General Discussion

...how on one hand there's a male loneliness epidemic and women are partly to blame because we're so picky - and yet on the other hand things like this.

How can we both be desperately needed for your emotional health but also be huge annoying burdens? I don't get it.

The case for liberal anti-capitalism in the 21st century

https://aeon.co/essays/the-case-for-liberal-socialism-in-the-21st-century

The most powerful critiques of capitalism are actually liberal critiques in that they appeal to the liberal principles that defenders of capitalism invoke, but show that capitalism does not in fact satisfy them even in the ideal case.

@general

HI, I had been trying to follow anti-tech discussion on a different account and had recently gotten removed from a second group. This time, they confused me of being a bot and didn't give me the chance to explain that I'm not a bot. The first time I believe its because I had accidentally linked to something leftist in error and didn't realize right away. The reason I have been trying to follow anti-tech and Neo-luddite is because it was making me feel good with all of the preserving nature talk, plus I read the Ted Kaczynski manifesto for starters and have it bookmarked on my laptop. If anyone can try to help me out or knows of another such group to check out, please let me know. I might be forced to create another group with my different account, figure out what to call it, and leave off the vetting for now to get people to join.

Hopefully things change once lemmy.world updates to 0.19 with scaled sorting. And maybe you guys and gals have some advice for fixing my issue.

To keep my feed fresh I subscribed to all the big communities full of memes. They do have engagement beyond funny jokes, but I'm tired of how political everything is.

I'm not trying to bury my head in the sand, on the contrary, im highly aware how much fascism has taken its grips on the world. But I don't need to be reminded everytime I'm on lemmy.

So I'm hoping once scaled sorting is on lemmy.world, the lemmyverse will transform. I hope I start seeing my hobbyist community come to life.

Or if people have recommendations for large communities not full of politics that works too. Maybe memes and shitposts aren't for me.

You might downvote this, go ahead, I know you hate proprietary goods, but just listen.

Is anyone excited to see that Threads is soon to federate with us on to the fediverse? I know I am, and this is becuase I can communicate with my family from Lemmy or Mastodon as I mainly use these two platforms. I am also not saying that Threads is good, its a bad platform in terms of privacy, and Meta is notoriously shitty in terms of user data collection. I'm making this post because I was just wondering if there is someone out there like me who likes the move what Meta is doing with Threads in federating with us. We just got to be aware and be cautious and get ready because we might "spam" Threads.

I'm also not trying to get on the wrong foot, I'm just in love with Free Software, and seeing Lemmy here and discovering the Fediverse is so amazing to me. I love it already and am going to stay on it for most of my online journey.

Thoughts?

Source:

CBC

This is not a comprehensive list by any means, and is why I'm featuring this post and leaving it open to comments. I may update this as people make suggestions, and I encourage others to make their own variations on this list in the comments or in their respective versions of this community.

Also to clarify some terms here, by active I'm aiming for at least some commenting on recent-ish posts, not merely recent posts, and by the topic names...I'll let the linked communities serve as examples.

Hope this helps any newcomers find some different communities to join and participate in!

p.s. although it's now out of date, as some instances are no longer around (RIP Lemmy.film), this post is still a pretty useful resource for a broader range of communities than those listed here.

Chameleons can hold things, octopuses can hold things, they can both blend in with their environments.

They have a lot in common, besides the whole aquatic-terrestrial separation, but that's no reason to think some of them couldn't get along. What do you think?

Something that i find prettyd disgusting these days is how certain people put their political ideologies / viewpoints over human lives, for example, celebrating the russian invasion of ukraine because it is "a blow against US / NATO imperialism" completely ignoring all the warcrimes, the deaths, and the suffering generated by that war, the same happening with the palestinian genocide because "Israel is the only working democracy on the middle east", acting like their ideoligies are going to bring back to life all the dead people somehow

Capitalism will consume itself.

I'm cleaning out my gmail folders this weekend, and went deep into the archive to 2011, when I got my invite to Google Music.

It's funny, because I just (November) moved all of my music out of cloud and back to local-only. Amazon was the last straw, when I tried to play purchased music, and was forced to listen to it on shuffle with other songs not of my choosing.

Anyway... there was a time when Google (ahem, Youtube) Music was set to be a game-changer. Imagine if enshittification wasn't a thing.

Permanently Deleted

People today cannot truly grasp history and fully comprehend (possibly literally) what should be learned from it because it is for many of them, especially the new ones in school, just words on a page.

Nothing educates like experience, like how you can teach a skill from a book but to truly understand it you must practice it, probably poorly at first but better with further action.

History cannot truly be experienced by someone who was not there, whether kept apart by time or distance. We can try to bridge the gap with our spoken and written words, and today maybe a video feed, but it is not the same. Just doesn’t adhere to our fleshy brains the same way.

This also means that “true” historical fact and utter fiction are often indistinguishable. The only difference between a history book and a historical fiction is that we are encouraged by our parents who we trust implicitly, or our teachers they tell us to trust, to believe that one book be the true one over another.

Kids today cannot understand the gravity and lessons of the time before because what they have experienced first hand in their short lives is the only thing they truly know to be real. As for everything else, it would be just as easy to give them an alt-history fiction and convince them we saved our country from actual lizard men. And they would believe it with just as much vigor as any other history lesson.

