@inthehands (To some extent, they're likely also hoping to have things appear to be 'calm' so they can try to undermine the DHS shutdown, or use it as a way to convince the dems to betray their people and give up on their efforts to require them to ... follow the fucking constitution... )

@inthehands they do seem to be shiffting focus elsewhere, though, I doubt they'll pull out of MN completely. I get the impression they don't have enough people to keep their presence there *and* assault the other communities on their hitlist - especially since hiring is one of the things more likely to be disrupted by the DHS shutdown, and the bad press has likely made it harder for them to get many people to sign up for the job either way.

@inthehands Yeah, I mean, I am angry about those two incidents also - but, none of these arrests should be happening in the first place. Neither Pretti nor Good would have been in a position for those 'incidents'(murders) to even happen if there wasn't *already* a problem for them to be protesting and documenting.

@xgranade (self-hosting of course has a higher barrier to entry on the host side of it, but, for a personal one, isn't particularly expensive... you could likely host one for the same cost as whatever discord's premium tier thing was called anyway, but, there's still the added work of setup and maintenance, so, not a real option for a lot of folks.)

@xgranade and tbh, I think the reason some of the 30 year old options still work well is precisely because they're open protocols, without a corporate overlord, and without the built-in perverse incentive structures to profit off users.
Self-hosting an IRC server works about as well as a discord 'server' - except you actually own the server and can do what you want or need to with it and control who gets what data yourself - for most purposes (voice chats being the primary gap)

@xgranade Partner of mine just signed up for an XMPP server (I already used XMPP) - which, similarly works across servers, and can cover almost everything I needed from discord (+ allows end to end encryption)
The hardest part of them signing up was waiting for the server admin to approve their account.

So, there's options that aren't particularly difficult to use or set up, that also don't lock you and all your friends into a singular server/provider.
... some of the options ~ 30 years old.

@inthehands It has no concept of what is correct, real, valuable, or meaningful - only what is statistically likely given a particular prompt.
Which is a problem - because if you ask it a question, you need to know the correct answer, or have the means to verify it.
Because it has no idea what the correct answer is.
If you don't know enough to be able to verify the result, then you can't trust it.

@inthehands This result makes sense - they generate *statistically likely* text based on a prompt, and the stolen words of basically the entire internet and several libraries worth of books.
If the prompt is such that the text it generates is statistically-likely to be correct - the language used closely aligns with a medical textbook, diagnostic manual, etc. - it's more likely to generate text based on sources like that.
If it sounds like a tweet, you're more likely to get a shitpost.

@inthehands Unfortunately, it seems at least too many elected dems still think it should exist.
Some have joined the 'abolish ICE' calls, but, I don't think enough reps or senators are taking it seriously.
Yet.
Some have changed stances - public pressure matters.
Especially when it's backed up by strikes, disruptive protests, etc.
So, it's not hopeless - but I don't think most of the senate, is seriously considering 'abolish' as an option. [hopefully primaries will be a slaugghter over it]

@inthehands Having someone more responsible in charge of the secret police does not make it okay to have a secret police in the first place.
And if ICE is not removed - if the secret police continues to exist - then the absolute best case result is this calms down now, and the same thing happens again later.

@inthehands Yeah, I've sent my reps another message, citing various abuses by the DHS over the years, and saying that at this point the entire department needs to be closed, the homeland security act repealed completely, and anything short of that should be considered an act of treason, because it's a fundamentally antidemocratic department.

@inthehands The aesthetics of law, structure, competence, fighting some enemy, etc. is clearly a major priority for the current regime - and if you look at right-wing news outlets, it's working for a significant the part of the sliver of the population that they actually care about.

@inthehands Aestheticization is a common trend in fascist regimes - Walter Benjamin's 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' goes into it, iirc he frames it as a way of giving the fascist in-group proletariat an outlet that does not risk fundamental structural changes.
But it functions more broadly as a means of social control, pacifying & reassuring the in-group with the spectacle, while terrorizing out-groups.
So the video game comparison is not an accident - it's kinda the point.