The problem with that is that the average citizen cannot possibly keep up with and stay informed on all issues that the government makes decisions on, and for the most part they don’t want to have to either.
That is why representative systems were created in the first place, so the average person would not have to bother with politics and instead would vote for someone they trust to represent their interests for a while.
Fair, but those were volunteers. Obviously he is referring to Americans deployed by the government in some form, nobody died in the line of duty so to say.
So you replied to the first sentence and ignored the paragraphs in which I describe why supporting either is misguided to malicious.
I understand the arguments that are constantly being spewed about the evil western imperialists, and they are of course true for the most part. Only that this doesn’t in turn validate or justify the human rights violations, atrocities or even genocides committed by either Russia or China; they cannot be guides or aides on the path to the desired egalitarian utopia.
If either of them had their way, would that do us in the west any good? The answer is no.
China desires a global hegemony under their sino-centric ideology, and to extend its control structures outside its own national borders. They employ the same imperialist strategies and methods to acquire influence and resource access in emerging countries as the west has or is doing. Russia currently displays its own imperial ambitions by its war of aggression on Ukraine. At least they don’t even bother with any greater good pretense, and are straight up about it.
The only real option is to consolidate the west in ethical and ideological opposition to these totalitarian parodies of their former goals, to create a new economic system that works for the people and not the reverse, without sacrificing our freedoms and individuality in the process.
One that truly represents what socialism is about.
Tankies are so fucking weird to me, and I would consider myself a progressive socialist as well.
How can they so unapologetically support Russia and China, when both nations are objectively not socialist in any sense of the word.
China does state capitalism, just because they have a one party state installed by the communist party doesn’t automatically mean they still are. All that is left is intense authoritarianism, with dystopian ambitions on global hegemony.
Russia is a failed state in the grasp of a kleptocratic oligarchy, with an extreme degree of corruption and disturbing moral decay in all levels of society. The only thing communist about it today is the old soviet ordnance they make their conscripts die in at the ukranian front.
Modern China and Russia are antithetical to actual leftist ideals, and any tankie supporting them just screams misinformed idiot or foreign propaganda shill and should be dismissed by default.
I don’t know much about it myself, but I would guess it is negligible. Maybe for small propeller machines with a fairly limited amount of fuel capacity; but larger planes, especially commercial ones, have reserve fuel for quite some time.
Situations where landing at the destination is temporarily unavailable, air traffic requires the plane to circle for some time, or they are even rerouted to a different airport can always occur and are accounted for. A minor increase from rainfall shouldn’t make a dent. I would think.
Normal games just use any actual name they like and put a disclaimer that any similarities to existing people are unintentional
I just yesterday saw a post how disabling downvotes for an instance that still acts as part of the greater fediverse causes issues and unfair advantages with posts being created there that can achieve a high score very easily, even on accident.
I would expect Lemmy to rework that function to avoid these issues so that up- and downvotes are either mandatory or can only be disabled together. I would not recommend trying to find an instance based on if they practice this most likely not here to stay functionality.
Holy shit those names are fantastic.
Dwigt Rortugal must be my favorite. Mike Truk
I think there is also the molars and general jaw shape to consider. Carnivores are not just identified by their fangs, they have generally a different structure and layout of their jaws that is made to lock into a prey animal or tear out pieces of flesh.
In contrast, many herbivores have teeth laid out to grind down plant matter (think cows or goats) and their mouths are laid out to chew off vegetation with very articulated lips to assist. Even if these camels have pointy fangs, the rest of their mouth would indicate they eat primarily plants.
While I agree that certain state sponsored actors and private interest groups are most definitely involved in discourse manipulation on reddit, Lemmy simply isn’t big enough for this yet.
If we go by the numbers stated in the original post, the whole of Lemmy has less than 500k users at this point, whom are overwhelmingly <40 years old tech affine early adopter nerds from the United States and Western Europe.
Too insignificant to spend resources on, and also largely sceptical of corporate interests and authoritarian governments (except the tankies of course); so by default critical of the two top potential manipulators.
