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Cake day: Jan 28, 2022

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Yeah, a good bit of the article is dedicated to pointing out that there are a whole swathe of public “intellectuals” who describe themselves as Liberals but are shallow and regressive in their actual ideas.


Did you read the article? I think it does a pretty good job of explaining what the author means by that phrase. The author articulates her concept of a “far center” (as opposed to far right and far left), which she describes as people who take liberal values to reactionary extremes, valuing civility over justice, etc.

The far center is for free speech and bourgeois institutions; it is against cancel culture, student protests, and radicalism of any kind. Yet it rejects the idea of a shared ideology or politics. Instead, its members see themselves as independently sane individuals — concerned citizens who wish only to defend civil society from the unbearable encroachments of politics. So the far center is liberal, in that its highest value is freedom; but it is also reactionary, in that its vision of freedom lacks any corresponding vision of justice.



I hope I’m not jinxing myself, but I don’t ever mess with my Ublock Origin settings and I’ve never once had it break or gotten the threatening messages about adblockers on YT. I’m not sure why, but I’m not going to change anything while I’ve got a good thing going.


Hi. You’ve gotten some very good responses from the community so I’m going to leave the thread up for now, but please be aware that pushing more will likely result in removal or a temp ban. Thanks.


@thelucky8@beehaw.org, when you’re posting obvious satire as genuine news, you might need to take a step back and do some self evaluation. You’ve been posting a lot of articles with a pretty clear point of view, and if you’re not concerned about veracity or quality then you might want to slow down and think a bit more, no?



I actually also think it’s probably both, to a degree, that’s just not what the author of the article is arguing. I think there’s probably a certain amount of persuasion that is pulling people deeper into a belief system that they might only be partially invested in at first, and then they are sucked into ecosystems that reinforce those beliefs and pull them further in. I don’t have anything but vibes and lots of half-remembered reading about online radicalization, though.


You’re right, but I think they are using the term “brainwashing” in a colloquial sense. There’s a perception that misinformation on the internet is persuading people into more extreme views, but what the author of this article is arguing is that what is happening more is that online misinformation is allowing people to easily justify beliefs that they have already formed, and quickly and easily get rid of cognitive dissonance associated with encountering information that contradicts their beliefs. This is something that people have always done, but it’s become so easy on the modern internet that more and more people are embracing fringe worldviews who might previously have been unable to cognitively support those views.

It’s a small difference in the way we think about misinformation online, but I think it’s important that we understand what is likely happening. It’s not so much that misinformation is changing people’s beliefs, but that it’s allowing people to hang onto beliefs that contradict reality more easily.



So I’m not an expert in nuclear weaponry. However, more modern warheads don’t somehow magically vaporize everything within a certain radius and then not cause effects outside that radius - that’s not how things work. They may have a larger fireball, which is the area within which things (and people) are going to be vaporized, but they still have very large areas where people will receive burns decreasing in severity depending on distance, and (if the warhead is detonated at ground level) radiation doses that will kill within 5 days to 1 month. Check out Nukemap to see those areas in different scenarios. Here’s one that I did for a ground burst of a 800 kt Topol warhead. You can see that the areas for radiation are larger than the fireball itself, and the areas for 2nd and 3rd degree burns are quite large. Setting one of these off anywhere populated would cause an immense amount of human suffering even if the folks in the ~220m fireball never saw it coming.


I dunno, I’ve read some downright horrific accounts from Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Sure, if you’re right at the hypocenter you’re immediately dead, but lots of folks didn’t die right away, but were horribly burned or got lethal doses of radiation and died slowly and horribly.


Go touch grass.

There’s no need for this, seriously. I get that it’s a gaming community but we’re trying to be better than the usual toxic mess, right?


I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not intending to make this assertion, but as a warning: transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny are not nice, and are not tolerated on Beehaw.


I’ve wondered before if my perception of headlights being so much brighter was them really getting brighter, cars getting taller, my eyes getting older, or a combination of all those (and other) factors. It seems like there might be a few things going on, but it does definitely look like lights are getting a lot brighter, and I’m obviously not the only one to be frustrated by it…


It was very early on, the first week or so after it released. I’m sure they’ve fixed a lot of the bugs but honestly I just haven’t really been motivated to try it out again.


I tried to play London and it crashed constantly. Now, that’s not all that different an experience from playing any Bethesda game, but it did kind of kill any interest I had in the mod.


For what it’s worth, I appreciate this. I’m not in the right headspace for the usual circular firing squad right now.


Hey @UngodlyAudrey@beehaw.org, I know we don’t really know each other and I’m just a random dude on the internet but I’m shattered for you and other folks like you that are rightly scared by this outcome. I’m raising kids in this nightmare and I’m terrified of what they’re going to face growing up. I don’t know what to do either. I know this is all empty words but it’s what I’ve got right now.


