Swordgeek

Two thousand was obvious.
Two thousand and one as well, thanks to Stanley Kubrick.
I made a determined effort somewhere around 2004 to go back to the previous century’s naming, and call the first decade “aught,” as in “twenty aught six.”

Nobody followed me in that.

Even so, I now refer to all years except 2000 and maybe 2001 as “twenty (aught/oh) <year>.” Good riddance to “two thousand seven” as a year.

No, corporations backing Nazis did.

No.

Don’t normalize the spread of toxic tip culture.

Fuck off with your spam.

I’m nearly three times your age and so will likely have a very different perspective, but…

I remember watching the news (from Canada) when Reagan was first elected. it felt HORRIBLE, and turned out to be just that - Reagan, Thatcher, and their psychophant hanger-on Mulroney ushered in a new era of “get fucked by the rich, fuck the poor” also known as trickle-down economics.

And yet, there was always a sense of decorum among them. Even Harper and Bush jr. at least pretended to be civil in the world of politics, no matter how corrupt and evil they were.

Trump changed everything. He was loud, abrasive, offensive, and off the rails. And he won! Suddenly the doors were open. Here in Canada, O’Toole did outhouse attack ads against Trudeau. Jingoistic, vapid, fear-mongering populism took root throughout Europe. And it just kept getting worse.

Now this election in the US was unhinged beyond description. Trump said things and did things that should have gotten him locked up. Musk should be facing either life in jail or the electric chair for his interference. There are no limits in American elections anymore - I would genuinely say including shooting someone onstage.

Here in Canada, Poilievre has been carefully fanning the same embers - stoking fear, instilling rage, creating groups to hate; and at the same time, throwing out meaningless attacks on his opponents. Unlike when O’Toole awkwardly attempted it, it is working very effectively. Having an entire room or stadium chanting “AXE THE TAX” without even offering an alternative shows that he’s winning by being the same empty bully as Trump.

(And meanwhile, Harper is chortling quietly from behind the curtain as he pulls the puppet strings.)

So yeah, this is crazy - and it’s the new normal, until we start showing politicians that it doesn’t work, and can get them arrested.

Not listed here, but California voted against outlawing slavery for prisoners.

This happens in the US, Canada, and many other western democracies.

The difference this time is that it’s not just the GOP being shitty, it’s an unhinged Nazi who just got elected, and has spent four years purging the party of unfaithful.

I don’t think you actually did get my point.

The fascists are the majority. The majority will do nothing because they chose this, and you - the people fighting fascism - are in the minority.

I’m not saying I disagree with you, but it is important to understand that your revolution is actually going against the will of the American people.

Unless you make voting mandatory, that will always be the case. Regardless, the split amongst non-voters is statistically likely to be the same as the people who actually voted. Consider the election to be an information poll, with a sample size of ~65% of the entire eligible population.

So with updated numbers, Trump got 72.5M out of ~240M eligible voters, so yeah you could say that 70% of the population didn’t vote for him. But then to be clear, you should also look at Harris’s 68M votes, and say that 72% of the population didn’t vote for her.

The people who mark and deposit their ballots are the only measure we have of the nation’s opinion, and in that contest a majority of the votes went to Trump.

No, that’s a misleading number.

27% of the entire eligible population voted for him. Less than that voted for Harris. About 45% of eligible voters didn’t bother.

So Trump got more than 50% of the popular vote, as well as the majority of seats. First past the poll is a terrible system, but it’s not the system that’s at fault here, it’s the voters.

I’m not an American, but I can’t help but notice something:

A clear majority elected Trump. Over 71 million Americans went out of their way to vote for him, saying “I am proud to be a Nazi.”

If you are going to fight (either figuratively or physically), then understand that a majority of the USA supports a fascist state.

Honestly, a person’s actual post history should be more relevant and indicative to whether they’renworth engaging with tham a single number.

Furthermore, aside from deliberate trolls, most comments or posts should be assessed on their own merits, irrespective of the poster’s history.

People are complex, and it’s possible that raving political idiots might have thoughtful opinions on their favourite video game or the aspects that make a perfect butt.

Trump will say anything and do whatever he decides is in his own best interests. Every time the media reports him saying some stupid shit, he gets media coverage, which gets him more support from morons.

He’ll keep spouting shit as long as it keeps getting reported and amplified.

Or maybe he forgot to take off his Freddy Kruger hallowe’en costume before jerking off to gay porn.

Hang Loose (both gesture and phrase) goes back to at LEAST the early '70s.

We have language to describe Trump, and have had for about a century.

Fascist. Nazi. Psychopath.

Or we could go with much older language and call him incompetent, insane, crooked, twisted, sadistic, power-hungry, evil…

It’s not that hard.

First cousin, once removed.

For the record, ‘once removed’ refers to the generation. Your cousin’s grandkid would be your first cousin twice removed.

So I’m in my mid-50s, and I’ve honestly only come up with genuine lasting interest in my friends’ lives in the last few years.

I noticed that I’d get together with friends and they’d say “hey, how did your kid’s sportsball tournament go back in July?” What struck me about it is that they cared enough to actually hear what I said, and remember it - not because they have a deep abiding interest in my kid’s life, but because they cared about me and the things that were important to me.

And I wasn’t repaying the care.

So I’ve tried to change. When people tell me stuff about their kids or vacation, I make a concerted effort to remember it and remember the significance of it, because the fact that it’s important to the people I care about means that to some degree, I care about it as well.

Manufacturing detritus. Machine oil. Pollution. The rancid sweat of 100 hands they’ve passed through.

That smell is an excellent reason to wash your clothes before wearing them.

Depends on what you mean “effective.”

The structure is very similar, and on the surface, it works about the same way. So in that sense, yes.

The lack of centralization improves on reddit - no authoritarian rule-making, no limitation of content by the laws of a single country, etc. - but also adds flaws. The biggest one is the potential for redundant groups on different servers, but also a concern is the potential for someone taking down their server and leaving the users high and dry. (I don’t know exactly what happens to the content in this case, but that could be another issue.)

Practically speaking though, it is not a meaningful replacement for reddit because it is lacking content. I browse “all”, and get fewer total posts that I saw on reddit on my 20 or so subscribed subreddits alone.

Community is the key. Community is what made reddit, and lemmy doesn’t have a developed community. Yet. We can get there, and then discover what other problems with the platform are.