CrocodilloBombardino

more outreach to, and adoption by, communities that are not specifically tech- or FOSS-focused, like crafting, parenting, fashion, home repair, or brewing, for example. gotta keep chipping away at those network effects. onboarding and ux will need to be top tier.

American racism is pervasive and there are idiosyncratic ways in which it is expressed here, but Europe and Asia, for example, have their big and small ways of expressing it too. look at how people from Africa or Turkey are treated in Europe, or groups like the Sami, Romani, Uighur, and indigenous peoples everywhere. As another example, Latin America has pervasive colorism, which can also appear in pseudoscientific ways.

none of this is to excuse or minimize American racism. it’s one of the nation’s core atrocities. I just want people in other places to admit how much of a problem it is where they are too.

no one deserves this. voting patterns aren’t simply “ignorance”, they’re complex. because you dismiss it so easily, you can’t fight it.

structural racism and overt racism exist in America and most other places too.

all Americans grow up in the racist society that exists here, some of them attempt to fight it, many others don’t like it but don’t find a way to resist. others actively build and support it.

racist Americans voted for it, but are finding out how much it sucks. the majority of America never wanted any of this

What we view as attractive is socially constructed and varies over time and place. See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738081X23000251

Youth and health are probably a proxy for fertility, so that would be related to physical attraction, but why should that affect how we treat people? That’s not a reason to favor the young or to disfavor the old. Not only that, but community care of children meant everyone had a role in the greater sense of “fertility”.

The wealthy surround themselves with beautiful people, get blood transfusions from young people, get cosmetic surgery. In our stories, good characters are usually portrayed as beautiful or handsome and often young. Successful characters, whether good or evil, are often beautiful or handsome. Regular-looking folks more often appear as side characters or comedic characters instead.

this view is encouraged by the fashion, skincare and cosmetics industries (not that there’s anything wrong with fashion, skincare, or cosmetics per se).

So we are all being conditioned to worship or favor beauty and youth.

that’s the point. the capitalists want every minute of your life they can get to work for them, then make you scramble to fit the rest of your life in the gaps. they make more profit and you have less time and energy to educate yourself, think, and organize