Chat

EDIT: as one of the admins explained below, they plan to migrate to something whitch uses ActivityPub, which means that my concerns are gone. I liked the interactions between servers who are equally wholesome compared to beehaw, which will be possible after the migration because of ActivityPub. So therefore, my sadness is canceled.)

The internet has already some queer forums similar to beehaw. For instance raddle.me and i am sure there are more that i don't know. Both have their unique flair and that's fine. I think lemmy (or more precisely, the ActivityPub powered fediverse that is at the core of lemmy) presents the unique oportunity to avoid isolated corners of the internet. I like raddle and beehaw, but i notice that i seldom read raddle and i think if beehaw goes to a similar isolated platform, i will probably read beehaw less.

I know that the mods tried to talk to the devs and their desinterest is equally sad.

However, i think you as a big instance still have one unused tool to fix lemmy's moderation issues within the "near short timeframe": talk to nlnet, the initial sponsor and explain to them your moderation issues. I think https://nlnet.nl/ would be interested given that lemmy is quite popular.

i think this could lead to two solutions:

• nlnet understands the issue and comes back to the lemmy devs and integrates the moderation tools into the next milestone so that the lemmy devs are more forced to develop those things.
• nlnet understands the issue and hires independent developers who fix the moderation tools which could either be integrated into lemmy (i think the devs wouldn't say no to this) - or it could lead to a fork.

busy week, taking a bunch of notes, not much time to talk

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17079522

To keep it short the reason why some people are ok with authoritarianism is because most structures that we deal with on a daily basis are authoritarian.

Here is evidence that shows a significant amount of people are ok with authoritarianism:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/sr_24-02-28_authoritarianism_1/

This should be concerning.

And the thing is that it makes sense once you look at what are the most common systems that people interact with the most.

A clear example would be the Boss-Worker relationship. The boss creates a set of objectives/tasks for the worker and the worker sees them out. Rarely does the worker get the chance to set the higher level direction of what they are supposed to be doing with their time leaving them obedient to the boss and their demands.

Another example would be some Parent-Child relationships. Some parents treat their children as people that should show absolute respect towards them just because they are the parents not because they have something that is of value to the child (experience).

Even in the places where we do make democratic decisions those are usually made in ways that are supposed to be supplemental to authoritative decision making. An example would be how we don’t vote on decisions but instead how we vote on others to make decisions for us.

Once you add up all the experiences that someone has throughout their whole life you will see that most of them come into direct contact with authoritarian systems which means it makes that kind of way of thinking familiar and therefore acceptable.

Unlike democracy which is an abstract concept and something we only really experience from time to time.

If we want people to actually stop thinking authoritarianism is ok then we as a society are gonna have to stop using these kinds of systems / ways of thinking in our daily lives.

First of all, I am speaking to all of you in a non-official capacity. Hence, why you are finding it in the chat community.

Secondly, I am very grateful and humbled to be in the position of a Beehaw administrator. The other four Beehaw administrators are a joy to work with, each with their own superpowers that they bring to the table.

Approximately 13 years ago, I kept waking up every morning feeling overwhelmed with thankfulness. That may sound strange and I never expected to have this sort of problem. Weeks and months of this feeling, with no relief in sight, I came to the end of my rope. I cried out to the universe: “What am I supposed to be doing?!?!?!”.

The answer came moments later in a telepathic whisper inside my mind: “Bless others as I bless you”.

To some, this may sound like I am schizophrenic. I assure you that I am not.

I started by simply being as generous and kind as possible with everyone around me.

And now, I am continuing with this trend by blending it with my professional background. Namely, information technology. More specifically, beta testing (e.g. Orkut, Gmail, Imzy, Tildes to name a few), web development, social media and the like.

I am honored to be in the position that I am. I am, incredibly, fortunate.

Beehaw’s ’Northern Star’ (e.g. guiding principle) is to be(e) nice.

I hope that all of you find it in your selves to carry this torch through the rest of your lives.

