pitninja

I actually do know what political means. Care to explain why you think software licenses are political instead of laughing at what I consider to be a completely reasonable statement?

I didn't repeat myself on the second point. Either one's politics endorse intellectual property rights, which include the rights of an individual or organization to permit/limit any or all of those specific facets I mentioned previously according to their preference or one does not believe intellectual property rights exist. That's the only meaningful way I can conceive of software licenses being a political concept, but I'm welcome to hear your take.

This sounds like one of those deals where the picture orientation is being determined by metadata that may be getting stripped when you post. I would file an issue on GitHub and include a sample image, if possible.

We're getting into an area where religious beliefs are less defined for me than my political beliefs lol. I'll gladly share my political beliefs on this topic, but I can offer even less assurance of consensus with fellow Satanists on this.

I personally believe in clearly defined free speech zones and I do not believe school should qualify as one. There have to be rules against harassment, hate speech, and proselytizing in places that people have no choice but to be (and the possibility of home schooling or private schooling does not preclude this right because those are not available to all).

Free speech zones should be limited to the public square (public property, parks, sidewalks, etc). There've been many debates about whether social media sites should become mandated free speech zones and I personally think that is a really bad idea. We need to be able to choose not to be harassed in our personal areas both in real life and online.

Unfortunately, we have to let bigots be able to speak freely both in their personal spaces and in the public square (within reasonable constraints, no credible threats of violence obviously). They have the right to free speech and all we can do is walk away or drown them out in public.

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Revisiting the whole idea of offense, I think there are really 2 broad categories. There are willfull acts of offense and unintended offense. The first category could be shouting slurs at people, attacking someone's character, engaging in general emotional bullying, etc. The second could include, for example, offending someone by simply existing and living out one's life in public (LGBTQIA+ individuals, BIPOC individuals, atheists, and Satanists are a few examples). The first kind of offensiveness is rarely warranted. The second kind is unavoidable for people who want to live normal lives amongst pearl clutching haters. To the haters, I say suck it up.

Previously, I mentioned the tenets should be understood holistically and Tenet VI is a great example to look at:

People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.

I think this ties into the topic of offense at least as far as a Satanist is concerned because it encourages us to try to make amends if we offend someone without justification.

So TL/DR on the topic of offense, I believe the tenets encourage us not to do it without a good reason, but also not to encroach on others' right to offend within reasonable limits.

That's interesting. I'm guessing here, but is that because votes from blocked servers aren't federated? I feel like having different vote totals depending on which server you're on is a little strange, but maybe it makes sense 🤷

Stuxnet itself doesn't care whose centrifuges it destroys (in fact it doesn't care or have an awareness that it's destroying anything at all), it does what it's programmed to do and is deployed to do by people with political goals. It's not the same thing as Stuxnet itself being political.

I did say that I could conceive of one way that software licenses could be considered somewhat political if one's politics reject the validity of intellectual property. But then again, the software licenses are also not the code itself. If one doesn't believe in the concept of intellectual property, one is free to accept whatever risk is involved with breaking the license and using it anyway. The software doesn't care who's running it.

I know this is all somewhat pedantic, but I pretty firmly believe no software is inherently political. At least maybe not until we have a computer system that achieves some form of sentience and its operating instructions are subject to its own will.

Looks like somebody has, but no posts for 2 years lol

Ick, keep my Twitter-like services and Reddit-like services apart lol. And unless I'm compelled with a strong real life reason, it's Fediverse socials or bust for me going forward, I think.

Quick, we need to get the /r/wallstreetbets folks in here to tell us how not to read it!

I'm pretty certain this is a bug and one that's going to be resolved soon if I'm reading the github PR's and commits correctly.

To be clear, you're not going to get definitive answers from anyone on canonical meanings for the tenets because they're open to interpretation. They were written fairly broadly by design to accommodate various worldviews (and likely to be interesting to discuss).

For me, Tenet IV which talks about the freedom of others to offend is not a paradox. You have every right to remove yourself from the company of those who are offending you, but they in turn have the right to be offensive. Now, that is not to say that people who choose to offend are absolved of the consequences of their actions. In our Satanic social circles for example, if people are offensive, they are removed and are free to go be offensive elsewhere. Therefore, the personal choice to offend as a Satanist is one that must be taken deliberately. I see this tenet as a caution against pushing for restrictive free speech in the public square lest we lose our own free speech which may, through no direct intent of our own, offend people like fundamentalist Christians, for example.

Tenet II which is about the struggle for justice has been kicked around a lot in discussions. The other part of the wording that people ponder is the meaning of "prevail". There are obviously various meanings for both of those words. Justice could be moral justice, social justice, legal justice... I've seen some people question if it even means retributive/vigilante justice and I think that's obviously a bridge too far and incompatible with the rest of the tenets, which are meant to be understood holistically. As far as "prevail" goes, I interpret it to be more of a synonym for "guide" or "inspire" than "supercede".

My story starts with becoming an atheist about 15 years ago, hearing about TST fighting to put a Baphomet statue on the state capitol grounds in Oklahoma, and then not thinking about them much for the next 9 years except when they'd pop up in the news and I'd laugh my ass off at whatever antics they were engaged in. I legitimately didn't realize it wasn't an elaborate troll for a long, long time.

That all changed last year when the draft Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked. I saw that as a call to action. I went to protests and looked for any organizations I could find that are fighting for reproductive rights. Naturally, atheists on reddit at the time reminded me about the Temple, so I gave it a hard look for the first time ever and realized it was a serious religion. And, not just that, one whose core tenets I agreed with wholeheartedly. I was officially a Satanist by that month's end and haven't looked back!