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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Or trying to look like they are trying. “Trying” kind of implies at least a tiny sliver of a chance of actually succeeding, which this, at the current political moment, absolutely does not have. Believe me, I’m all for them trying stuff, but this might as well be proposing eliminating the electoral collage, electing Senators based on population, or passing the ERA. I’m all for all of those things, but they are a total pipedream from our current position. I just really really don’t think there is an appreciable number of voters out there who think that now is the time for democrats to be showing off their impossible Christmas wish list because “people will complain if we don’t”. What people are complaining about is Dems puttering around having meetings and proposing non-starter solutions rather than owning the fact that they got stomped this time and should now switch to organizing the type of ground-level resistance that worked such wonders for the republicans the last 10 years.


  • True. I really wish they would focus on things they can actually do as the minority. Like, this is performative, but I’m not even sure for who it’s supposed to be performative. Do dems honestly think there’s even a single voter out there with the attitude of “well I wasn’t going to vote next year, but after seeing dems moonshot yet another dead-on-arrival amendment about a 15-year old court ruling I’m on board!”

    Look at what republicans were able to accomplish on the level of school boards, counties, churches, state houses, election commissions, etc while they were out of power and steal their playbook for goodness sake 😒


  • Yeah, that was my first thought when I read this too. There were plenty of people for whom the internet in general, or later social media, was too complex for them to bother with. I think each generation of technology leaves behind a certain % of people who are past the point of being willing or able to learn how to use something new, and that isn’t really a bad thing.

    Yes, you have to have some notion of what “federated” means and how it works to make full use of federated sites. But it’s just asking people to learn a little bit about a couple new terms, and spending a few minutes outside of their comfort zone while they orient to a new environment, just like when the internet itself or social media started. And I think we obviate the entire point of building something new by trying to make it completely familiar and friction-less for people. If that was the best way to build community, then the internet would just be the phone book and social media would just be the personals section of a newspaper.


  • Yeah, I wish the legal system didn’t have this deference to “the voters will decide” when it reaches the level of actual criminal activity. Like the fact that you are running for or currently hold some office should have no impact at all on whether we are all equal before the law or how the law treats us. Yet every court and law enforcement agency seems terrified of the appearance of influencing the outcome of an election to the point that as long as you are running for something you are essentially legally bulletproof if the election is coming up soon.







  • That's all well and good, I agree with virtually all you said. It's certainly the admins' right to block or de-federate any community they want, based on risk or just because they feel like it, I have no issue with that. It's simply my personal belief that discussion of crime is not a crime. Direct links to illegal content should not be allowed, but discussion about piracy in general should carry no more risk that learning about murder in a criminology class, which does not need to be banned just because it's teaching people things they could in theory use to get away with murder.


  • I think we're close to saying the same thing, I'm in total agreement that linking to illegal content should be banned, it's the uneven enforcement of that principle across communities that I think is an issue. I know .world isn't hosted in the US, so you don't enjoy broad 1st Amendment protections for free speech, but does anyone really think that discussing crime is itself a crime? If I say "here's a scenario for how a group of people could rob a bank" what crime is that? If I say "hey I think there's people dealing drugs on this street corner" what crime is that? And I can of course appreciate a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability, that's their free choice, they own the server. I'm talking about, on principle, what's wrong with allowing a community to exist so long as that community does not post or link to illegal content? That principle seems to work just fine for virtually every other topic but when it comes to discussion of filesharing, torrents, and the like, then suddenly the "don't link to illegal content" principle isn't good enough and it becomes "we must ban this entire concept for our own safety." That's the admins' right and I have no issue if they want to do that, I just want to point out the glaring double standard between moderating communities so they don't break the rules and banning communities so they don't break the rules.


  • Linking to or posting content that's illegal or in violation of copyright should not be allowed, but you don't have to ban an entire community to do that, you just have to enforce the same rules that are in place for every other community on here. Maybe someone can explain this to me, but this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity. Ditto for cryptocurrency, ditto for secure operating systems, ditto for drugs, guns, and any number of other things where community discussion is allowed but illegal activity is not. I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.


  • Sounds like this "study" (aka a self-reported, retrospective, epidemiological survey - which is a type of statistics that I think just confuses the public to call a study but whatever) needs a lot more work to say anything with certainty. The kicker in the article is this I think:

    "…the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake." Yikes. That, and it sounds like they didn't control for any of the possible confounding variables such as nutrient intake, demographics, weight, stress, or basically any other risk factors or possible explanations. Its entirely possible that once they actually control for this stuff, the correlation could shrink to almost nothing or even reverse when we see that people who tried this diet were just baseline higher risk than who didn't.


  • It's just sugar with a teensy bit of the natural brown color from unrefined molasses left in it. I don't find your observation that it takes 5 or 10 times as much of it to sweeten something to be true for me whatsoever, it's almost exactly the same, and leaves me wondering if perhaps you also find that today's low-flow toilets need to be flushed dozens of times to work, or that you turn on modern showers and just a tiny trickle comes out :)