Couldn't find any venting communities on Lemmy, but if one exists please direct me to it. I'm fairly sick right now so I could have just missed one in my dazed state.

I've been dealing with a problem lately. Technically not just lately, but my whole life, but for the past few years it's something I didn't have to worry about.
I've always been a fairly popular person in whatever circles I take part in. People like me. They like my personality. They like my appearance. My friends value me extremely highly. All that's great. But when it comes to relationships, I always flop on my face.
Some people find me really attractive but don't want anything serious. Some people do want something serious, but get scared off the second they see what's hiding under the hood. Others just prefer me as a friend and would rather not complicate that with a relationship. But practically zero people both want anything serious and find themselves able to handle me and my mental issues.
There's only been one person ever who I ever had any semblance of a successful relationship with, and that was my first ex. We dated for two years, fell deeply in love, but still in the end broke up because of mental issues making being together too painful to deal with.

I'm just so afraid I'll never find anyone. I found the first person in the world who could handle my emotional outbursts completely unfazed recently, and she just wanted to be friends. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to have a friend as amazing as her. I'm just living in fear that I'll never be able to find somebody who can handle and understand me like she can, who does want to be anything more. I just want people to stop leaving because of my over-tuned emotions getting in the way.

And yeah, yeah, I know, "you don't need a relationship to be happy" and whatever. That's not the point. The point is I practically don't even have the option of a relationship in the first place because nobody can handle my deeper issues. I'm on numerous meds. I've tried therapy, and am still trying. I've done all I can on the road to self improvement and the only thing left I can do is find somebody who can handle what issues remain, and it doesn't look like that'll happen. It feels like I got a million romantic options and zero of them are good ones.

I know there's only one real solution, and that's to keep trying, and keep looking. I just needed to vent about it because the process of doing so is making me feel like shit and giving up would make me feel even worse, as if accepting that I'm unlovable.

are you doing anything to celebrate? do you typically observe the “solar holidays?”

i usually have a bonfire with friends to mark the passage of time, but it snuck up on me this year. maybe i can light a candle instead and let that be enough.

pretty wacky week last week, it snowed a ton here, may or may not have bedbugs although if we do for now they seem contained(?) so keeping an eye on that

I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a temporary position out of state via networking, but after signing a six-month lease, that job evaporated in only 10 weeks. Next job ran five months before layoffs were threatened, prompting me to find a position at a small weekly in the town I wanted to retire in but turned out to be nominally editorial but functionally advertising, leading to my first panic attack and resignation.

Owing to a lot of other shit happening, I wasn't in a position worth even putting on a resume for 14 months. On the other end of that was 19 months at the local paper where I'd landed, cut short because I decided a 50% raise to go into marketing was worth the ethical costs (and would return me to where I'd started in 2003). I only had to endure that for 10 months, when our three-year contract was terminated. I quickly found work at an audiobook publisher, but nine months into that, I walked out from a dressing down from my boss, on the production floor, for doing what I'd been told to do (and not in a malicious-compliance sort of way).

A couple months later, a SWAT team rousted my family from our hotel room Christmas Eve, and to my wife's surprise, before we got to the ground floor, I'd dialed the batphone at the paper. After being a source on A1 for the Christmas edition, I figured I had nothing to lose by emailing the editor. The old IT guy was gone, and they were looking for a part-time, temporary copyeditor ahead of the desk being shipped off to Texas, so I started the new year working across from the city ed from back in the day.

I did not follow my job at first, as it was a pay cut in a far more expensive city, but after nine months of fruitless searching, I got back in touch and took the job here, which I had three roles at over nearly five years.

So I'm seriously considering removing several of the intervening positions and stretching both stints to paper over both the gaps and the instability itself, as there's no one to call to verify when I worked there. Being midcareer, it's hard enough to get past software gatekeepers in the first place, but seven mostly nonconsecutive positions in as many years can't be helping my score.

The two main wrinkles I can foresee are a wholesale refactor of my LinkedIn could be a red flag, and the most basic of background reports would place me in two other states before remote journalism work was a thing.

