Ace T'Ken

They are? Where? I mod a Community and I’ve never seen anything that isn’t explicitly for Admins that can see them.

For my community ( !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca ) I would adore this as long as it’s available to Mods of the community the downvotes are in and Admins of that instance only. It should absolutely not be visible for normal users.

We are hit with downvotes nearly every time we post a new thread on anything even remotely controversial so it would really help us filter out people who simply downvote to bury the thread and contribute nothing whatsoever to the discussion.

If you disagree, we want to know why and discuss that with you. It’s the entire point of our Community.

Heck, we actively made it a rule to not downvote unless the user is not adding to the discussion, and that it should not be used as a disagree button. People generally ignore this, however.

That or just add the moderator option to disable downvotes for Communities. It would be an incredibly handy toggle.

EDIT: For an example as to why it should be implemented, see this post you’re currently viewing where I give reasons, how it’s been impacting us, some alternatives, and people hit the “fuck you” button with zero discussion and that’s all. This is the problem.

A trash heap where it fucking belongs.

There isn’t a thing that you can put ketchup on that a good BBQ sauce or hot sauce isn’t better on. I will die on this hill.

Looks like what I’d want to use, but to reach broad support it needs a Windows client as well.

Well, it’s definitely more wrong , so there’s that.

17276667. Thanks for the memories.

I see what you mean, but energy isn’t currently free, and as we built more headroom, crypto and AI have simply eaten up that headroom. Don’t take my word for it, simply look at the statistics on how much more energy we are using than 10 years ago, and then look at corporate energy usage now on those two things. Renewables haven’t kept up because large corporations keep eating more and more. In fact, governments have had to **de-**decomission a few coal plants because the energy usage was so high. Here’s an article on one of them that is supporting a massive crypto farm.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely 100% glad that the energy is not all coming from coal plants anymore, but also it isn’t like none of it is.

And no energy is emission free. You still have to pay the environmental cost to create and maintain the equipment gathering the energy in the first place.

In short, renewables are great. Corporate overusage of energy is not, especially for incredibly selfish gain like crypto and “AI”. I’m not going to cheer for the shares at corporations to be higher simply because we have renewables offsetting a tiny bit of the massive power they suck up.

“Oh, nice!” - Companies haphazardly adding AI into everything whether you want it or not and eating up three times this energy produced for short-term shareholder gain.

Well. My child is that age and I very much relate to the protagonist. Was not expecting a gut-punch this afternoon.

The Jaunt by Steven King

One of my favorites short sci-fi stories ever.

Street protests generally carried out in front of royal palaces or civic structures where those in power worked had an impact, yes. NOT protests at a random road in town.

I am factually correct here.

I have never stated that protests aren’t effective when carried out well. I’ve stated that these road blocking protests aren’t effective because they do not target.

But come now, certainly you must recognize that that’s not even close to causation. Just because it’s done often doesn’t even come close to meaning that there’s any proof that it functions as you state.

If I carry a “rock of tiger repellent” and tell you that I’ve never been attacked by a tiger, therefore it must work, it’s the same logic.

Countries that do not (or rarely) have highway blockades have more civil rights or had them earlier than the US did. They also have stronger protections and aren’t helping bomb Gaza. Using the logic stated by you, that may actually mean that highway protests make things worse.

Again, just because it agrees with you politically, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. There’s no study or data indicating that it functions, and scads of loose polls and information saying it doesn’t (which are only slightly better than no evidence at all). I’d encourage an actual study, but judging by every thread I’ve ever seen on the issue, the only people claiming to be even minutely swayed by these demonstrations were people already on the side of the protesters.

In this one instance they might do that. In the area where I live where it was done, there was no space for the emergency vehicles to go in the other direction. Just because there are ways they could do it in this one case doesn’t make it universal.

Also, are you able to provide the polling you referenced showing that highway blockades change minds? I was unable to find anything other than web and call-in polls, both of which overwhelmingly showed the exact opposite (but those are hardly scientific so I wouldn’t trust them).

Also, I’m not the one downvoting you. I do not do that.

… which just means you have to get creative.

Freeway blocking is not creative, doesn’t get people present on your side (quite literally the opposite), presents safety risks, may delay emergency vehicles, wastes natural resources, and doesn’t change minds of readers. Same with the stupid “throw soup / oil at a piece of art” shit I saw repeatedly. A throw-away headline seems to be the goal, but it accomplishes next to nothing.

Target. Those. In. Power. Make life fucking hard for them.

This thread (not you explicitly) reeks of this attitude I see frequently on Lemmy of “It’s a deeply stupid and astoundingly flawed thing to do, but I’ll defend it to the death because it agrees with my politics!”

I had to go look them up, but it seems that some have protested manufacturing plants, though not in a terribly effective way. The protests seem to be short-term, and none of the other things I mentioned have been done anywhere I was able to find.

I’ve seen plenty of stories involving protests uselessly blocking main thoroughfares however.

But there definitely are though. Why wouldn’t you, say, protest the factories where these things are made? Not just hold up some signs outside, but blockade those businesses in.

Maybe find out who their major shareholders are and publicly shame them. Dig up dirt on them. Do anything you can to stop them.

Maybe find the neighbourhoods that those shareholders live in and blockade those.

Protest at the schools that their children go to letting them know their parents are murdering people overseas.

It took me like 3 minutes to think of those and those are far more effective than what is going on in this news story. Are protesters in America really that short-sighted but they can’t think of anything better than annoying other normal people and making enemies?

This is like protesting the food in a prison cafeteria by beating the shit out of your cellmate, and then calling him complicit because he ate food yesterday.

They’re not targeting the right people, they’re simply turning normal people off of their message.

But they are scientifically accurate beliefs. They are true.

Emotionally, plant communication is awesome. Simultaneously factory farming also sucks.

Getting mad at a poster because you draw an uncharitable conclusion from the beginning of a post chain is extreme.

What I’ve stated is not baseless. There are many sources and studies claiming how plants communicate via root systems, pheromones, and other mechanisms (some we’re discovering continually). As someone who worked in forestry (and lived on a non-corporate farm that produced mostly alfalfa), it’s somewhat more apparent once you’re there and present in that world.

To quote myself on another thread:

I trust you know how to use search, but some brief citations: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientists-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm

You can find many more if you look. We’ve known for quite a while that trees do this, and fungi are absolutely notorious for this. Speak to a botanist (or read the articles above) and they’ll tell you that plants respond to warnings from their peers about dangers, brace for pain, and signal pain to others. To be clear they don’t seem to feel pain (but keep in mind that they said this for years about crustaceans as well, but it was simply because we didn’t know how they functioned well enough) - not understanding the pain does not mean there is no pain.

Life for some organisms means death for others. Period. You can not avoid it on a micro or macro scale, all you can do is change WHAT you kill.

Plants are cool as hell though I suppose that understanding the above means that it can fuck with the worldview of vegetarians, and nobody likes that. If you disagree, please be respectful and let me know what your reasoning is.

Most likely they’ll continue to heavily downvote me when I describe the complex communication systems plants and fungi have.

No matter the outcome of this, nobody is learning that lesson from this demonstration.

If you want to take a (more obvious) environmental bent, this is a terrible idea for them to do because all they’re doing is causing vehicles to have to run substantially longer.