I needed this explanation for “L’Engle”:

References A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Characters cross great distances by “tessering”, moving via a tesseract through a higher dimension which essentially brings the two ends of the journey together from the perspective of the traveler. The image shows the two ends of the gap being brought together, with the gap apparently crumpled in between them.

Similar to the arbitrarily defined density of other stuff in the same orbit. We need to draw lines somewhere to impose categories on nature.

It can bother people who believe in omnipotent deities.

Confirmed. At first I was confused about the comments. Good idea, an obvious opportunity!

I heard that early childhood (first weeks, months, maybe years) are vital for development of emotional intelligence. Neglect could lead to life-long struggles. So I’m happy to hear you favor the idea to stay and care. Good for you, you both, and all of us.

burning teslas owned by random people when it seems it would be easier to burn this fucking nazi asshole?

Because simply in practical terms, it’s the other way around. There’s a Tesla right next door, but only one Musk somewhere, probably not where you are. And mostly, one has personal bodyguards, while the others just sit on the road.

Offering a slight damper / correction:

This is about two things (design and ownership), which are correlated, but not identical.

Malicious design can be things like:

• Algorithms to keep people engaged
• UIs to confuse users (luring them to purchases, or making ‘cancel’ hard to access)
• Using intermediate currencies to make it harder to assert value
• …

Obviously, these patterns and practices can also be applied to a FOSS instance you own. There is less incentive to do so if the profit motive is removed - which makes a huge difference.

These design patterns are fundamentally about making user numbers go up. Attract more users, keep them on your platform longer, make them leave less. And a portion of user guidance mixed in. None of that is inherently evil, to some degree even desireable, and to some extent unavoidable to offer a functional service.

Some users may expect a feed like lemmy to browse indefinitely, since they find it inconvenient to have to click to go to the ‘next page’. And because they got used to this feature elsewhere. Others already see this as a dark pattern.

I just wanted to highlight how some of the malicious stuff may still be present in the fediverse, without any company involved. Here, we’re kind of in charge on both sides: Each is responsible for their own user agency (like controlling your online hours, or what sites you visit), and collectively to decide what user experience we want to shape (which might include controverse patterns).

I spent way too many words on this. Mostly I agree with you! And overall, users will encounter far less malicious patterns on FOSS.

[Edit: Formatting]

Same here. My max is about 5.5’’ and 160g. Otherwise I feel it’s too hard to carry and handle, or even just hold. I also want to be able to reach the opposing screen corner with my thumb.

So is social media, and the openness of free societies to internal (the rich owning the media) and external (foreign adversaries) tampering. Spreading misinformation, eroding trust in institutions and truth itself, poisons like that.

Many democracies are crumbling this way. We yet have to find an effective antidote.

Regardless of the voting system, there still is a worryingly large portion of voters who were corrupted to serve other’s interests. And that is true to all (?) countries. That not just any two democracies fall first, but GB and US, kind of shows us that it could be anyone.

So while it is easy to look down on the fallen, or feel ashamed to be that - we’re helpless in this together. Hate to end like that.

There is so much in this direction. For a fraction of the budget, you could obliterate both the Russian army and economy, without losing any soldiers. What an opportunity, what a deal. Unless you’re owned by Russia, of course.

none of the people critiquing Bernie have offered up a tangible suggestion for what Bernie should be doing instead, rather just pointing out how ineffective they feel Bernie is.

People reacting to activism, in a nutshell.

why bother reporting?

Here are some of the many ways this could be answered:

• To exercise this core freedom, to not lose it. What comes out of it is a much less important question. The day news outlets remain silent about wrongdoings because they believe nobody cares anyways is going to be one of the darkest days towards the death of democracy.
• Separation of powers means the Press is not the Legislative, which is not the Judicative. The question seems to assume they were all one, or since the Press lacks the means of the other two, it’s mission would be kind of futile. But since these powers are separated, it is irrelevant to the Press wether and what legal actions follow (aside from being stories worth covering in themselves). It’s simply not the job of reporting to carry out arrests, and the lack of arrests, even when necessary, does not devalue the reporting. Maybe even on the contrary: It’s probably of much more value to society to report about things which aren’t already dealt with.
• It is totally relatable to feel powerless, maybe even getting accustomed to things going south. But I think we should be extra careful how these sentiments are communicated. A necessary prelude to that darkest day from above, is when outlets still report, but are met with nothing but indifferent “water is wet”, “can’t do anything so why care at all?” comments.

In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast.

As a European I’m all for it. Fuck up your own country for once and leave the rest alone. Nobody needs the corrupt self-declared policeman of the world

The Schadenfreude resonates with me, but that power vacuum scares me more. All kinds of potentially violent forces, who have been constrained by US hegemony, will test what the new limits are in the coming years.

At least, a corrupt policeman still has to play and pretend, which somewhat aligns her with the designated role. The Mafia, on the other hand …

What I mean to say is, you cannot step down from that position “and leave the rest alone”. It causes ripples across the world.

fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

By repetition, trust has been eroded beyond elections. For security or even trade partners, it’s bad to be erratic, violent and self-harming.

The American peoples have been played and fooled, much like it happened in GB. Hyped by fairytales of economic and nationalistic wonders, by stories of sovereignty appealing to the imperialistic dim-witted, in the misunderstood attempt to make their country “great again”, they flushed it down the toilet, cheeringly.

Apparently, both forgot how much of their power came from being central parts of powerful networks. Isolating yourself, alienating everyone else surely makes you lose these privileges quickly, makes you lose influence on so many scales. Wether these losses can be compensated by any means remains to be seen, I’m doubtful.

And as much as I enjoy seeing imperialist nations falling apart, the power vacuum they create seems to invite even more imperialism. Like they say, even more dangerous than an evil person is a stupid person, because the latter is unhinged. You never know how much they will fuck up next time, and you cannot even trust them being restricted by self-preservation or “common sense”.

I guess if it can happen to two nations from the West (and not just any two), it can potentially happen to any and all. They sure try.

Glorious.

The question is wether there was sexual violence.

The claim from your screenshot answers that with a ‘no’: “It was all fabricated”.

Though what you provide to support that claim (I did not open the link) does not support it. On the contrary, it even provides accounts of sexual violence.

There is a 2nd, different claim muddled within: Wether sexual violence can be proven in court.

Of course, that can be difficult for a number of reasons related to sexual violence (“victims were murdered”, “not prepared to reveal”). But failure to prove an offense does by no means conclude that the accusations were “all fabricated”.

Maybe this is related to people confusing proof and evidence. Evidence (even numerous and strong) can exist although a proof is not possible.

Feel free to clear things up if I missed your point. At the moment, it is not understandable how that guy jumps from “there is evidence, but we will have trouble proving in court” to “it was all fabricated”. If you can add something which closes this gap, that would help your point.

Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It’s easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it’s just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

Right, I should have clarified that. No, not my measure, I agree with you on that. It was just some measure, which seemed better than “do the opposite of what others say”. Because actions matter more than words, or so.

The comic you posted speaks of communism, not socialism, so I went with that term.

I mean, both could be brainwashed. Or neither. It’s funny, but rationally pretty moot.

Just because many people say the same thing does not mean it’s false. And just because you’re the only who disagrees does not mean you’re right.

Or maybe it’s rather a matter of taste and opinion.

Though I don’t see many communist paradises where people try to migrate in masses. While many non-communist countries exist which have such a pull. Ah, silly me, that’s probably due to all the propaganda only.