OpenStars

I don’t follow you. They are BOTH the capitalist party, though not equally so. Also, voting for one side vs. the other does not mean that you agree with EVERYTHING that they do - in fact it is more common these days to vote against the other side and ignore what your own might plan or actually do. Nor is it true that avoiding voting - e.g. for mental or physical health reasons - means that someone does not care at all about what happens as a result of the election. Plus, a rather ENORMOUS fraction of people in the USA could skip a particular vote and it would not make the tiniest iota of difference, due to the electoral college system, though that heavily depends on where you live, and also trends to be more true the larger the region impacted (federal > state > county), whereas local elections could turn on a dime and also make a huge impact regardless of what goes on in upper levels - e.g. federal sends monies to help people but locals turn that aid away b/c “reasons”.

Unpopular opinion alert: I dare to say that many people who should NOT be voting - especially those who do little to no research beforehand - would vastly improve the outcome of elections by NOT voting, and thereby contribute more that way than they do now, by actually voting, where they tend to just magnify the votes of whatever the TV & radio talk show people (or more recently, pastors behind the pulpit) tell them to do. The latter makes the USA even more of a plutocracy than later, when the votes get ignored and the rich get whatever they want regardless of who got elected does.

In the wild, it is rare to see a predator before it strikes. Have you ever seen one of those games where there is a picture and you are supposed to find it… but you can’t, even zooming in and scanning every section, and then even when the answer is shown you can barely make it out? In the wild, prey aren’t supposed to evade death - the entire food chain is predicated on that fact. Ofc the predator still has to cross the distance between it and the prey, but lulling it into a sense of complacency is the first part of its successful strategy, then it waits for the prey to turn its head, and only THEN does it pounce. Sorry if this is upsetting but it’s very relevant I promise you, and in no way shippable for this conversation.

So in the wild, if I ever were to see this large fat orange buffoon, bumbling around while making wild hooting noises, actively trying to get noticed by saying whatever manages to get the most reaction from everyone around, I think I would be wisest to run away. Crucially though, not from the orange thing - which has no obvious teeth or claws or anything at all harmful - but from whatever it is that may be following it (whether the orange thing has any knowledge of that or not), waiting to take advantage of the distraction that it provides.

Whether any particular person wins the next election or not, there are always more willing to step up in their place - more Republicans, more Democrats, etc. - and a smart predator is ready to take advantage of whichever side wins in order to get what they want.

Sorry if you thought I was building up to some point worth knowing about - I have found no solutions, only more layers of problems the further deep you dig into these matters.:-( I will say that often when you meet Trump supporters irl, they can be very kind people - they are mislead, but aren’t we all? It is the system that is broken, not solely them (obviously outliers exist, on both sides, and no they are not remotely close to being equal \KKK, but nor is the problem uniquely on one side vs. the other either, plus the whole division between “sides” is working out VERY well to Putin’s benefit, hence making me question just how much involvement his agencies have with the recent Civil War style divisionist thinking that is currently fashionable).

I think all we can do is question what we see, and compare it against what we KNOW to be true. Which not everyone is capable of - e.g. who has the luxury of that kind of time? A great place to start, imho, is to recommend watching https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs.

Counterpoint: the rich want to get richer, and the lapdogs want their bribes, and the lazy folks in the middle can only be motivated by fear (not even greed works anymore, e.g. for retirees who already got theirs), so to break out of this cycle would take… … …

I have no clue.

Learning about the philosophy of the Stoics (which frankly was not enough for me), plus this quote (which also was not, but the two together… that did help!:-D), something to the effect of: “Strong societies beget weak children, who then grow up to create weak societies, which then beget strong children, who then grow up to create strong societies” - and the cycle continues. i.e., Boomers mainly did not fight in the wars, just grew up hearing how Great America was, without having to experience first-hand the blood, sweat, and tears that made it that way (to the extent that it ever was that way ofc). Well, now things are changing in the direction that they were ALWAYS going to have to changed in - b/c evil people gonna evil it up, no doubts about that - and eventually, sheeple will get sick & tired of being sick & tired and rise up, to change things. Until then, we suffer, but not needlessly.

