comfy
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Yep. I don’t judge a comment before reading it, but there are a couple of instances where I will think “yeah, not surprised” after reading a reactionary or low-quality post.
I’m curious if people are sinophobic or anti Russian.
Some instances, notoriously lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, aggressively ban Sinophobia and Russophobia, so much that many visitors get banned without understanding how what they said was prejudiced (many of their prejudiced views are simply ‘common sense’ as a result of normal Western propaganda) and yell about the instances being Russian/Chinese genocidal propaganda. So if .world gives you trouble, these places could be worth considering.
It’s so polarizing like people how do you expect to improve if you can’t acknowledge your faults?
The scale of this problem is mind-boggling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
spoiler for those who don't want to skim an article on a US military war game
Long story short, the US Armed Forces performed a practice war simulation, “costing US$250 million (equivalent to about $423M in 2023), the most expensive war game in US military history”. The two teams were “Blue” (totally-not the US) and the “Red” team (totally-not Iran or Iraq). The retired Lieutenant General of the Red team made the reasonable choice to adopt old-school low-tech tactics to avoid the Blue team’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network, as well as other asymmetric tactics like those used by real armies who have defended against US invasions. Red team won in one day. There were apparently a range of technical problems in the simulation which made it harder for Blue, so they re-tried with conditions to make use of the remaining thirteen days. However:
After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and during a combined parachute assault by the 82nd Airborne Division and Marines air assaulting on the then new and still controversial CV-22, Van Riper’s forces were ordered not to shoot down any of the approaching aircraft. Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed. The postmortem JFCOM report on MC02 would say “As the exercise progressed, the [Opposing Force] free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted. This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and established conditions in the exercise for transition operations.” :::
but the amount of practical real life skills I’ve acquired over the years
Are there any particularly unexpected ones?
92·9 days ago“Human rights” are a nice idea, but unfortunately, they’re a joke in practice. History clearly shows how quickly even the most basic rights vanish. If you aren’t liberated, if you don’t have the power to defend them (whether collective or individual power), rights are only privileges. So in that sense, I can’t consider it a human right.
But do I think someone should be free to pursue that goal? I’m not sure. Remembering history is really important in our development and learning. For a more extreme example, if someone, say, worked as a hitman for organized crime, killing many people, and later regretted their decision and requested people forget about them, I don’t think someone who has had such a profound impact on a society should be able to simply demand that anyone, let alone the whole of their society, ignore their past actions.
I believe people can appeal for forgiveness, or even ask people to forget them, but I don’t believe in a universal right to be forgotten, such as legally punishing people who discuss someone who wanted to be forgotten (I really don’t know how else such a right could be enforced).
With all that said, the GDPR “right to be forgotten” is a distinct and wonderful thing and I hope more countries enforce it. But again, know it’s only a privilege. A company can literally just make an illegal copy and pass it around like candy, if they believe they can avoid prosecution.
10·10 days ago- What is their monetization model? If you read the original article defining ‘enshittificaiton’, it’s clear how this factors in. FOSS projects tend to avoid this, and in the occasional cases where they are sold and aggressively monetized, there are usually forks (see: audacity->tenacity). With donation-run but non-open services, you really just have to hope. If it’s unclear or for-profit, avoid wherever possible (unfortunately not always possible).
That’s the bottom line.
I’m partly repeating what others have replied, but when a nearby synagogue hosted a Zionist corporate event, some of the protesters alongside us were members who normally worshipped at that synagogue and felt disgusted.
And, for an extreme example of anti-Zionist Judaism, here’s some Hasidic Jews over in London, including their Rabbi, publicly burning an Israeli flag: https://www.vice.com/en/article/anti-zionist-orthodox-jews-flag-burning-protest-109/
“The whole state of Israel is not legal from the Jewish viewpoint,” said the flag burning’s organizer, Rabbi Elhanan Beck, adding, “The Messiah will not be [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu.”
1·12 days agoSorry, you are correct. I assumed the person you replied to was talking about the whole Middle East region and didn’t think twice for posting.
