Rant

Fuck this optimism. We need realism. And I don't mean pessimism, I mean realism. Pessimism is assuming nothing will change for the better. Optimism is assuming troubles will pass without you having to do anything. Realism is adjusting the sails.

This isn't inevitably going to end after the midterms or after the next scheduled presidential election. Those responsible aren't inevitably going to be prosecuted. It'll only happen if someone makes it happen.

Everyone needs to stop assuming this will pass. The world needs to gear up to protect itself, America needs to do something about this mess. The sooner America and the rest of the world recognizes that America is now a fascist dictatorship, the sooner something might be able to be done about it.

what in the ever living hell is with a garbage quality of corded sub $5 headphones. why must they all have those stupid trash silicone tips that fall off and don't fit. why in the ever living fuck is there ZERO bass... 10 year old FREE headphones were literally better in all regards. makes absolutely no sense. it's actually hurting my brain listening to these prices of shit

There is no such thing as competition. As soon as a business does something that sets it apart, it's immediately hounded by business school people who want to profit off of lowering standards and raising prices.

It's why everything is so expensive and wages are trash. The whole point of going to business school is to ensure that businesses are always doing the bare minimum while charging the maximum people are willing to pay.

I often see people say that the majority of America is against Trump. How did he come to be democratically elected if the majority are against him? I know technically he didn't get the majority of votes, he got just under 50%, but if all the non-voters cared enough, they could have stopped him from becoming president. I know Kamala Harris wasn't the best choice either; I know it sucks that there are only two viable options in an election, but that's the way it is. You have to make the best of a bad situation and participate in the election to prevent the fascist takeover.

When I point out that the majority could have prevented this, I get told a lot of Americans didn't vote, as if that absolves them. That means the majority either voted for Trump or didn't care enough to prevent this. If the majority were against him and gave enough of a fuck about what happens to their country, they'd have voted to prevent this.

You don't get to refrain from participating and then say you aren't responsible for the outcome. Is this the reason so many university students refuse to study? They think if they don't study, it makes them not responsible for the outcome of the exam? When I was in university, I heard a lot of people complain that they weren't ready for the exam because they didn't study, seemingly oblivious that that was a choice they made. Now people tell me a lot of Americans didn't vote with that same attitude, as if CHOOSING not to vote was somehow beyond their control and not their responsibility

• Mostly water
• Difficult to cut
• Seems indecisive
• Pronunciation inconsistencies

I used to enroll in a school where every week, you'll see students being whipped either by teachers, discipline masters or the administration. I tried myself to avoid being in trouble and not get beaten but that failed as I got beaten every year in the school for any small mistake I made. I remember the time I got 10 hard strokes on my palms because I assisted in cheating in an exam. Imagine those red throbbing hands and you're still trying to complete an exam. That's why I decided not to help people in exams. If you enrolled in that school and you didn't get beaten, congrats, you're an anomaly. This is cuz every student during the whole duration of the school year get beaten at least once. And I'm saying this cuz my class was collectively punished by cane. Sometimes when there's noise in my class, a teacher or discipline master just decides to beat the whole class including the students that didn't make noise and I was beaten too.

I was beaten for either coming late, forgetting to do assignments and failing some subjects. Most of the time I come early, but when I come late, it's usually because of a short program that forces me to come to school before 6:30 AM and if I come after, 2 strokes of cane, even at 6:31 AM. I hated those times. I was beaten for failing tests, kneeling down and opening my palms to receive either 5 or 6 strokes of cane. One assignment that I didn't finish, I was flogged by holding my desk and the teacher whipped me in the butt 5 strokes.

