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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • That veers into subjective territory, though. From your example, going to a vegan community and declaring that you don’t believe veganism is sustainable would be seen by most as not contributing to discussion, but just trying to troll or incite a flame war. I’d consider that detrimental and downvote.

    On the other hand, asking “How can we make vegan lifestyles more sustainable?” would be something worth upvoting.

    Communities are not necessarily places where people go to debate or have deep discussions, often it’s just to find solidarity and meme out with good vibes. I’m not going to go to the Elden Ring community and say “Elden Ring is trash”, even if that’s a valid opinion for someone to have, because that’s not really the right place to have that kind of discussion.



  • The Biden FCC briefly brought it back but it was quickly killed by a Bush-appointed judge based on the conservative majority Supreme Court’s ruling on Loper Bright v. Raimondo which ended the practice of Chevron Deference.

    Chevron Deference was a policy that allowed federal agencies to be the interpreters of ambiguous regulations, and in this particular case the uncertainty was whether or not the internet counted as a “utility” akin to electricity and water. The updated interpretation is that the FCC doesn’t have the right to treat the internet as a utility if it is not explicitly defined as a utility by law, so net neutrality was killed.

    There is still hope that a later, more progressive Congress and administration could pass regulation declaring the internet to be a utility, or that a later court could change their minds on that interpretation, but for now it’s not looking good.





  • Nah, fuck Biden’s and Harris’s handling of the situation. It was a disaster and needs to be called what it is.

    But I think what you are suggesting is a disingenuous interpretation of what most people were saying during the US election. No one was suggesting that Biden/Harris were good for Palestine. Only that Trump would be much, much worse. And I feel like the events of the past few weeks have validated that fear, however horrifying that is to type out.


  • There weren’t many other kids who spoke Cantonese at my school (a couple, but not a lot), but I learned to be paranoid after one incident in English class.

    My teacher at the time was like the most stereotypical looking white guy you could imagine. Being a school in a big city, we had a pretty diverse population of students, and in this particular class there were two boys who were friends and would often goof off between themselves in Spanish.

    One day about 2/3 of the way through the school year, I have no idea what one of the two boys must have said, but Mr. “Grew up on a farm in Ohio” quickly turned around from the board and interjected in the most native-sounding Spanish my untrained ears could parse. That immediately put the fear of god in them—in all of us, really—to suddenly realize that he had been listening to and understood everything they were saying from the very beginning of the school year, and had just not bothered to say anything until then. I think we were basically an English-only English class from that point on.

    Between that experience and other stories I’ve read online, I’ve learned to never, ever assume that someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying in another language. You never know what unlikely language someone picked up because they had a pen pal or their SO is from another country or they lived/worked abroad for a while. Even then, since it’s so easy these days for anyone to subtly pull out a smartphone and let Google Translate provide the gist of what is being said with relative accuracy, you should never say out loud something you don’t want someone else to hear.

    Edit: a word






  • When I heard about the targeted moves against the FBI by DOGE, I got to thinking that the FBI is not the sort of organization you want to anger if you have skeletons in your closet. And even if you don’t, they’ll put one there to find.

    But I’m worried we’re already at the point where the entire agency can be discredited (not entirely undeservedly) just because President Cheeto and Supreme President Musk could label any findings as “fake news” and the majority of Americans would take it as fact.

    They could be the SA to whatever SS the Trump admin wants to replace them with (the Proud Boys?)



  • I mean, I don’t mind brands visible on purchased goods per se, it’s the same as a maker’s mark like artisans have added to their wares for thousands of years. It’s no more an ad than a book including the name of its author on the front.

    But it’s my conscious choice to buy certain products from certain brands, with careful considerations to quality and price. If a product is good and it is reasonably priced, I don’t care if they have a logo on there. But I don’t go buying products for the brand.

    Where ads are different is that they intrude into parts of our lives they have no right to be in.

    I want to watch some sports, but no, ads everywhere.

    I want to watch a movie, but I have to sit through all the ads first.

    I am waiting at the bus/train stop and there’s business posters everywhere, and then the bus/train pulls up and it’s covered in ads inside and out, all during my commute.

    I’m in the waiting room at the doctor’s office having a panic attack about the results of some recent tests and there’s a dumb ad on the wall with some smiling white lady staring directly at me, who has everything figured out and can now live life to the fullest thanks to her doctor having prescribed [DrugName]™.

    That’s the shit I can’t stand. When it’s not possible to simply exist in life without some entity trying to extract capital from you at every turn.



  • Or they may just be pushing back on the idea that the PRC has legitimate claim to the nation of Taiwan. People online like to say it because they know it upsets the PRC government. Basically, it asks the question, “What makes the PRC any more the “True China” than Taiwan?”

    Truthfully, neither nation is “true China”, and neither are the nations that they were years ago. No one in Taiwan today holds any belief that the ROC government is the rightful government of the mainland in exile.

    But Taiwan is unable to be widely recognized as a sovereign nation in its own right to this day because the government of the PRC is still sticking to the “manifest destiny” sort of idea that there is a single, ideal land of China rooted in its imperial legacy, which for some reason the current mainland government feels they have an obligation to claim.