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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 1st, 2022

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  • There’s an infamous article on Foreign Policy about how /leftypol/ managed to do that with 8chan’s infamous /pol/ board, and I recall some people saying it got them out of GamerGate (a right-wing recruitment pipeline). In fact, I remember hearing there’s some lineage of that board from 4chan’s /lit/erature board. So there’s certainly truth that users can often be directed away from incel and alt-right spheres into something more social and constructive.

    At the end of the day, 4chan, if taken as a whole rather than just the political boards, is largely a popular hub for alienated nerds (even the /fit/ness board). Not sure how much that’s stayed true over the past 10 years, but screencaps like this show it’s still a complicated place despite the edgy surface.


  • I care more about where they are spent. My local government is spending it far better than my federal government. If it was half my income and was spent in ways that lower the cost of living and improve quality of life, then I’d have no problem with that.

    If I get a tax cut, I think, cool, at least I choose where this money goes, because I actually do give some to non-profits that benefit society. Tax amounts are not something which determines how I vote, I gloss over it in the news, it’s just incidental that the anti-worker parties want to raise my taxes and spend them in worse ways.





  • It’s a common practice, a problem with authentic child actors is they generally change once the original actor hits puberty, so higher pitched adult voices are common.

    One of the behind-the-scenes videos on a Ed Edd n Eddy disc had some funny stories of the voice actors meeting fans (e.g. Ed’s VA spotting some kid watching the show on a TV while on vacation in Jamaica and throwing in a “huh huah, thut guy is funneh…”) and Kevin’s VA had to keep doing their voice since kids didn’t believe her whenever she mentioned it.


  • Putting resources into things simply because someone is willing to pay money for it is a huge problem in our world. Once we put a dent in poverty and other existential crises, then let’s consider paying people millions and billions for simply entertaining people with skills and talent. Entertainment, arts and culture are certainly important, but their industrialization and overemphasis under capitalism comes at a very real cost, both to their art and entertainment itself, and to the rest of society.

    Here’s a related hill: I am for the abolition of the professional sports industry. Focus on local competitions, actual participation and sports that encourage socially-useful skills, like the Firemen’s Olympics and its modern siblings.





  • Democracy is not automatically “good”. Democracy is a tool. When applied in an appropriate way and to an appropriate voter base (one informed and smart enough to, on average, make a correct vote), it’s a great decision-making tool. It also has the ability to empower a larger number of people, which has real tangible benefits. When applied in an inappropriate way… well just look around. Most liberal democracies have just become a pay-to-win competition for the mega-rich to launder their dictatorship though.

    I say this as someone who has designed and run democratic projects, and someone who is generally pro-democracy, yet against most existing “democratic countries”.

    It’s also important to note historical cases like the 1917 October Revolution, where there became an interesting question of whether a liberal democracy was more important than putting power in the hands of the working class - the second option was closer to the goals of an ideal democracy, despite appearing to be an anti-democratic authoritarian seizure of power. Consider alternative cases, like democracies which have allowed right-wing authoritarians to legally gain large amounts of power (e.g. Hitler, Trump) and whether it was more important to preserve a malfunctioning liberal democracy or to prevent a harmful regime taking over.







    • reddit (I joined Lemmy years before most people reading this, and was already only lurking a couple of selected subreddits through an alternative frontend for years before that)
    • Bill Gates (FOSS have hated that prick since 1976, but even I was hating their reputation laundering long before right-wing conspiracy nuts decided Gates was a communist vaccine microchip liberal or whatever)
    • Musk, I guess. I was years ahead of the mainstream, but again, not ahead of socialist communities and environmentalists.
    • and twitter, and BlueSky