Email: "Hi, this is IT. It looks like your password is expired. Please change your password by clicking this link. Ignore the weird from address and the fact that the link obviously goes to a noncompany website. We're really from your IT department. Promise!"
Way too many users: "Yup. This looks legit. Better coick that link and enter all of my information right now!"
I learned how dangerous dehumanization is when I went on a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC. (SIde note: I recommend going there. It's not a "happy" place to visit, but it's an important one. Give yourself half a day for the museum and half a day to mentally recover. )
At one point, you can go through or around one of the train cars that transported Jews to the death camps. I walked inside and stopped. The plaque had said how many people were crammed inside, but I couldn't mentally fit that many people in the train car.
Then, I realized my mistake. I was trying to fit PEOPLE. Even though the people I was trying to fit in were imaginary, I was still treating them like people. Once I tried fitting human shaped objects into the train car, I could easily fit that many.
Once you dehumanize a group of people, the door is opened to do anything you want to them because all societal guardrails for the treatment of your fellow humans are removed.
Has anyone checked Jack Smith for adamantium claws?
And then you've got to add in that Trump likes to pressure his attorneys to do illegal things which could result in THEM being tried for crimes.
Trump is perhaps the worst client a lawyer could possibly represent.
For the "crime" of not being a far right Republican and for the "crime" of Trump having been impeached twice. Those are the only "crimes" that these extremists care about. They also don't care that, even if they convince 50%+1 Representatives to vote to impeach, this will die in the Senate. They'll impeach Biden three times just so Trump isn't the most impeached President and they'll claim that their purely political impeachments somehow prove that the impeachments of Trump were purely political as well
Even if cultivated meat was initially bad for the environment, I'd guess that it would be easy to minimize it's environmental impact versus traditional meat. There's only so much you can do to stop cows from belching CO2. However, a factory making vats of cultured meat could install pollution controls to reduce their emissions.
I'd definitely like to see peer reviewed studies backing everything up, but my guess is that cultivated meat will on par with or be better for the environment than traditional meat and will only get better.
Thanks for posting this. It will help me replace a few more of the subreddits I loved going to with Lemmy alternatives. I might still need to go to Reddit for a couple of subreddits (one local one and one hobby one), but my goal is to reduce my Reddit usage as much as possible.
What about a series of local communities? Back on Reddit, I enjoyed participating in a subreddit for my local area. I don't think Lemmy is quite there just yet (but hopefully one day will have enough users to support such localized communities), so how about a series of US State communities? Depending on intentional presence, this could be expanded into equivalent regions for other countries as well.
Trump keeps claiming that he's being treated differently and he's right, but not in the way he means it. He's not being persecuted. He's being treated with exceptionally soft kid gloves.
He was given multiple chances to return the stuff he took. He was asked politely before a subpoena was issued. He was given time between the subpoena and the raid to turn everything over. After the raid, he wasn't immediately arrested and tossed behind bars. They even allowed him to come in and skip some procedures like being handcuffed and getting his mugshot taken.
He's been given way more considerations than anyone else who committed even remotely the number of infractions that he committed would get.
If Trump wants to not get treated differently, I'm all for it. Arrest him and toss him in jail while he waits for his trial. As a bonus, suddenly his usual tactic of delay, delay, delay won't be as attractive.
We're not all insane. The problem is that there's a very vocal minority that's insane. There are between 10% and 30% of our population that think anyone who opposes them should be violently overthrown. They justify any actions they take with "the liberals would do this to us so we're just beating them to it." (Note: We would not.) This vocal minority is getting more representation than any other group and they still complain that they are underrepresented and that the entire country should bend to their whims.
Unfortunately, things are going to get worse before they get better unless the majority of sane people vote to ensure that the crazies stay out of power.
Either that or "I don't believe that anyone is starving. I just ate a large lunch so obviously nobody is going hungry."
They only recognize that something is real when it affects them personally. If it doesn't then they'll either claim the thing doesn't exist or will say it's that person's fault that they are going through that (likely for being "too lazy" to pull themselves up by their bootstraps).
And it's not like we had some recent example of people thumbing their nose at safety only to have their "safety is waste" vessel catastrophically fail... Oh, wait.
Back in 2016, I got to taste a new flavor from Ben & Jerry's called "Feel the Bern" which showed their support for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. Anyone who gets surprised that Ben & Jerry's is political hasn't been paying attention.