I don't like the idea of lying on my resume, but what I'm doing now isn't working.

Are there other risks I'm not considering? I'd love some stability going forward, but I'm not going to expect any job to last long enough that this could stymie a promotion.

I’ve been the GM for my friend group and for one year I’ve been the architect giving voice to many places, many characters, a whole world for us to explore. At times my goal was only to instill fears into my players, identify what they were most afraid of loosing and made the threat of it happening looming over their head.

I rarely every killed my characters, I just feel shitty doing so; and I found more creative ways of creating consequences for failures. I didn’t just want death to be a problem, I wanted real consequences: being forcefully put under the control of the whomever they were fighting, becoming crippled, or loosing something dear to them.

By doing so, when they succeed at accomplishing the goal they set for themselves, it felt amazing and epic! Finally killing this boss!

It was a more-than-amazing experience and it has left me with unforgettable memories which where at the same time funny&epic.

We had to stop because they all started their superior studies after high school and I was one year younger than them. We’re still in contact but we’re all far away from one another and we’re sooo busy.

I’m going to try to find a group to play with, I hope I will because solo TTRPG is cool but I miss the social emulation.

I still prep games, but for nothing because I can’t actually see what I made in action; me being forced to improvise, etc…

I miss doing that lol. So yeah, just wanted to tell this little story

Good night ;)

I was watching a video by Georgia Dow in which she talked about a study showing how fear drives people to be more conservative. What that reminded me of was the rationalization I keep stumbling upon almost every day lately: "the alternative is worse".

We are mostly not revolutionaries willing to die for a cause. We just want to live our quiet lives, so we pay the thugs that offer us protection from themselves. The alternative is worse.

I can't criticise people for trying to survive, but I think it's important to be honest with ourselves. It's all bad and the good option is really hard and a scary risk with too many sacrifices.

And let me get personal to drive the point home. Anxiety and depression are just my reality. I'm very isolated and avoid interactions as much as I can. I'm in a bad place and would totally tell you with great conviction that out there somewhere is worse. I also believe it could be amazing, but the chances of me suffering, actually, the certainty, makes me think it's not worth it even trying.

Anyway. Be kind kind to yourselves, be kind to all the others, but be honest.

this is a sort of novel follow up to a question i asked previously, which was your opinion on right of nature laws, which recognize natural entities as having "personhood" or legal rights comparable to humans. Berry was a theologian who wrote extensively on the rights of nature and ecology generally. one of his lasting works are his 10 principles as enumerated in The Origin, Differentiation and Role of Rights, which are:

1. Rights originate where existence originates. That which determines existence determines rights.
2. Since it has no further context of existence in the phenomenal order, the universe is self-referent in its being and self-normative in its activities. It is also the primary referent in the being and activities of all derivative modes of being.
3. The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. As subjects, the component members of the universe are capable of having rights.
4. The natural world on the planet Earth gets its rights from the same source that humans get their rights, from the universe that brought them into being.
5. Every component of the Earth community has three rights. The right to be, the right to habitat, and the right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing process of the Earth community.
6. All rights are species specific and limited. Rivers have river rights. Birds have bird rights. Insects have insect rights. Humans have human rights. Difference of rights is qualitative not quantitative. The rights of an insect would be of no use to a tree or fish.
7. Human rights do not cancel out the rights of other modes of being to exist in their natural state. Human property rights are not absolute. Property rights are simply a special relationship between a particular human "owner" and a particular piece of "property" for the benefit of both.
8. Species exist in the form of individuals and groupings--flock, herds, schools of fish and so forth. Rights refer to individuals and groupings, not simply in a general way to species.
9. These rights as presented here establish the relationships that the various components of the Earth have toward each other. The planet earth is a single community bound together with interdependent relationships. Every component of the Earth community is immediately or mediately dependent on every other member of the Community for the nourishment and assistance it needs for its own survival. This mutual nourishment, which includes predator-prey relationship, is integral with the role that each component of the Earth has within the comprehensive community of existence.
10. In a special manner humans have not only a need for but a right of access to the natural world, not only to supply their physical needs but also to provide the wonder needed by human intelligence, the beauty needed by human imagination, and the intimacy needed by the human emotions.

