Hobo @ Hobo @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I get where you’re coming from and why you typed up 4 paragraphs condemning his horrible actions before we are allowed to acknowledge that he did one or two okay things.

I think it's important to me personally for this specific figure. I grew up a leftist atheist in the deep south. When I learned about TJ, he was a very appealing figure to me. He was largely anti-establishment, anti-institutional, and at least mildly anti-religion. He was also, on the surface level, pro-science and pro-scientific method. He went as far as to re-write the Bible with all the miracles removed.

I say all this because when I was a teenager I pointed to him a lot as a bastion of progressiveness in America's founding, and often used him to argue that the US was not founded as a Christian state because he clearly wasn't Christian. The stuff I learned about him in textbooks and in school conveniently left out the much darker shit he did. It wasn't until I started reading his own writings and finding non-history textbook recounts of his life that I saw the complete picture. He was sort of my first experience with a hero that falls short of expectations, and he fell extremely short.

It’s just frustrating that we still live in a such a racist society that you felt like you had to type that up before you could approach the nuance.

I don't quite follow. I don't think those were my motivations and I don't quite understand the logic. I thought I did approach the nuance in my comment, but there's way more that's left out about the man. He was incredibly complex for sure!

I wish we could talk plainly to each other without this underlying paranoid one of us might accidentally come across pro the thing we are obviously very anti.

I don't quite follow, but I personally don't assume anything about you. I do agree that lemmy, and the internet at large, has become a weird obstacle course. I honestly can't quite figure out the new purity test on the left that seem to be everywhere. I feel like you need to find your allies where ever you can (within reason). I do think paranoia of being infiltrated by right wing activist, and the long history of that happening, plays a big part in that paranoia. I agree, though, it's more than mildly frustrating.

[My quote that you quoted for context] "I for sure agree that it is nuanced, but it’s also rather reductive to just leave it at, “he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.” [

I specifically said “While there’s no shortage of slave related evils to blame him for this is also the man who ended the trans atlantic slave trade.”

... down through ...

I didn’t reduce anything, I specifically acknowledged his evils before giving him credit for ending the slave trade.

My apologies! I see how that comes off as directed at you specifically. Should have phrased that better for sure! I meant that more in the more esoteric, "when people at large do this." Poor wording on my part! Didn't mean to accuse specifically with that.

While that is exactly what ended up historically happening, especially due to the invention of the cotton gin, I would appreciate a source that this was Jefferson’s stated intentions.

I don't think he ever outwardly states that was intentions because that would be far less self aware than he was about slavery. Here's the source for his "breeding woman is worth more than a man". I'm not sure if I can find the orginal source for it without really digging, but it's widely accepted that he was in massive debt and perpetuating slavery was his only way out. He planned on ending the slave trade, but his actions and many of his writings seem to indicate that he planned on maintaining the system of slavery for his own gain.

I think there's a few things in the quote you linked that seem to support that my position though.

... by bettering (Jefferson used the term “ameliorating”) living conditions and moderating physical punishment.

Is an example of a good thing within context. Which is kind of the equivalent of turning down the orphan crushing machine to a slower pace. Not even turning it off, just making it slower. Like yeah sure you aren't as bad as those other guys but holy shit that's still really bad. Which doesn't really indicate to me that he was trying to stop it as much as make it more palatable.

Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.

That date was conveniently far into the future where he would be able to keep slaves to pay off his debt. That seems... dishonest at best. It's what several politicians do still. It just seems to indicate that he was attempting to keep slaves while also virtue signaling that he didn't like slavery. Which again seems to support my position.

Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racial beliefs... [to the end]

This seems to also point to him be hugely racist and believing that he could use black people like cattle to get out of debt cause they were "inferior." I feel like what you quoted mostly supports what I'm saying. The dude perpetuated slavery for his own personal gain while denouncing it publicly to appear more liberal. I do agree he did several good things, and I like a lot of his more progressive writings. It's just really hard to overlook some the absolutely fucked up shit he was doing to other people. All in the name of greed and to pay off his debts.

Fair enough! I think it's a bit more complex hence the tangent that I didn't want to get into. The man had 600 slaves during his life and he is often credited as freeing his slaves. He freed two. Which is a fair bit short of the 600 he owned. He denounced the slave trade as a "human right violation" but continued to own slaves himself. So he knew it was wrong and did it anyway.

He built Monitcello to basically run on slavery. He had dumb waiters and hidden compartments in the walls so his slaves could serve him and not be seen. He didn't want his foreign visitors to know about them when they visited, because most other nations had denounced slavery as barbaric, hence the hiding them in the walls and behind pully systems. Which seems extra diabolical to make sure no foreign dignitaries brought back stories about how awful slavery was to their home country. Hiding his slaves like that really points to the fact that he knew it was wrong but did it anyway.

