cabbage

@ cabbage @piefed.social

Posts

22
Comments

1206
Joined

2 yr. ago

As He died to make men holyLet us die to make things cheap

11h ago

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Iran War Megathread
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cabbage @piefed.social 11h ago
Oops, obvisouly, was thinking about the Muslim world and getting terms mixed. Fixed.

11h ago

Iran War Megathread

I think the advantage is that it reads partly as a FAQ, partly as a place to read whatever commentary on the situation people seem to agree with. It's a place where people can discuss and ask questions more generally. Other threads tend to be more about specific breaking news and developments, maybe missing the bigger picture.

11h ago

Iran War Megathread

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cabbage @piefed.social 11h ago

All fascists need a good enemy, obliviate one and you have to move on to the next. The only end game to this bullshit is total apocalypse. Which of course is what the evangelical Christian supporters of Israel has been cheering for all along.

11h ago

Iran War Megathread

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cabbage @piefed.social 11h ago

Iran has been a headache for a long time. Much like in America and Israel, violent religious fundamentalists took control over society and installed a reign of terror.

This has of course been bad for the Iranians, but America of course could not care less about that. However, Iran has been a major concern for Israel, as they are an unreliable an aggressive neighbour. Again, don't let the irony get lost on you. The threat of Iran maybe managing to develop nukes has been a particularly salient issue, and perhaps one of the driving forces behind Israel getting its own nukes decades ago.

In short, Israel just cannot feel safe with the current rule in Iran. Or so the Israeli far right has insisted for decades, anyways. Keeping this fear high on the agenda has been key to winning elections and to get in place the far right genocidal lunatics currently in the Israeli government. Along with the fear of Palestinians of course.

The US is of course loyal allies of Israel as their one true friend in a region full of oil. The Saudis are of course also good friends whenever they are not actively attacking America and killing civilians or journalists, but they are not quite as good at lobbying. So American interests and Israeli interests are pretty much the same, and the Iranian regime has been the face of evil for decades. Conveniently they are also super evil, so it's easy to make propaganda.

Recently the Iranian regime has murdered a bunch of civilians who protest the regime. The US and Israel wouldn't usually care about dead civilians in the middle east - they certainly wouldn't oppose it at least - but right now it provides a convenient excuse to bomb the fuck out of Iran. Trump needs this because he needs support before the upcoming election- a successful impeachment might allow the opposition to grow teeth, and if they do he could end up locked away for life.

Netanyahu is in even deeper ship than Trump, with corruption charges at home and crimes against humanity abroad. Now that his genocide in Palestine is getting old he needs something new to keep him in power.

Iran responds to attack by sending missiles towards American military bases in the area. American military bases are located in the surrounding countries, which is why you see newspaper headlines making out as if Iran is launching a war on every country in the regioun. They're not, they're just trying to strike back against America and Israel. Just like the Americans and Israelis they suck at hitting military targets and often end up hitting civilian ones instead.

16h ago

Motorola confirms GrapheneOS support for a future phone, bringing over features

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cabbage @piefed.social 16h ago

Gaël Duval, the lead developer behind /e/OS, has been recommending an app called Zettle on his blog. It at least work on degoogled /e/OS, probably GrapheneOS as well. I have no personal experience as I prefer sticking to cards.

2d ago

Lemmy.today is absolutely beautiful

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cabbage @piefed.social 2d ago

By allowing users to choose their instance we are giving them that choice though. I chose piefed.social in part because I agree with the moderation policy, and I don't want to waste my time doing it myself. I want to have reasonable admins who filter away stuff I don't want to see before it ever gets to me. That is a choice I have as a user, just like the choice you (and users of your instance) have to do this job yourself.

The important thing is transparency, in my opinion.

2d ago

Talking positively about this person, on reddit, gets you banned.

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cabbage @piefed.social 2d ago

The official story is amazing.

Plan crime perfectly, engraved bullets and all with a perfect escape in the middle of New York
Bring murder weapon and all relevant evidence to McDonalds days later, be snitched on by employee who recognizes you from a grainy half-foto

If he wanted to be caught he wouldn't have to be snitched on by some random McDonalds employee. If he didn't want to be caught there's just no way the official story holds.

2d ago

Talking positively about this person, on reddit, gets you banned.

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cabbage @piefed.social 2d ago

At least if you make a mural of him it'll vaguely resemble someone who made things better for a little while.

3d ago

A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator - Norwegian Consumer Council

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cabbage @piefed.social 3d ago

It's an actual government agency, just that it's not under political leadership. It operates as part of the state.

3d ago

Are there any easy ways and methods for actually studying socialist theory and such?

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cabbage @piefed.social 3d ago

I just remembered this amazing book:Why Not Socialism by Gerald A. Cohen.

