Remote

Ted Lemon

@abhayakara@mastodon.nl

mastodon 4.7.3+procolix.mnl

Oude nerd (hij/hem) uit de V.S. Mijn baan is bij een groot bedrijf in California, maar ik woon in Utrecht.

Ik geef advies over meditatie, ontwakingservaringen, en de problemen die darmee bepaard gaan.

0 Followers

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50 Posts

Joined February 10, 2023

Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

RE: @2legged@mastodon.ie

Having lived through the 70s homophobia, I can testify to the accuracy of this. Of course, I was a teenager, so I internalized a lot of it without understanding. I hope that teenagers of today have enough information to be able to reject this more readily than I was able to.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Hm. A nice bit of unanticipated good news on the anti-fascism front:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/04/10/giorgia-meloni-and-the-defeat-of-ideology_6752279_23.html

If you are not a subscriber, the brief recap is that Meloni tried and failed to "reform" the Italian constitution to be more fascist-friendly. A national referendum on the constitution failed to approve her changes, not by a particularly comfortable margin, but enough to do the job.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@LeslieBurns @gabriel @amydiehl I mention this because it's been very clear to me for a long time that boys and young men need clear and explicit education on how to behave towards members of the desired sex (as do girls and young women). And that ain't happening. And bashing won't help.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

RE: @pluralistic@mamot.fr

This feels highly relevant to the discussion we had yesterday at Jaarbeurs about digital sovereignty.

Cory Doctorow: "Lest anyone accuse me of bargaining in bad faith …" - Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@pebbles_chaoskittens @mandy@cupoftea.social "Helping!"

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@gabriel Unfortunately if this goes viral that won't be effective, because the first message is what people generally remember. I grew up during the Dworkin/McKinnon period, and bear the scars—that's why I remember their names. The problem with their work is that they just figured out who to blame, not what to do to fix the situation, and those of us who took them seriously wound up hating ourselves for the misdeeds of others instead of doing anything about it.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey BTW, I really appreciate the constructive engagement here. This is a hard topic.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@wjmaggos @benroyce @TheStoneDonkey 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. Anti-spam doesn't accomplish this, because it's porous: assholes can keep changing their identity to get past the filter. I should be able to simply say "no, I don't want to hear from random strangers." That's not anti-spam. That's consent.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@TheStoneDonkey 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. Of the lot of them, Patreon is probably the best, but they seem to be wandering down the enshittification highway, so we'll see.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@rlonstein@social.stonetools.tech @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io EU car safety standards are far and away better than NHTSA, specifically with respect to pedestrian safety but also side crash survival. So if their cars pass that, they should be able to pass NHTSA as well.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@obrien_kat I wonder if this was part of Pope Leo's calculus... :)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey So, that is both a great explanation for why Molly left, and at the same time a completely clear explanation for why e.g. Amanda and Anand don't leave. Holy shit that's a lot of work! I've been contemplating the same thing, and as a result of my dithering over this, haven't actually set up my blog. This question has had me blocked for nearly a year—I really don't want to do substack, but the alternative is.. a LOT of work.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey

And that is the essence of the problem, isn't it. It feels different to you, and I completely understand and respect that, and I even feel the same way. I just don't trust the feeling very much.

Two points Molly made connected the most for me:

Can't recommend people on other sites (not sure how that's enforced, mind you).
Can't accept payments elsewhere (again, does that mean if I also have Ghost I can't accept payments there?)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey In a sense yes. But for me the common carrier question still holds. I follow several people on substack. I've never, as a result of this, had to read posts by sex traffickers or nazis. That feels more like "common carrier" than "community" to me. E.g. on Facebook, which I left years ago for obvious reasons, I couldn't _not_ encounter nazis. Same thing on Twitter. So that's a very different experience.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey I think they are similar, but not the same. We think of ISPs as "common carriers," which is a term that goes back to the days of the railroads, and was really important to making interstate commerce work at that time. It carried forward to the telcos and to some extent the ISPs. So in a sense the question is, is substack a common carrier? I think you can definitely make an argument that they are not, but you can also say they are. Neither is obviously correct.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@leeloo @TheStoneDonkey If we are voting against assholes with our wallet, then we have to stop driving (which I've pretty much done, but that was hard, and not everyone can do it). The thing about voting with your wallet is that unless you are a billionaire, you don't have equal levarage, because the billionaires can just outbid you. So TBH I do not take voting with my wallet very seriously as a way of changing the world. I do it when I can, but it's not a hill to die on.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey The thing is, how much of Amanda's time are you willing to burn on this? It's her time. We've been talking about consent. Doesn't she get to consent (or not) to this? I think the reason people like Amanda use substack is because they've already thought about this and made the decision that works for them. So me demanding that they revisit it seems disrespectful and, indeed, ungrateful. Holy shit is she doing a lot of good for democracy right now.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey Okay, but my retort here is "why do you think that." No need to actually answer this question unless you want to, but that's the thing I'm getting at. For me it's nowhere near as obvious as it seems to be for you. I think the bending point would be whether it's a community or a public space. If it's a community, imposing community standards makes sense. If it's a public space, then stopping abuse makes sense, but stopping disagreeable speech feels too far.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey BTW, to be clear, I think your position here is 100% valid. I was just trying to figure out what it was. I don't hold the same position, but I don't 100% disagree with you either. I just think it's a harder problem than people are letting on. I'd much rather hear from Amanda Litman on Substack than not hear from her at all, e.g.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@stevenodb I keep hearing people say this. Possibly it's true. But why do I keep hearing these assertions without backup? Like, you could have said "look here at what they are doing." But you didn't. Why didn't you? If they are indeed promoting nazis, how are they doing that? Do you mean because they have a best seller chart and Tate is on top? Or something else? If it's something else, please point me to a clear analysis of this—I haven't been able to find one.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@dangillmor 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?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@dangillmor 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. Right now, it feels a lot like not using substack is similar to not flying to conferences. Airlines are actively harmful in the world, but we don't really have a viable alternative. Should we silence ourselves by not flying?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@dangillmor 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. And how much does it cost us to use it, in terms of the damage that their asshole users cause? Suppose the answer is that the cost of not using it outweighs the cost of using it. Should we still not use it? If so, why?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@majdal@social.coop @liaizon@social.wake.st I think it was that awful explosion in 2020 that made Beirut real for me. Prior to that it had just been a place I heard about on the news when I was a teenager, and then silent. But the pictures after the explosion, and everything we learned about how it happened, suddenly made it a real, living place. And now it's being deliberately bombed. Again. It's really heartbreaking.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@theron29@witter.cz @nirak@carhenge.club @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io One of the super fun things about the Trump administration and all the stuff they've been doing is that my fear of The Chinese Communists getting my data somewhat pales in comparison. The unfortunate reality is that if they want to surveil you, they can just buy the data from American companies that are tracking you. One thing I love about this car is the distinctly not-Detroit not-Yokohama aesthetic. Very nice.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

RE: @passenger@kolektiva.social

This entire thread is fucking bassed.