Then again, some people became shocked that Rage Against The Machine was political leading to a commenter asking "what machine did you think they were raging against?"
I buy Beyond Meat bricks for $8.99 a pound. That's pricey compared to regular beef, but I'm an outlier with pricing. I keep kosher at home and kosher meat is VERY expensive. Between the price and hassle (it requires separate pots/pans, plates, utensils, etc), I keep vegetarian at home. It's just cheaper and easier.
Beyond Meat lets me cook "beef" dishes for less than kosher beef would cost me and with more flexibility. (Tonight, we had pasta and Beyond Beef meatballs with cheese - a dish I couldn't make using kosher meat.)
There's still a market for products like Beyond Beef, but I agree that they'll need to hit "normal need" price levels before it really takes off.
Even worse than the demonizing is how they dehumanize trans people. Don't get me wrong, demonizing a group is bad, but dehumanizing is so much worse.
I learned this lesson during a trip to the Holocaust Museum in DC. I walked through one of the train cars and tried to picture fitting as many people in there as the plaque said were crammed in. I couldn't. Then, I realized that I was trying to fit people in the car. Even though these were imaginary people existing solely in my head, I was still treating them like people. I switched to trying to cram that many human shaped objects in the car and realized it was easy to do.
The right is pushing dehumanization of people they don't like. Once you've accepted a group of people as "not human," all sorts of horrible options open up to deal with them.
I second this. After all, isn't he the smartest person who knows the most about everything (according to himself)?
And, just to remind everyone, there were 4 months from when Trump left office to when NARA asked for everything back. Then, there were 15 months from when NARA asked for everything back and when the FBI came in to seize the documents.
Even at the most generous timeline (which Trump definitely doesn't deserve), he had 15 months from when NARA told him to give back the documents. Trump being "too busy" for this long isn't an excuse.
And this ignores that he had his lawyer declare that they didn't have any documents there only to be proven wrong by the FBI.
Trump's lawyers should definitely tell him to keep quiet (not that he'll listen) because every interview he gives about this is going to be entered into the mountain of evidence that the government has against him.
I've never held security clearance, but I'm reasonably certain that "I was too busy to give you back those classified documents" isn't a very good defense. In fact, it's admitting that you had the classified documents and held onto them despite being told to give them back. It's especially not a good defense given that he had 15 months from the first "give back the documents request" to the FBI raid.
If I ever found myself in possession of classified documents which I wasn't supposed to have (so, any classified documents) and I was asked to give them back, I'd MAKE time. I'd take time off of work and scour my house from the top to the bottom to make sure I got everything. Then, I'd invite the FBI in to do the same to be sure that I didn't miss anything.
This would be the biggest priority in my life (absent any live threatening situations) until those classified documents were safely returned. "I was too busy for the past 1.25 years" is not a good defense at all.
IIRC, the X-Men was originally an allegory for the Civil Rights movement - complete with some "mutants" wanting to work within the system to improve things and others wanting to tear the entire system down.
Of course, all persecutions tend to share similar themes even if details change so the story of the X-Men is easily applied to LGBTQ folks as well as any other group that's persecuted against.
And if someone sides with the people who persecuted the X-Men without realizing that this makes them the villains, they really are idiotic.
I'm not vegan, but I do keep Kosher and I'm sure there would be a huge debate in the Jewish community as to whether cultured meat was kosher.
Assuming that the animal that the original cells were taken from was Kosher (e.g. a chicken or a cow, not a pig), then would the cultured meat be Kosher? Would it not need to follow usual processes (specific slaughter techniques, salting and soaking the meat to remove blood, etc) if there was no animal/blood?
As cultured meat takes hold, there are going to be a lot of communities trying to take it into account. I'm sure there will be plenty of arguments as to the status of it as well. It should be interesting.
I'd go with pathological liar given how he alleged that the Apollo developer threatened Reddit - allegations which the Apollo developer proved false by releasing the audio of the phone call - and then Spez doubled down on the allegations while saying the developer shouldn't have released the audio. Basically, "I'm going to defame you and you providing proof of me lying about you isn't allowed."
And the thing is, there is no "winning a final battle" with fascists like this. Let's say that all their fascist dreams come true. They've eliminated every LGBTQ person from America and made being LGBTQ a capital offense. They're done right?