Sometimes, I do manage to avoid canes but my friends and classmates didn't. They got beaten a lot for noisemaking, sometimes having to go out of class and receive strokes of cane on the school yard. Even in class, you get beaten for talking while the teacher's talking. Girls were also beaten too. Mostly on their palms but there were a few teachers that beat them on the butt sometimes. I would always feel sad when they start crying on the middle of receiving their strokes and the teacher would still beat them until they have finished with their strokes. Can you imagine being in that class, seeing grown ass men with canes hit the girls on their asses and then see them uncontrollably cry but you can only do nothing about it because you know that you could get a similar or worse treatment. Yeah, I saw all that and became a little emotional. They got beaten either for noisemaking, failing subjects or forgetting to do assignments. One time after the mock exam results were published, I managed to barely pass and because of that I avoided being flogged but majority of the class failed and some discipline master whipped them really hard on their palms to the point I saw visible bruises on their palms and hands the next day. I couldn't do anything about it.

When you trigger the teachers angrily, you could get beaten like an animal. That's what happened to a friend of mine who left the school before I did. He said something that got the teacher angry, teacher then uses chalk to draw a circle on the floor, takes a cane, tells my friend to lie on it and because he couldn't do it well, he whipped my friend mostly on the back and sometimes all around his body. He was crying, begging to the teacher to stop and he repeatedly said he's sorry. The teacher didn't care, kept hitting him even though he was crying, and my friend was 13 at the time, being beaten by someone twice his age. After all that, he went to his seat to continue crying cuz that was just brutal. I sympathized with him back then and this situation still lives rent free in my mind. He was beaten like an animal all because he said something that triggered the teacher or was talking while the teacher was talking.

Mind you, this school is in a country where corporal punishment is banned with the law explicitly banning it in schools. But of course, the law wasn't enforced and my school got away with it. Because of that, I had to see students being whipped at least every week, receive 10 strokes of cane on my palms, 5 strokes on my ass, seeing girls receiving the same treatment and crying. Most of us guys didn't cry when that happens cuz we were pretty used to it. They beat us since primary school. Lying on the desk and being whipped 5 strokes and trying to hold that same desk so that you don't fall is really brutal. Pain everywhere. Pain sitting down.

I really didn't like this school at all as the only benefits I got from this school was making friends and academics being good. Basically, if you avoided being beaten in that school, you're an anomaly and a good one at that. And you can't even protest cuz when you try to do that, you get heavily beaten. Something that happened to a friend of mine when he argued about a dumb school rule and a teacher went to our class, called him out and beat him like 10 strokes just for doing that and warned us not to do the same. Children being whipped every week, sometimes outside the school yard, teenagers being whipped like animals, almost every week, I must hear a whooping either in my class or in other classes. I'm not sure you guys could make it if you went into my school. All these memories compelled me to write this post to show awareness of how bad we have it in africa.

I put a lot of work into writing up decent documentation and SOPs and making them available. Does anyone read them? Pfft, not if my work chat history is any indication. Constantly getting pinged for basic-ass questions I've already answered thoroughly when I wrote up the docs and SOPs.

And I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo. Mm-Kay?

for 1 printer from Lexmark, there is 25 warranty options.... what the hell? I'm not selling your shit. if picking the best warranty upgrade is confusing, everything else about it will be confusing and not worth the effort.

migitage how much garbage services your selling, and maybe you'll sell some. instead, I purposely avoid even looking at it because it's just a mess of bullshit

companies need to actually try using their services client side to see how garbage they really are.

• No flavor
• Gets stuck in teeth
• Makes a mess
• Boring

Doesn't matter what you make, how interesting it is, what its uses are. What society collectively hyper-focuses on is its impact on the stock exchange.

Note to the haters: if you threaten me like you apparently threatened the poster of the other thread complaining about cm0002's multiple accounts which caused them to delete their post and their account and leave Lemmy, I will report you and repost screenshots of your threats publicly. If you act too egregiously, I will report you to law enforcement and/or my lawyer. I have legal insurance and am willing to use it. Be civil and let us have a civilized discussion.