This is why I think some major issues are easily glossed over by the newest generations. Their entire life experience is based in a world which is not perfect, but also not as bad or the same as the events before. And the accounts of the past just don’t hold the same gravity as their experience of world today, making those who did experience worse and are rightly afraid seem like they are exaggerating. We ask people to feel just as concerned about something they have never lived through and hopefully never will, with the same feeling as those who truly have. And it would be like asking someone to feel like they've lived through a novel or movie, because to their brain there is no difference. I feel that's why there is a struggle to connect and cooperate on these issues.

It doesn't help that history is malleable because of its apparent intangibility. There is the fear these days that misinformation, propaganda, and AI created fiction can be easily spread along today's internet, to influence the minds of people everywhere and convince them of non-truths. Politicians and leaders of nations are even at this moment pushing legislation to set the tone of history taught in schools. Should any of this succeed, one generation will know history to have one set of facts, and the next will have another set. They will both hold these facts to be as irrefutably true as any others they've learned. I feel that this is so easily possible because of how, fundamentally, the "true" and false histories are cut from the same cloth and leave the same mark on the mind.

Notice how I keep putting "true" history in quotes? It's because I ask, what is true history? Is it not said that history belongs to the victor? Propaganda, book burnings, internet/information restrictions, statues and landmarks put up and torn down... History is subjective, altered every day to suite a narrative or changing sensibilities. Different countries educate on different perspectives and opinions of the same events, and each is the world truth according to their citizens. This practice continues even into today, with wars going on and different sides with different opinions on why they are happening...and when one is victorious, one side will influence the collective record through alliances old and new, and make that the truth. Eventually. And if that side so happens to be known by the witnesses of the time to be false, then what will become future historical truth, will actually just be fiction.

Or really, all just words on the page, like all history not personally witnessed.

Completely new to this so any help is appreciated!

I’m making a generator for personal use mostly but could be fun for others to use.

Here’s what I have so far but not sure what I need to put in the section under the auto button to get the generator to work. I’m a little bit confused even with looking at the tutorials and other generators.

Also if possible, I would want the generator to select a team of 6 Pokémon in the type category. Or does this have to be a separate generator?

Ex. Generates fire type and the team you get is Arcanine, Charizard, etc.

This only makes sense when I realize that to conservatives, it's an identity. They think it's an identity that Taylor Swift should have because she's (presumably) white, popular, rich, good looking, Midwestern, Christian, etc.

To them politics is not about ideas, or policies, or problem solving, or good governance. It's all about identity.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/13355449

Capitalism is a game where only a few people get to win.

We have also seen time and time again that it is a game that is able to manipulate and change whatever ideology or behaviour you have to work towards its own benefit.

So the only way to actually "win" is to not play the game.

Right now that seems impossible because it is a massive collective action problem, however this whole platform is a testament to show that it's possible to overcome that kind of problem.

Reddit is a dominant platform that is starting to destroy itself. People are in turn finding alternatives such as Lemmy to satisfy the need that Reddit once did.

I view capitalism in the same way. It will never truly completely cease to exist (the same way Digg never truly died), but it can become irrelevant over time if we collectively decide to just use another system to satisfy the same needs that capitalism is satisfying today.

The one example that I can think of that tries to tackle this problem is the idea of free stores that are based on a gift economy. If more people decided to use this system instead of capitalism then capitalism will have less sway over people's lives.

And in the end it doesn't have to be specifically a free store that needs to be adopted by wider society but whatever it is does need to satisfy the same basic need that capitalism does in our current society.

I was eating at a restaurant and they had Faux news on (I know it sucks and hate that we have to see that garbage)

They were discussing the border and they claim that over 1.5 million people are trying to cross into the US from 150 plus other countries. Knowing how they can be so full of shit hard to imagine that being true.

But it did get me wondering there is a lot of people trying to cross and the ariel shots I seen If true we are talking about thousands trying to flee into the states.

Instead of trying to stop them from crossing why are we not addressing the cause? How come we aren't maybe trying to see if we can solve the problem that causing them from running away from their homes?

I am sure America is probably responsible for some of that turmoil so why we not discussing that and fixing our mess instead of trying pass bills closing our boarders?

Also on a side note sick of all the fucking mega fucks and racist rednecks throwing fits about the boarder. Unless your native American we all fucking immigrants. Especially all the caucuses.

Just why are we allowing this to cause us to almost on the brink of a civil war. Bad enough that we locking these people in cages. That something the Biden administration should have ended on day one of his administration.

So what could we be doing to fix this problem?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/12894133

I read this article recently and I was just thinking about my news consumption and how much I want to be affected by it.

I feel like it is important because shit is going on in the world however I usually don't change my habits much over it.

I also think that there should be a middle ground somewhere but I can't think of it so if anyone of you have ideas please share them.

I use Privacy cards for the majority of online commerce. If you aren't familiar with them, they generate one-off card numbers that obfuscate your financial details and become locked to the merchant of first use. They also can create single-use cards that deactivate after the first charge.

The card I have tied to my Epic account generated two fraudulent charges on Dec 10 at Spanish-named locations. The charges were blocked, as they didn't originate from Epic. On top of blocking the charges, Privacy deactivated the card number as they suspected fraud.

I've reached out to Epic for details, but they're just sending scripted meaningless fluff, and its been almost forty days.

Am I right to assume this means Epic was themselves the victim of some breach? I don't see any press releases or coverage of anything.

Is there any youtube channel similar to Unusual Videos that you know? I know there are infinite youtube channels that upload memes and short videos but they all usually upload the same content or doesn´t have the same 'quality' that Unusual Videos have...