There do exist somewhat legitimate sub-factions that actually take serious actions and do serious ops
Any examples or sources for me to learn more about these? The only Anonymous news I’ve heard of since the early days is updates on Kirtaner.
Iran, for one example, is a prolific cybersecurity adversary of the USA. One of the top four advesaries alongside China, North Korea and Russia. In fact, Iran is believed to be responsible for disclosing a CIA covert channel to China which led to a critical dismantling of CIA assets. I don’t know as much about other Arab states because Iran is most famous for its advanced cyber-warfare capabilities, but honestly, to avoid exploiting the USA would be very foolish.
Obviously this goes both ways. Israel and the USA are infamous for Stuxnet, a computer virus which reportedly destroyed a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in the early 2000s.
So for people trying to get attention, identifying as Antifa […] probably doesn’t help them these days.
People doing actions for clout are likely to be shunned as opportunistic. A well-known antifascist guide to doxxing Nazis straight up says [paraphrasing] “seeking clout will make people skeptical of your actions, just don’t do it”.
Interesting, you picked two brands which aren’t really single groups.
‘Antifa’ is a social movement which developed from a red united front organization in 1930s Germany[1] and turned into a general brand we see today. Any group of antifascists can identify as antifa using symbols and tactics. You can find a friend and go be antifa.
Similarly, ‘Anonymous’ grew out of social justice activism on 4chan and, as the name suggests, is a fluid kind of identity. Anyone can use the name, the original chatroom/group is less and less relevant as time goes on.
Both collectives are still present and doing things, but antifa groups are far more relevant. They’re just not in the news as often as they were during BLM. Anarchist blogs and media outlets (e.g. Unicorn Riot and It’s Going Down) often have updates on recent antifascist actions, including disrupting neo-Nazi protests and infiltrating+sabotaging their organizations.
and am not so sure direct democracy is a good idea at all, anymore.
Personally, in an ideal world (and it’s feasible to test on a small scale like an organization election), I would advocate a certain kind of mass conditional democracy where everyone has the right to vote but must answer some very basic objective questions to verify they understand (e.g.) the candidate positions and election basics. The answers can all be found in an educational pamphlet published collectively with candidate approval prior to the election. The goal is to allow as many voters as possible, so long as they can demonstrate a basic awareness of the situation.
Well, in countries like mine there’s donation limits (with teeth).
Refreshing to hear!
That’s not really the issue so much as the majority of voters that barely know what they’re voting for
I haven’t looked into this but I’m tempted to believe that immediately. Election awareness is amazingly low, even among people who do have strong political beliefs.
Sell it to who, Ben? Fucking Aquaman?
Good choice, no point throwing it away if it was too late for you to realize, but it’s more powerful as a platform to disavow Musk and Tesla.
The US is collapsing and all I got was this lousy car
but nobody can win without being slick and two-faced
And don’t forget ‘rich’, or more importantly, supported by the rich. A national-scale campaign requires resources that a typical organization can’t gather, and to win without such a campaign is miraculous in most systems.
So, you’re assuming we’re all American here.
Nah, like you said it applies to most democracies, even if America is an extreme example of these universal trends.
Good call, I’ll start looking out for these!
but they never seem to consider that it’s them that keeps electing those people.
How so?
If one doesn’t vote, a slimy politician still gets elected.
If one does vote, in most elections they can only choose from a small group of people who probably fail to represent them, and even if there is a reasonable option, they probably won’t win the vote anyway.
The system is rigged, when it comes to voting there usually* isn’t a correct option. Our political voice must exist outside of elections.
(I say usually, because a few elections are better than other, but generally speaking at a federal level, it’s slime no matter how you vote)
On the other hand, some have explicit ideological positions or themes (e.g. lemmygrad.ml, slrpnk.net) and others are shaped by moderation (.ml taking a hard stance against the sinophobia normal in mainatream media, .world and a few other instances/staff banning comments making light of violence e.g. luigi)