Yeah Firefox on Android is extremely so for me at times. I’ve never noticed it specifically being on the first page load after a while, but I haven’t been paying that much attention. I use firefox on mobile so that I can install ublock, because when I’ve tried to use a DNS-based solution in the pass I ran into all kinds of issues with battery drain, but the experience does leave a little to be desired at times.


I saw this headline and expected something very different than what I got, and I’m really glad. I think the last decade has made me really cynical about technology and the internet, for some good reasons, to the point where a story like this is almost surprising. I found myself a little caught off guard by how emotional I got while reading it. Thank you for posting this.


This post isn’t really on-topic for c/technology. Please post it in c/Politics instead.


Just jumping in here to remind folks to Be Nice. We’ve had to clean up some comments in here already and if issues continue the thread will be locked.


This source was founded and is fully funded by the Heritage Foundation, and this article comes from the staff of the far-right Daily Caller. This is not a reliable source and anything coming from them should be taken with an entire salt mine.


I suspect their argument would be that they are more like a flea market. If you buy something fake or faulty at a flea market then the flea market probably isn’t liable, the seller is. Now, I don’t think this argument holds water, especially in light of Amazon’s practice of combining all of the stock of a single product into one place, regardless of who the seller is, so that there’s no way to know if you’ll actually get product from that seller.


I don’t think you’re trying to be xenophobic with this joke, but I feel like you should know that it’s probably not landing the way you want it to…


Hi @rosethornRangerTTV. I can see you’ve just recently joined our instance, so let me first say: Welcome!

While you’re here, please keep in mind the ethos of Beehaw when interacting with other folks in the comments - Be(e) Nice. We’re working hard to make Beehaw a pleasant little corner of the internet that is welcoming and inclusive.

I personally don’t have any issues with something like this being posted in !politics, but @coyotino’s question is valid. I think in the future it wouldn’t hurt to include a question (or questions) related to your ideas to help get discussion started, or link to an article expanding on the idea that you’re interested in discussing. Regardless, I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you enjoy the community that we’re working to build.


Reports should work even if you’re registered on another Lemmy instance, but they might be broken if you’re browsing from Kbin. Kbin’s federation is a hot mess and we’ve had a lot of issues with it.

I don’t have a problem with this thread. I was already aware of it, I’m aware it’s borderline editorializing, but honestly I think it’s funny and I’m not going to be a stickler when it isn’t harming anyone or making the community worse off. I’m more concerned with editorialized headlines if/when they are misleading or don’t reflect the actual contents of the article. If this starts to be a trend, we’ll address it, but as a one off it’s not a big deal.


I don’t think that the author is suggesting that mockery or laughter should be our only action, just that it should be part of the arsenal


Also, tomato, “people are trying to make you ashamed of being white” is a pretty common white supremacist dogwhistle. I’m sure that’s not how you intended it, but I think you’d be better served avoiding it in the future.


Hi Tomato - a lot of what you’re saying here has already been addressed elsewhere in the thread. The OP isn’t just addressing Lemmy, but other Fediverse services like Mastodon as well. He also notes in the article several people who been addressing ways in which Fediverse culture has been toxic to black users. These aren’t imagined problems, they exist in a lot of places off of and on Lemmy, and providing suggestions to make these sites better for black users is a good thing, not something to get defensive about. This post isn’t accusing you personally of anything, but if you feel challenged by it then it might be a good opportunity for you to interrogate those feelings.

Also, others have addressed your comments about not seeing other’s race online, etc, but I think it’s worth taking a step back and pausing. If people of color say they experience racism online, even though you don’t notice what race other people are, do you think it’s possible that there may be systemic problems or unconscious biases that might cause those folks to experience racism even when it is unintended? Those are the kinds of problems that aren’t solved by saying “I don’t say racist things to people and I don’t see color”. They’re problems that are built into our society just by the fact that we were all born and raised in an imperfect culture.

Nobody is accusing anyone of anything here, and nobody is trying to make anyone feel ashamed of who they are. But we can all benefit from stopping, thinking about the ways that we interact with others, and taking the time to try and be sure that we aren’t acting in ways that harm others even if that isn’t our intent or we weren’t aware of the harm in the first place.


I completely agree. Thank you for this comment. This is one of the reasons that in many cases we try first to just talk to users. Lots of folks have bad days, or just have certain issues that they really struggle with staying calm and being kind about.


I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but please remember:

  1. Be Nice. You might think your cranky comment isn’t a big deal, but when there are dozens of them it can get pretty overwhelming. The dogpile is real.
  2. Technology@Beehaw.org is not a “free speech zone”. I think Beehaw admins have been pretty clear on this, but our overriding concern is community building and creating a corner of the internet where people are good to one another, not creating yet another site where people can say whatever they like regardless of the harm it might cause others. I understand this might clash with what some see as a fundamental philosophy of the fediverse, but we disagree. This isn’t the place to re-litigate those disagreements.

