You must have one sharp axe

I must learn the crow tongue so I can create an army of crows

My friend is a teacher. He has heard kids say your body my choice.

I really don’t think that sexism was the leading cause of her loss, or even one of the top causes.

She alienated a sizable voter group in a swing state, and people who are struggling to buy groceries are not going to vote for a person who is literally in the second highest executive position in the ruling party, unless they make changes people can see, and have a good campaign on change. When I heard harris give speeches I always thought “well, you have a direct ear to the president and are one of the highest ranking democrats in the US. Why don’t you use this to make change now?

I have a similar job, but I have been in the unfortunate position to be swamped with work for the past month or so.

I have had one task that needed babysitting in the past 3 weeks, and I was so busy that I was jumping between tasks at that point.

But I also make the mistake of trying to bring a rational take I hope in the big communities and that is not welcomed

I think the best way to avoid getting insulted just to conduct yourself carefully.

What you said sounds haughty. It implies that everyone else is irrational and you are the sole voice of reason, and that you are ultimately right and that’s why people are taking issue with you. Things like that is what leads to insults flying. Even if you didn’t intend that, it is impossible to know that from the text alone.

If you are talking online to “be right” rather than to discuss and debate, it will come through. And this is true even if you are literally correct in a case and have a dictionary definition as proof. People would rather talk to someone who isn’t trying to “be right” even if they are arguing on which view is correct. It’s about how you say things, and why you are bothering to engage.

Part of why I rarely get insulted is because I’m careful with my conduct. Even when I doubt the person on the other side of the screen is being genuine, act as if they are. Those feelings have been wrong a few times, and if I used that feeling as a way to be rude and say “you are a disingenuous person” I can skip saying that and counter the disingenuous bit.

How I approach responses is usually done in such a way that I try and prevent escalation. I’m not perfect, I often get on lemmy when I’m drunk and on the train ride home, or waiting for alcohol to wear off after drinking with friends online before going to bed. And usually I don’t have much of a filter then.

The only time I ever get insulted anymore is when I’m dealing with zionists or people on the right, since we are diametrically opposed in our views. Specifically in the case of Zionists, I have a hard time being respectful though I try initially. Plus, they will always be incredibly demeaning and go “BuT YoU ArE QqUeEr tHaT meAnS tHeY wOuLd KilL YoU OvEr ThErE” while not even considering the fact that, at this point, Israel has very likely killed more queers than any Palestinian vigilante or governmental system that they are imagining. Hard to keep your cool when things like that happen, though I usually drop a meme that points out how horrid that position is and block em, since it isn’t worth continuing.

As for my thoughts about why people are dicks online, i think it’s the lack of face to face communication leads people to be less respectful which over a few comments will escalate. And I think that people will often take something that would obviously not be seen as an attack in a face to face conversation as an attack online, where there is less context from tone or body language. I think that some people are socialized to be shitty to their political opponents due to the current media ecosystem. And most importantly, there are much fewer consequences. But i don’t think anonymity is a factor.

I protest a lot, and in most cases I opt to maintain anonymity. But I don’t always. I’ve been at pride marches far enough from home that I don’t feel the need to make any effort to remain anonymous, and even at those I’ve seen people be shitty to my face, or to other people/the crowd. I’ll never see those folks again once I leave.

Hell, I remember a fuckton of name calling and bullying at school when there was no anonymity.

Finally, as for my blocklist, the point of a blocklist is to separate you from people you won’t get along with. If someone is going through your history to downvote you or insult you, that is what it is for. Blocklists have to be tuned and maintained by design in order to work.

At this point, i’m having a decent time here but I also have a decent block list, an instance blocked, and another mostly blocked.

I don’t mind the commies too much, since I’m an ancom, though I have argued with them on my previous main account a lot, and it did get exhausting since some communities dogmatically support specific arguments that have been proven wrong a hundred years ago or are based on strawmen, or fundamental misunderstandings, or on viewpoints that haven’t been mainstream since the 1800s.

Lemmy has changed a bit since I joined when reddit announced their api changes. It used to be more radical, but I’ve seen a lot more centrists and center left folks join, and I think the mixing of that has caused a fuckton of drama.

Though I don’t see a lot of insults anymore. I’ve been insulted a million different ways, but since march or april I’ve seen a reduction in people calling me a slur or people calling me a fascist or trumper even though my position is to the left of theirs. I remember being insulted incessantly after October of last year.

I tend to be careful where I reply with political talk (AKA not on .world or most hexbear communities) but the non political communities are wonderful. I fucking love the queer communities here (even on hexbear) and the open source communities are also great.

I just hope the toxicity drops to what I remember around June or July of last year once elections end.

Her record isn’t spotless, but when you compare someone to trump it might as well look spotless because the context of trump makes it look so clean

I’m not fully knowledgeable about her record since I have more pressing things to worry about rather than researching harris, but as a queer person, I am aware of some of her shortcomings regarding queer rights.

She has explicitly tried to prevent trans people from receiving gender affirming care when in prison and challenged a ruling in favor of a transwoman to do so.

Source: (washington blade)

She also supported trans women in men’s prisons which is an extra horrific experience for a trans person, since queer people are generally more likely to be assaulted, raped, and sexually assaulted in prison. Trans women in men’s prisons have it the worst.

This happened in the past, but with her not explicitly making trans rights a campaign issue in the face of how much discrimination they are currently facing, it is concerning.

I had an elementary school teacher who would ask all of us to save the seeds when making jack o lanterns and give it to her. She’d then make a ton of roasted pumpkin seeds and share it with us and some kids from other classes who brought seeds.