I'm recovering after quite a bad period of my life. Everything else seems surprisingly ok so far. Absolutely nothing out of ordinary happened yet

EDIT: nvm the good bad repeat cycle is still there so it's all still the same

busy all around between the site stuff, other stuff, and interpersonal happenings

Share your interests, whether niche or common. I've figured news tends to skew negative, and I'd like to see the hive talk about what they love rather than what they hate.

POSITIVITY PASSION SPACE GO GO GO

I've been on the Fediverse for like 2 weeks and the system itself was pretty good and even enjoyable. But I can't stand what's being posted recently. It looks like the humanity is just dead. The negative influence is real on here (and I think it's around the same on other social medias) plus I have some personality development issues now that do cause vulnerabilities to that. I don't want to die with this society so I have to go. I will most likely miss some of the places from here and I will miss my username but hey surviving and being able to help people in the future is much more important. Goodbye Lemmy. It was a nice experience

EDIT: everyone who made me stay here is to be fought. This place has some good things to it but still there's too much for me to handle. And there is bad stuff too which is not that easy to notice but it does intoxicate me over time. FOSS is good but FOSS community sucks.

(If this isn't the right place to post this, please let me know.)

This is going to be a very long post (an essay maybe), because that's what it is. Some parts may go all over the place, but that's because my mind will go bankrupt everytime I remember it. Even though years have passed since it ended and everybody has moved on, I am still occasionally afraid of potentional retaliation. I don't have a lot of proof in the form of screenshots because it just hurts looking back, but I will try to explain with the best of my ability.

There were some details to the story that I left out because I didn't think they were relevant. And before I get any comments questioning my involvement with a subreddit like this: I was one of the kids that fell down the "anti-SJW rabbithole, and communities like these prey on vulnerable young people, regardless of gender and sexuality. I was so attached to this community that I refused to leave despite it hurting me.

For context, I am currently 20 years old, and all of this happened when I was 13-14.

PS: Please do not try to go and contact my harassers. Most are suspended, some deleted their accounts and others are inactive. However, very few of them are still active on Reddit to this day. Regardless of where they are or what happened to them, still do not go out and contact them. Plus, the subreddit where the harassment first took place is banned now.

Alright, here's the story:

It was late July 2017. I discovered a subreddit we will call "X" via an app called iFunny, dedicated to supposedly real stories about intellectually and developmentally disabled people doing mundane things with the intent to mock them, with the majority of the subjects being children, in a "4chan greentext" format. I discovered it via an app called iFunny, so I decided to create a Reddit account there to post my own "t*rd stories". They got upvotes and not-so-bad comments, inspiring me to create more. However, little did I know at the time that joining the subreddit would be the biggest mistake of my life.

In late August of that year, a user within the subreddit made a call-out post with my username in the title, indirectly asking me to "stop posting obviously-fake tard stories", calling me "the real t*rd". It was THE post that caused all the the troubles I went through on the big R. I had civil arguments with other users that only turned aggressive since they mostly responded back with insults. It got to the point that I, at one point, fell into depression. The few that supported me told me not to mention anything about the subreddit to avoid being hunted down by the mob, but I was too stubborn because I wanted to take back all the power they had over me via those arguments. Mind you, I was 13-14-years-old at the time this whole shit happened.

When I made a return to the subreddit in the hopes that I could be better and fit into their rigid standards, I was hounded down with insults, told to "fuck off", and even got stalked in almost every other subreddit I was in. Angry, I created a counter-sub in the hopes of reforming X. A day after I created the sub, one of my harassers created a secret burner account pretending to be on my side, messaged me via ModMail that they wanted to join. Not long after I let them in, they ended up causing trouble on X by picking fights with the users. For some reason, people thought that it was me in an alt account, and even had one accusing the account of being me using a throwaway account to pretend that people liked me, and that I was chasing my haters across Reddit by telling them off". The targeted switched them to say that "they were not me".

