• Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      54 minutes ago

      That Canadian woman was arrested and held for 2 weeks. That won’t protect you, and it won’t protect me.

    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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      13 hours ago

      I went looking for the alt text because, well, I love the Easter-egg nature of the alt text he provides. Got chills as soon as I realized what he’d done.

      So much respect for him.

      • notabot@lemm.ee
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        12 hours ago

        I did the same, pressed on it for the text, got sent straight to the video, and swore under my breath in admiration. In the current climate what he’s done isn’t risk free, despite the fact it a) should be, and b) shouldn’t be needed in the first place.

        Nothing but respect for people calling out the crimes of thus administration, and when it’s someone with an unrelated platform and an audience, so much the better.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I imagine there will be fuss over this, “politics” in XKCD, as if (with the author being an academic) a PhD student getting grabbed off the street in your town against the state’s wishes for something she published somehow isn’t relevant.

    • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      People bitching about politics are bad faith Nazis trying to appeal to ignorant folk who don’t know no better. Belittle them. Bash them. Tell them to go fuck themselves

      • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Those people are strangely quiet when it’s a conservative-leaning meme, so I’ve learned to, as you say, tell them to get bent.

        I can think of no better situation for the phrase “fuck you and the horse you rode in on”

    • supernicepojo@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      There might not be. The only people that read xkcd are those that can understand it, so there could be a cutoff where you just arent gonna get the other side of the “politics”

      • OriginalUsername7@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        The only people that read xkcd are those that can understand it

        If that was true, there’d be no need for ExplainXKCD.com.

        And even then on some of the more physics-y ones I just give Randall the benefit of the doubt that it’s funny.

        • Hoimo@ani.social
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          10 hours ago

          I think there’s a difference between being able to understand and having all the information to understand. Randall has a very wide range of topics that he makes comics on and most readers won’t know enough about every topic to get every joke, even though he does his best to simplify it for a broad audience. That’s the reason ExplainXKCD exists. But his audience is generally nerds, people who like learning new information, which is also what Explain caters to. So it is both true that his audience can (and are willing to) understand and that Explain helps them understand. (I also think that nerds love explaining stuff, so it makes sense that the main fandom website is ExplainXKCD, even if there were no demand for explanations.)

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        Maybe.

        It’s fairly popular in tech circles where there’s a large intersection with MAGA, or at least a more “keep politics out of my programming” attitude predating that.

    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      fuck if I watched this without knowing the context, I would have thought they are kidnapping her. What the fuck is this?

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        56 minutes ago

        Fascism. I used to think the word was just a silly term the privileged South Park goths accuse everybody of being. Of course I knew it existed in places like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, but not here. Not in the “Land of the Free”.

        But that was in the Before Times. Fascism is real, it’s terrifying, it’s disgusting, and it’s here now. So we have to fight it. Together.

      • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        It looks like a kidnapping because that’s what it is. They’ve not charged her with a crime to my knowledge. Demonstrates how easy it is for people to disappear. They had her from all angles, cuffed and gone in under a minute.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    16 hours ago

    I think it can be also seen as a fairly pointed reference to this, which happened only a few days ago. It was a stupid and careless error on the part of the scientist in terms of running afoul of bureaucracy, but the consequences here are WILDLY out of proportion - especially if you take into account the incredible positive effect her research could have.