What's wrong with "We didn't realise how controversial DHH was, and frankly it's none of our business. We are sponsoring his development efforts, not his political crusade."?
What's wrong buying any Harry Potter thing, when J.K. has spoken very clearly that any money that she would get, would be use in his anti-trans crusade ?
Framework isn't funding any crusade. They made a small contribution to support open source software development.
If you don't agree with that, quietly take your business elsewhere. I cannot fathom the entitlement on display here, for this group to believe they have the moral high ground in demanding a cessation of this funding and a public apology, while trying to organise a boycott.
Nothing you buy doesn't have a fascist and a communist somewhere in the supply chain. Whatever your politics, you are always indirectly funding your political opponents. It bears no relation to the product or service they provide. You need to learn to operate in a society full of diverse opinions rather than having a meltdown when anyone differs in perspective.
There will be people of all types and ideologies in the Framework laptop supply chain somewhere. I don't see how this man's political views are at all relevant to the computer you are buying, even if you managed to convince me that he is guilty of thought crime in the first place.
My first Framework is preordered now. I really don't care if a Nazi or a transsexual furry Marxist or anything in between has contributed along the way. I bought a computer from a computer manufacturer.
Isn't that repairability, upgradeability and customisation, though? I didn't see anything political while completing my preorder.
It seems to me like certain groups are trying to project their political agenda on to this repairable laptop maker, and then being outraged when the company is more concerned with making repairable laptops than championing their particular views.
Fascism tends to reward work rate, contribution, cooperation, etc., and is typically nationalistic - there is no (Western) nation right now without an enormous proportion of ethnic foreigners whereby a UBI would effectively constitute a massive wealth transfer from the domestic population to immigrants (which is, needless to say, contrary to fascist objectives).
This is basically what we are seeing already, democratically, however. I know here in Australia it seems like there are neverending announcements of unfunded public programs to give out money and other resources to whichever group tugs at the voters' heartstrings most effectively. The coffers are dry, national debt is soaring, fraud is rampant, and yet I'm still positive I'll see a feel-good headline next week about the latest government initiative to "pay off" their electorate.
I think they mean fascist, and it's a good question - will the common person toe the line if they get paid to accept it? We almost saw this in the MEFO bill era of the Nazi German economy, where the Wehrmacht's industrial demand reanimated the half-dead German manufacturers. Many poor German citizens got jobs and homes in this era, despite the ongoing tragedy.
Democracy is underpinned by populism, if the average person feels like UBI would harm the economy then they'll vote against it. Fascism, authoritarianism and planned economies can completely skip the public opinion portion and just start paying people out-of-pocket if they're liquid enough. We may see something similar here in the US as Trump considers a public tariff stipend to refute accusations of a recession: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/11/19/trump-2000-ta...
It's so jarring getting a peek into the mind of someone who sees the world this way. Take this, for example:
>Globally, there are perhaps 20 (mostly male) specialized surgeons capable of face transplants
What an extraordinarily petty way to announce your bitter, cynical world view.
Or announcing your racial allegiance with the capitalisation of "Black" vs lower case "whiteness", or indeed the assertion that made it necessary to bring race into this at all: that White people are to blame (as per usual) for low organ donorship among African Americans.
I know. It's outrageous that they are so emboldened to publicly declare this to be their policy and that the practice has survived without condemnation for this long. As a White man, their reasoning in that link is insulting - and very clearly intended to be so.
Just because they are brazen, shameless, and (so far) unchallenged in their racism doesn't make it ok.
Is it silly though? With enough linguistic archeology I bet you can make this entire comment I'm writing right now extremely problematic and offensive. The linguistic treadmill means exactly that older terms change meaning back in time. They also change meaning FORWARD in time, meaning your inoffensive terms today will almost certainly be offensive in the future.
It's also the case that offense is language dependent, which is always funny when Americans hard ban certain words on chats and then Swedes can't use the Swedish word for "end" because it's spelled like a slur in English.