When this whole drama was dying down, so did the activity of the reform sub, but oh holy moly, it didn't really end there. One of my major harassers and stalker, who became a mod after one of the old moderators have him the roles, made a post on a "help" sub for Reddit mods trying to imply that I was making multiple accounts to evade bans, when I have never did sort of thing and that acc he was implying wasn't even mine and never was. I tried contacting the sub's mods about taking down the post, but they denied my request because the post didn't have any usernames on it. I got angry with the harasser and demanded he apologised, which led to me being temp banned from the sub for "trying to cause drama again".

At that time, I began to question the user I believed to be on my side. I sent a PM to them about their username and the true purpose of the account, but they never responded back. With more questions in my mind, I reached out to the "help" sub, telling other users that I suspected that somebody was impersonating me or it it was all just a coincidence, as for some more context, their username vaguely resembled mine, though they were named after a character from a game I have no interest in.

My harasser then barged in and silenced me by saying that none of the other moderators thought that the user was me and that I should have no concerns regarding that account. Many hours after I made that post, the "imposter" account was mysteriously deleted. Shockingly, it still didn't end here!

My other harasser with a history of indirectly harassing others by namedropping them with derogatory remarks under the guise of "memes", had done it multiple times, even long after the three other dramas were over. They did it in the comments within tardtales, and even on other "edgy" subreddits. Informing another old moderator about it, hell broke loose again, but the other harasser who had deep ties with him tried to downplay the situation, and even compared me to Hitler by saying that "even though he might've said sorry that doesn't change what happened" when I tried apologising multiple times for my behaviour because of my vulnerability and the fact that I WAS JUST A CHILD AT THE TIME THIS WHOLE THING WAS GOING ON. I didn't question it because if I did then he would silence me even more.

Even after this whole situation, the other harasser would still get away with this behaviour and even get promoted as mod by the other major harasser.

All this time leading to mid-2018, I contacted the mods of other subreddits he was in getting them to delete comments and ban him for namedropping me. And mind you, the admins did jackshit about the harassment campaign I was caught in. I contacted them multiple times via the normal Reddit PM system and email, and always got the same bullshit AI bot response that goes "thanks for reporting. my important advice is to ignore the users and not reply to them further", yet, even if I didn't engage with them, they still insultet me. The block button wasn't better either because it only let you so that once you blocked the person bothering you, YOU WOULDN'T SEE THEM INTERACTING WITH YOU rather than the system in all other socmeds where the blocked cannot communicate with you AT ALL.

Furious from being ignored by the admins, I re-opened the reform subreddit, made a call-out video specifically for one of my harassers, and got the "mod" to see it. A few days later, he mocked me and banned me from X, and THEN made a copy subreddit with a description that said "fuck off (my username)", trying to get me to keep it. Obviously, I didn't want to keep it, and successfully closed it own after several failed attempts. At one point, I brought the two harassers including X up on a sub where you could report a misbehaving mod, where each of us told our own versions of the story.

Guess who the sub's mods sided with?

Following up, I was threatened to get reported to the admins and then suspended, and afraid, I had no choice but to comply. And then, a few months later, something miraculous happened...

The harasser who stalked me, who was a mod for X, got his mod privileges revoked, and banned from the subreddit after one of the old moderators (the kindest I've ever seen tbh) got multiple messages from other users saying that he mistreated them, and when doing an investigation through his acc, the old mod realised that everything he was told turned out to be true. He got banned, and never touched the subreddit again.

Due to all of the stress and trauma surrounding my harassment, I decided, after being inactive for months after getting advice from someone on Discord, deleted my account (exactly two years after it was created), vowing to never go back there again.

I guess I'm done with the story. Remember, it is supposed to tell you about how Reddit's administration team doesn't take reports about rule violations seriously, mostly harassment/cyberbullying-related, and the fact that they care more about the site's reputation than the safety of their own users. Looking back at it 6 years from now, I'm glad that my sister tried to keep me away from the site.

