comfy

Thanks. Lots of the documentation was difficult to parse for a beginner so your explanation of those features is very helpful.

The site hasn't been designed yet, so I can use whatever database is most appropriate. I'm only familiar with SQL and MongoDB so far, but this project shouldn't be a complicated design so I'm open to alternatives.

I can definitely add a field for that, and I suppose I could use even a lightweight langauge model (or hypothetically even a static thesaurus dataset) to populate it automatically, allowing for manual overrides by a user in case it suggests something irrelevant.

Somewhat relevant are the Subvertisers for London (as well as similar groups all over the world):

Another word for “marketing” or “advertisement” is Manipulation.

Don't worry they've solved that, it's called 🩷 𝐼𝓃𝒻𝓁𝓊𝑒𝓃𝒸𝒾𝓃𝑔 😎. That's much less ominous! They just influence!

Cutest commission in the gallery

If you have a bit of time, please collect evidence of when that targeting and harassment happens. I've already seen a few accounts using low-quality /c/MoG posts to try and demonize .ml, lemmygrad and hexbear so it's useful to have a post or posts to point to showing that it's a harassment circlejerk, not the credible spectators they pretend to be.

That slop is trash on multiple levels, and looking at those votes I won't be surprised if the whole sub is too, so I won't even check.

That said, the existence of these confused groups is a reminder that hegemonic patriarchy alienates huge numbers of men as well, who are looking for answers and community. Sexism in our societies does stigmatize male and men victims of abuse, preys upon those who don't meet masculine ideals (look at "mens help" grifters and products, akin to the women beauty industry). And if we fail to create and promote places for the disillusioned victims of patriarchy to learn and find community in, they might find a home in reactionary false-solutions, like the manosphere and trad cultures (even see "trad women" who glorify their own subservience to patriarchy) which are an easy pathway to recruitment by openly-fascist organizations.

You're not an ultracapitalist, Harry.

@Civility@hexbear.net: Is singing like this civil? My friends need to know.

First things first, I do not defend nutomic's ignorant transphobia. It's unfortunate to see how legitimate complaints about capitalist exploitation of trans issues (rainbow capitalism) can be wrongfully misdirected into reactionary anti-trans victim-blaming. Their personal writings on trans issues are harmful.

And I don't think Lemmy really is defined by the politics of those instances anymore. Their politics are largely optional, especially now that many other instances have grown. These days, I see more red-scare posters than tankies, who regularly inflame off-topic instance drama whenever they see a username from one of the instances.

The cm0002 compilation linked is a list of trolling strawman claims, many are either completely made up or shamelessly misframed. I'll pick a few representative ones to talk about, obviously there's too many to give proper attention to in one reply:

The first one: [Dessalines:] “Slava Ukraini” is considered a “Fascist slogan”: Yes, this is a true claim from cm0002 and a fair position from Desallines to hold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini#Second_World_War . Openly-fascist groups like Azov Battalion maintain a strong presence in Ukrainian nationalism, so the preservation of this slogan isn't a historical oddity.
^^ We also see cm0002 list another post of a user being banned for saying "Slava Ukraini", which cm0002 knows is considered by lemmy.ml staff as being a fascist slogan, but instead knowingly misframes the ban as "Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban", which simply isn't the case. fwiw, I do believe the two devs, in the busyness, do a terrible job of explaining their perspectives in ban messages, using quick messages like "orientalism" or "Rule 1" which will just puzzle someone who doesn't understand how what they said was offensive.
[Dessalines:] “The BBC is not a credible news source”: I don't unconditionally agree with that as a general statement, but in the context of some political topics, this is a fair position. They're a state-sponsored channel, and like all countries, the British state has biases too. Here is one case of MI5 state intervention into the BBC ongoing for over 50 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Christmas_tree"_files .
"[Davel:] Response to a valid report of “NK is actually good” as propaganda/misinfo": The report is right there to read, it's not claiming "misinfo". Spreading political beliefs is not against the rules of that community or the instance, why should it be? The point of thinking about politics is to improve the world. cm0002 just assumes saying some basic positive things about countries they don't like should be banned. That is a chauvinistic belief, and them posting about it this way is propaganda in itself. Yet we can assume someone reporting their post for propaganda would get a similarly dismissive reaction.
[Cowbee:] "Propaganda is good actually”: - and then you click on the link and now it's changed to the lesser strawman - "Propaganda can be good!"... cm0002 is, again, making false statements to fabricate an extreme position out of some pretty boring factual claims, and then points to them and says "Look at all this extremism!". Just look at the comments on that post, even they're saying Cowbee is right, and that's a politically-motivated circlejerk in a circlejerk community. cm0002 is inventing and exaggerating to create drama, and in my experience, drama spreaders are much more effective at driving people away than unpopular communities.

