I just created hourback.info’s own open, public discussion forum for sharing ideas, content, and whatever else you want to share! :-)

Greetings! πŸ™‚

I finally stood up a place where I and others can feel free to share things and discuss without worrying about censorship or stupid, arbitrary community guidelines.

So often I’ve posted things, mostly on social media sites, only to have them taken down because they contained bits of copyrighted content (such as things as minor as background music from a popular musical artist) or other trivialities. I wanted to have at least one place where, to the best of my ability to control, nothing would be taken down for such idiotic and anti-human reasons.

I chose Discourse because it is an extremely well-designed piece of software, very user-friendly, very efficient, and built with solid, open-source technologies.

The site is brand new so I’m still working on it. I haven’t touched the look and feel of it yet. I’m hoping to make it suitable for hosting images, video, and any other kinds of content people want to share on it. Think of it like a Reddit that won’t ever ban you (unless you do something actually stupid). πŸ™‚

More updates to follow soon, hopefully! Enjoy!

Ellen DeGeneres Explained Why She’s Friends With George W. Bush And People Are Really Angry

https://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/ellen-degeneres-defended-herself-hang-out-george-w-bush

Sorry to get all complicated and stuff but. . . .

Words matter. Terms matter. What we say and how we say it matters a whole lot, assuming of course that you want to convey information and you want other people to understand it. If that were not the case then why bother saying anything?

So in this case, it’s important to define what it means to be friends with someone and I think it also is worth defining what it means to be nice to someone. If what Ellen said is genuine then it would have to hold true that she would have to be friends with Hitler and be nice to Hitler. And I think that is ethically tenable depending on how you define friendship and being nice.

See what I mean?

Personally, I think at the end of the day we have to be able to connect to feelings of love for every single person on Earth in order to have a civil, just, and peaceful society. So I would be okay saying I love George W. Bush, but he’s also a fucking idiot and a war criminal and there’s no fucking way I would choose to spend time with him. If I were to find myself spending time with him I would strive to be civil, respectful, and treat him as a human being, as I would want to be treated. We should all do the same toward each other every day.

I think Ellen’s error is that the way she put it sounded too sickeningly Disney.

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