"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" - Ursula K. Le Guin

Have you considered moving?

FYI - 42 downvotes and 320 upvotes so far = 278 (87% ratio of upvotes/downvotes)

Good question... US still unprepared for Russian election interference, Robert Mueller says. I'm not a policy wonk, but it's clear to me that while media literacy and awareness campaigns have some level of utility, they are not sufficient to move the dial for the general public. Especially in the US, the people repeating Russian disinformation talking points are in fact often aware of this, but because those talking points are an effective way of attacking their domestic opponents, they just don't seem to care whether what they are saying is true or not.

If you know of anything similar in other countries, please let me know and I'll add it to my list of sources.

That's a pretty good summation, imo. Democrats really don't want to hear anything about the ethics of sending US arms to Israel while it conducts a genocide right now. Their mentality is something like, "let's get Kamala elected, and don't point to any negatives until afterwards". But the fact is, once Harris is elected (if she wins), she will have very little incentive to change her policy on this issue. This small pre-election window is really the only opportunity available for leftists to campaign for her to change her stance. The activists still "harping on" about this issue recognize that and are doing their best to put pressure on her campaign. Arguably, they are running an ethically principled campaign, assuming their motives are good (i.e., stop the genocide). I get the whole "lesser of two evils" concept and have some sympathy for it, but I also understand why this single important issue is a complete dealbreaker for many leftists.

Having said all that, your disclaimer note about Linkerbaan's checks out. They are problematic because they do repeat a lot of Russian disinfo talking points, and in classic tankie fashion don't seem to have any issues with Russia's invasion of Ukraine while at the same time condemning US support of Israel's genocide. Personally, I feel that a principled person should be against genocide and war crimes no matter who is conducting them, otherwise they are just a partisan propagandist. But it seems most MLs on lemmy just can't bring themselves to level any sort of criticism against Russia, China, North Korea or Iran (to name a few), even when it is entirely justified, because of their "critical support" groupthink towards any anti-US/anti-Western state.

If any poster seems to be totally ignoring or justifying genocide and war crimes committed by AES countries, but campaigning relentlessly against "US funded genocide" then personally I think it's justified to ban them as they are clearly engaging in partisan propaganda. While it's hard to know 100% for sure what linkerbaan's true motivations are, I'd agree there are a number of red flags in their post history.

Ah sorry man, I didn't check it out too thoroughly.

TheEmpire has open signups right now.

Lol no, never seen one.

It should say "eat less kitten" if they were talking about an amount of kitten meat though :p

If they changed the title to read "Trump tried to roll back ACA’s LGBTQ+ protections" then it would be 100% true, for sure.

Donald Trump’s administration initiated a sustained, years-long effort to erase protections for LGBTQ people. This included an effort to “define ‘transgender’ out of existence,” erode protections for transgender students and workers, and weaken access to gender-affirming health care that most transgender people already struggled to access.

While President Joe Biden’s administration reversed much of the Trump-era abuses, just last month on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to dismantle a new Biden administration policy that will offer protections for transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. [...]

Trump on LGBTQ Rights

The Facts: Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will rescind federal policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will assert that federal civil rights laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In addition to rolling back existing protections, a second Trump administration will proactively mandate discrimination by the federal government wherever it can. Lastly, and perhaps most ominously, if Trump returns to the White House, we expect his administration to use federal law – including laws meant to safeguard civil rights – as a cudgel to override critical state-level protections for transgender students and to force state and local governments, as well as private organizations, to allow or even perpetuate discrimination

Why It Matters: A second Trump administration would strip LGBTQ people of protections against discrimination in many contexts, including employment, housing, education, health care, and a range of federal government programs. The Trump administration’s proposed policies would ban transgender people from serving openly in the armed forces and block gender-affirming medical care for transgender people enrolled in federal healthcare programs, such as Medicare. The effects of these cruel – and unconstitutional – discrimination efforts would be devastating, as thousands of transgender people would immediately lose access to needed medical care and the right to live freely without fear. In essence, a potential second Trump administration would seek to erase transgender people from public life entirely by using federal laws – including obscenity laws – to criminalize gender nonconformity.

- Source: https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/trump-on-lgbtq-rights-rolling-back-protections-and-criminalizing-gender-nonconformity

I think that accurately sums up the Trump administration's stance on LGBTQ issues. But if that was a rhetorical question, then go ahead and answer it yourself.

A bit of self-promotion here, but check out !fediverse_vs_disinfo@lemmy.dbzer0.com if you want to stay up to date on recent disinformation campaigns. It's obviously not going to solve the problem, but it's one more tool to help identify and fight the disinfo peddlers.