Of course not. Next, they'll target Muslims, immigrants, BIPOC people, Jews, and too many other minorities to list. Now, say they're successful there. All us minorites are now either dead, imprisoned, or second class citizens with zero voting rights that are tolerated for as long as we're useful to the fascists.
Now are they done? No. Fascists always need an Other. So they'll start to cannibalize. Maybe Christian Group A will declare that everyone in Christian Group B are just pretenders. They've been behind everything all along (since fascists love conspiracies). Now Christian groups will be banned one by one. Or maybe anyone with green eyes or red hair will be declared to be an unfit aberration that must be destroyed.
The only time a fascist would be happy would be if the entire country was populated by clones of himself that are 100% identical in every way and always think alike. Anything short of this and they'll turn every slight difference into a war to be waged.
Ukraine would be happy to provide Russia with more ammunition. It'll even be delivered at high speed!
But that analogy would make Spez the king who rules over all the lands of Reddit-tania, doling favors out to people who support him and punishment out to those who oppose him no matter what the people of Reddit-tania want.
Wait, maybe the analogy has some merit to it after all.
Definitely terrifying and can be surprising, but I think it's easier to demonize unfamiliar groups than to demonize a well-known one.
This is also why "colleges indoctrinate students" is wrong even though college students do tend to get more liberal. When college students leave their home towns and go to college, they run into people of differing backgrounds. Stereotypes get challenged and broken to pieces. The college kids return to their home towns unwilling to engage in the demonization because suddenly it's not some faceless Other they are railing against, but an actual person that they have interacted with.
He should totally represent himself. You know the old saying "The man who represents himself is a bigly brained genius and definitely doesn't have a fool for a client!"
Biden wasn't my top pick in the primaries. (Bernie Sanders was.) When he was the nominee, I jumped on board because any issues I had with Biden paled in comparison with issues I had with Trump. I figured that Biden wouldn't be perfect but would be decent. He definitely hasn't been perfect, but even on his worst days he's been SOOOO much better than Trump on Trump's best days.
They could have even gotten third party apps to pay for API access. They just needed to set a fair rate and a workable timeline for the change.
Instead, they said "we're charging $20 million starting next month. Good luck trying to stay afloat with those sudden costs!"
Reddit could have increased their profits and kept users/moderators happy, but they chose Burn It All Down instead.
The problem is that, when free lunches are restricted to only kids who can't afford lunch, there's a social pressure NOT to get the free lunch. Kids don't want to stand out as "that poor kid." They'll skip lunch instead of being singled out.
Free lunches for everyone fixes this. Kids can't tell if Jimmy is getting the free lunch because his parents didn't pack him one or because his parents can't afford to feed him. The cost to feed the kids is low and the reward - kids learning, doing well in school, and having a better chance to break the poverty cycle - is high. It's well worth the cost.
Beyond the whole porn issue, as the victim of identity theft, "put all your personal information in this one big database" make me very nervous. Either that database will be hacked or someone with access to it will grab data for nefarious purposes.
It's not a matter of IF it will happen, but WHEN.
If the moderators decide to go private again, then Reddit will kick them out and replace them with someone who will toe the official Reddit line. ("Everything Reddit is doing is great and you'll be banned for saying differently!")
If the new moderators are horrible at their job, then Reddit won't care. They're betting on their site being large enough that a few subs going bad won't hurt them. They're also banking on there being no Reddit alternatives for users to flee to. (They don't see Lemmy as a threat just yet.)
The one downside to the writer's strike (that I've so far since there was a lot of content banked) is all the late night comedians' missed opportunities. Of course, I fully support the writers. I hope they get everything they are asking for so that we can get back to watching the amazing stuff they produce!
Republicans seem to want to turn back the clock to the 1950's and in one aspect I agree with them. The top tax rate back then was 90%. That should be returned for anyone making over $10 million.
Unlike Republicans, though, I think people should be free to be who they are - whether they're LGBTQ or straight/cisgender, black or white, Christian or Jewish or atheist, or any other group I didn't list. (I didn't list all groups only because I don't want this comment to be novel length.) Basically, as long as your actions affect only yourself and consenting adults, I'm fine with them.
