• 5 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • The lack of experience is worthy of criticism; but the “Ex-Gardener and Grocery Store Assistant” is presented as not worthy of respect. Which is bullshit.

    It has the same air as some trumpanzee dipshit trying to insult AOC by calling her a ‘bartender’, as though having been a bartender makes her unqualified for her current position, which is similarly bullshit.

    Gardeners, store assistants, and bartenders all contribute to our society and shouldn’t be looked down on for their role; nor should that role be held against them when they decide to move on to something else.

    …I guess my point is that gardening and entry-level-grocery are completely fine and expected experience for a 22 year old; but that no 22 year old could have the experience to do well as a leader in terror prevention. So, there’s a distinction between criticizing the absence of experience (justified), vs criticizing someone for having actual experience in an unrelated field (bullshit).








  • The earth will be fine. It’s been through way worse than us.

    People say this a lot, but what are we calling ‘fine’?

    Supporting life is what makes Earth special; if that’s snuffed out and Earth becomes just another dead rock floating through space, I’d argue it isn’t fine at all, in the same sense that you or I wouldn’t be fine if we suddenly died, even though our physical corpse would remain for much longer.

    And we’re WAY far away from life being completely extinguished, but even in its current state with life relatively abundant, Earth is running a high fever, so I’d say it’s already crossed the ‘not fine’ line.

    We’ve discovered hundreds of billions of planets, and so far we’re only aware of life existing on a single one of them: life is an incredibly rare, incredibly fragile, statistically insignificant fluke in our universe. It may literally be the single best example of “it’s the exception, not the rule”.

    So, why are people always so certain that it’ll persist? Life in general will certainly persist well beyond humans, but even the most resilient of extremophiles have their limits. The whole “Life, uh, finds a way” is great and all, until it doesn’t.

    The damage we’re doing to our planet directly is pretty small on a universal scale, but we’re playing with forces we don’t understand - some of those forces are feedback loops, so our involvement may be the first tiny domino that sets off a cascade of increasingly large dominos until our planet is molten all the way to its core.

    Or, we die off and feedback loops stop, the environment stabalizes, and Earth lives on happily ever after. Or anything in between: the point is we have no idea, and no basis to make and real predictions good or bad.

    Hopefully Earth will be fine.

    …sorry that was so wordy. I ramble when I’m tired.


  • I’m probably the least tech savvy person on Lemmy. If my dumb ass can figure it out, the subset of Reddit’s population who we’d actually want in Lemmy’s community should have no problem.

    That said, onboarding could have been better, and you’re right about the potential hangups: “fediverse” sounds like some kind of federal government function like a hub website that links to all the different .gov agencies, and “Lemmy” sounds like a cartoon character. Choosing an instance was more stressful than it probably should have been; ultimately went with .world by blindly following the advice of a YouTube video, but on day 1 I was pretty oblivious to the extremist shit that’s associated with instances like .ml and had no clue what ‘tankie’ even meant.

    That was two years ago though - no idea if that reflects what getting started is like today.

    And again, that’s all coming from a relatively tech-dumbass, so I’d imagine it’s probably smoother for people less prone to starting a fire when they turn their computer turns on.

     

    Edit: sorry to anyone who had to read that before the edit… when I’m tired I have an annoying tendency to think a word as I’m typing and then just skip to the next one. And I’m tired all the fucking time, so my posts have a lot of holes Q_Q



  • On the flip side, keeping your personal online footprint small is definitely more secure.

    Maybe we need a soft kill switch to disassociate content with an account after x amount of time. Like for me personally, I’ve put zero effort into mopping up old content, and as often as I post, I’m sure someone with the desire could put the pieces together and dox me.

    I’ve left it up anyway cuz I don’t want to do to Lemmy what you’re concerned about, but if I could nuke all my content older than a few months into an anonymous version, I’d be all for that. Leave the info up for anyone who might benefit from it, but scrub my username.

    That said, for community building sake, I’d hate to see posts go anonymous right out the gate like some 4chan shit; and posts should be associated with an account at least long enough for mods to have a reasonable amount of time to take action against an account that breaks the rules. But again, posts that are months old? The conversation there is over - my personal involvement is moot at that point, it’s just data now.


  • Judging by your post history, it looks like I agree with you on nearly everything, except apparently when it comes to splitting hairs over how much faith we have in the average American to actually get up and get their hands dirty to take our country back.

    …and honestly, I’m a little jealous of that optimism. The past decade has made me cynical as fuck. You’re right to call me out for defeatism. This all seems so fucking hopeless to me, but I really ought to keep that shit to myself - not like I’d be doing anyone a favor by ‘winning’ them over.


  • Well, I specified the majority of voters for a reason. When a third of population looks at the possibility of someone as evil as Trump taking power, and are so unmoved by that possibility that they can’t even be bothered to so much as color in a quarter-inch rectangle in opposition to it, that’s a fucking problem.

    Militias to protect protesters is one thing; militias to enforce the demands being made by the protesters is what we need.

    Look at current events here: we’ve got the 50501 protests happening nationwide and frequently - nothing changes. There were protests constantly during Trump’s first go at raping the Constitution - nothing changed. There were protests against Biden and Harris over their support for the genocide on Gaza - nothing changed. This has been a recurring theme for the almost 4 decades I’ve been stuck in this fucking dumpster fire.

    You know what did get shit done? Luigi put three bullets into a malicious healthcare CEO’s back, and we immediately saw some reform (nothing huge, but some). Teslas and Tesla dealerships started getting burned to the ground, and now (supposedly - hasn’t happened yet) Elon is backing down from his role as chief Nazi. The republicans carried out a literal insurrection; they now control the presidency, Congress, and the Judiciary. Any semblance of checks and balances, and they just arrest the judge.

    Point being: good or bad, violence is the only thing that works here. We’ve dipped our toes into it, but we haven’t gone full guillotine, which is what desperately needs to happen. Protests aren’t going to accomplish shit until the ruling class has a healthy fear for what happens when the protesters’ demands are ignored.


  • …the fuck are you talking about? The majority of US voters wanted this shitstorm. This isn’t like two people oppressing the country - the problem is that the majority of us land somewhere on the spectrum between stupid and evil, and that’s a MUCH larger problem than just Trump.

    Protests in the US have lost their teeth ever since the civil rights movement. Nowadays we don’t have the Black Panthers standing by with rifles to enforce the efficacy of broader non-violent side of the movement; and so long as they remain nonviolent, they’ll continue to be ignored. We protest all the time - it doesn’t accomplish shit here.

    The French do it all the time. Are you saying you’re not as capable as those you call “cheese eating surrender monkeys”? You keep making fun of them, but if you don’t act, they’ll be making fun of you.

    Again, what the actual fuck are you talking about? I haven’t made fun of the French a single time. 100% we’re not as capable as the French - the French are absolute badasses who respond to oppression by literally making heads roll. That’s why protests there work - the ruling class knows what happens next if they ignore the protests. And cheese is fucking delicious. I’d love if we emulated the French - we should start with the guillotines and end with fondue.