You can optionally create and maintain your own list on our hosted wiki. Any dbzer0 user can access the wiki to create/edit pages.

If Putin can point to a few actual Nazis in a given country, he has a ready-made pretext to invade or take other hostile actions against that country. And Russians will lap it up, because "fighting nazis is good, mkay". It's analogous to the US warmongering pretext of "fighting terrorism". Putin only needs to show proof of an occasional Nazi (because every country has at least a few, even Russia) and then make the claim that he is fighting Nazism. Turns out, this strategy very useful for propaganda purposes. What could possibly be wrong with fighting Nazis/terrorism, right?

Wait until you hear about the semi-autonomous killer drone swarms, designed to prevent signal jamming (by not needing an operator).

Thanks brother, good luck in your activism.

Isn't it (at least notionally) communists who are currently busy conscripting immigrants and waging an illegal invasion and attempted genocide of Ukraine, while the US helps Israel to carry out genocide in Gaza? But I guess imperialism is ok when it's a communist state doing it?

I have zero problem with criticizing the US where I think it's deserved. I'm not American, and I don't live there. It's the double standards I don't like and MLs hiding behind "critical support" to ONLY criticize the US, or more broadly, the West. Complaining about the US supporting right wing states like Israel, while MLs give Russia a free pass for cozying up to Iran and North Korea in order to wage an imperialist war to re-vassalize Ukraine just seem like political partisanship to me. They all suck. None of them deserve a free pass, and we shouldn't buy Putin's pretexts for starting and continuing that war any more than we should accept Israel's pretexts for continuing their genocide. If all someone does is criticize the West while giving a free pass to everyone who hates the West, then they are simply propagandists as far as I'm concerned (and vice versa). Not accusing you of that specifically, but I see it all the time on some instances.

As an anarchist living in a liberal democracy, my observation is that replacing a Capitalist authoritarian State with a Communist authoritarian State in the vein of Russia or China is simply not something that I (or really any significant demographic living in the West) wants. You're never going to get a communist revolution in the US - it's nothing but a fantasy. All the failed Communist experiments around the world have destroyed its appeal as a viable alternative. Of course we could argue about why they failed, but that's really beside the point here.

Having said that, I have no doubt that Socialism is a better and more equitable economic model than Capitalism. And I think you are right, we probably do want the same end state, we are just arguing over the means to that end, and perhaps over some of the implementation details. But the question of how to get from the current state to some future anarcho-socialist state is unresolved, as you are no doubt well aware. I don't think anyone has written a convincing account of that might credibly happen in an advanced economy like the US, especially when the population is so brainwashed the working class routinely votes against their own interests.

My personal view is that the US would be well served by the creation of a third major political party that is unapologetically Socialist. I know Bernie was/is imperfect, but if he had started his own party instead of aligning with the Democrats, US politics might look very different right now. He was actually grass-roots popular, and some form of Democratic Socialism is likely the only type of Socialism that is likely to get over the line in the US as a first step back to the left. IMO it's going to be impossible to move the Democrats to the left, so we need to start over, before they assimilate and neutralize all the truly progressive candidates.

You just came to slag her off then? Fair enough, I guess. I'm not sure Putin or Xi have any better border policies to aspire to, though if Kamala opened the border up, presumably you'd be ok with her sticking all the migrants into forced labor / re-education camps for "coercive ethnic assimilation" of the Mexicans like Xi recently enshrined in legislation?

I don't think there's currently a way to automatically sync watch history across devices, but I'd love to be wrong about that tbh, because it would be handy.

I think that's simple - because she's not as progressive as you or I would like her to be on that issue. You know the Democrats - they're always inching to the right on border security for those sweet "centrist" votes, instead of moving to the left.

For me it's not just about ads, it's also about surveillance. With FreeTube you can have subscriptions without needing a linked YouTube account, and all the subscription/watch history data is stored locally. So, it's a good opt-out of Google/YouTube surveillance. And you can import/export subscriptions if you need to transfer to another device. I happen to use FreeTube for this because it is frequently updated and I like the setup, but other options exist - I'm not really promoting this option over other options, just raising some awareness about it.

Thanks for the reminder: Donate link

MLs have been predicting the "inevitable" collapse of capitalism for a century now. When can we expect some progress? :p

You can’t get change just by getting people to agree with you, otherwise America would have Ranked Choice Voting, Medicare for All, free public College education, and legalized weed and abortion nationwide.

I think this is great point. In spite of majority public support for issues like these, it's seemingly impossible to get either party to take action. That's not how healthy democracies are supposed to work. I'd probably agree that public support is a pre-requisite for change, but it's not always sufficient. If the public want something and the government don't agree (say, over suspending arms shipments to Israel), what can the public actually do about it? Really nothing, other than disruptive protests or taking direct action to physically stop the shipments. And then it's obvious what would happen to the protestors.

