You say you don’t care who they are but you’re the one who first claimed to know that, when you called them “an anonymous user who has never contributed to foss outside of a whiney bug report or two.”. You seemed to think it very important. Moreover, it’s not impossible for the user to have been impersonating a FOSS developer for a couple of years, but what do you think the probability of that is? What would they gain? It seems far more probable that they simply are the same person.

Noone called the developer a “petty bitch asshole” from what I saw, putting words in others’ mouths doesn’t seem to help the discussion.

I agree with your overall sentiment that we can sympathize with the dev, even if they’re obviously not perfect themselves. FOSS is hard for everyone engaging with it.

It is a games console emulator project. Noone’s livelihood or business hinges on this AFAIU, and there are alternative emulators for the PS. If anything I’d hope people - maintainers, contributors, users - would be more cool and relaxed about it. It’s the kind of project I wish would give everyone involved more energy and experience for other endeavors in their lives. What’s even the point if it’s not fun?

It also doesn’t help that the AI companies deliberately use language to make their models seem more human-like and cogent. Saying that the model e.g. “thinks” in “conceptual spaces” is misleading imo. It abuses our innate tendency to anthropomorphize, which I guess is very fitting for a company with that name.

On this point I can highly recommend this open access and even language-wise accessible article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5 (the authors also appear on an episode of the Better Offline podcast)

Imagine if there was a candidate in the 60s that was obviously funded by the CCP and supported by its propaganda machine, which was plotting to surrender its country to the CCP, while being a vocal supporter of planned economics and thumping Mao’s little red book like the Bible. I think a lot of leftists would agree that such a party, though far-left on its face at least, would have been undemocratic at its core and not in the interest of the country itself.

It is in my mind very misleading to try to use an analogy with Bernie Sanders. Sanders, AFAIK, is not interested in upheaving democracy or selling out the country to Russia. This is fundamentally different from many current far-right parties in Eastern Europe.

Now, is it a wise strategy to straight up bar Georgescu’s party without explaining the reasoning as the article claims has been done? Perhaps not (though ample evidence supporting the decision has been provided previously by Romanian intelligence agencies). But one can understand why extreme measures might be called for to counter the electoral interference of a country that is actively invading your neighbor and has openly talked about wanting your country to become a puppet, too.

From ISW, "Georgescu has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership and “wisdom” and claimed in 2022 that Ukraine is an “invented state.” ( https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/likely-kremlin-backed-election-interference-against-romania-threatens-bucharests ) Could you find a similarly extreme and anti-democratic view espoused by a “far-left” leader that you think non-tankie leftists commonly support? If you still don’t see how extreme Georgescu’s party is and why they can be rightfully called a Russian agent I highly recommend checking out the ISW article, actually it’s well worth reading either way. Georgescu was even too explicit a Russian stooge for other ultranationalists to stomach (for a while).

I’m not quite as convinced as you are that there was that deliberate a strategy to prolong the war and let it fester, and I still think the description of it as just an American proxy war is overly simplistic. But we do seem to agree on many points, most importantly that Ukraine should have gotten, and still should get, a lot more support and not be artificially restrained. Thanks for the chat.

The point was always that whatever “deal” was worked out, unless Ukraine would become part of NATO or have security guarantees with say NATO boots on the ground for decades, Russia would have only used the temporary pause to build up its forces while doing hybrid warfare, then try again in a couple of years. Also, it is misleading to characterize the war in Ukraine as an American proxy war, it ignores the complex relationships between all involved actors and most importantly ignores Ukrainian autonomy. Lastly, Netanyahu did “what Trump said” temporarily because it was in his interest to boost Trump as he expected to soon get Trump’s blessing to continue waging war on Palestinians (and it seems even Netanyahu was surprised by how emphatic Trump’s approval is).

Now, IMO Biden should have been much bolder in sending more military support to Ukraine and approving long-distance strikes etc., which would have encouraged other NATO allies to do the same. By trying to play it safe, Biden & co. ensured that the conflict would become more drawn out and expand, making things more dangerous for everyone. The Democratic Party and European allies could have used much more war rhetoric, painting Russia as enemy number one, to drum up more popular support at home, but again hesitated. The Biden admin also should have worked with the Ukrainians and other European allies on a realistic, sustainable peace deal rather than talking loosely about how Ukraine needed to “accept” that they would lose terrain while also saying Ukraine’s very reasonable security guarantee requests were “unrealistic”. But that’s very different. To suggest that Biden could have just said “ok stop, now peace” and created something lasting seems utterly out of touch with at least all of Russian politics ever since Putin came to power.