In Catholic theology, anyway, Satan is not the boss of hell. He is a prisoner in it just like everyone else, just more notorious than the rest.

In my setting I use Esperanto as an ancient common tongue and English as a modern one. That's because it's ridiculously easy to construct false etymologies to explain various features of the English language if you use Esperanto as a base.

Esperanto words also have somewhat guessable meanings if you know your Latin and Greek roots, even though the text is not comprehensible generally. So players can have hints at the meaning of a text without knowing what it really says.

When I need to obscure the meaning more, I mix up the words in a sentence. Because Esperanto has an accusative case, you can mix up the sentence order without loss of meaning. But it makes the sentence harder to read and obscures the relationship between the words.

Also, it sounds like an incomprehensible but distinctly European language when spoken. Players tell me it sounds like Spanish.

Kiam oni konsciiĝas, ke oni povas diri ian ajn rubon sur la interreto per tiu ĉi lingvo, ĉar neniu komprenos sin

Genuinely who has characterised environmental policies as "just wanting chaos"? I have never heard anyone of significant note say that.

During the (biologically) short two years of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was inside and factories were shut down, a lot of rivers and other natural ecosystems pretty much recovered to near pre-industrial health. Even the River Ganges started clearing up if I remember correctly.

A: gets scammed by company

B: You're so stupid, you should have known that company was going to scam you.

I am informed. I can see her activities. They range from very productive performatism to useless but mostly inert lip service.

For example her Gaza aid ship stunt I believe falls in the category of "very productive performatism". Obviously she is a kind of international political celebrity, and by forcing Israeli authorities to either arrest her (and cause a diplomatic incident) or allow a hole in their Gaza blockade, she's forcing the issue in a way that is both a good use of her infamy and also disproportionately impactful.

These are the pawnbrokers from Pawn Stars, an American television programme broadcast on the History Channel where they show various antique items and historical artefacts being sold at the pawn shop.

Perhaps this is an issue of grammar. I use the word "performative" to describe actions where more effort is paid to the publication of the process of performing the actions, rather than any effect of the actions themselves.

And, of course, I do think that being performative does not on its own make a behaviour socially useless. That's why I distinguish between "useful performatism" and "useless performatism", which is typically just done with the goal of generating the feeling of having done something, without actually making any significant effect.

As another example, most peaceful protests are inherently performative, but they can be usefully so if they actually provoke positive policy changes.

And of course, by "lip service", I mean speeches and declarations which merely talk about the existence of an issue and one's support/opposition of it without actually taking any concrete action towards achieving one's stated goal. For example (though not Thunberg-related), I consider a city council resolution condemning Israeli atrocities in occupied Palestine to be a form of useless lip service, unless it is paired with actual actions in furtherance of that view, such as sending aid to Palestine or cutting ties with Israeli companies.

US presidents ordering flags flown at half-mast after mass shootings without offering substantial policy changes is a notorious example of useless lip service.

I'm not defending this action from Microsoft, but for most people, they buy a Microsoft product and then happily use it for years, none the wiser to any of Microsoft's other nonsense happening in the background.

Do you have an example? I haven't even seen the Washington Post characterise it that way. Most opponents just talk about how these policies will "destroy the competitiveness of our industry" or "raise prices for consumers".

With Thunberg in particular, while I agree broadly with her on pretty much all of her policy stances, I can't help but also think that a lot of what she does is performative and doesn't really accomplish much on a practical level. I'm not stupid enough to think the goal is chaos but I think I understand how some people could be led to think that.

Law enforcement shouldn't be able to get into someone's mobile phone without a warrant anyway. All this change does is frustrate attempts by police to evade going through the proper legal procedures and abridging the rights of the accused.

If it's not already the law, it needs to be. It should be required that paid advertising be disclosed in all contexts.

Pretty much anyone defending the postal worker here on the basis of what she did being "right" is missing the generalisation that must be made. If it's okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it's okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organisations. It means it would be okay for pro-life postal workers to refuse to deliver parcels containing birth control pills or flyers containing information about abortion services.

You cannot have it both ways. If you make a rule that there are cases when it is acceptable for postal workers to destroy or refuse to deliver mail, it will be used by the other side against you.

If you have used Reddit for some time, you'll have noticed an interesting trend: any large space where general content is allowed to be posted and which does not prohibit US politics, will generally become saturated with US politics.

This happens to some degree on Lemmy as well. It's because Americans are the largest national demographic group on the English-speaking portion of the Internet, and because American politics in general is extreme and garners a lot of attention from others. So if talking about it is allowed, it will usually become all that anyone ever wants to talk about, or at least it will appear that way in a space where popularity determines visibility.

Edit: I did not write this, but I cannot explain it better.

I think most of the complaints are that Microsoft Office doesn't work. Which is true. The web version of Microsoft Office is honestly kinda terrible.

And no, people don't want to use a product that does the same thing as Microsoft Office, they want to use a product called "Microsoft Office". No, it's not logical, and doesn't make any sense at all but it's how people are.

SystemD will consume the entirety of Linux, bit by bit.

• In 2032, SystemD announces they're going to be introducing a new way to manage software on Linux
• In 2035, SystemD will announce they're making a display system to replace the ageing Wayland
• In 2038, the SystemD team announces they're making their own desktop environment
• In 2039 SystemD's codebase has grown to sixteen times its size in the 2020s. SystemD's announces they're going to release replacements for most other packages and ship their own vanilla distro.
• In 2045 SystemD's distro has become the standard Linux distribution. Most other distros have quietly faded away.
• In 2047, SystemD announces they're going to incorporate most of GNU into SystemD. Outrage ensues from the Free Software Foundation, which vehemently opposes this move.
• In 2048, Richard Stallman dies of a heart attack after attempting to clone SystemD's git repo. SystemD engages in a hostile takeover and all resistance within the FSF crumbles
• In 2050, SystemD buys the struggling RedHat from IBM for $61 million.
• In 2053, most world governments have been pressured into using SystemD.
• In 2054, Linus Torvalds, fearing for his life, begins negotiations to merge kernel development into SystemD
• In 2056, the final message on the Linux kernel development mailing list is sent.
• In 2058, Torvalds dies under suspicious circumstances after his brand-new laptop battery explodes.
• In 2060, SystemD agents assassinate the CEO of Microsoft.
• In 2063, after immense pressure from SystemD-controlled human rights organisations, Arch developers discontinue development.
• In 2064, the remaining living Debian developers release the next stable version of their clandestine and highly illegal distro.