Some weird, German communist, hello. He/him pronouns and all that. Obsessed with philosophy and history, secondarily obsessed with video games as a cultural medium. Also somewhat able to program.

https://abnormalbeings.space/

https://liberapay.com/Wxnzxn/

  • 32 Posts
  • 60 Comments
Joined 23 days ago
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Cake day: March 6th, 2025

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  • I can understand the tensions from the housing crisis, and I can also sympathise with not having a lot of personal sympathy for the Americans moving right now, who most likely won’t be refugees as such, but just people with the financial privilege and ability to choose where to emigrate.

    But long-term, depending on how shitty the shit-show will get, there might be tent cities for persecuted Americans in the future, both for you and for us here in the EU (and, ironically, in Mexico, of course). You can say that you don’t like it, and you have every right to - but at least in my eyes, it’s an international duty to human rights when that point comes, and I, personally, won’t give a shit what people feel, then. The international community will have to take them in unless we want to follow the international trend of fascism and say “empathy is the problem” like Elon. (Even though I actually don’t think this would be about empathy, it’d be about upholding what remains of international standards, duties, laws and human rights, eventually with force if necessary)




  • Ah, yeah, it’s my own PeerTube instance, using the “share” function gives you a link to the instance you are currently on, not the original one. I use the PeerTube companion add-on to redirect PeerTube links to my own instance automatically (where I can easily interact with my own account), so always linking to the original instance can get a bit finnicky for me - and usually, it shouldn’t be a problem. (Hadn’t come up before)

    But now that you bring it up - I gues “usually” might not include app interactions? 🤔




  • Yeah, I think the official android app is pretty bad, sadly, from all I have heard. Not all the devs fault - I heard they had problems with apple/google app store rules, where they were under extra scrutiny to only allow videos from a “vetted and moderated search index” or something to be allowed on their app. (ludicrous, IMO, that their project of all projects suddenly got scrutinised to that degree, compared to other shit on their stores)

    I think there were some decent FOSS app alternatives on F-Droid, but since I myself am 99% on desktop or use just vanilla Firefox mobile, I am sadly not a good person to recommend apps myself.







  • Oh, just to not accidentally create the wrong impression - that’s not me, I just shared the video and didn’t want to editorialise the title. If you want to give them your message (that I think is important, indeed) - you can follow the link and should be able to comment with many different activitypub account options (PeerTube itself, Mastodon, etc.) - sadly, I don’t think Lemmy is possible yet, because its design isn’t user-centric but content-centric, and it lacks some of those AP-capabilities.






  • It’s only half-topical, but let me say one thing: farmers are romanticised waaay too much in my opinion. Yes, they usually have a more precarious business, and agriculture as such is, of course, very much the foundation of our societies and very lives.

    But don’t be blinded by the image of homesteading and such - most farmers are basically just business owners, with their class interests often removing them from a large part of the population. Many of the seasonal workers for example have shit pay on top of shit conditions, and they are notoriously overrepresented with some kind of “rurally wholesome” image, when they can be just as much business assholes, that mainly own a piece of land and the machinery necessary to use it for agriculture.

    This will only get worse, because bankruptcy like this has one main effect: consolidation, even more farmland operated by big business, even though I personally think small business like this one is clearly already not as good as people tend to make it out as.


  • Right? I thought that looked like some serious ideological, “but hurting business is too far!”-brainrot.

    But the article is actually really confusing to me:

    One in five Americans plan to turn their backs for good on companies that have shifted their policies to align with Donald Trump’s agenda, according to a new poll for the Guardian.

    That means ~20% plan to boycott themselves, which is not necessarily the same as supporting a boycott. Participating != supporting. Not supporting would e.g. also potentially mean attacking people like the person with the sign in the article photo, or ruining a Thanksgiving dinner with a huge family argument. While supporting can also mean “I support the movement, but for this and that reason, don’t participate myself” (that may be due to genuine dependence on some boycotted things, or just lack of motivation, or a feeling of not knowing how to, etc.).

    Then the article goes on with a quote:

    When 20% of Americans are permanently changing their consumption habits and nearly a third of boycotters say they’ll hold out indefinitely, convenience may no longer be the decisive factor companies think it is.

    Again, that seems like 20% are actively boycotting, which is actually a pretty big number for a movement like that.

    But then, there is another conflicting number just one paragraph away:

    When asked about the boycotts that have been making headlines over the last few weeks, 36% of Americans said they are or will be participating.

    So, wait, what? Why are the numbers so significantly different?

    Last month, a Harris poll found that 31% of Americans have reported similar goals to “opt out” of the economy this year in light of the changing political climate.

