Yea, no disagreement. I more am curious if the federated nature is what helps mitigate that risk, or if there is some other systemic distinction that has helped.

I also just don’t know what the others were like long-term - did they peeter out? Would I realize it if lemmy was in the same decline?

I’m not actually sure comments get sorted by vote tally by default here.

I’ve always just ignored downvotes - I know when my opinion is unpopular, I don’t see the votes as validating. I’d be fine if there were no visible votes at all

If i could do this without my wife noticing, I’d be golden.

Unfortunately, she took to lurking some reddit communities right as I was exiting

I wonder if anybody here has tried some of the other failed reddit alternatives like Voat for a long enough time to be able to speak on how lemmy has fared relative to them.

I tried a few during other reddit exoduses, and they all felt… bad. Lemmy is the first one I’ve managed to actually stay on comfortably without being tempted back to reddit.

My take? That a third of the american population has taken a liking to fascism.

Fascism isn’t borne out of stupidity, it’s borne out of greed and desperation. Sure, some of those people are probably as dumb as a bag of rocks (any slice of the american population is liable to have a few), but most are likely just your average-intelligence american who has taken their feelings of fear or envy and rationalized them into fascism.

People like Josef Mangele don’t become famous because they’re dumb - they become famous because they end up wielding their intelligence against humanity. If we were to assume that everyone with those beliefs is dumb, we’d misunderstand what motivates them and we’d waste our time trying to educate them out of bigotry.

The critique of the trolly problem isn’t that you don’t still make the choice, it’s that the outcome was predetermined before you even got there.

Leftists who are making a point of abstaining are doing so to point out that voters have no control over the trolly to begin with - that the choice is artificial because the outcomes were pre-selected by someone/something else to ensure a particular outcome, and that participating in that choice only ends up legitimizing that process.

Of course she is.

Calling them weird is effective because it makes them seem weak and gross to people who are compelled by him appearing dominant. Accusing him of sexual assault (while gross to everyone else) reinforces that image of male dominance that his base fuckin’ loves.

Those two messages are working against each other.

Setting aside the seriousness of SA and the repeated examples of Trump committing it -

are we working off of the 2016 playbook or something? Between this and the rumored SA video, i’m getting strong ‘grab her by the pussy’ vibes. That didn’t move any voters back then, why do we expect it to now? Hell, Tucker Carlson was just giving a speech where trump was “daddy”, and he’s “coming home to spank his children”. They’re aroused by trump manhandling women and children…

All these stories do is get his core base excited; anyone who’s disgusted by Trump’s misogyny is already not voting for him.

Go back to calling him weird, that was so much more effective.

You misunderstand, I only mean that it’s disconcerting that there may be some reason that cis-women do not find the hobby/group appealing

I know ghost has a container deployment and uses activity pub

I do wonder how many within the man/woman responses are trans, too.

Idk if that survey was mainly advertised on lemmy, but i know that at least one instance that did a survey had maybe 2% woman respondents, but more than two thirds of those were transfem.

Either way, a little disconcerting. I’m not sure what to make of that or what (if anything) to do about it

This might be a controversial take, but I don’t think racist bigotry is an intelligence thing

The study and measure of intelligence itself is a piece of the rationalization of racism.

We owe a lot of our scientific inheritance to genociders and racists and eugenicists - I wouldn’t be quick to assume the MAGA base is just a bunch of dimwitted Americans.

Maybe because that shortage lasted about a week

If you live in America, you already are.

People forget about how much it felt like labor and employment were about to be revolutionized for the better back then. It really seemed like employers were finally going to be forced to adapt to better conditions.

Now it feels like that’s all being undone. How many companies still have their remote work options? How many people are willing to leave their jobs for something better now?

I’ll admit that I was one of the privileged few who were comfortable and secure during the pandemic: i had a job that could be remote without issue and i lived in a city that took precautions seriously

But

• remote employment was a 100% improvement to being stuck in my office and in a toxic environment
• because I was remote, there was no pressure to work extra hours when my projects didn’t require it, which meant my work-life balance was much better
• the student loan moratorium helped me and my wife finally save up for a house down-payment and get ahead on our debt
• with the extra financial and work security, I finally reached a healthy weight and was the most fit i had been since college

Now, my weight is back up, my job is much less secure, my finances are strained again, and I feel like our future financial security is in question because the economy is dominated by two or three companies that may come crashing back down if AI turns out to be a bubble

This question is so subjective and incredibly personal, so i question the utility of it. But there’s no question for me about how precarious my personal situation feels now vs back in 2020. Back then, our primaries and much of the Campaign revolved around questions that had significant impacts on my life, but this cycle none of what is being discussed in the campaigns have much to do with my personal security. I don’t know if my remote job will last, I don’t know how long my house (that I bought in 2021 thanks to covid stimulus efforts) will be worth more than my mortgage, I don’t know if the items I rely on will continue inflating in cost or not, ect.

Again, I’m incredibly privileged. But democrats have switched focus to what happens if Trump wins, instead of focusing on what happens if they win. Seems like nothing significant is on the table for my family’s security, and that doesn’t comfort me at all. There’s just no hope in this election, all there seems to be is fear.

Like I said, it’s incredibly naive to think this problem goes away when Trump does.

Like how democrats splintered and fragmented when Biden stepped down?

They’ll reform and continue gaining power in lower-level positions until the next election, like they’ve been doing since 2020

I cannot emphasize how naieve it is to think this problem will go away if all we do is beat trump, or even if he dies or gets incarcerated.

The US has a growing fascism problem

It does not go away with Trump. I wish democrats would address it instead of pointing at Trump like he’s an aberration