I had noticed that cm0002 was a high-volume poster on Lemmy a while ago. After they cross-posted a few of my posts from lemmy.ml communities to other communities on other instances, I asked them about their motivation for doing this. They are open and public about their desire to draw traffic away from lemmy.ml and support away from Lemmy devs because they think that "tankies" are going to destroy the Threadiverse. I was having a decent, amicable discussion with them on direct messages, but as soon as I expressed that I was sympathetic to some of the political views of the so-called "tankies", I never got a reply.

Then the whole post about them creating accounts on pretty much every Threadiverse instance came up just yesterday (https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45730651). While some people defended this type of activity as not being ban-evasion because they are not trying to hide being the same user, I feel that if nothing else, this makes it more difficult for moderators to review a user's posting history to spot a pattern of bad behavior. If someone reports one of the (dozens? hundreds?) of cm0002 accounts, a mod may see only a few posts from the reported account and not get a full picture of this user.

Finally, I started looking into their one-person crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and "tankies". I started looking at their claims more closely and didn't like what I saw. To me it seems like they are making many distorted or debatable claims and spamming the Threadiverse with these. I read their "megathread" (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) of supposed evidence that the Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and "tankies" are bad, and think the whole thing is lame, flawed, and dangerous:

• First, notice that the majority of posts that they link contain only what they would like you to see, and not a link to the original thread where one would be able evaluate the context for what was said.

• Second, notice that even where screenshots are provided, what the list item claims was said is most often not what was actually said. In other words, distortions. Specifically, most of the items that are claimed to be direct quotes (based on the quote marks around them) don't at all appear to be actual quotes. I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that in many jurisdictions this would be grounds for a libel lawsuit.

• Third, most of the items that are not outright distortions are either exaggerations or debatable.

I personally feel that this crusade is more damaging to the Threadiverse than anything that they have complained about. I've been tired for a while of all the whining that I see here about "tankies" (Tankie Derangement Syndrome?), but have been holding my tongue. All this stuff from cm0002 is finally driving me to respond. Look, it's fine to have the beliefs of a liberal, conservative, MAGA, loyal supporter of the United States' imperial project, or a "tankie". Live and let live. Learn to accept that people who think differently from you may have legitimate and valid reasons for thinking that way, as much as you may disagree (except fascists). I wish people would learn to agree to disagree after a discussion reaches a certain point where it becomes clear that it's no longer productive. What's not fine is to relentlessly target and persecute other people and other instances (again, except fascists). This is why I call this a crusade, because it's nearly religious in nature. These people and instances haven't committed any crime. Threadiverse visitors don't deserve to be bombarded with all the whining and complaining that we often see. For all the complaining that I see about "Russian/Chinese bots", I sometimes wonder if many of the complainers aren't either intelligence or corporate agents trying to destabilize the Threadiverse.

My proposal: If nothing else comes out of this, I think that it would be beneficial to the Threadiverse if all instances added rules against disparaging, targeting, and persecuting other instances and users of other instances in general, especially if using false claims that border on libel, if they don't already have such a rule. If we want to see the Threadiverse be sustainable as a Reddit alternative in the long term, I think that this would be a useful step contributing to that.

Another thing: I think that most instances defederating the so-called "tankie triad" (hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml) is stupid to start with and damaging to the health of Lemmy and the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed), considering that at least Lemmy (and I imagine the others too) now allows users to block entire instances and allows admins to make this user-level block the default for new users. My instance, lemmy.zip, takes this default user-level block approach (for hexbear and lemmygrad) and I think that it's a reasonable way to handle any concerns about the "triad".

Anyway, I decided to look through cm0002's "megathread" (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) that they keep spamming and make comments showing how just about every item on the list is flawed, in my opinion. I only looked through the supposed "noteworthy selection" since those have their comments about the item on the main list. I suspect that most people wouldn't look past that list and take it at face value. Note that most of them seem to indicate either problems with reading comprehension, malicious distortions, or lame complaints about random internet comments. There is no point in debating the items below with me. It's fine to debate the items above with me. Like I said above, learn to accept that people may think differently than you do and learn to agree to disagree.