Yes he did end the US's participation in the slave trade. His reaction to which was to have his slaves breed more, "...woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm." Is a quote from his Letters on the state of Virginia (I believe that is the corrct source although it could be from one of his almanacs and I'm misremembering). He spent a lot effort trying to reduce infant mortality (which is a good thing) so that slavery could be more profitable (which is a fucked up psychotic thing). So he was outwardly trying to end the slave trade because he had a plan to perpetuate slavery by breeding. I don't know if needs to be said again, but that seems to point to the fact that he knew it was wrong but figured out a way to do it anway.

He often had "relationships" (read raped) with his slaves, which seems to be more like prolific raping of black women than a "relationship" when held up to the light. He raped so many black women that there's a absolute ton of his ancestry in the black American population still today. During his lifetime, and even for a while after, he hid the fact that he was doing this. In fact, it's theorized that some of the children that worked on Montecello were in fact his own mixed race children. The fact that he hid his prolific raping and own children seems to point to the fact that he knew it was wrong and did it, to an unconscionable level, anyway.

I for sure agree that it is nuanced, but it's also rather reductive to just leave it at, "he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves." He was outwardly antislavery, because he was trying to portray himself as progressive at the time while running an extremely regressive slave farm. His life and his views are just brimming with these sorts of contradicting actions too. So, you are absolutely correct in that it's reductive on both sides of the discussion! I for sure think he was a monster and kind of think of him as a modern day "limousine liberal." He ran around saying how slavery was bad while owning and perpetuating slavery. Much like limousine liberals run around saying the rich are destroying the country while riding around in their limo.

I feel like that's incredibly reductive and it just kind of bothers me every time I see it. The Constitution was almost not ratified because there was a contingent of founders that opposed slavery. What's important about that is that it completely destroys the moral relativism argument for the rest of them. Founders that supported slavery knew it was wrong and did it anyway cause they were greedy.

Well, except for Jefferson. His reasons are more rooted in being an incredibly lazy psychopathic rapist who had created a slavery powered life of luxury for himself. But that's going off on a completely different tangent.

Reddit is fun. It was a reddit app that was killed when reddit started charging crack prices for api requests.

One of the best programmers I've ever met told me, "All you need is Knuth everything else is just syntax." And I don't know if that's 100% true, but can say I learned more from reading The Art of Computer Programming than I have in basically any other textbook/textbook series I've read on the subject.

Just ruined 35 years of me avoiding spoilers. Thanks a lot.

Just rename Estonia to EstoniAI and people will apparently send you $1.5 billion no questions asked.

The no capitalization makes it hard for me. I think just re-writing with capitalization makes it a lot easier to read:

Note to UI designers. When reading a long piece of text. I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it!. I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.

Here's how I would mildly edit the punctuation in order to make it easier to read:

Note to UI designers; when reading a long piece of text, I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it! I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text, I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.

Here's how I would have conveyed the thought in a JIRA comment:

UI designers could you please, for the love of all mankind, stop fucking putting fucking shitty ass popups in the god damn non-mobile website! There is no one, and I mean no-fucking-body, that is still using a desktop computer in 2025 that does not know about ctrl-c and ctrl-v. There is not sane reason for you to ever assume a user wants to visit some shitty twitter/reddit/digg/blog when they select text on a desktop computer. If I see a single one of you motherfuckers putting fucking text inside an action I swear to god I will come down there and beat you to death with your own fucking keyboard.

People wouldn't take two pictures in the same day. That would be crazy.

You can literally see the smear lines in the picture (the chin especially). On top of that they're clearly taking a joke picture and she's hiding her laughter. If this dude has these face tattoos and teeth THAT nice he's like a complete anomaly. Everything in this picture says those are marker, but you can believe whatever you want!

You all do realize those are just drawn on with a marker right? If those were real, and fresh enough to have the ink smear, they would be way more red and probably raised a bit.

Wait you don't understand why someone would push their bed in the corner? Or you don't understand why it's a problem for two people sleeping in the same bed if the bed is pushed in the corner?

• Bed is pushed in the corner

Opens notepad.exe

This... this one?

It's really not even advice. It's just self aggrandizement and dumbass people looking for a circle jerk to join. It doesn't address the issue that OP has in the slightest practical way, and is kind of callus to their actual problem.

Holy fuck you all are a bunch of callous assholes. Telling someone to "join a union" or "ask your union" about it are fucking mental. Do you really think OP is working a union gig or are you really that stupid to think you just go out to the union store and ask for one union card? How is this helpful to anyone who is in a non-union job working for a non-union company. I'll bet you all are the same people that tell depressed people to "just be happy." It's just useless, if not ourtright malicious, advice to give someone.