When I was younger and started being pestered by a wasp, I ran away from it as fast as I could. People very condescendingly told me "if you stay still, it won't bother you 🤓". Then I'd later hear these same people mention how they were recently stung by a wasp. I am now an adult and still avoid wasps. People still condescendingly tell me the same thing. I ask them if they have ever been stung and they quite proudly tell me they have. I've never been stung. I don't see the logic of sitting still eating an ice cream while a wasp buzzes around you, and that somehow doesn't agitate the wasp.

I can understand why swatting would aggravate them. But not running. Running has always worked for me

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action". This is real police state behaviour.

I'm hearing everyone come out and condemn this thing which is apparently "hate speech" and how apparently terrible it was for the BBC to continue broadcasting it (I don't think they did anything wrong- they were broadcasting a real life event). I understand the upset at kneecap (like supporting Hezbollah and talking about killing MPs) but I don't know how chanting "Death to the IDF" is hate speech- it's not even necessarily calling for death to humans, could be directed towards wanting to disband the organisation.

I don't know why the media and politicians are making such a big deal over it. It feels like they are trying to tell us how awful it was that these people said this thing and that we should apparently be outraged. Or maybe it's just me. I think there are worse things going on in the world.... particularly within the geographical piece of land variously known as Israel/Palestine/Canaan....

~~I'm probably banned from entering the USA now~~

Arrest:

https://youtu.be/8s_oOC_j4Ps

"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is when corporate pigs try to get ahead on open standards, make their client the main one used, then make their client drop the standard.

Email is at risk since most normies use Gmail or Outlook. Google and Microsoft could agree to drop support for all other providers and people probably won't switch to the other providers.

The most Meta can do is add a load of more users to the fediverse then take them away again. For them to successfully EEE the fediverse, it would require convincing existing fediverse users to switch to threads. I cannot see that happening on here on any noticeable scale.

The worst that can happen, is a bunch of new users appear on the 'verse from threads, then disappear again.

If anything, Bluesky is the bigger threat as it touts itself as "decentralised" in order to gain users who would have otherwise gone to Mastodon, then easily pull the plug on that, and we have to wait another decade for a maniac to ruin the platform to cause people to reconsider the fediverse.

Why can countries officially recognise both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea as different political entities despite them both claiming to be the true Korea, but not the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, instead having to choose a side?

Typically this is a Christian argument used against Islam - but I'm actually curious if this is seen as a valid argument from a secular point of view? (Even if it's not the "best")

Because essentially it's "your holy book contradicts the holy book it claims to be endorsed by", which personally I think I can see working on a secular level, even if you don't actually believe in the Bible either.