kolektiva.social

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@RaePatterson @dangillmor I get that, and I avoid certain companies too. The reason I'm digging in on this is that a lot of the criticisms of substack feel really lazy and misleading. There are very good reasons to criticize substack. But shaming people for not having weeks of technical expertise to throw at an alternative feels really unhelpful and counterproductive. If this is a real problem for our community, we should actually solve it, and not shame non-experts for failing to solve it.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@RaePatterson @dangillmor Okay, that is literally my question. I do not see evidence of this. I'm not saying it's not happening. But you seem to know that it is happening. That means you've seen evidence. Please share a link. I follow several people on substack and pay for their newsletters. As far as I know I'm paying for _them_. If that's not the case I'd like to know.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey You haven't actually explained why it's not a common carrier, because apparently it's obvious to you. But if you can't explain why it's not, then yeah, it's going to be hard for us to discuss, because I very definitely can explain why it could be. That you do not find my explanation convincing does not mean that it is a priori incorrect! What you are saying is that web sites as a class share some quality that excludes them _all_ being common carriers. What is it?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey Out of curiosity I just went to the site itself. There I don't see anything objectionable. There's a set of suggestions for who to subscribe to. I recognize nearly everybody on that list, and they're all people I know and respect. There are one or two I don't recognize. So if it _is_ a website, from my experience it's a web site with no nazis or sex traffickers. I'm not asserting that that's true, just reporting its appearance from my perspective.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@whatzaname @dangillmor I'm asking specifically what they are doing to platform assholes. Every so often I go look to try to figure out if they are actually doing anything other than not censoring them, and I have yet to succeed in finding out what they are doing other than that. This is literally all I am asking. If they are supporting them, that's bad, and a reason to not use their service. If they are just not censoring them, I don't love that, but I don't take it the same way.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce @TheStoneDonkey I don't think we disagree about Andrew Tate. My question is, what specifically are they doing to platform him? Like, did they incentivize him to post on substack? If so, that's a good argument against using substack. Right now I see them treating him neutrally, which I don't love, but again, so does Comcast (or my ISP, Odido). Should I quit Odido? So I'm asking, what specifically are they doing. I'm asking because I haven't found a clear answer by searching.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@torgo One unfortunate observation is that enough people are deciding what to think based on conversations with LLMs that the answer to this question is extremely important. A second is that it's often the people who are not fascists who also don't want their work used to train the models. This is exploitable, and it's being exploited. So this question should be seen as a call to action more than a refutation of the value of AI, true though that second interpretation may be.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@mattblaze@federate.social @Eka_FOOF_A@spacey.space @kajord@hachyderm.io A ⇒ B ≢ B ⇒ A... :)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Eka_FOOF_A@spacey.space @kajord@hachyderm.io @mattblaze@federate.social Of course—nobody puts up a full-wave 80 meter antenna! But even a quarter wave inverted vee is pretty big—you need some very patient neighbors if you're going to do that in DC.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@mttaggart@infosec.exchange And what about all the damned outlines and summaries and "the key issue here is..." nonsense?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@mttaggart@infosec.exchange Maybe at some corporations, but I work for a very large corporation, and I only started seeing that crap when LLM writing got popular. I use Claude a fair amount and I've gotten use to the cadence of its writing. Now I can't unsee it.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@liquidlamp @dangillmor I didn't say that it was neutral. But this is all inside baseball, not useful analysis. E.g., I am pretty disgusted with HarperCollins for publishing Vance's latest, and my respect for them has gone from high (possibly naively) to in the toilet. But if I have a book to publish, and they'll publish it, do you think I should say no because of this? I think that's the analogy, and I would be surprised to find a serious writer who would refuse a contract with them.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@liquidlamp @dangillmor Are they doing that? Can you point me at the evidence? This is what I'm asking for. I think that just saying they platform bad people is bad communication. The picture is not them platforming anyone. It's someone we don't like landing on the bestseller list. Would we castigate the NYT for reporting that his book sold well? If they are in fact incentivizing him in some way, can you please point me at the evidence of that?

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@vaurora@mstdn.social @shane_kerr@fosstodon.org I didn't get enough sleep last night, and this thread is really hitting home for some reason... :)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@MrDNS@mastodon.social Glad to hear it. I was pretty sure. :)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Eka_FOOF_A@spacey.space @kajord@hachyderm.io @mattblaze@federate.social How are you supposed to put up an 80-meter dipole in DC? You'd have to be richer than God to have that much available space. Also, though, you may have proven that ham does not correlate well with nerd.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@CathyTuttle There was quite a crowd at Pastoe today enjoying the sun. :)

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@k3ym0 Far's I know, Paul Mockapetris is still with us... Maybe @MrDNS would know for sure.

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Ted Lemon @abhayakara@mastodon.nl

· 4mo ago

This is very much worth a read. I don't love the title, and neither does the author, actually. It is a clear-eyed and detailed (but not too long) analysis of what it takes to actually bring about change.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-195843786

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