    Wait, that is yet another number, where are the 20% coming from even?

    Also, I swear, maybe I am imagining it, but I think the article changed while I was typing this, because I remember wanting to structure an argument around them later using the “support” wording again, but now I can’t find it any more. Maybe I was misreading, that happens to me at times, but it wouldn’t be the first time a news outlet has changed an article while it was already live without a notice.

    To anyone not wanting to click, here is the neat graphic with some more demographic info from the article:





  • im sorry that i sound like trolling i hoped that it doesnt sound like that

    The dilemma is: it’s impossible to tell from the outside, which is why I try to give advice while not indulging potential troll interests (e.g. spreading the post and forum as much as possible, creating concern). If you truly are in that situation, I don’t envy you, because of course part of those trolls’ interest is also to make things as hard as possible for people that really are caught up in it.

    So, sadly, I don’t have any personal experience concerning giving tips to journalists. Looking up “giving anonymous tips to journalists” on DuckDuckGo gives a few potential links, though most are directed at whistleblowers in administration and corporations:

    https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/sharing-sensitive-leaks-press/ - this is a guide that seems to go through things to consider pretty well. If you do your own search, you will find links to specific outlets as well, for example Reuters here and the NYT here. If you have reason to believe, that the US altogether is not a good idea, European outlets are also always able to understand English material, of course.

    Again, I have my doubts, and sadly there is little to remove them, and I wouldn’t want you to doxx yourself. If you really are in that situation, just know that the downvotes and potential removal are not an indication of judgement of you, personally.

    If you want to ask about something like this in the future, best try to hide anything sensitive behind spoiler tags or content warnings where available and not post links to the forum in any way openly - reduct the onion link itself for example, and only keep it available to people you trust to not spread it in malicious ways. And only show the topic list behind a disclaimer, of how this can be disturbing to read - those warnings aren’t there for censorship, but to protect victims/survivors of abuse, which is precisely, why it is a troll tactic to try and spread them without such warnings/disclaimers.


  • Sadly, it is hard to say if you are serious, or if this post is made by a troll, who wants to spread disturbing material for the sake of hurting people. The latter assumption is also the most likely explanation, why it was removed. Again, if you are serious, this is a catch-22, but do not spread this impulsively, this also goes to anyone reading this wanting to share it randomly out of concern. Firstly, you will have to add Content Warnings, the video you linked and topics discussed alone are enough to cause serious PTSD triggers. This, again, would be another factor why it gets removed (and why a troll wants to spread it).

    Again: I am going to treat this like in good faith, even though I am aware that a troll wanting to perversely spread the fucked up shit happening to revel in the power and untouchability is sadly the more likely option. The “billionaire friends” are, for example, a bit sus in how the sentence goes.

    In theory: Depending on where you live, the police and such would be the first to go to. If you have reason to assume that this will put you in danger, even an anonymous tip to journalists can help (including the material you posted here, but not in a semi-public forum, where it will reasonably be seen as trolling). I am sadly, no expert on who exactly to contact, but neither you, nor random internet people, should be the people handling this. That is what investigative Journalism flanked by therapists to help them go through shit like that is for.

    Speaking of therapists, that would be another first line of people to talk to.

    Sadly, speaking from my own experience from watching journalists in Germany investigating forums like that - the police often just let them stay up, partly out of incompetence, partly out of wanting the next success in catching people, instead of preventing forums to exist to begin with.

    Now, again, I am here assuming you are serious and in good faith here, maybe against my better judgement, but to the other people coming across this post: Don’t get concerned into spreading this post simply “as is” impulsively. Chances are still higher, this is a troll getting somewhat off from spreading disturbing material.






  • So, a few years back, when a good friend of mine tried out Linux mint, one of the main reasons he didn’t stick with it wasn’t even compatibility or anything (although he probably would have switched to a rolling release as someone who values cutting edge updates). But what ultimately made him return to Windows was something, I have been scratching my head on how to best handle it: The file system structure ultimately being too much of a change.

    Now, of course, if you are used to it, I wouldn’t really call it better or worse - definitely more suited to what Linux ultimately is. But stuff like, “Where are the save games of my paradox games? Why is so much stuff in my user directory? Why is there no unified directoy for all the stuff I installed (including everything they use), like Program Files, but everything is scattered all around into different directories? Why was the path to my save games hidden in a dotfile-folder?” were examples of hurdles, where the current answer seems to be “you just have to get used to it”.

    Now, I am not pleading to change the standard, there’s good reasons for it. But are there good transitioning guides from Windows to Linux, that do a good job at explaining the structure of the file system? Because I remember, myself, only really getting used to it months into my Linux journey all those years ago.