I voted for Biden in 2020. This was despite the fact that he is one of the main architects of modern American slavery through his crime bill which made the US the nation with the highest proportion of its own citizens imprisoned by far, who are quite literally slaves according to our constitution. This was despite him participating in the lies which caused us to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in our pursuit of blowing up Halliburton’s stock value and taking control of large parts of the oil trade. This was despite his support of the neoliberal consensus which has lead to the deterioration of the economic, social, and physical health of the average American while the wealthiest’s share of the economy continues to grow meaninglessly. In fact, it was relatively easy for me to vote for Biden because the person he was running against was Trump who demonstrated worse tendencies on all of the above (while actually softening some prison laws, still fostered the increased social acceptability of acting according to blatant racism so I can’t even give him credit here) and more. According to my utilitarian principles, the evil choice I made was morally superior to the evil choice I did not make. Recent events have me re-considering this motivation.

To be clear, my opinion of Trump has not changed. Under Trump, I am sure I will be more likely to lose my loved ones or even my own life, although I am personally less at risk than his main targets. I am also sure that his influence would at least maintain if not increase the atrocities committed by the Likud-lead Isreali government with whom he has a strong relationship. Christian Nationalism is extraordinarily dangerous and if some of their desires are pushed through there’s really no telling the extent of future horrors we may have to deal with. If Project 2025 has a certain degree of success we may consider any pretense of democracy to be nullified. If I were only considering the immediate consequences of my decision, I would still support Genocide Joe.

I phrased that last sentence like that intentionally and it is the inspiration for this essay. The lesser of two evils in this case is now facilitating a genocide and I think that’s significant. In 2020 I didn’t think I had a red line which would cause me to allow a greater evil, and within the last few months I’m coming to find that I do have a red line I have to consider in and of itself and that line is genocide.

This is what I find particularly frustrating when I try to engage this topic in good faith, even among Biden supporters who are lucid about recognizing what is clearly happening before their eyes with their implicit support. Yes, they tell me, there is a lot they don’t like about Biden but he is the better choice. There is some equivalence implied here. Biden is guilty of a lot of things like union busting, failure to support a public option despite promises, the continuation of many unfair border policies, and oh yeah genocide too. I really want to emphasize that we are talking about the categorization and systematic elimination of a group of people from their homes which could not be happening as it is now happening without the economic and political support of the Biden administration. This is now among the issues we are telling Democrats we are ok with or not ok with via the use of the only political currency left to us being our votes.

“Vote Blue No Matter Who” is a phrase that made me sick the first time I heard it and I have only grown to detest it more, especially since I acted according to it it through my actions in 2020. Recently I realized that this is less of a call to action and more of a threat. More explicitly, this phrase can be understood as “Vote for our candidate or the Republicans will fuck you up.” We better pay up or they can’t be responsible for what happens to us. Like other organizations who make threats like this, by paying up we are supporting them in what they do even if it’s under duress. As long as their heavy, the Republican party, is out there fucking people up the Democrats have license do anything as long as it’s not as bad. The DNC made a hard right-wing shift with Clinton and have been moving right since then, just not as far as the Republicans have. This is where damage control has gotten us. Democrats have pushed through so many boundaries and now we’re at genocide. Now the promise is, “You better support our genocide, or the Republicans will make it worse and fuck you up too.”

What is going to happen if we tell the Democrats that even though they are facilitating a genocide, we’re still going to pay up? What is the message the DNC will read from that? What precedent is going to be set? Are we going to be safer now that genocide will be seen as something we can compromise on? Do we really believe that Trump is the worst threat they can make, or that the lesser of two evils couldn’t eventually be worse than Trump? Do we really think by making this compromise here, on top of all the compromises we’ve made over the last few decades, that after this time everything will suddenly change and we can start talking about making average peoples’ lives better for once?

I can’t responsibly ask these questions without recognizing that the threat is very real. I am not an accelerationist and I do not desire the further deterioration of our society in hopes of a positive outcome through violent revolution. I do not want to have to risk imprisonment and death to resist government persecution. I recognize that a breakdown of democracy and subsequent shift to political violence would only advantage those most equipped for and skilled in the use of violence, whose society of nails would be governed by hammers.