In other words, we’ve gone through the stages of denial (climate change / economic downturn / wage slavery / cultural insensitivity / whatever is NOT happening), anger (okay so it’s happening but what are you going to do about it), bargaining (he tells it like it is and big daddy will fix everything & make it all great again! ironically this holds true for both Obama and Trump, loathe as I am to have ever uttered such a sentence), and now we are into the depression era.

Next comes acceptance, and that’s when the healing - and the beginning of lasting change - can truly start.

Nobody “never gets mad”, they just deal. But your issue speaks to something bubbling underneath the surface, it sounds like (obligatory caveat: I am nowhere near a professional). Figure that shit out bc it’s not going away.:-(

Maybe you are worried about your job or partner or something, and this little stupid stuff is just how it comes out, bc you won’t allow yourself to be mad about the REAL reason you are currently unhappy. It definitely sounds like it is yourself that you are mad about… but even that could be a smokescreen or like projection or some such, if it were not okay to be mad at someone/something else.

Therapy could help if you could afford it - even just the time bc there are like volunteer orgs that lower the cost - but you can also do a lot on your own, like try to create a safe space where it is okay to be mad about whatever, even if it seems “wrong”. Stupid dog tracking stupid dirt on the stupid carpet… why can’t I ever do anything right? (Like: I could not even marry someone who I don’t highly suspect is cheating on me… WTF!? Or maybe not that, maybe it’s a midlife crisis with career, or children, or who knows what else). Eventually your brain will allow you to know what is REALLY bothering you, when telling you that fact will cause a lesser amount of pain than doing so right now would.

IMHO, start with: you are not okay, this is not normal, and things can get much better (REALLY!), but it will take effort and possibly time (depending on how deeply ingrained whatever it is turns out to be).

There is no possibility of this ever causing negative effects of any kind, certainly it will not ever be misused (like one pilot being pressured into flying 5 planes at once bc… profit).

• Elon Musk, probably

Regexps are awesome! And also not at the same time:-P. 🎉 Congrats👏!:-)

Eventually you will also come to the question often expressed in the popular phrase: is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? i.e., even as you retreat from hostile forces, what are you advancing towards, that is worthwhile? I am not very knowledgeable about this - most of my own advances irl have failed, though I do not really regret any of them, as each decision was made only with the knowledge that I had at the time, even if I have learned & changed & grown since.

The reason I bring it up is to help illuminate how boundaries need to be set even upon the very setting of boundaries (how meta!:-P). In the limit (I mean in the mathematical sense), the ultimate safety is achieved by walling off everyone and everything so that it cannot affect you in any way - I have heard that concept expressed as an analogy where someone builds a castle, and thereafter basically suffocates inside, walled off entirely from the world, both the bad but also the good from it.

At some point you (& me, and each of us, possibly uniquely for each situation even) will need to find the appropriate balance point b/t avoiding toxic people, vs. allowing contact with imperfect humans. If we cannot forgive them, at some level we cannot forgive the faults within ourselves, and that would be the ultimate tragedy - if we could not even stand to be around our very own selves! That said, it is an advanced concept, b/c for instance it does not mean that we should re-establish contact, or to not break away contact, from a toxic person. If anything rather, it is the ultimate severing of their “hold” over us, where we know that we will be okay regardless of what they do, even if we remain in contact with them (which would need to be decided on a case-by-case basis ofc, b/c the more contact we have with them, the more they influence us even if we fight tooth & nail against that).

Doesn’t that sound nice, in theory? Sigh… I have literally no idea what it means though, in practice:-P. We, like them, are all just bumbling around in the dark, trying in our own way to do the best we know how. The difference is that at least you are making the attempt to illuminate the situation - and that will make a HUGE difference in the outcome!

