“The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”
—Hannah Arendt
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
—Captain G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (1947)
“A user you’ve blocked has previously contributed to this repository.”
“Europeans pay for health care. Americans pay for health insurance.”
escapism is a perfectly valid coping method
Quarantine: when food service workers weren’t allowed to call in sick because they were “essential” …
Bluesky isn’t federated (another privately owned monolith that’s promised it’s coming Soon™) and recently got funding from a company with “blockchain” in its name (and there’s already rumors that despite claims otherwise, ads will be showing up in the next year or so)
that being said, Bluesky does offer much better blocking, muting, and moderation options than Mastodon (Mastodon devs have been digging in their heels) as well as better on-boarding and curated follow lists
(at one point, Apple made a couple of the best keyboards)