly a double entendre in chosing it as the name of a satellite, but it definitely comes from the name of tgat comic book character. Which itself is a play on asterisque (this symbol: *), which, of course, comes in turn from aster as you said.

    His compagnon Obélix has a name which works on two levels: It can be seen as a play on obelisk (he is himself a sculptor of menhirs, which are vaguely similar to obelisks), but “obèle” is also the French word for the dagger symbol (†), which is an alternative to the asterisk.




  • You probably can unleash your special interest again without denying yourself.

    I’m not trans (I think), but I do hyperfixate (probably on the spectrum, a shrink even said so but he wasn’t abilitated to do an official diagnosis), and I feel like one of the good things about hyperfixations is how they’re things outside of yourself, and how you feel about them isn’t too affected by how you feel about yourself or your immediate surrounding. I feel if I became a girl, my interest for my hyperfixations, including past ones would be one of the most consistent things about me, I wouldn’t feel the need to change or deny them even as I’d change everything else.

    Sorry if my experience isn’t relevant tho, I may not understand every trans issue.