Then this might help: remember that even as you try to set boundaries between yourself and others, you can set boundaries within yourself as well. e.g., you could watch a movie depicting a fictional narrative of a not-good-faith event, and decide to at least attempt to not be triggered, or at least quite as much. You cannot control the world, but you control your response to it, and you deserve to be happy:-). Though you need to find the route to get to it - even in spite of others attempting to ruin it for everyone around them, to become as unhappy as they are.:-(

I guess you already said this, sorta, in that when people act that way, you respond to increase your happiness by getting away from that source of toxicity. But I mean something deeper, which you may also already be doing, in terms of setting the boundaries within yourself, to not feel unhappiness about their actions.

To me, the key is always good-faith.

Abso-frigging-lutely. Even the dumbest person, or maybe someone with a bad memory, but who is trying can eventually be trained, or else constrained, whereas a malicious actor can do everything “right”, until they get what they wanted all along and then cause the highest magnitude of harm.

I like how you are approaching it intentionally, which demonstrates awareness and intent to make things better for yourself, and also others as you plan ahead for what is most important.

We ALL are that way. :-D

You can do whatever you want.

So too can they.

The balance point lies somewhere in the middle.

I won’t tell if you don’t…

30 seconds costs a minute

I… but… it… wha… my brain just broke a little :-P

A study on astroturfing on Reddit, written in the style of Reddit by an astroturfer - oh the delicious irony? :-P

Spez is unlikely to ever do anything unless the Musk has already said that he wanted to do it.

At which point you might start to worry that both X and Reddit may join us at some point? But consider this: if Spez ever did tell people that he wanted to do that, it would take their programmers 20 years to write the code to make it happen, and by then we’ll all have moved on to direct thought sharing over the Web10.0 anyway. :-P Whereas if he simply bought the code off of somebody else who already made a fully-functional copy, then like Alien Blue - the forerunner to Reddit’s official app - it would still self-destruct in his hands, converting itself into a pile of dung. At which point we simply defederate from it, no worries.

Here we are free.

I hear that, but also…

Well, I was doing the same, but noticed that even in the niche subs, the conversations seemed to be getting more and more… juvenile? Like prior to the Snoopacolypse (as you called it, and I love it! The term not the event in case that needs any clarification:-P), it was a point of pride for me that I had never blocked anyone in my life - whereas now I don’t think twice before doing that bc who has time to waste on someone not engaging in good faith!? Especially if they lack enough self awareness to even realize that fact about themselves while they are doing it. (Tbf, possibly watching Innuendo Studios’ analysis of GamerGate that uses many tactics of the Alt Right in America had something to do with my changing views as well:-).

Ymmv ofc, bc different subs means entirely different people & thus experiences interacting with them, but I’m just saying that rather than stick with the subset of that community that remained after Rexit, I eventually just find myself going or even wanting to go there less and less, instead enjoying engaging here more, even at the expense of not being able to talk about those matters. I haven’t posted there for months, nor even commented for a month, and barely go once a week to read. Bc I use Kbin and the mobile browser experience here is so horrible to write a comment, I find myself not commenting here often either - but when I do I have much more fun doing so, not having to be anywhere near as defensive as that other place that shall not be named.

I hope you find something that works best for you as well, wherever that may be.

That’s a good point but I thought it was different servers, like one had “telemetry” directly in the name? Unfortunately I really don’t recall bc it’s been too long and I didn’t have time to finish delving in the first place, nor since. I don’t want to spread misinformation so let me know if you think I might be doing that. Mostly I’m saying that if Blockada chose to mark their checks home as “bad”, enough to block them upon a default installation of that app, then they surely had some reason to do so, even if ultimately it turns out to be harmless.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for severity, this might be just like a 1, but that’s still not 0, and some people just prefer to stay away from an app that has demonstrably chosen to ignore user consent. Even if they clearly state that they felt they had good reasons for doing so.

I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how “friendly” such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as “bad”.

If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers… but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.

Don’t worry, like a sitcom laugh track, they will tell you how you are supposed to feel:-).

Dun dun. Dun dun. Dundundundundun…