If a situation involves another person having substantial power over the success or failure of that situation, and especially if over your success/failure, don’t get involved until you have an exit plan thought out (incl what conditions will justify executing it) and preferably already have started the exit plan so it’s easier to transition to.
It is best to move to Firefox because fundamentally the chromium project thrives because of Google ,an Ad company. It is not worth using chromium derivatives.
My best Reddit experiences were where Reddit facilitated meeting people "IRL". I found my first D&D group on Reddit, made 3 great penpal friends, scored a couple dates, ..., and one romantic relationship.
I really don't know my worst... A couple times I let people get under my skin, but I eventually got good at blocking people.
The Them who wrote your American history textbook and glossed over the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause, aren't the same Them who write TV sitcoms that propagate stereotypes of bumbling clueless men entitled to dump all the emotional labor on their hyper-competent women partners.
The Them who fund intrusive social media, aren't the same Them who dial down the yellow-light time on your traffic lights to catch more people with red-light cameras.
And the closer you look, the less it looks like a Them at all.
The individual TV writers were really trying to be good TV writers, in the social & economic context of TV studios.
The history textbook people were mostly actual professors. They want you to have a good history textbook. But the Texas Board of Education is giving them a hard time.
Heck, the social-media programmers mostly just wanna launch cool stuff.
The yellow-light people, though? They have no goddamn excuse.
This is an important point - it’s the difference between emphasizing critical thinking skills vs falling into conspiracy theories, or being privacy-conscious vs being paranoid.
I think starting critical thinking with empathy is incredibly important. E.g. “What’s motivating this person to write this?” Are they trying to get clicks, are they trying to move the needle on an issue, are they meeting their word count quota for the day? Are they just lonely or isolated or scared and lashing out because they can’t find affirmation? Or even, are they paid by a foreign state to post controversial things and stir up dissent in another country because it helps their country economically?
There are many possible motivations, but it’s not going to be a big global conspiracy dedicated to manipulating you personally. Understanding a person’s starting point and motivation helps you critically think through their points and decide what you agree or disagree with.
It’s so hard to see from your perspective sometimes. Feels like everything’s a conspiracy haha. But you are 100% correct.
The “them” we feel is the sum of all human outcomes, personified as a discrete organism. Maybe all of humanity is one big mega-organism and thats the “them”.
Lemmy itself is an open source software. It's developed by a community, and was originally created by two developers. It does not make money, except from things like donations or patreon.
Lemmy instances are run by different members of the community. Various folks have answered ways that instances could make money but may not make money in any ways.
The Lemmy project also receives grants from NLnet (funded by the European Commission), whenever they finish milestone features. According to the developers, this was their main source of funding until very recently and are now asking for more donations.
I publicly called out a user whose photo was on the front page of a local publication for racking up over $10,000 in unpaid red light tickets (at about $75 per offense).
He threatened to sue me in response. The cognitive dissonance 😂
Thank you for your explanation! I feel a tiny bit better about them now despite constantly being startled by a massive one in the sink, etc.
The only bug I've seen is small spiders and the occasional but very rare silverfish or pill bug. We certainly don't have cockroaches or bed bugs. Is it feasible to get rid of their food source or is that a lost cause?
Well, it's complicated and it really depends on you in the end. I'll try to explain.
DDG has good results in any language and they donate a lot of money to privacy-related initiatives. That's great and very few do this, BUT they also depend massively on bing: if bing censors something, you won't be able too see it in DDG. There have been a couple other controversies but they are pretty minor imo and almost every privacy-oriented company has those.
Brave search is great and has the best independent index among all private search engines, but it's 100% reliable only for English results and people usually either love or hate brave for its involvement in crypto and a couple of other minor controversies (people love to pick hills to die on)
Then there are meta-engines, who give you the best private results across the board (duh, they look for them on every search engine) but they don't really contribute to the scene like ddg (or even brave) does.
