@gerikson @YourNetworkIsHaunted That and even hyper-cautious countries like Switzerland have been selling off their gold reserves to at least some extent, because they listen to sane economists rather than nut jobs.

@V0ldek @self And not just the song title - the lyrics are so on point all the way through:

You still think swastikas look cool
The real Nazis run your schools
They're coaches, businessmen and cops
In a real fourth Reich you'll be the first to go

@fasterandworse Published a book about hypertext two years before the Web.. but two years after Hypercard.

@corbin I can’t believe I’m defending this odious guy, but this kind of “don’t interfere in our internal affairs, foreigners” stuff is exactly the same playbook that countries like Russia and China and Iran roll out when they get criticised for, you know, declaring LGBTQA+ folk to be terrorists or sending people to labour camps because they’re inconvenient. The guy has the right to express whatever shitty opinions he wants about the US, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to listen, and the real problem here is that people in the US right are so willing to use this guy as a useful idiot in exchange for a bit of attention and the occasional wad of cash. This is exactly what you see from the above mentioned countries - “look, these foreigners agree with us, stop being mean about us!”.

Hell, Russia and Iran both have entire TV networks (RT and Press TV) dedicated to this kind of useful idiocy but in their cases they’re intended for foreign consumption. The US equivalent is Fox News - but that’s aimed at the US market, which is kind of an interesting difference.

@froztbyte How many US citizens actually renounce their citizenship, though? It’s been deliberately made into a difficult and expensive process, especially under Trump, because they have an obsession with the idea that the only reason any US citizen would want to stop being one is to evade tax.

And as a UK citizen who hasn’t lived in the UK for 15 years UK domestic policy still very much affects my life - not least a few years ago when the lunatics pushed us out of the EU and my family and I lost a whole load of basic rights in the country in which we now live. And I reserve the right to critique any government I want if it’s behaving in a shitty manner - why should the US be immune from criticism while it’s perfectly acceptable to slag off awful regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran and yes, even that in our next door neighbour, Hungary? The US isn’t immune from criticism just because they wear clean shirts while mistreating marginalised folk.

@averyminya @swlabr It's funny because it's racist!

@dgerard Thought you were having a go at the RNLI there for a moment. Just remember what happened to the last guy who did that.

@self So basically it's like a science fiction novel, except that they haven't realised that it's one of those novels where the author develops an entire society based on some weird totalitarian cult just so they can spend the rest of the plot demonstrating how nutso said society is?

@dgerard Oh, the Antiversity! I remember that. I think it was one of the first Lovecraftian horrors I was exposed to when I first started to take an interest in this particular rabbithole of weird.

@gerikson Yeah, that’s a point well made. In this particular instance - did a bit of digging and the “Global Priorities Institute” is funded by… Open Philanthropy, which is run by… EAs. Lordy.

@grumpybozo @swlabr We're more of an exclusive ore, I like to think.

@Soyweiser (One of my dad's schoolteachers was a conscientious objector - a Quaker who volunteered for the Friends Ambulance Unit and spent a lot more time in harm's way than much of the actual military did)