Dessalines - Head .ml admin - Head Lemmy Dev

1. “Slava Ukraini” is considered a “Fascist slogan” - https://lemmy.world/post/36065538 - Debatable. It has a history of use by fascists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini

2. “NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES” - https://lemmy.world/post/31595035 - Distortion. Note the quotes, making this appear to be a direct quote, whereas Dessalines doesn't appear to have written the quoted text on this linked thread.

3. “The BBC is not a credible news source” - https://lemmy.world/post/35824465 - Debatable. First, it's a partial quote with no link to the original thread to get the context of the comment. Second, not credible is perhaps exaggerating a bit, but BBC news earns plenty of valid criticisms about bias. Here's a collection of many of the criticisms: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/BBC%20Bias%20Chp%203.pdf

4. Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban - https://lemmy.world/post/32775563 - Distortion, debatable, and exaggeration. First, the comment used the slogan from item 1. Second, also note that it was a 30 day ban, which the lemmy.ml code of conduct appears to call a "kick" as opposed to a permanent ban.

5. Open declaration of support for Russia - https://lemmy.world/post/27352415 - Distortion and debatable. Even though from what I've seen in the past I believe that Dessalines possibly supports Russia, that is not what the posted chart shows. The chart is not unconditionally supporting Russia. It's making the claim that if a person supports Russia (in the Russia-Ukraine conflict) AND Palestine (in the Israel-Palestine conflict), it means they "fully understands the core of international geopolitics, while if they support Russia AND Israel, they believe in "Social Darwinism" (i.e., the discredited idea that stronger countries are always right). In other words, the chart is absolutely not unconditionally supporting Russia.

6. "Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! - https://lemmy.world/post/30580167 - Distortion. Again a completely fake quote and again no link to original thread for context.

7. Censoring criticism of China while allowing fellow “in-crowd” user “concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren’t that bad” misinfo to remain - https://lemmy.world/post/26985447 - Distortion and Debatable. The first comment that was removed seemed to be criticizing the Soviet Union for having had "concentration camps" and the second post from the user removed for criticizing China for also having "concentration camps". Did the USSR have concentration camps? The first result that uses that term when I searched was literally the CIA website, and when you read the historical document there, it is clear that they are calling the gulags (prisons) "concentration camps". Regarding China having those (presumably referring to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang), Wikipedia itself calls them internment camps, similar to the Japanese internment camps in the US during World War II. Meanwhile, cm0002 complains about a comment using the term "shitlib", which is a criticism of someone's political philosophy, not being removed. The two are not equivalent.

8. Censoring when users call out propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522 - Debatable. At least some of the removed comments seem to be purely anti-Russia ("Fuck russia!"). The others seem debatable on the basis that other instances' admins do the same or worse.

9. Discussing winnie the pooh and/or the negatives of china is a 30 day ban - https://lemmy.world/post/35374967 - Debatable. This is pretty weaksauce to use as a reason to defederate one of the top Lemmy instances.

Davel - .ml admin

10. Spreading anti-ukraine Russian propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/34655572 - Misinformation. The article they're complaining about literally links to documents on the CIA's own website discussing their 1957 plans. Is it "Russian propaganda" to discuss historical facts?

11. General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet - https://lemmy.world/post/27426510 - I don't even understand this one, plus again no link to original thread for context.

12. “See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” - https://lemmy.world/post/30673342 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context, no evidence that they wrote what is "quoted".

13. Response to a valid report of “NK is actually good” as propaganda/misinfo https://lemmy.world/post/32627834 - Distortion and debatable. Once again, not actual quote and no link to thread for context. The meme itself is obviously shitposting, FFS.

14. Removal of a credible article that was on the Uyghur genocide - https://lemmy.world/post/33205310 - Debatable. The mod removed a story that they saw as bigoted, possibly because of xenophobia. No link to original article or the cross-posted thread.