As a side note, and I want to point out that that I'm commenting about media propaganda practices and not taking a side (I support the working class in both Ukraine and Russia, I would pop champagne if Putin and their friends were shot tonight, and the same goes for Russian mercenaries, the Azov fascists and the US vultures prolonging their proxy war at the expense of Ukrainian people), but it's always puzzled me that the phrase "illegal invasion" caught on. What the hell does a "legal invasion" look like? Laws are written by the victor, there is nothing inherently wrong with breaking law. 🏴‍☠️💿

I'll add to this that a common rationale for centrism is that significantly changing course is dangerous. However, this is obviously relative, with an implication that the status quo is not as dangerous. Lots of unnecessary everyday death and suffering is normalized, often ignored by a centrist, but any death and suffering caused in the process of fixing these problems is counted!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder

The Two Terrors - an extract from Mark Twain

There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it;
the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood;
the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years;
the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions;
but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak;
whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?
What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake?
A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over;
but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Mark Twain, 1889. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Ch. XIII.

I don't believe the words 'good' or 'bad' are useful to describe people. We can, and should, aim to be more specific.

As Cowbee pointed out already, 'centrism' is a vague concept, especially since this site isn't just people from the USA. Does it mean people who are apathetic about left-right politics? People who intentionally position themselves in the middle? People resistant to changing this terrible tragedy?

Even in my country, and my country is progressive compared to the USA, both the center-right and center-left parties (I'm using Wikipedia's evaluation here because I object to the left-right political scale) are funneling wealth up to the rich, destroying our environment, compounding housing issues, supporting an ongoing genocide and scapegoating immigrants. Seeing either of these parties as acceptable is a serious issue, and is complicity in the crises these issues create.

That doesn't mean I absolutely judge these people as 'bad', perhaps ignorant or misled but not bad, there are many sincere and caring ways through life that lead people to these harmful positions, but it's a seriously harmful political position which we, as a society, are obligated to shift. And yes, apathy is a political position too, there is no 'apolitical': the status quo is just the ideology of the ruling class.

Didn't even know there was one. Is it an exiled community, or just happens to be popular here just like everywhere else?

[This user claims to have blocked the instance I registered on, so I assume they won't read this]

Lemmy is what it is because of the beliefs and values of instances like lemmy.ml. There have been many other attempts at creating reddit alternatives, decades of them, from voat to raddle. The lead developers have clear values which guided Lemmy into being a better platform than reddit and the other reddit-like forums - free-and-open source, anti-commercial, decentralized, and counter to the pro-US media hegemony. These are not incidental, values aren't a syncretic pick-and-choose buffet! They are a result of the socialist ideologies of the admins of each of those instances, and how they have been applied to material reality.

And keep in mind that these instances aren't some outsider aberration, they were the three largest Lemmy instances until 2023, they remain large and popular, and host popular active communities frequented by users of many other instances.

And while Zedestrian perceives lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad and Hexbear as problematic (and I have my criticisms of each of them), from my perspective, many of the big liberalist instances are far more problematic, tolerating right-wing bigots, allowing obvious pro-US think-tank propaganda accounts, and banning users from advocating for action (including, where necessary, violence) against the ruling class destroying us and our planet. That's a big reason why many left, for were banned from, reddit. Should lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works therefore be removed, for being problematically close to the harmful behaviors of reddit.com that many of us are trying to escape? That's a serious reputational liability too, it can drive users away if they can't find the places they want to join.

A friend of mine has their large corporate company telling everyone they have to show up to one of their offices on at least two days each week. Now a few people just walk there at 2355, clock out at 0005, and spend the rest of the week at home.

Silly conditions -> silly behaviors

he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

If you're able to be there for the install, then great. I've had a couple of times where, due to certain hardware, it needs a different sound server or some other workaround. In an extreme case, you might need to fallback to a second choice of distro.

but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience

Is there anything specific you've heard that applies to your friend's needs? (Honest question, I haven't looked deep into it.)

If it's just small things like 'Steam and [etc] is installed already', then you can just do that easily anyway.

no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks [snip]

Keep in mind that Mint uses apt and (optionally, but IMO inevitably for a gamer/dev) Flatpaks integrated in their package manager, which has gotten much smoother but still is two different systems which can cause confusion. I don't know how Bazzite handles this.

I remember Happy Tree Friends made some YouTube Copyright School videos, but I've thought they'd have a real opportunity making public safety warnings.

RSS feeds. It's digital so probably not what you're asking for, but I would often drain time checking tabs or bookmarks for updates each day. Now I just have a specific list of updates from feeds I've subscribed to: no ads, no recommendations, no scrolling, no manual refreshing every hour. Just what you ask to see.

Website doesn't supply one? Luckily some RSS tools let you create one from most websites.

Also, relevant youtube video from Technology Connections about feeds in general.

And, on the topic of digital simplification, learn how to mute specific conversations on your chat apps. Many even have temporary muting (mute for 1 hour). You don't need constant pings distracting you from life.