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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • whofearsthenight@lemm.eetomemes@lemmy.worldThe system is broken
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    10 months ago

    I don’t think the mom and pops are really the problem (in fact, this is I think one of the few viable ways for regular people to actually get ahead) but all of the things surrounding housing. One can get place renting for $2k, but can’t get approved for that mortgage amount even with tons of history showing it’s paid. Corporations owning massive amounts of property are also a much bigger problem. Appealing to an individual (mom and pop) is generally a lot easier than to try to appeal to a corp in which you’re just Lessee #4949857 who’s spreadsheet tells them to squeeze you for more money because.

    Past that, I’d also argue renters need much more support when it comes to their rights because quite a lot of the things that people are posting here as anecdotes to why their landlords are shitty are already illegal, it’s just extremely difficult to get anything done about it. I’d suggest also that there was some regulatory body (if one doesn’t exist already) responsible for certifying housing/landlords because then at least shit would get fixed once a year.

    My only half-decent experience renting was a blue-collar mom and pop who leveraged their own home to buy a second home to rent, that they rented significantly under market value. If anything, we should be trying to setup more systems that allow this outcome (they fucked me on the deposit though, but that’s the part about renter’s rights.)






  • For point 1, that’s absolutely not getting past the 1st amendment, and it really doesn’t matter that it’s called news. People treat their crazy uncle’s conspiracy Facebook posts as “news” and labeling doesn’t really do much if anything to discourage this behavior.

    For the idea of critical thinking and education, this is something that democrats should be campaigning on and promising, although obliquely. It should probably come in the form of increasing funding for schools (MASSIVELY) and then add in media literacy courses and such to the curriculum. Although, that said, there are already schools that do this in some form or fashion, but the problem is that far too many school boards are overrun with nuts, and this ties into point 3…

    Religion being tied to governance is a real, real problem. Teaching kids critical thinking is going to teach a lot of them, especially Republicans and Evangelicals, that they are being fed a steady stream of bullshit. We still have enough religious association that even getting this across to Democrats and left leaning in a major way is going to be tricky.

    On a hopeful note, the most zealous of this population is dying out. Levels of religion have been steadily dropping for a while now. I think as more of this magical thinking dies out, we’re more likely to see positive improvement. Of course, we have to not become a fascist state in the meantime.



  • Ah perfect. Sets up a strawman, completely misses the point of my post, says one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard (reddit being an alt-right website*) and then immediately moves to block in response to me saying this place is a hostile echo chamber. 10/10, no notes, illustrates the point I was trying to make better than I did.

    Just to be clear for other readers, I was not saying that any of those things are bad I was saying that this place has a purity test that borders on stupidity which this post illustrates well.

    * just how does one come to this conclusion? It’s less lefty than Lemmy, but not by much. It’s alt-right communities are usually either banned, quarantined, and regardless of the technicals of the website or how the admins run it, they’ve always been outcast and if you say “vote for trump” in any but the clearly right echo chambers, you’re going to get downvoted to hell.


  • As someone who went from a daily user of reddit for a decade and now hasn’t used reddit basically since the app’s red wedding, I really don’t think this is it. As much as I hope the fediverse and Lemmy take off, currently I’m extremely pessimistic about that because if anything the problem is the reverse of what you describe. My current front page on Lemmy (all/active):

    • an article whining about Elon
    • an article about Fox News/trump
    • a post complaining about charging for XBL/PSN
    • an article about Tesla being banned from driving schools
    • an article complaining about DoorDash

    and so on. And to get to this great non-rage bait content, I had to go through the trouble of even figuring out how to use the fediverse and which instance to sign up for (and then still hop instances a few times) and spend my first week just blocking like I was getting paid for it because language settings on this site mean nothing, more or less, and there are a few “communities” that pop up here that provide all of the intellectual stimulation of jamming a q-tip too far in your ear.

    And if those posts alone don’t paint a clear picture about who the user base is here, heading to the comments will. Most of the comments read like they’re posted by “lefty white linux bro” or “communist trans linux they/them” who have decided that those are their entire identity/personality. While none of those things are bad and I tick a lot of those boxes myself, it creates a real echo chamber that borders on hostile to anyone that isn’t in that category. The other side effect I’ve seen on this is that this place can offer up some real doozies of takes in a way that is likely to make anyone who actually knows anything just up and leave. I saw one the other day that was talking about greatest people in the FOSS space and uncritically lists RMS that was heavily upvoted. At least someone brought up why that’s problematic in the comments, but imagine hopping over to the mainstream sites and talking about best musicians and seeing R Kelly on the list…

    Anyway, while I don’t mind an echo chamber now and then, if Lemmy in particular is to grow and be useful for anyone outside of this base, I’d suggest the community adopt something closer akin to “reddiquette” which is probably the main reason why reddit was able to get somewhat past this in the early days, and some of the “niche” communities were able to grow. I put niche in quotes here, because as it stands now Lemmy doesn’t have even very vibrant communities for fairly mainstream things (music and TV, movies, etc.)

    So while I personally choose to spend my time here instead of on reddit, that’s mostly an ideological choice and I view as a sacrifice because I’m missing out on tons of other content that I enjoy. Even your post is a form of this – “reddit bad” (sure) “because of bots” (also sure) “and Lemmy has less outrage content and fuels engagement” (uh, no.) Lemmy has as much or more, and it’s only fueling engagement on those that don’t immediately bounce off, but since you posted “their team bad, our team good” you’re getting upvotes and probably will continue to.







  • Right now, Haley is polling significantly behind DeSantis, who is already significantly behind Trump. I honestly thought it was more likely that she was angling for a cabinet position or something, but the Koch money injection is interesting. That said, even with money it’s a pretty uphill battle. Given that Trump is far and away the front runner, the number of old school republicans is pretty low. She’s running as if she’s in the general, where a more moderate approach would make a lot of sense (or maybe she’s just trying to dodge creating soundbites for Biden campaign ads which DeSantis seems to have no problem with) but in the Republican primary moderate isn’t going to get very far.

    Even if she manages to clear the first hurdle and overtake DeSantis, she is kinda stuck with her finger’s crossed that Trump is for some reason ineligible to run because he’s such a clear favorite. It would be like going into a room of Swifties and trying to explain why you’re better than Taylor. Spoilers, it doesn’t matter, and the corpse you leave behind is going to look like something out of a horror show.



  • The whole primary is the punchline. It’s either going to be Trump as the nominee, or Biden is going to sweep. R’s are far too racist to nominate Vivek, and even if everyone else in the primary died I have a feeling they’d just write in Tucker or something. That leaves Haley, who is trying to appeal to a Republican base that hasn’t existed for 15-20 years, and DeSantis, who is trying to run as the “is Pepsi okay?” to Trump’s Coke, while he also seems to be simultaneously mumbling “dude Coke is so much better.” The only way this makes any sense for him is if he thinks that Trump is likely to be in jail or barred from running, because that’s the only way he’s getting the nomination.

    I kinda wish that weren’t the case. If it were Biden v DeSantis, Biden sweeps. DeSantis is far too extreme for dems and probably even slightly center/slightly left of center, his whole campaign seems to be designed as if he just has a cuck fetish. And the one thing that I think everyone can all agree on is that as soon as he opens his mouth, you just get the overwhelming urge to shove him in a locker. I also think that almost no one likes Trump’s policies, they just like him and it’s pure cult of personality (and the way they vote seems to confirm that; Trump-like candidates lose, it’s only Trump that has any traction) and DeSantis obviously does not have that. And he’d be running against an incumbent, which is already an uphill battle.