You’re right; the definition of “nihilism” is complex and ambiguous, and the term has been applied to mean different things at different times.

I’m using it here to describe the particular case where one perceives the conditions of life as fundamentally meaningless *therefore one might as well go all the way down the slippery slope*. It‘s a low-effort reductio ad absurdum, accelerated by a perception that there is no point in exerting energy in any particular direction.

@JimmyB The smugness comes from the presumption that they are entitled to belittle someone else’s effort to improve the situation.

From my experience, people who have decided that things are fucked—and proudly tell others about it—offer no help to improve anything, even when there is room for improvement. The best they can do is stay out of the way and stop discouraging those who are actually working to better the world.

I often say: “Things could always be worse; we could be standing in shit.” The corollary to that is that things could always be BETTER, in ways small and large. People who extinguish the flame in others that work to improve the situation are nihilistic assholes.

Ok - well we have very different experiences of nihilism. I've not seen that at all.

Anyway,

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@woo There’s picking one’s battles, and there’s discouraging others. Keeping your powder dry until you find a fight you can win is perfectly fine, and admirable even; telling others not to even bother is not.

You know the type: the reply guy who gives you a one-line quip about why you shouldn’t do anything because we’re all fucked in the end, or why your plan won’t be enough to solve the systemic problem so why bother, “there’s always another one ready to take their place” and blah blah blah any number of a hundred wisecracks that discourage others who try to make things better.

speaking of data, I know everyone knows period trackers can’t be trusted but I’m a 51 year-old woman who has no chance of getting pregnant and it was important to me to know when ovulation or bleeding would be happening . . . I stopped logging my period in September, a couple weeks ago the Apple iPhone health app did a push notification (I have them turned off I don’t need notifications from that app) to ask me if I forgot to log it and I just closed it out without clicking anything else.

A couple days later I got this email in my email box. I looked at the date and it would have come at 117 days since the first day of my last period, so right at the last day I could legally terminate in some states.

#privacyIsDead

wait what? You bought a phone and it came pre-installed with Facebook and you cannot delete it?

Can you please tell us what phone this was because I would be furious if I bought a phone with a Facebook app on it I couldn’t delete.

It was not removable from the last Android phone I had (Samsung something)

You could “disable” it but not “delete” it like other apps

I assumed it was due to a payout by Samsung.

>> whether the app is deletable or not depends on various pre-install deals Facebook has made with phone manufacturers, operating systems and mobile operators

time.com/5497200/samsung-faceb…

Some Samsung Users Are Finding They Can’t Delete Facebook From Their Phones

Samsung users are becoming alarmed about the fact that they are not allowed to delete the Facebook app from their smartphones.

^{Sarah Frier / Bloomberg (Time)}

I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S6, it had the same setup. The Facebook app was non-removable.

A weird decision for a premium phone, which is part of the reason why I don't buy Samsung phones anymore.