If the Republicans ever get to weigh in on what is "obscene" and therefore can't be mailed (according to this 150 yo law), then say goodbye to ordering sex toys, lingerie, books with LGBTQ+ content, etc, in addition to abortion pills.

IMO it's a good idea to use a VPN when accessing any pirated content, as a general rule. While there are exceptions (e.g. usenet, specific countries with piracy-friendly laws/enforcement) and it's arguably unlikely end-users of pirated streams would be prosecuted, why take the risk? It's cheap insurance and there are few downsides. In some countries ISPs will act on reported piracy at your IP address and you could have your internet cut off or suspended, and/or be fined. So, better safe than sorry.

I'm not sure what you mean. The CNN interview happened on Thursday. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/27/politics/kamala-harris-cnn-interview/index.html

PSA: make sure you use a VPN and a good adblocker like ublock origin before visiting any of the listed links. We have not verified whether these are legitimate fmovie mirrors or scammy clone sites.

I just came across a comment from a Hexbear user criticizing Walz's record on calling in the National Guard during the BLM protests as state-sanctioned violence against Black people. And I kind of agree with their point tbh.

But, if opposing state-sanctioned violence is a firm principle of ML political ideology, like it is for Anarchism, then how come nearly ever tankie I've ever talked to seems perfectly ok with state-sanctioned violence when it's being carried out by Maduro, Putin, Xi, or any number of authoritarian leftists? They only ever seem to have objections when the West employs state-sanctioned violence, funnily enough.

Yeah, I'm with you on this one, from an anarchist perspective.

But how far do your principles extend? Are you against state sanctioned violence in general, such as Putin's invasion of Ukraine? If so, great :)

Yeah totally agree, it's more of a shitty excuse politicians use. The reality is that it will impact the profits of the oil, gas and coal industries, but the economy as a whole will be much better in the long run once we are less dependent on fossil fuels. It's such a short sighted outlook.

Lol true.

That Harris used her nomination acceptance speech "with more than 26 million watching from home, to issue a forceful call for Palestinian human rights was actually remarkable," said Rolling Stone. It could be argued that "taking up the call for Palestinian freedom and self-determination is a bigger coup than a brief speaking slot of the kind the Uncommitted delegates were seeking." While the Uncommitted movement was unable to secure a speaker, group leaders "cast their work at the convention as a success," The Guardian said. Uncommitted's impact was still undeniable, as "numerous delegates, including older Black and white delegates from as far-flung as Texas, were spotted wearing keffiyehs in clear support of the pro-Palestinian movement," The Independent said.

Although much of Harris' rhetoric "continue[s] to be empty," Uncommitted Washington State DNC delegate Yaz Kader said at Rolling Stone, "The positive thing is when she did talk about Gaza, the roar from the delegates in support was palpable." Nevertheless, Kader said, until Harris "can make that change" from words to action, "I'm still uncommitted."

IMO Kader is 100% right to doubt whether Harris' words of support for "Palestinian freedom and self-determination" will translate into any meaningful policy changes. I hope they keep up the pressure on this.

It's great to get a take on this directly from a Minnesota publication.

This is an imperialist war by Russia to (re)vassalize their neighbor. Don't be supporting the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, or promoting defeatism here. Just because US = bad doesn't mean Russia = good.

Looks like he's putting together his own version of the Legion of Doom.

I think people are concluding you are right wing because your post history is full of pro-Trump apologia. You are walking a fine line on this topic. Nobody wants right wingers on Lemmy, so if you are coming across as a Trump supporter, or at the very least a Trump apologist, then people, including me, are obviously gonna be suspicious of your claimed political position.

And for the record, you have no right to say whatever you want on Reddit, or on this instance. dbzer0 is not a "free speech" instance, it's an Anarchist instance. If you don't understand the difference, then see this post for some light reading. FYI, you are expected to follow both the community and/or instance rules wherever you are posting. If you want to run your own instance and set your own rules, then go for it. Until that time, try to focus on something more productive than making excuses for Trump and being a "both-sides" bro.

That is strange then, I haven't noticed any issues lately, except for the occasional slowdown. Db0 did upgrade the image storage fairly recently and that made a big improvement to responsiveness, but I think that was a couple of weeks ago, so probably not related.

What app/UI are you using? There was a problem with one of the front ends (mlmym).

FYI, I'm by no means an "AI" enthusiast - just thought it would be an interesting discussion to float out the pros and cons. And I appreciate all your thought provoking comments!

Oh damn. Autocomplete + tiredness for the win I guess :p