They are pretty good. Highly recommend.

Your kitchen knives are vegan?!?!? But aren’t they naturally omnivores???

You don’t.

I haven’t talked to parts of my family the same way I used to. We don’t seek each other out anymore, though some people who do still have connections means we will still see each other for big events like thanksgiving or by happenstance.

Some of them probably think i’m an evil satan worshipping communist based on the last time we argued politics, which was either late 2015 or early to mid 2016, and I was your average slightly socialistic leftist who had just learned about Bernie’s policies for the first time.

With the genocide going on, i feel even more isolated, since I have some family who are harris voters who support israel, and aren’t exactly happy about how vocal I am about palestine. Christian liberal zionism hasn’t been something I could talk people out of.

Fact checking will only work on people who care about facts, and those people aren’t the problem. Though stopping doing it won’t exactly help the situation either

Does fact checking even work anymore? At this point it almost feels like a waste of time, and maybe even counterproductive.

Like, it doesn’t matter how hard I fact check things anymore. It doesn’t matter how many statistics I can pull out, or how simple and factual my response is.

People want to be wrong. Their mind is made up and their desire to have that opinion is unflinching. Fact checks might not even reach them in their corners of the internet. Telling someone who is choosing to be wrong that they are wrong will not do anything.

I honestly don’t know what to do instead, this seems like it is going to need something that is basically cult deprogramming.

I have no clue. But our timeline certainly isn’t the best one.

I genuinely have no idea why i’m still in it, but I do know i was drunk as a skunk when I joined. It’s on his website iirc, but I do know I was invited by someone on discord. L

Sometimes I join weird servers and end up staying for the memes. I’m on a tankie discord server, and while i have it muted and generally ignore it, time to time i take a peek and find some godly ultra high effort shitposts mixed in with the muck. I’m on a server for radio hacking although wireless shit is magical to me. But the memes are great even if they sometimes look like they are hieroglyphics.

But that gavin newsom discord doesn’t have good memes. Now, many of the memes are just various “Vote!” images and bottom of the barrel facebook memes.

Another remarkable thing about it is how many old people there are on that server who have their first and last name and their state as their username, and sometimes they even have a selfie as a profile pic.

It’s so weird to have some servers with genuine security culture like your average anarchist or queer server, and then also have Gavin Newsom’s server with “Jane Doe [WI]” sending a facebook post she made that is just a link to a youtube vid on project 2025 followed by her saying “Shameful!!”

Even though I’m an anarchist from not california, i somehow ended up in Gavin Newsom’s discord server where people regularly organize to text voters like this.

I am so fucking glad i take great care to keep my names and numbers off of these lists, and even more glad to live in a solid colored state with no hope of flipping meaning the election ads are minimal.

My poor Californian friends receive so many goddamn text messages it’s insane, and my friends from Pennsylvania and Georgia have it worse.

You really shouldn’t fight depression solo. We’re social creatures. Trained therapists aren’t the only people who can help you, even a trusted friend or a random stranger in a free support group can do wonders.

Local support groups probably exist in your area. Sometimes they aren’t very visible, and being depressed certainly won’t help you find it.

I didn’t know about any in my area, since when I’m depressed I’m unable to look for those groups, and when I’m fine, i have no need to look. But after joining a local mutual aid board, i found out about quite a few resources that were fully free or extremely cheap (less than $50 us) when others asked for them.

If you are queer, a lot of queer support groups often have resources to help you out.

As for how I treated mine, exercise and hiking, finding scenic areas, avoiding alcohol (which i was bad at), and trying to live more “intentionally” and not getting into patterns that left me feeling hollow. For example, i tried spending less time gaming, and substituted that time with reading, since that made me feel less like I was wasting time and my life. I also tried learning to cook, since having good meals was great, and not constantly eating shit from a local fast food joint helped me stop rapidly gaining weight, which was certainly making things worse.

I also have a trusted friend who i talked to about some of my problems, and he helped me get through the worst parts. This was probably the most important part, and it got me on the path to getting out of that depressive episode.

The amount of malpractice done by the police department and ag combined with the fact they state that it was possibly a discredited/disgraced police officer that actually did the killing makes it look like there was a coverup going on.

And the fact that people fought to keep her in prison? Disgusting.

ACAB

Are you drawing the line of what is acceptable to protest between protesting for an end to genocide and protesting for the rights of Palestinians to govern themselves, rather than be at the bottom of the hierarchy in an apartheid government?

Idk what genres you like so here’s a few recommendations across a few genres. On phone so no links.

I’ve been obsessing over Hiræth lately, probably one of the best albums I have ever heard. It’s not a metal album, but it scratches that itch I have for metal, so it’s going on this list lol

• Witching - Vernal (blackened sludge)
• Flummox - Rephlummoxed (prog death/avant garde)
• Mamaleek - Vida Blue (avant garde)
• Rail Yard Ghosts - Hiræth (Blackgrass/Blackened folk punk, large band)
• Woe - Hope Attrition (black metal/RABM)
• Botanist - Paleobotany (Experimental Black metal)
• An Abstract Illusion - Woe (prog death)

I mean, that is a definition of rights.

Rights that can be instantly taken away mean almost nothing. What good is my right to do something, such as be queer, when a bunch of cishet people can just say “alright, now you can’t exercise your right to be enby or trans or otherwise gender non-conforming, or be in a non-heteronormative relationship because a large enough portion of bigots decided you can’t.”

Those rights don’t mean shit unless they can’t be taken away. If they can, they are little more than privileges granted to us from cishet people because they felt bad for being oppressive.