So yeah. DDG is not a bad choice by any means but everything has caveat. It's up to you to stay informed about the software you use to make a conscious choice
In my mind there is no them, but individuals, trying to achieve their own goals. Everyone has some incentive to misinterpret and twist truth. It might be just so it fits with their own biases and world view little better. The only reasonable way to use information online is to follow evidence based information and look for trusthworthy official sources.
It’s a Lemmy thing, not just on jerboa. I just sort by “top day” to see the top posts from the past 24 hours. Once I’ve seen most of those, I switch to new all, which keeps a decent amount of new content coming through.
The platform is still young, so it’s a combo of a) not enough content yet and b) early sorting algorithms that paradoxically haven’t caught up with the influx of users yet.
Sort by All->New or Subscribed->New, depending on how many communities you are following. Keep in mind though that Lemmy is still much smaller than Reddit at the moment but it’s getting better by the day.
"Learn to pick your battles." I've found that the vast majority of battles aren't worth picking. Your time and energy are valuable, don't waste them on things that aren't worth it. Ask yourself, "Am I willing to die on a hill for this?" Most of the time, you should just walk away.
Learn how to do deep, honest self reflection, the kind that makes you fully vulnerable to yourself. If you feel yourself snapping to a conclusion rapidly or defending a position aggressively, stop and really question why. What are the reasons you think that/feel that?
Use those moments to expose yourself to opposing views with an open mind. Even if you still end up on the same side, you'll have at least understood where the other person is coming from. I've trained myself to be suspicious any time I hold a view where I struggle to think of plausible arguments supporting an opposing view. That usually indicates that I've been in an echo chamber and I need to start challenging my own position more.
"The heart without the mind is ineffective. The mind without the heart is insincere." Passion and practicality need to work together to find effective solutions to make the world better. It does little good to have a bleeding heart with no plan of action to accomplish anything. It also does little good to have a plan of action without people involved who truly believe in it and care about the outcome.
Those folks will be the only ones left when funding runs thin and support dwindles, the bleeding hearts will show up when the weather's bad, show up early and stay late. Both are essential to create lasting, effective, positive change in the world.
Above all else, be compassionate. All people deserve basic human dignity. Love people as best as you can. This has sadly been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I grew up in a family with lots of law enforcement connections and sadly, I was taught to fear, hate, and ridicule far more often than I was taught to love.
I know that's not everybody's experience, but that was my experience. I was taught that if somebody was in a bad situation in life, it was almost always their fault, and they were to be condemned for that and I was to treat them as outcasts.
I'm ashamed to admit that I carried that mentality with me through all of my childhood and into my adult life. I was disgusted by homeless folks, drug addicts, people suffering in shelters and in government housing. I'm ashamed to admit that I viewed them as parasites, draining valuable resources from society all because they were "too lazy/dysfunctional to be productive."
I was told this and taught this as truth. Thankfully I started to slowly deconstruct and question all of that that in my 20's. Something started to happen to me internally, and when I would see a person begging or hear a story about impoverished folks struggling, I started to feel care, and compassion, and concern for them. I started to understand the systemic reasons for their situation, I stopped thinking the way to deal with these problems was to throw them in jail or fine them for panhandling.
I'm happy to say that my spouse and I are involved in community efforts now days to help folks in need. We're are working with different organizations that address these issues in our home city and it's been such a fulfilling journey so far.
Sorry for the novel, I felt like I needed to get some of that off my chest. This world is really broken and the underprivileged are suffering a lot. Don't be like a younger me and add to that, be compassionate and caring to others. Love and try to understand. Help and serve, you might be the only hint of positivity another person sees for days, weeks, even years, so make it count.
Find orgs/groups around you that help folks in need and address systemic issues in your communities. Stand up for those who are the most vulnerable, give a voice to those that don't have one.
Peace, love, and good vibes to everybody here and beyond. I hope y'alls day/night goes well. Stay safe and be well. <3
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