Lets start with your assumption that it’s fine that a country with .87% of the global population being anywhere near 2% of greenhouse gasses is ok. Especially when first world countries like ours are responsible for the historical majority of them. But also by reducing our emissions we enter the ability to negotiate with other countries to reduce theirs and we have incentives to develop more ecological technology that we can then sell to other countries as China has famously been doing with solar panels and electric vehicles. But significantly, all we can impact outside treaties is our own countries, so when we demand carbon reduction at home it’s because the alternatives are giving up or I suppose you could attempt to take back India and China.

Carbon taxes are more like vice taxes than say revenue taxes. The goal isn’t to raise money to offset emissions, but to make more externally costly decisions less appealing. That way you don’t fly instead of take the train in order to save a bit of time.

And yeah, I can’t speak much for the UK, but in the US I associate the Reagan era with the severance of businesses from their responsibility and value to society. The rot that’s killing my country both financially and socially was fostered and promoted by the Reagan era. We sold off our manufacturing capacity in the form of offshoring and created the conditions of the crack epidemic, government ignoring as more Americans died of aids than in the Vietnam War, and the formation of the religious right who would go on to cause a lot of today’s problems. My part of my country is called the rust belt, and it was decimated by the consequencesof the 80s.

Also I’m pretty sure the UK had great benefits from EU membership. At least considering how bad leaving it has gone for yall.

Think of our perception of capitalism as closer to your great grandparents’. Your statement of thatcher implies UK, so think before the unions and the council housing and for us yanks before the NHS. And with an oncoming doom from climate change. And that’s in addition to the technofuedalism. The benefits of privatization increasingly feel like a bold faced lie to us

There’s probably a crusader saint. Oh st Joan of Arc. Sure she was sanctified for martyrdom (only catholic saint to be martyred by the catholic church yet), but she did do a war as part of her miracles

Oh it was a glorious shit show. Look into what happened. In my area it wound up basically grindr

Especially sex

The internet still has to fight to be free

Yeah the thing I got from here was an understanding that focusing on free speech just means you have the worst users. If you want a free speech instance you’re free to be on one that others are defederated from

Yeah I meant it not as bragging but as acknowledgement of the reality that for many of us it is so far into the only internet we’ve ever known that as a cultural touchstone it’s lost on us, even those of us in the fediverse/linux sphere.

Young or old, in our society age isn’t an achievement or something one should brag about. But it’s important to keep in mind the wide array of ages present here. Some here lament the death of forum culture, others caught the tail end of it, and still others will need the explanation of why it’s worth missing (and yeah I’m not that young, but I know professionals who are)

The eternal September is to some of us full adults, people complaining about our parents being on the internet for as long as we’ve been alive, which is actually something we can agree to complain about, but people that age are also here

And also it feels like while there’s just the one eternal September there’s also several. I’ve been part of some and I’ve been frustrated with others, and for some I showed up in December and didn’t realize what I’d missed

Plenty of us here weren’t born yet when it started

Yeah I’m not prone to talk about misogyny in my career field in general spaces for that career, but in spaces for women in it I’m much more comfortable talking about it.

Yeah I definitely feel like a minority here sometimes but when I compare it to rules of the internet era internet it’s not even close. The misogyny has generally been the sort I’m used to as an engineer. I probably shouldn’t be basing my standards on gamergate era Reddit, but it is way better than that

There are instances to avoid interacting with but generally they’re defederated from a lot of instances because they’re welcoming to conservative assholes.