15. It’s totally fine when Russia kills woman and children, war is war after all - https://lemmy.world/post/33224299 - Distortion. First, no link to thread for context. Second, they are distorting what was said. The actual quote: "Still not a genocide. There is no war where women, children, and other civilians don't end up getting killed."

Nutomic - 2nd in command Lemmy Dev

16. Their continued transphobia - https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 - Debatable. No link to thread for context, and they were contrite in the screenshots.

General Tankie user behaviour [note: this is about random users of lemmy.ml]

17. “Propaganda is good actually” - https://lemmy.world/post/36162233 - Distortion and debatable. No link to thread for context. Partial quote taking it out of context. The actual full quote in the screenshot: "Anyone pushing their views is propaganda. Propaganda isn't always a bad thing, propaganda can be good, like antifascist or pro-communist propaganda, or it can be bad, like fascist propaganda."

18. “The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it’s actually a good thing a state has that much power!” https://lemmy.world/post/30010789 - Distortion. Again no link to thread for context, plus no indication that what they claim to be a direct "quote" was actually written by the person. Besides, this is a random user linking to a YouTube video.

19. Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763 - Distorion. No link to original thread for context, and screenshot does not say what this item claims.

20. Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a “negotiating tactic” https://lemmy.world/post/27012640 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. The article in the screenshot claims "Not enough to conquer Ukraine, the invading force was sufficient to persuade Ukraine to the negotiating table." That is not saying that they invaded only to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table, but that Ukraine came to the negotiating table as a result of the invasion. Different meanings.

21. Biden is worse than Trump - https://lemmy.world/post/33631617 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. What was actually written by a random user on the screenshot: "I'd argue Biden is worse. Trump is honest about being a terrible person. Biden pretends to be good."

22. Uyghur Genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/33873969 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. Not an accurate summation of what was said.

I reserve the right to edit this post to clarify points and/or add additional thoughts.

Editing to delete all of this. I am getting real threats again, and I am not willing to have a complete mental collapse over fucking Lemmy for a 2nd time. Fuck this place. And especially fuck all of the transpose assholes bent on making my life hell. I am deleting my accounts permanently, but will leave the content up. Don't worry, you won't need to kill or doxx me, I intend to take care of the former myself.

Why are all robot vacuums the same? They all have these tall as fuck charging stands.

I don't want to dedicate several square feet of wall space for a fucking charger and dust bin. What i do have, though, is a fucking couch with tons of free space around it. Instead of building the dust bin to go above the fucking robot, why hasn't ANYONE released one that is wide so it can go under a fucking couch or bed?

The fucking dock could be U shaped and the bin you remove to empty it would slide out forward instead of lifting up.

The News wants people to care so bad. Reminder Epstein was declared deceased in 2019, think about that. It's about to be 7 years and these people won't stfu about it. We all know the government traffics humans, adults and underaged. This is no new knowledge to the American public. The government doesn't get in trouble and that's it. Americans instead fight somehow about even that while the government lies even more about the topic at large. Biden for 4 years did nothing about the files. Trump is now pretending they don't exist. It's a cartoon comedy show and you are the punchline.

Problem is the joke isn't funny. You'll NEVER get the list because thousands of your favorite politicians and celebs are on it. You people fall for the same tactics over and over. Wait till you learn America supports sweat shops, child labor fields, genocide, war crimes, organ harvesting, and colonization. Killing of every religious and innocent civilian they can under the sun ON PURPOSE. You all will be in for a shock. Like how serious is the American population? Are they really victims of a corrupted system or are they key components in the system that fuels it? We know the answer.

1. Evades fork
2. Tendency to cut mouth
3. Either too many or not enough
4. Just old bread

Pick a fucking lane!

Is it the best, hands down; or is it one of the best? The "hands down" implies that this one is clearly so much better than all the others that there's no need to even consider them. And the "one of" immediately contradicts that by considering several others.

If you ever say "hands down one of" just know that i hate you.

