I don’t think federation has to be an obstacle for non-tech people. They don’t really have to know about it, and it can be something they learn about later. I really don’t know if federation stops people from trying it out. Don’t people think, “I don’t know what instance to join, so I’m not going to choose any?”

Personally, having no algorithm for your home feed is what I don’t like about it. Everything is chronological. Some people I follow post many times a day, some post once per month, some post stuff I’m extremely interested in sporadically, followed by a sea of random posts. Hashtag search and follow is also less useful because there’s no option for an algo.

The UI seems fine to me. I guess I’m not picky about UIs. The one nitpick I have is on mobile, tapping an image will just full-screen the image instead of opening the thread.

That’s not really good evidence. They could’ve made more money by just holding an SP 500 index fund. Their recent Visa trade is better evidence.

Ok, yes, I support actions like these, and they are good for community defense against small civilian fascist groups. There are not the numbers to counter organizations like FBI, DHS, or national guard though. Things are a bit different when the fascist group you’re trying to counter is the federal or state government with the will to kill and immunity from their actions.

The left is such a small population in the US, it’s irrelevant. If we are to believe Trump’s rhetoric, any group that becomes too much of a nuisance will be deemed “the enemy within,” and be shot.

Yeah, I agree. I do use Flatpaks, Snaps, and Appimages sometimes if I can’t find a suitable deb repo/package. Flatpak is the best out of the three because they do try to avoid too much duplication through runtimes. I also use Docker quite a bit, which has similar issues (and benefits).

Another interesting question is if they vote for one of their local DA or sheriff candidates or just obtain.

I assume the “kill it” comment was a little tongue-in-cheek. On small SBCs, like a Pi, or old hardware, it could be a problem. I’ve seen people with flatpaks taking up 30GB of space, which is significant. I’m not sure how much RAM it wastes. I assume running 6 different applications that have loaded 6 different versions of Qt libraries would also use significantly more RAM than just loading the system’s shared Qt libraries once.

Wastes RAM and disk space (compared to package-manager installed applications) by storing more libraries on disk and loading them into RAM rather than just using the libraries already installed on the distro. It’s probably better than Snap and Appimage though.

Meh, startups and businesses are capitalist organizations, and I think the idea of patents is questionable outside capitalism, so these wouldn’t really be a good metrics. I’d guess the richest countries “innovate” the most because they can support more risky endeavors. The U.S. is the capitalist imperial core, so it probably innovates the most. Other capitalist nations like Haiti, probably not so much.

The best measure of innovation would probably be something like scientific publications. China wins by raw numbers, Vatican City wins per-capita (???).

I’ve always heard ingesting flouride makes developing teeth stronger, and does nothing for adults. Found a review of studies: https://www.cochrane.org/CD010856/ORAL_does-adding-fluoride-water-supplies-prevent-tooth-decay

tankie

🤨 I’ve never heard a right-winger, or even a liberal use that term.

IMO, the U.S. will become similar to Russia. It’s not some sudden societal collapse scenario; just an oligarchy with high levels of corruption and incompetence. Most people will conform or keep their heads down to avoid the consequences of stepping out of line. If you’re in a possibly targeted group, you may want a valid passport though. And it’s always been a good idea to keep at least a months worth of non-perishable food on hand in case of supply chain disruptions. Possibly stuff like emergency propane heaters and a propane tank could be useful too (they’ve been useful for me in the past already without an authoritarian government or social unrest). Knowing your neighbors and helping eachother out in little ways is probably the most powerful thing though.

Source? First I’ve heard of anything like this. I’d imagine a lot of things would have to be settled in court given the US’s strange laws giving states so much leeway in how they conduct federal elections.

Governments (state and federal) can force people to fight though.

Could be the blue states refusing to comply with some crazy federal demand under a Trump administration. Trump has said he’d use the military to attack the “enemy within,” after all.

Ideally, the Democrats would be unabashedly pro-immigration and advocate for solving the “problem” by making it much easier to immigrate legally and getting those currently undocumented, documented. This would make immigrants harder to exploit, address fears of immigrants under-cutting wages, and paying more taxes and social security. That addresses all the somewhat legitimate worries I can think of; the rest of the “problems” I can think of are just rooted in racism and lies. Immigration has been and is a net-positive for the U.S., and a pro-immigration stance should be an easy argument to sell to voters that’s also backed up by many studies and data; including conservative think-tanks like Cato. Pro-immigration sentiments were very popular in the U.S. until this recent bout of anti-immigration propaganda. Even now, Americans hold contradictory opinions, like being pro-mass-deportation while being in favor of expanding pathways to citizenship: https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/polling-around-mass-deportation-far-more-complicated-right-wing-media-let

Also from the article (which I agree with):

To be sure, Democrats are wary of getting stuck talking about an issue where Trump always polls better than Harris. Backlash to a Democratic president and a surge of migrants at the Mexican border have helped make Americans suspicious of immigration at levels not seen since 2001. As Atlantic staff writer Rogé Karma explained to Mary Harris on Wednesday’s What Next, the share of Americans who think immigration should decrease has risen from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent today. And some polls have found that a majority of Americans support mass deportations.

But results like that are an indictment, not a vindication, of Democrats’ reluctance to talk about immigration. Mass deportation would separate 4.4 million U.S. citizen children from their parents. It would require the largest police action in American history, wipe out millions of jobs, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and destabilize the economy. Industries from milk to housing construction would be damaged for years. Los Angeles and Houston would see their populations fall by 10 percent; Florida would lose 1 in 20 residents. A million mortgages could be at risk.

I.e. Democrat’s position is unpopular because they offer little-to-no pushback to anti-immigration arguments. In fact, Harris, Biden, and many Democrat politicians, seem to be embracing the anti-immigration narrative. In a sense, they are complicit in aiding fascism, IMO.

Yeah, I used to occasionally use tianeptine to self-medicate on days when I was really depressed (hard to get out of bed depressed). Worked well for that, because regular anti-depressants take about a month to start really working, and tianeptine took about 30 minutes, IIRC. I never found tianeptive very “enjoyable” or intoxicating though. I used to use MXE for a similar purpose; and also recreationally sometimes.

I have. My bank did a chargeback like they would if it was a credit card. I was told it would’ve been a lot harder to get my money back if my PIN was used. But, I’ve only seen that option available for in-person purchaees.

For some of the ultra-wealthy (Theil, Altman, Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, OpenAI board, etc), a type of accelerationism seems to be in-vogue (e/acc publicly, and probably accelerationist thoughts like The Dark Enlightenment privately). I think some ultra-wealthy are just trying to hedge their bets (Zuckerberg, and news corporations come to mind), because if Trump does win he’ll definitely try to use his power to harm companies he doesn’t like. I think others, such as Musk, want to be Russian-style oligarchs. I guess all this is kinda related; accelerate into some sort of collapse or chaos, use their positions to maneuver into greater power and become oligarchs or create corporate-city-states, or whatever stupid shit they believe in.

I think finance workers are about as split between the parties as the rest of the population; probably more socially liberal. Small bussiness owners are some of the most ignorant and authoritarian people I’ve encountered.