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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 9th, 2024

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  • Not just the mods but the admins are using the deceptive database manipulation practices. i.e. this is not a fixable problem by merely appealing one layer up from a mod of a community - the only layer above admins is defederation from the Fediverse overall, which is what OP is advocating.

    It is a pain yes, but also it only takes 2 clicks to migrate your settings from one instance to another - go to Settings and under “Import/Export Settings” click the big Export button, then in the new click Import. With a similar iconic avatar and name, people likely won’t even notice the difference. Your old comments/posts/points won’t transfer though. Bonus: you can keep both, so while e.g. one instance is upgrading you still have another with which to read/reply/etc.

    People on lemmy.ml are going to notice a noticeably reduced functionality over the next several months regardless, as many, Many, MANY users start blocking the instance on a personal/user level even if not an instance-wide block. Imagine every single comment you write receives 10x fewer replies back, or votes, just you shouting into the void, and the only people responding back… are the fascists, and those more neutral to fascism.

    So OP is bringing up the problem, which is the first step towards healing. :-)





  • Why is “Threats” in double-quotes? The fact that they are “threats” is not in question - these are not “alleged threats”?

    I see that it comes from the article, but that only pushes back my question as to why the article does that. It also puts “hard right” and “all-out” (and “holy war” and “race war” and “dangerous” and “evil” and “demonic” etc.) in quotes too, which should not be, but those at least are all more discretionary, whereas putting “threats” in quotes like that calls into question their validity.




  • There are so many things pointing towards ditching QWERTY - WFH jobs, mobile devices, portable keyboards, even virtual projected keyboards rather than physical ones.

    On the other hand, laptops are a bottleneck - even if nobody else uses your personal one but you, they still have to make one with a nonstandard layout (will e.g. Apple ever do that?) - and just bc newer, younger people learning how to use computers for the first time could choose a different layout, doesn’t mean that many will (I mean at the mainstream level).




  • Ironically, blue shirt here is showing that off in reverse: refusing to do due diligence, simply ghosting red shirt with no explanation whatsoever, against the explicit advice of green shirt. Anyone who ghosts may even be doing other people a favor to warn them to stay away from their own toxicity.

    Irl caveats may apply ofc - e.g. definitely get far away from an abusive relationship and if need be enter witness protection type of scenarios, but here we are talking more casual circumstances.




  • I am not the person you replied to but I wanted to echo and extend their statement: you may need to come to terms with the fact that you might not have the capability to help your friend, and it’s even possible that nobody does, unless and until they become receptive to that kind of aid.

    I am not saying to do nothing, but do be aware of that, e.g. if you give them money and they gamble it away, will you just keep giving them money until neither of you has any at all? And then repeat for every single one of your friends as well?

    Decide what you can do and what you cannot. In any case you may not be able to “save” him - that is something that as an adult he needs to do for himself, and may resent you for even trying?





  • I mean, that’s how they want to be, so whatever, they can enjoy it.

    But that’s not how *I* want to be - and I resented having it thrust upon me without consent, in the form of being able to make an informed choice. They do not clearly state how they are, yet they are that way, hence the disconnect.

    Like any authoritarian regime, they have drunk their own cool-aid and they seem to both not acknowledge it whilst simultaneously also flaunting it proudly - i.e. how they are looks to be by design, not ignorance or whatever.

    And ofc the obligatory caveat that not all people on those servers are that way - e.g. you were there, until you weren’t anymore:-P. But it does form a trend. And I for one would rather that people be able to make an informed choice. Like someone go there if they want, but don’t you come here and tell me how to be.

    Yes an echo chamber provides value to them in terms of an emotional reinforcement, though it’s dangerous b/c what gets reinforced becomes thereby divorced from logic. i.e., “might makes right”, which works so long as you ignore the alternative that “the pen (Reason) is mightier than the sword (Might)” - i.e. the value is purely local amongst themselves, who choose to refuse to see outside.

    Even so, the code for the Fediverse came from the guy who started lemmygrad.ml iirc, and it was freely offered to the world not in spite of but b/c of that belief in communistic philosophical principles. In contrast, Reddit and most other alternatives started here in the USA - like squabbles to name one (looks to now be renamed to squabblr or something?) - did not offer their sourcecode freely, and instead tried to monetize their user base, and this too not in spite of but b/c of their own beliefs in capitalistic principles.

    As long as they are honest about it though, I’m fine with them. The problem is that they are not, nor are they respectful to others… so I ban them and move on with my life. I am not kidding: if I could not have banned them, I would have left the Fediverse entirely - they are that annoying. So being able to easily improve my Fediverse experience by 95% with 1-2 instance blocks (lemmygrad.ml is often blocked by default, and many others though seemingly fewer likewise also block hexbear.net) is wonderful!:-)



  • To name one example, he deregulated the inspection of train safety, despite internal whistleblowers (who were ofc subsequently fired) claiming that the industry was not regulating itself in anything remotely resembling a “safe” manner. Keep in mind, this was before all those famous train derailments happened. Multiple people especially train engineers predicted they would happen, they went to a large amount of trouble - and were fired as a result - of warning that they would happen, but Trump ignored all of that and deregulated the industry to help make it more profitable… and then the derailments happened, whereupon we all paid the price. Socialization of costs, privatization of profits, it is the exact opposite of both socialism and of capitalism both - it was sheer foolishness, period.

    And ofc there was his handling of the pandemic - note the initial cause of the pandemic was not his fault, but his poor handling of it is on him. First, at minimum, if nothing else “the buck stops here”. But above & beyond the latter, as the audio recording with Bob Woodsworth revealed, Trump knew that the virus was airborne - he told his friend that much - and yet even knowing that, afterwards he lied and told people that it explicitly was not airborne (again, to aid “the economy”, at the expense of the workers who died as a result). When others, e.g. Bill Clinton, have lied previously, conservatives got angry and tried to impeach them - and rightfully so - so why ignore it when it happens on the other side? Also this lie, measured in the form of “excess deaths”, contributed to the deaths of more Americans than all of our wars combined. That seems like “harm” to me.

    Then too there is how he inserted himself between a Congressional decision and the intended recipient of funding, with his attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian government to “just do me a favor though”. By some definitions of the word that might even have constituted “treason” - I am no lawyer though, so be skeptical ofc, especially extreme claims require more extreme evidence, which the first impeachment trial was meant to bring forth except it was halted by Republicans in Congress.

    The list really can go on and on… whatever you think of conservative vs. liberal philosophies, or of Republican vs. Democrat politics, he really was quite a dangerous President. Yes, most of us are still alive after his Presidency, but again… many of us are not now, with a good number of those deaths directly traceable to his decisions. Biden may not be “good”, but extremely few Presidents in all of American history come close to how dangerous Trump was, by many objective metrics. History will reveal that, but right now it can be difficult to distinguish b/t the lying liberal media and the lying conservative media sources both lie, for the sake of their own profits. In all of that muddiness of facts, it can be super difficult to find out what is really going on. But the fate of people in and maybe the fate of our actual nation is on the line, so it is worth the effort for those of us who would consider ourselves “leaders” aka citizens, whose votes will determine the course ahead for us all.