@clacke @mcmoots @natecull @saper fascinating.

I think that looking forward 15 years, we don't have "the web", we have some layer of thin client applications and remote servers for heavy lifting, actual HTML is almost non-existent. IoT speaks json exclusively to the remote servers.

and we have to think what *matters* and what we can do - both in an idealized way and in a practical way

@saper @mcmoots maybe a decade ago now, I guess, I saw some events, and realized that rms had predicted it & a number of other things (or analogues of same) years prior. at that point it was like, "welp, ok. time to take him seriously and presume correctness"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201611/are-we-forfeiting-control-over-our-digital-lives

A good article on Stallman. It's worth asking ourselves here the epistemological question: "are ideas separate from the idea-holders".

because by many accounts rms isn't a stellar human being, but he believes his ideals with great purity.

is it possible - as the classical Western ideal says - for an idea and the idea-carrier to be separated?

idk. monday afternoon musings when I'm not excited about work.

“There are two novels that can change a 14yo’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders an obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted adulthood. The other, of course, involves orcs."

@drwho What do you think the end games here are? My sense is that in 2018 or 2020 we'll have a Democrat House & an impeachment proceeding. But that doesn't change the emboldened and now-organized neo-fascists.

My strong impression is that we're running a "Cold Civil War" right now, with fracture lines drawn in the 60s now very wide. So does that mean in 2 years, massive police reform in D states? Police arresting D pols?

Do the militias violently intimidate? Etc.

@natecull @miwilc @pmosetc @wrenpile Circling around to Nate's original point: small towns being fed talk radio, Fox, and Facebook memes gave us a fascist President, because they had never met anyone different but were told to fear it. There are people in Idaho who have never left it, or talked to a Muslim in their life. Yet they believe what Fox says about Muslims.

Again: what value small towns?

https://con.racket-lang.org/ this is in Seattle this year over a weekend. Might be fun to go!