I'm also fine with parents having some control over what their kids do. I'm a parent myself and know that as a parent you need to make judgement calls as to what's best for your child. I wouldn't want someone else questioning my parenting based on their beliefs. However, there are limits. If your child is LGBTQ and you try to force them to be straight/cisgender, you aren't acting in your child's best interests. If your 10 year old child is raped and their life is in danger, but you refuse to allow them to have an abortion because your religion doesn't allow it, then you're harming your child.
Also, a person's "parental rights" shouldn't mean that they get to decide that certain books are banned from everyone reading them. My son actually just finished reading a book because it had been banned and we laughed over how innocuous the "ban triggering passage" was compared to some stuff in the Bible.
Basically, I think I'd call myself a Pragmatic Progressive. I advocate for progressive causes, but I also realize that society can often be slower to adapt than we like. While we would love to be able to pass X and have it be widely adopted immediately, there's often a series of slow moving battles to get X passed and another slow march to get wide acceptance. We can't simply throw in the political towel at the first setback. Neither can we pass up 10% of our goal being within our grasp because we're holding out for 100%. We need to get whatever advancements we can while continually pushing for more.
Also, the whole "liberal indoctrination" of colleges is only a half truth. Do people who go to college come out more liberal? Yes, but not because the colleges are indoctrinating them.
Let's say you've lived in a small town all your life. Everyone you know is pretty much the same. You know very few people who are different so stereotypes abound.
Then you go to college. You start meeting some of the people you had stereotypes of. They don't match what you thought "those people" would be like. Your stereotypes break down and instead of thinking of them as some scary Other, you see them as actual people.
When you go home, everyone back at home hasn't met the people you did. They make the bigoted, stereotype filled comments that you once would have echoed. Except, now those comments have faces attached to them for you so you object to them.
To your parents and the people in your small town, you've changed. They blame the college for "indoctrinating" you, but in reality it is just that you were exposed to different people and viewpoints.
Great to hear! Sync was my first third party Reddit app. I eventually switched to Boost (IIRC, Sync was having some problems with image uploads and so I moved clients), but Sync was still a great Reddit app.
Even though I'm liking Jerboa, I can't wait to see what the "third party Reddit developers" can do. The more Lemmy apps, the better!
And Jews, such aa myself. In fact, they're already railing against the Jews even if they hide it behind "Soros," "Globalists," or other code words.
And their "support for Israel" isn't incompatible with their antisemitism once you realize that:
This is because the evangelicals think Jews need to be running Israel before Jesus will return. So it's for the evangelicals, not for the Jews.
After Jesus returns, he supposedly will toss all Jews into hell. So it's delayed antisemitism.
It gives antisemites a "dual loyalty" trope to use as well as an expulsion plan. I've never been to Israel. I have no "loyalty" to Israel. I'm an American citizen and have lived in the US my entire life. However, many antisemites would love to ship me off to Israel or demote me to second class citizen simply because I'm Jewish.
Hopefully, the abortion pills remain legal and easily available. States can't regulate the mail system so they can't intercept mailed abortion pills. (Doing so would be a federal offense.)
Of course, we've not only got some right wing nut jobs as judges who would be more than willing to decide that states are completely allowed to open and inspect every piece of mail and any future Republican Congress/President could rule that abortion (including pills) are illegal nationwide.
All it takes is one red wave to remove rights nationally that are (at best) hanging on by a thread in many places.
Before the subreddits went dark, I used a tool to see which subreddits I've posted to and commented on the most. Then, I added in a few subreddits that I had newly joined and so weren't represented in the data.
I had a list of 17 subreddits. I actually subscribe to over 30, but clearly the others weren't that important to me. I've replaced at least 7 of those (including the top 2) with Lemmy. Most of the others really need no replacement as they were just time killers.
About the only subreddit that I really care about that I haven't found a good Lemmy replacement for is r/LEGO. Yes, there's a Lemmy alternative and I've subscribed to it, but there are few people there.
So if I do return to Reddit, it will likely be for 1 subreddit only. I'll unsubscribe to everything else and deal with Reddit trying to push me into other discussions while I help the Lemmy LEGO community grow.
Apparently, those subreddits are now not only open, but completely unmoderated. Reddit's solution was to remove the mods and put nobody else in charge. I'm sure that won't backfire in any way whatsoever! /s