Technology@Beehaw.org, Community Culture, and Moderation
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Hey Beeple and visitors to Beehaw: I think we need to have a discussion about !technology@beehaw.org, community culture, and moderation. First, some of the reasons that I think we need to have this conversation. 1. Technology got big *fast* and has stayed Beehaw's most active community. 1. Technology gets more reports (about double in the last month by a rough hand count) than the next highest community that I moderate (Politics, and this is during election season in a month that involved a disastrous debate, an assassination attempt on a candidate, and a major party's presumptive nominee dropping out of the race) 1. For a long time, I and other mods have felt that Technology at times isn’t living up to the Beehaw ethos. More often than I like I see comments in this community where users are being abusive or insulting toward one another, often without any provocation other than the perception that the other user’s opinion is wrong. Because of these reasons, we have decided that we may need to be a little more hands-on with our moderation of Technology. Here’s what that might mean: 1. Mods will be more actively removing comments that are unkind or abusive, that involve personal attacks, or that just have really bad vibes. a. We will always try to be fair, but you may not always agree with our moderation decisions. Please try to respect those decisions anyway. We will generally try to moderate in a way that is a) proportional, and b) gradual. b. We are more likely to respond to particularly bad behavior from off-instance users with pre-emptive bans. This is **not** because off-instance users are worse, or less valuable, but simply that we aren't able to vet users from other instances and don't interact with them with the same frequency, and other instances may have less strict sign-up policies than Beehaw, making it more difficult to play whack-a-mole. 1. We will need you to report early and often. The drawbacks of getting reports for something that doesn't require our intervention are outweighed by the benefits of us being able to get to a situation before it spirals out of control. By all means, if you’re not sure if something has risen to the level of violating our rule, say so in the report reason, but I'd personally rather get reports early than late, when a thread has spiraled into an all out flamewar. a. That said, please don't report people for *being wrong*, unless they are doing so in a way that is actually dangerous to others. It would be better for you to *kindly* disagree with them in a *nice* comment. b. Please, feel free to try and de-escalate arguments and remind one another of the humanity of the people behind the usernames. Remember to Be(e) Nice even when disagreeing with one another. Yes, *even Windows users*. 1. We will try to be more proactive in stepping in when arguments are happening and trying to remind folks to Be(e) Nice. a. This isn't always possible. Mods are all volunteers with jobs and lives, and things often get out of hand before we are aware of the problem due to the size of the community and mod team. b. This isn't always helpful, but we try to make these kinds of gentle reminders our first resort when we get to things early enough. It’s also usually useful in gauging whether someone is a good fit for Beehaw. If someone responds with abuse to a gentle nudge about their behavior, it’s generally a good indication that they either aren’t aware of or don’t care about the type of community we are trying to maintain. I know our [philosophy posts](https://docs.beehaw.org/docs/) can be long and sometimes a little meandering (personally that's why I love them) but do take the time to read them if you haven't. If you can't/won't or just need a reminder, though, I'll try to distill the parts that I think are most salient to this particular post: 1. Be(e) nice. By nice, we don't mean merely being polite, or in the surface-level "oh bless your heart" kind of way; we mean be *kind*. 1. Remember the human. The users that you interact with on Beehaw (and most likely other parts of the internet) are *people*, and *people* should be treated kindly and in good-faith whenever possible. 1. Assume good faith. Whenever possible, and until demonstrated otherwise, assume that users don't have a secret, evil agenda. If you think they might be saying or implying something you think is bad, *ask them to clarify* (kindly) and give them a chance to explain. Most likely, they've communicated themselves poorly, or you've misunderstood. After all of that, it's possible that you may disagree with them still, but we can disagree about Technology and still give one another the respect due to other humans.
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Technology@Beehaw.org, Community Culture, and Moderation
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It’s practically a guarantee that this Sharon’s dog is the most obnoxious, poorly trained little shit to ever walk the earth on four legs, too. Nobody wants your fucking dog, Sharon, it’s an unholy terror.


I was reminded of the trend of Milkshaking a few years ago. That wikipedia article includes a quote from a Vice Article on the trend that refers back to Serbian resistance as well.

But there’s a method to all this dairy-based madness. Milkshaking can be seen within a tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience known as “dilemma action”. A term coined by Serbian activists in the 1990s, dilemma action creates a lose-lose situation for the opposition. It’s a genius move reserved for some of the absolute worst people in our society, because there’s no good way to respond to a milkshaking: do nothing and you look like a twat, or fight back and look like you’re overreacting. Plus, a milkshake will really mess up your suit. Still, that’s not to say you should go out and do it, unless you want to risk arrest: the guy who milkshaked Farage has since been charged with assault, after all.



