Lemmy and BlueSky (primarily Lemmy).

BlueSky’s mobile app is such a clone of twitter, transitioning is nearly seamless for the average user. I tried mastodon at first, but it felt pretty rocky and different (and I’m rather techy).

Between BlueSky and Voyager for Lemmy (I was an Apollo user on Reddit), my user experience hasn’t changed at all – except for the pleasant lack of bots and Nazis on both platforms.

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Ooh, thanks for the reminder! Mine expires next year. Best renew it now before they fuck that up, too.

And who is likely to nominate an antivax, anti-science lunatic with brain worms to head the dept of Health and Human Services?

And who is planning to eliminate the department of education and NOAA?

Previous administrations have done damage through incompetence and/or malice, but the plan this time is on another level. They’re going in with the goal of breaking everything.

You can’t just pick up your factory, drop it in Kansas, and just slot people into the building to work it right away.

This was demonstrated in Springfield, OH. That whole thing about Haitian immigrants? A large factory opened there, but they couldn’t find Americans who wanted to work there for wages that would make them profitable, so the mayor sent out a call welcoming Haitian immigrants to the town. They were invited specifically for this reason.

What happens when immigration is halted and people are deported? Where do they expect to find Americans willing to work for wages that will have to be even lower to make up the costs the tariffs will cause?

It takes only minutes of thought to realise how stupid and doomed trump’s plan is (which is obviously more than his supporters can manage).

It isn’t the same. For one, the Supreme Court ruled only this year the the president has nearly king-like powers and immunity – which was only made possible because of the far-right justices he appointed (put forward by the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, who are also behind Project 2025), and he’ll get to appoint two more, bringing the balance from 5-4 to 7-2. That will give him literally unchecked power, which he didn’t have last time.

Have you read Project 2025? If not, you should. They learned a lot from the limitations they faced in 2016, and have worked this whole time to make sure they will have free reign this time.

It isn’t about trump. He’s just the frontman for a larger fascist movement, who now have the House, Congress, Supreme Court, and have infiltrated the legislature at the state level. They will enact Project 2025 and all they need from trump are rubber stamps between rounds of golf.

The whole reason they chose him was because he’s practically illiterate and insanely easy to manipulate. He doesn’t need to do anything except put his signature on whatever shit they put in front of him. And they have a comprehensive plan to dismantle democracy this time.

Considering evolutionary time scales, this trait may have been a response to something large and dangerous that’s extinct now.

I can easily imagine that, too. I saw an early concept render that went around a decade ago or so when I worked in a design office, and we half- joked they’d accidentally released a low-poly model by mistake. Or it was some sort of weird joke we didn’t get.

It’s so ridiculous and broken, it has Musk’s fingerprints all over it (and good luck; fingerprints are near-permanent on that ludicrous metal finish they chose.)

Paying bills is for poor people. Rich people don’t need to do that. How would they stay rich?

And then there’s the problem that the only people who have the possible power to pass electoral reform belong to one of the two major parties, and it’s completely against the interest of those major parties to get rid of FPTP

This is generally true, but I’d say there’s a nonzero chance the Dems will be persuaded to support it – mostly because they’ve shown some support so far and because they don’t have a stranglehold on their base. The Republicans will fight it until their last breath, but the Dems are a coalition party held together by hopes and dreams, and they’ve been made to learn lately that they will lose if they don’t acknowledge progressives (this is part of why Walz was chosen – he’s the closest thing to a socialist they’ve chosen in recent memory). Without progressives, they will fail, and ditching FPTP would mean more engagement from a wide swathe of leftists, which would effectively shut out the far right. It’s in the best interest for the moderate left to be campaigning against the far left than the far right, and ditching FPTP would give them that.*.

e: *

And that’s the thing many people don’t seem to get: the US is not a 2 party system by design – there are actually many parties in the US, including Green, Libertarian, Constitution, Forward, No Labels, Working Families, Alliance, etc, many of which have been on the national ticket. Darrell Castle (Constitution Party) was on the presidential ballot in 2016, for example (I included him in a satirical anti-trump graphic I made in 2016).

The problem isn’t a lack of parties, but that the mathematics of FPTP means they literally can’t gain purchase. If you want 3rd parties to matter, instead of protest* voting or abstaining, start working towards replacing FPTP now for future elections. These conversations only seem to happen in autumn of an election year, which is far too late.

Put your effort into something like FairVote Action so we don’t have to deal with this nonsense forever.

e:*

A lot.

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The installers for every major software company riddled every single computer with adware. And you needed a compsci degree to get rid of it. Weren’t there lawsuits over that shit, that led to regulations? I remember that happening. It’s not like they were going to stop doing that of their own accord.

I’m to the point that if whatever I’m watching/doing pops an ad at me, I reflexively make a snap judgement on whether I want to continue watching/doing whatever it is. Often the answer is ‘no’ and I’ll just bail entirely.

This is peak cat.

Why is anyone listening to her, though? According to her followers, her vagina should be shooting out babies like an AK when it’s not making sandwiches.

Uh, more like a saddening percentage of the country wants Israel to succeed for their rapture fantasies, and an another significant portion is unaware that’s their goal. They don’t care about Israel, really, only that their doomsday prophesies are fulfilled, so Jesus can come back. A few million brown people dying is just the price to be paid for paradise.

I actually enjoy religious debate to a point (until it becomes circular).

Responses I’ve got usually settle on the fact my outlook and actions follow Jesus’s teachings, and that because I have morals – and god is the originator of morals – I clearly do follow god, even if I don’t want to admit it to myself.

Trying to tell people that ethics didn’t originate with their bible, and that obviously people had morals tens of thousands of years before Christianity even existed (because otherwise cooperative societies would not have formed) is something they can’t even fathom, it’s so far outside their worldview.

Some insist I must believe in god in order to reject him, and can’t understand when I point out they don’t have to believe in leprechauns in order to reject them.

For indoctrinated and devout Christians, there doesn’t seem to be a way to break through the fog. I’ve two friends who will begin shouting at me over this, though they’re perfectly reasonable the rest of the time. Years of this is exhausting, as you say, so now I’ve mostly stopped trying.