It seems to me that failing to support the Democrats this cycle puts us at greater immediate risk of the above, and that is shocking enough to bring most reasonable people under control. The thing is though, I think that by leaving genocide on the table for anyone across the Overton window of elected officials to consider as a socially acceptable tool is a far greater risk in the long term.

I think that by making genocide just another issue of managing how much we can tolerate among the two sides, making it something that is tolerable under some circumstances, or especially encouraging the thinking that the charge of genocide is conditional on the political expediency of it victims, we are ultimately normalizing the general idea that genocide is an acceptable tool for elected officials across our “political spectrum” of right wing and big tent(right wing, centrist, some left wing) to support or even employ in the worst case as long as they call it something else regardless of international law. If this is ok, what is the next boundary the Democrats will push? I want to stop digging the hole we’re in now, suffer the consequences, and deal with Democrats who at least understand they will not get elected if they facilitate genocide. Honestly I’d like one day to not have to make the least evil choice and have the opportunity to support something after the DNC primary, and it doesn’t seem like damage control is leading us in that direction at all but away from it.

In practical immediate terms, Trump is hated outside of his base and has demonstrated that his endorsement is poison to politicians who are not himself more often than not. He is dangerous, but inspires so much more opposition to himself and his ideas than any other candidate I can think of. I even think that Trump’s genocide is going to be received very differently than Biden’s genocide since Trump will be far less tactful and far more honest about his motivations. The worst case scenario is possible under Trump and I don’t think it’s ok to dismiss that, but it is by no means a guarantee that Trump is the one to lead average Americans into fascism. It is a fucking frightening risk allowing a greater evil through inaction, but I think it’s the actual least bad option this time.

I’m open to being challenged on or discuss anything I’ve said here in good faith. I’m also open to rage-induced teardowns of the ideas I’ve proposed here as long as those teardowns are against my ideas and not against me as a person or others who are sympathetic to these ideas. I understand that this is an extremely charged topic and would like to encourage honest conversation as long as it doesn’t bleed into abuse which won't help anyone.

Edit: Whew, that was some important discussion. I hope it was clear that my intention was to clarify my thinking and explore different perspectives on my argument rather than me judging others for coming to different conclusions or trying to convince everyone I am sure I am absolutely correct. Importantly, I realized this entire argument is secondary. What is important now is direct action. Depending on the degree of success we have with disrupting this sick order, this whole conversation could become moot and that is my strongest desire. See y'all on the street.

Since the housing market looks like a crowd of people just signing mortgages as fast as possible just to then turn around and charge that mortgage plus a little bit.

I shouldn't pay someone's mortgage like seriously this is just adding an unnecessary problem to the real problem of "living somewhere"

our plumbing is finally fixed, so that's nice

First the crazy: Alabama has been calling embryos and fetuses 'people' for a long time. The latest ruling says that even frozen embryos are 'people'. This ruling says:

“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982)”.

source: archive: https://archive.is/fBJnL | https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/created-by-him-to-reflect-his-likeness-alabama-judge-quotes-bible-in-embryo-lawsuit-ruling

USA Today points to Gorsuch as opening the gates to highly religious rulings:

The First Amendment's Establishment Clause typically limits the role religion can play in government, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 changed the longstanding process by which it reviewed conflicts between government and religion. The decision to change that process was written by Justice Gorsuch, who said the court needed to rely more heavily on "reference to historical practices and understandings." Parker, the Alabama judge, specifically referenced Gorsuch in his concurrent opinion.

source: archive: https://archive.is/cPjgw | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/22/ivf-opinion-from-alabama-justice-was-overtly-religious/72689378007/

Slate points out that by the Court's own logic, both the 'parents' and the clinic should be charged with murder (as well as the person who actually dropped the embryos).

source: archive: https://archive.is/7l3vx | https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/abortion-bans-alabamas-anti-ivf-ruling-fail.html