There isn’t a product in the world, even my most used and beloved, that makes me care enough to bother looking up beliefs of involved executives.
That’s not how capitalism works. You already bought the product, they have your money. You even spent enough time on the game to have an opinion on it, so it’s a win for their engagement metrics as well.
Why invest in fixing a product you have already been paid for if there is no legal obligation to do so, and you can alternatively make another product and get paid again? Star Wars games always sell enough to make them net profits.
… he thought to himself, then proceeded to post it on social media
Thank you for enlightening me to my inner workings! It is always a revelation to have an internet armchair psychologist give you a diagnosis.
For that matter, I am german myself and thus have a “passing” familiarity with the legal situation surrounding nazism. I am specifically referring to Christianity in the west, with an exception to America due to their own regression in that regard. You are of course right that certain re emerging right wing parties are sometimes tied to conservative Christianity like in Poland, but that doesn’t somehow negate the danger of allowing a new and radically violent religion to take hold and carve out space in a free society.
Also, your paradox of tolerance is not actually a paradox, people just like to parrot that to not be made to change something.
Tolerance is a social contract that says I accept you to live and be free as you are or want to be in this society, as long as you treat me with the same respect. Islam does not subscribe to this notion, there is no room for acceptance of LGBTQ people, the equal rights and opportunities of women, not even for non-Muslim beliefs (infidels) or atheists (apostates).
Which in turn means Islam is not covered by the social contract of tolerance.
Why is being disrespectful towards religions even an issue? I do not respect them and have in fact strong contempt for religions. I consider islam a new cancer growing, after we finally managed to largely push Christianity out of policy making and into the realm of personal choice in the west.
There cannot be topics forbidden to be made fun of in a free society. If we cannot make fun of Muslims and Islam in any way without causing religious riots and violence then current form Islam has no place in a free society. The difference between Islam and the other monotheistic abrahamic religions is that the older two of the three have had enough time to go through cycles of reformation and ideological modernization, making them somewhat compatible with a modern pluralist society. Islam still insists a bunch of fables from when the book was written are literally true and valid today, and not just apocryphal advice on how to be a decent person.
And before someone brings up the inevitable American evangelicals as comparison, they are equally incompatible. Luckily that scourge is largely confined to the United States and not my problem.
I hate the idea that we have different kinds of prisons for different classes of people. In my opinion any kind of tax fraud or financial cheating on the public is a worse crime than most of the ones we currently punish with years of regular prison, except those causing physical / psychological harm to others.
As i argued in another comment, there are many useful bots for certain niche communities that I really think have a place here, even though I am generally wary of AI accounts infesting the fediverse as well.
Good examples for good and very useful, yet not mod work related bots are on TCG/CCG subs like magic the gathering and hearthstone to provide context to card names, or convert deck codes into a nicely formatted table of the used cards. Or on the Lego sub, returning any set number as a link to the proper bricklink entry. This kind of bot should be allowed and even encouraged to be used where appropriate.
Then there are the plenty of irrelevant and annoying bots we really can do without, like the alphabetical order bot, haiku bot, the dozens of bots quoting LOTR or Star Wars characters, and so on. Like most reddit jokes they stopped being funny fairly quickly and now add nothing to the conversation, but are being kept around for karma.
And then there are the more insidious bots that are about to become widespread, being harder to detect the more their refinement advances. It is going to be a constant arms race between bot detection and bot deception skills.
That’s simply unrealistic to implement right away though. The best realistic system I could see would be the Swiss system except online.
There the citizens vote on all major decisions, requiring politicians to either take on issues of importance to the people or to make their policies palatable to the general population if they hope for it to pass.
This seems like a reasonable middle ground to ensure that citizens stay informed and engaged - at least on big issues - and that their leaders are generally required to consider the wishes of the people.
I could see monthly or bimonthly digital voting on a handful of current issues work out well, provided they are presented in a digestible format to the average citizen.
If people have to do hours of research to even understand what the question is they will very likely just vote whatever or ask their friends what they voted. Worst case even sell their votes on issues they don’t care about.