Thanks! I almost skipped it when I saw it pop up this morning, because I’ve seen so many articles about this topic, but I’m glad I didn’t.


I've seen a lot of ink spilled recently over the Harris campaign's recent adoption of the tactic of calling Trump and his cronies "weird". There's a lot of hand-wringing over the Democrats ceding the high ground or being unserious about serious matters, but this article, and especially the source material it links to by Sdrja Popovic (a non-violent Serbian revolutionary during the Milošević regime) about the power of humor in non-violent movements, really changed my thinking on this.
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I read that point as posting less when it comes to issues of race and racism specifically, but it’s possible I’m reading that into it. If so, it could be a little clearer.


Other commenters provided feedback that was given in good faith. Those replies were left up. I hope you can see why we might consider jumping straight to comparing the poster to Hitler when you disagree with their well intentioned post about how to better be anti-racist on Fediverse communities to be a bit problematic.


I agree completely. We do work hard to keep things inclusive and nice™ on Beehaw, but Technology is our largest and most active community by a fair margin, and sometimes folks don’t respect the vibe on the instance when they comment - either because they don’t realize what instance the post is on, or because they don’t understand or maybe don’t care to understand the ethos of the instance.

We’ve done some cleanup in the thread, but removals can take time to federate (if they federate at all, which is not guaranteed in my experience. Hopefully the discussion from here out will be more inclusive, but we’ll be keeping a closer eye on the thread in any case.


We’ve removed some of the comments in this thread for expressing the exact racist sentiments which would warrant this type of post and for arguing in bad faith. This is a perfectly salient conversation to be having in this community so we will be leaving this thread up, but as a reminder, please engage in good faith and be nice. If you don’t want to have conversations about anti-racism in Technology then I suggest you unsubscribe from this community and others on Beehaw.

On a personal note: I would be absolutely thrilled to see more, better discussions of the intersections of areas like race, gender, and sexuality with technology, and fewer arguments about which Linux distro is better.


I think pinned comments were added in a recent update, but in that case Beehaw hasn’t updated for various reasons that have been explained elsewhere.

I’m not sure about the flairs. It would be a very helpful moderation tool in a toolbox that is quite limited at the moment.


Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.
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Doxxing and callouts on Beehaw politics
Hey folks. I just want to check in with the community about a post that was recently removed. My intention is absolutely not to create drama or stir anything up, but I'd like to make sure you all understand my reasoning for removing the post. Also, I'm aware that I'm not as good at articulating these kinds of things as some of our folks, so don't expect a classic Beehaw philosophy post here. The post in questions was a link to a twitter thread providing evidence of the IRL identity of "comic" "artist" stonetoss, who is unquestionably a huge piece of shit and a neo-nazi, or at least something so indistinguishable from one that the difference is meaningless. The post provoked some discussion in the Mod chat and several of us, myself included, were on the fence about it. I understand that there are arguments both for and against naming and calling out people like stonetoss. I find arguments in both directions somewhat convincing, but ultimately the thing that a number of us expressed was that the act of calling someone like this out and potentially exposing them to harassment or real-world consequences for their views might be morally defensible, it didn't *feel* like Beehaw was the right place for it. We really want Beehaw to be a place that is *constructive* and *kind*, and that this type of doxxing/callout didn't seem to fit our vision what what we want Beehaw to be. At the same time, we're all very conscious that it would be easy for this kind of thinking to lead to tone policing and respectability politics, and that is also something we want to be careful to avoid. All this to say that I made what I think was the best decision in the moment for the overall health of [!politics](https://beehaw.org/c/politics) as a community, as I saw it. On a personal note, I find that our Politics community is one of the communities that is most prone to falling into some of the traps that Beehaw was created to avoid. That's very understandable - politics are something that cause real and immediate harm and stress in a lot of folks' lives; they're complicated, contentious, and often make us feel powerless. I'd like to remind folks as we move into the general election season in the US, though, to remember the founding principles of Beehaw when discussing these topics, no matter how stressful they may be: remember the human, assume good faith in others, and above all, be(e) nice. Thanks, TheRtRevKaiser
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General Megathread for Elon Musk Nonsense and Twitter News
Hey folks - The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we've decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter. This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we're including news about Musk acting the fool as related to *any* of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don't involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.
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Why It’s Rude to Suck at Warcraft
I'm honestly not sure how to summarize this video. It's a very interesting look at the way that the impulse to "optimize" gameplay affects the culture surrounding games, especially MMOs and other multiplayer games. It particularly looks at World of Warcraft and the social norms that have developed around and within the game. It's a long watch but I found it really interesting, and I have zero connection to WoW and have never played it.
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It was interesting seeing this headline over the weekend. RPG platform DrivethruRPG has also come out with [a similar statement](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/smx42p/drivethrurpg_on_twitter_in_regards_to_nfts_we_see).
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