WITH ALL THAT:

Perhaps it is a good thing that the whole nation now has a reason to take a long hard look at what it means to be a 'person'. I've seen studies saying anywhere from 20%-60% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion; most before the woman realizes she is pregnant. This paper says maybe as low as 10%, but only if you aren't paying attention: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741961/

The spontaneous miscarriage rate varies between from 10% to 20% where 10% refers to late recognition of pregnancy and 20% refers to research involving routinely testing for pregnancy before 4 weeks or 4 weeks after the last menstrual period

This chart says there's a 30% chance of miscarrying in the first week, with reduced risks after that: https://datayze.com/miscarriage-chart

Per Alabama, is God that invested in killing 'unborn' 'people'? Given how likely it is for an embryo to naturally abort, can we ever claim "beyond reasonable doubt" that a pregnancy was ever viable?

The above Slate piece suggests the unborn be treated as property. That might work for cells you want to keep, but note that there's a Supreme Court precedent that discarded cells are NOT a person's property and can be commercialized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#Consent_issues_and_privacy_concerns).

If we try to define when life begins, the Religious Right is sure to get deference. Look at how they've put "heartbeat bills" in place for embryos that don't HAVE HEARTS! Personally, I don't think setting a time constraint should be involved in defining life, but we're here to chat and discuss.

Lastly, CNN offered an opinion that we could choose to be more like South Korea which ruled (as summarized in Op-Ed):

If embryonic or fetal life has value, the state shouldn’t start with criminalization. Instead, the government may have a constitutional obligation to advance its interest in protecting that life in ways that don’t limit reproductive liberty, by protecting pregnant workers, delivering better prenatal care or safe housing and reducing the rate of maternal mortality.

source: archive: https://archive.is/GV0M0 | https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/opinions/alabama-supreme-court-fetal-embryo-personhood-abortion-ziegler/index.html

I'm at wit's end. I'm three months into a job search like the 30-month one I went through starting four years ago, and things proceed apace. I've gotten zero interviews despite 20 years of experience, and even finding things I think I could stand is a fucking tall ask.

I've always been of the mindset that if you have a good product, shockingly little marketing is required. And that investing in the product is going to have a far larger ROI than blowing money on trying to convince people your product is better than it is. Just fucking, you know, make it better.

Which is what I've always done. Whether it's a redesign or significantly better editing than the audience is used to, or infographics for stories that no one is going to comprehend from text analysis. Or, process improvement that makes employees lives better even though it may challenge the necessity of salaried positions.

I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying.

I honestly don't know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point, which is less than ideal when ideation is always on the menu (I last got out of a psych ward in late January, and all they had to offer is "you need to stop wanting what you want."). I don't understand why I would want to be alive to be able to pay off debt accrued because society has already discarded me as useless.

I swear to fucking god, I cannot handle being told again that I'm wrong to have the ethics and goals in life that I do. If these do not align with the positions advertised, then the logical choice is simply removing myself from this clusterfuck.

I have provable results from things I've done that did align, so why does saving companies six and seven figures several times by teaching myself what I needed to to accomplish my goals over the course of my career make me a bad hire? I've rarely worked for competent managers, so I'm generally needed to actually get improvements done. I don't care about my title, and I've topped out at $48K, so it's not like I'm looking for $150K ... but I don't like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it's what others want to hear.

What is the point of even being alive when everyone is telling me I'm wrong to want to accomplish things that improve the lives of people other than shareholders? They sure as fuck don't need the money. I do, but I don't count because I've not already rolled over and begged to suck at the teat of immoral people who care nothing for the rest of the world, let alone the people without whom they'd have no product in the first place.

pretty quiet week this week if you ignore whatever the hell is going on with our bathroom toilet, which has a diagnostic issue we can't troubleshoot and which has flooded once this week. calling maintenance once again to see if we can figure this out so i don't have to plunge every third time we flush (ironically it'd be way easier if we just had to plunge every time--but it's the times we don't that make this extremely bizarre)

bit busy this week, so the thread is late