Super nice and easy read, fantastic introduction. It has been years and years since I read it but I highly recommend it as an introduction.

3d ago

Why do you think so many people on the Marxist left defend Stalinism?

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cabbage @piefed.social 3d ago

People want the world to be simple and make sense. The cold war was great for this, as it presented two simplistic idealistic world views in competition.

Some people saw through capitalism and understood that freedom in the west is not all that it's made up to be. Not wrong. But then they make the fallacy of concluding that the alternative they are presented with is good, which would be Soviet communism.

Of course many people understood that both alternatives are oppressive, but once you discover some "forbidden knowledge" it's easy to start going a bit insane and to disregard evidence that goes against your world view, because clearly there is a great conspiracy at work. If you make the mistake of arguing with radicalized people they always have some stupid anecdote that they believe serves as solid evidence of any crackpot theory they have. In this sense it's just like conspiracy theories, and it tends to be the same type of people: lonely men who feel the world has treated them unfairly.

Authoritarian-leaning people need to believe that there is a good authority out there who wants them well and that they can follow. For the authoritarians that lost faith in the west, Stalin provided a strong alternative and remains iconic among these bootlickers. Putin just doesn't offer an alternative in the same way.

3d ago

The question Joe Biden keeps asking: ‘You think we can actually come back from this?’

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cabbage @piefed.social 3d ago

He won his election. It's not entirely his fault the Democratic party is a part of the whole corrupt mess. He did more than most to prevent this.

I don't think there are many Americans who are in a position to sit on their high horse at the moment. The entire thing has failed, top to bottom. I think history will study it as a societal failure more than a political one.

4d ago

Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more

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cabbage @piefed.social 4d ago

This is probably a much more efficient "mention of the fediverse" than if the journalist had started trying to explain that there is this federated network of independent social media sites bla bla bla.

The people reading this are looking for something they can understand. I expect naming Mastodon and leaving it to them to check it out will convert more people than if they started trying to explain what it is.

I'm a bit weirded out by all the attention given to w-social.eu by mainstream media, though. First of all it doesn't exist yet, second we have no reason to believe it will actually be decent, third we have good reason to believe it won't be.

4d ago

Reddit decides to remove r/all

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cabbage @piefed.social 4d ago

Yeah, that makes sense. They had an experiment to see if they could increase ad revenue by removing the all-feed, and now it's concluded and it turns out that yes indeed, enshittification rolls on.

I cannot imagine staying on a service that is openly admitting running experiments on its users to make them as addicted as possible. I guess it's a boiling frog kind of deal.

4d ago

Reddit decides to remove r/all

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cabbage @piefed.social 4d ago

Haha.

Don't worry folks, it was not a basic feature since day one, it was an experiment!

5d ago

Instagram says it will notify parents if teens ‘repeatedly’ search for terms related to suicide

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cabbage @piefed.social 5d ago

The neat thing about algorithmic social media is that content relating to suicide and self-harm inspires a lot of interaction among teenagers, causing it to be shoved in their faces whether they search for it or not.

Suicidal teenagers are not searching for suicide material on Instagram; Instagram is feeding suicide material to regular teenagers for ad views.

5d ago

LibreOffice Leave X/Twitter in favor of Mastodon

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cabbage @piefed.social 5d ago

They have been on Mastodon for many years already. As for why it takes so long to leave Twitter I guess it's the same reason as everyone else - giving up on reaching the people there seems like a big loss to some.

5d ago

LibreOffice Leave X/Twitter in favor of Mastodon

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cabbage @piefed.social 5d ago

Yeah, I think it's reasonably run and invite-only now, so the ban should probably be lifted. @Skavau@piefed.social , something to consider? :)

5d ago

LibreOffice Leave X/Twitter in favor of Mastodon

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cabbage @piefed.social 5d ago

Yeah, they are looking for "early twitter", without reflecting too much on why "early twitter" that they loved turned into what it is today. I think many are forgetting that it took a turn for the worse long before Musk bought it.

6d ago

UK fines Reddit $19 million for using children’s data unlawfully

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cabbage @piefed.social 6d ago

The kids would be the ones answering as well, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I know a lot of people here come from Reddit, but I'm sure I'm not the only one here who grew up using old school phpBB forums to talk to other kids about random stuff online after school. My favorite forum was not in English and probably had fewer than 100 active members, and its by far the best experience I've had online. I didn't bother much with other public social media before Mastodon.

I think at least some of us are dreaming of recreating that type of safe and fun online space, where it's possible to create more close-knit (but nevertheless anonymous) communities. Reddit isn't it, and I agree that it's not good for children (or anyone) to be on there.

Whether the Fediverse could provide it remains an open question. It certainly comes with huge moderation challenges.