Originally, meme was defined as the counterpart of the gene. From Wikipedia: "In the popular science book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, the English term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins to describe the dissemination of cultural information, but in the course of the digital revolution it was used to describe a specific type of internet phenomenon.” Thus, today a meme is a photo of Kim Kardesian’s fat ar$e with a stupid text, not a philosophical concept. This inflation of an important idea is symptomatic for the degeneration of humanity.

Online left-wing infighting seems to me to be about applying labels to people because they argue or have argued one thing on a particular topic, and then use it to discredit an unrelated argument topic or paint their overall character. I know there are pot-stirring trolls and compulsive contrarians, but I do witness users I personally judge to have genuine convictions do this amongst each other.

Within US politics, CA Gov. Newsom is an illustrative example (plenty of examples exist too for other countries and around Lemmy/Fedi). I don't particularly like him, he has done things I think are good, some things I think are funny, something things I think are bad and some things I think are downright horrible. Yet I have encountered some users online who will say they can't ever applaud a move of his if one specific other policy or set of other unrelated policies crossed a line for them. I'm not asking people to change their mind on what they think of a person because of an isolated good thing they do, but to at least acknowledge it as a good thing or add nuance describing what about it you like or don't. I can accept saying "I don't think this is a good thing in this circumstance", "this person will not follow through with this thing I think is good thing because ___", or "they are doing a good thing for wrong and selfish reasons" too. But to outright deny any support for an action because of a wildly extrapolated character judgement of the person doing it, when that user would support it otherwise, vexes me greatly.

I know this is not every or most interactions on Lemmy, but these are just some thoughts I have to get out of my head. You don't have to agree with me. I'm using 'left-wing' because the definition of 'leftist' or 'liberal' is wide-ranging depending on who you talk to. And on the side of the spectrum I'm calling left to left-centre, we seem to let the fewer things we disagree with get in the way of the many more things we would agree with each other. That's all, thanks for reading.

It's literally just someone else's computer! I find so many people believing it's some sort of ethereal space where data is arranged neatly by advanced druid magic or some shit -- solely because it's called "The cloud"

Any good blocklist will include rules that filter out the complete cancer that is imgur. I can't see your memes. Use something else, or just upload them to your instance.

I feel like it should be a part of internet etiquette to not start your forum posts with a general question only to clarify in the text post it's about something specific. Like at that point if you want to use a general question as the title you could start a comment thread with your specific situation. I know it would end up with people commenting outside your comment thread with your specific situation in mind but in a better world the OP's problems will get solved and other people with the same general question but specific situation could get help as well in another comment thread.

Can't justify the "hurr durr people are asking the same questions at the same time, just look at the previous posts" mentality when, yes, the post titles are similar, but it's clearly for another's specific situation. People would feel bad for "barging in" on those sort of posts.

It wants to seem smart, so it gives lengthy replies even when it doesn't know what it's talking about.

In attempt to be liked, it agrees with most everything you say, even if it just contradicted your opinion

When it doesn't know something, it makes shit up and presents it as fact instead of admitting to not knowing something

It pulls opinions out of its nonexistent ass about the depths and meaning of a work of fiction based on info it clearly didn't know until you told it

It often forgets what you just said and spouts bullshit you already told it was wrong

If you have a video that autoplays at the top of your article, and I have to scroll past it to read the article, I don't want it to pop out and scroll down along with me. It blocks the top third of the screen. Who even thinks of that? Why would a person in charge of making decisions say "Oh, yeah, neat. I like the way that works, let's not change anything." I don't want any videos to autoplay at all ever for any reason. If I scroll past it, it should autostop.

Fucking web developers.

Edit: Yes, you're right, it's not the fault of web developers. At least, it's mostly not their fault. They still came up with this shit, but it's executives and middle managers who demand it.

That's it. I'd never say don't shitpost, but confine it to the appropriate channels. Or at the very least shoot your shot better.