The whole terminology in IT could be turned upside down because it can be quite offensive if people ignore the context, so it is not limited to processes. There are utilities like "man", "finger", etc. that could come across as offensive too, to some, with no context-awareness.
Today it is "master" -> "main", tomorrow the whole IT terminology.
There are many PRs on GitHub with regarding to these, by the way.
... also what about pins? Slave and master pins! Must be about slavery, right? No, it is not, not at all.
In any case, who made the association of the git branch "master" to slavery? It is absurd. People need to take the context into account.
It is based on nothing. It is not intended to be offensive, and it is not intended to be about slavery. Similarly how master and slave pins are not either, or how blacklist and whitelist are not about race either!
I grant it's not nothing, but I think it's not enough of something to make changes over it. Thinking of a master record or similar is the natural reaction when you learn about the terminology, and most young people have never used bitkeeper, so unless you go out of your way to explain why this is "bad" most people won't even know, so what do you gain from it?
Of course, but they do not care about that. They made the association, and now they are being vocal about it. I am pretty sure most of us never made this association or attribution. I have never thought about slavery until they told me their own associations to it.
I am pretty sure master / slave pins were not intended to be offensive, nor attributed to slavery. Similarly with the git "master" branch.
Let's say you know a secret, and you tell people who can use the secret to harm good people.
Is there a difference between:
- Going to them proactively to get some money
- Telling them when they ask you right after they captured you
- Telling them after 24 hours of torture
It's wrong and harmful in all circumstances; but in the first case, it's doubly wrong, whereas in the last case, there are significant mitigating circumstances.
If this whole story had stopped at #2, you could say it's wrong, but there are mitigating circumstances. Risk of disease is fuzzy and far away; the physical and emotional rewards are right in front of your face. If you don't see any hope of improving the situation, it looks to you like your choices are:
- Come out and completely destroy your life, your wife's life, and your child's life
- Live in a loveless marriage, never enjoying romantic or sexual intimacy
- Enjoy romantic and sexual intimacy secretly, telling yourself that you're not really hurting your wife because you're being "careful" or whatever.
It's not right, but I can see how a person who experiences normal human empathy could choose #3. When I was younger I certainly made my fair share of stupid decisions in search of romantic intimacy (or more crassly, when the "little head told the big head what to do").
As we go down the line, the damage to others becomes greater and more immediate, and the alternative "right" behavior become less and less desolate. It therefore becomes harder not to conclude that he person either lacks empathy entirely, or have made massive efforts to suppress it -- either finding justifications to avoid looking at what's right in front of their faces, or just killing the feeling altogether.
No it doesn't. Voluntarily choosing to marry someone, choosing to deceive them in such a cruel and selfish way, choosing to betray a solemn vow is not being "placed in a messed up, lose-lose situation". It is deliberate, conscious, malicious action over many years upon an innocent victim. The circumstances are entirely of his own creation. He is 100% culpable.
I think the point is not that having an affair is “ok” but that it’s within the range of things that not unusually awful people can do. So it’s “ok” as in “Ok, so you had an affair”, not “It’s ok that you had an affair”.
“OK” is an over-simplified word to use here. It’s incredibly complicated. And it changes with the era and location. If it’s illegal to be gay where you are, or if there literally is no societal understanding of gayness like in the 1700s or whatever where staying a single man is not always an option, I don’t think asking someone to be celibate their entire life is reasonable either. It’s still not _great_ but I don’t blame the individual as much as I do society.
Now, the 90s are a different time than the 1700s, and I do think it’s a bit selfish and myopic to think that having affairs in a marriage is your only option. But if I’m being honest, as an out gay person who strongly considered staying in the closet forever, I understand and can empathize.
I recently discovered an acquaintance has been cheating on his wife for half a decade, and this thought has burned in my mind many many times. To hide such a thing is cruel; to expose your partner to potentially life-changing disease because you're a cruel liar is also disgusting and absurdly foolish. It's never OK.
What's wrong with "We didn't realise how controversial DHH was, and frankly it's none of our business. We are sponsoring his development efforts, not his political crusade."?