As a non-American, it’s always looked to me like the Republicans manage to get their shit done whether they’re in charge or not and the Democrats are just there to assure everyone they have a choice in voting and not much else.

The whole thing to me looks like a game of good cop / bad cop. Bad cop comes along beats the shit out you, and then good cop comes along to give you a cup of weak shit coffee as a consolation for your black eye and says something unconvincing about being unhappy with bad cop’s behaviour, before letting bad cop back in to beat the shit out of you some more.

And for every cycle of that, bad cop achieves his goals while good cop just acts as a glorified tea lady that tries to make sure you don’t have any hard feelings about bad cop.

Someone needs to start keeping a central list of all corporations and organisations that have been rolling over like they’ve been waiting for this moment all their lives. Just to keep around as reminders, any time they decide to do a little rainbow capitalism or black history month marketing.

If the world, and especially the USA regains its senses, please all I ask is that everyone remembers exactly who these people are when they’re begging for your money and support again.

All depends on which app / UI you’re using I guess but it should look pretty much like Reddit almost everywhere. The only difference here is that there’s no grand total at the top of your profile like a high score. But when I was signed up on world, in the app I’m using you could see separate up and down vote counts for everything.

They’re really not meaningless though. For one thing, they allow moderators and admins to more easily detect trolls and bad faith actors. And on platforms or with add-ons that allow better tracking of vote history, it allows the user to more efficiently moderate their own experience, should they so choose.

Also, I think you’ve got to be kind of an asshole to not recognise that a little bit of validation from communities that you participate in is a nice thing to have and that downvotes can hurt to an extent, even if it’s not the same as getting physically slapped. And to be clear, I’m not pointing at you or anyone, I’m just riffing here. I haven’t even seen downvotes for a while now.

So yeah, I’d say they’re meaningless in a video game sense. You’re not going to win any prizes with them. But there’s a reason they exist, plus no one is immune to the effects of positive or negative reinforcement.

Going to be a bit negative but this is something that’s kinda annoyed me about Android in the last few years. BREAKING: new shortcut available! And then there’s the articles and breaking news for them doing shit like changing the design of the clock slightly every now and then.

What annoys me about all of this is that the very first Android phone that I had, the S4 Mini, that started out on Android 4.3, had custom firmwares around that allowed you to customise every shortcut with anything and choose from multiple styles of clock. Amongst other things.

Which tells me that the folks working on Android could easily make things more customisable but they choose not to so that we can get these articles going on about how awesome a new shortcut is and they get to look like they’re always working on these new ‘innovations’.

They’re running out of ways to add extra cameras, so now they’re acting like adding a new shortcut to a button that should’ve been more configurable in the first place is some sort of technological breakthrough.

For me personally, it’s something that I’m always activating in my pocket and have disabled now.

The way I see it, the slippery slope that we’re currently on is tolerating nazis and bigots.

Firstly the obligatory disclaimer that I’m not American, just someone that has been watching this unfold on the same world wide web that we all use.

Maybe I’m too radical but I would say fully. Whether they want a white christian nationalist country or just wanted cheaper eggs. Because that first thing was never a hidden objective, it was clear from the start. We had people who find secret illuminati pizza messages on bathroom walls take one look at Project 2025, an actual real conspiracy and go “doesn’t look like anything to me”.

So whether they’re true right wingers, conspiracy theorists, or people that closed their eyes and ears and hearts while convincing themselves that this was all about cheaper groceries; I’d say they’re all equally to blame.

So glad that free speech has been restored.

I dunno but I always get the impression that these fucking people that are too cool for school and need to loudly tell everyone how little they care about downvotes every chance they get, are probably also the people that go around using downvotes in bad faith and making the platform a little less welcoming for everyone.

My advice would probably be to just stay away from instances that are populated with the kind of people that use downvotes as a ‘disagree’ button or panic button to make themselves feel better when reading something they don’t understand. Those were always the worst people on Reddit that dragged the experience down for everyone. And it sucks that they’re all here too. And in a smaller pond, they’re going to be making a bigger splash.

I’d find a nice instance and / or communities to spend 90% of my time in and only actually go to places like Ask Lemmy in world when you actually feel like dealing with smart alecs and neckbeards.

Edit: and downvoting people for talking about downvotes isn’t actually funny, it’s just proof that you use downvotes for the wrong reasons. For the meme and ‘disagree’ button.

My heart goes out to all the good people that are going to suffer too, who have to share a country with people that threw them under the bus and sold them out for cheaper eggs that we all knew weren’t going to happen.

Edit: it would be nice if you could repurpose deleted comments when you change your mind about replying, seeing as that ‘deleted by creator’ now hangs around forever anyway.

My heart goes out to all the good people who are going to suffer too, who have to share a country with people that sold them out and threw them under the bus for cheaper eggs that everyone knew wasn’t going to happen.

Yeah but what about the price of eggs?

I want something between ‘feature phones’ and smartphones. A little bit like what Nokia had to offer with Symbian and Maemo but more modern. If you want a rectangle of glass that requires wireless proprietary everything and replacing every time the battery starts packing up, more power to you, I’m a fan of choice and options.

But I want to be able to buy a music phone with great speakers and toys like FM transmitters thrown in. Or a gaming phone with a d-pad, a, b, x, y and shoulder buttons. But like, with Firefox instead of Opera Mini. And social media apps and shit.

What an alpha.

Next step: political adverts that quiz you on what you’ve just heard and repeat each segment if you get the answer wrong.

Just kidding though (or am I). This is truly some dystopian shit. My first reaction was what the actual fuck. And I bet you that their numbers aren’t really going to hurt that much because of this. Mark my words.

Yeah, this kind of thing makes me glad that I got banned from Reddit too. People jump on any excuse to shit on women there. The place seems progressive on the surface and has some pretty great feminist and queer communities but there has always been this underlying current there in the larger Reddit.

People dogpile and seem to almost take glee when there’s a chance to shit on a woman for something. It gives me the impression that they just love to jump on any chance they get to go “See? The ‘females’ are also bad.” But it comes with 10x the spite and hate, like with Ellen Pao versus anything that has happened on Reddit since. If they had a female CEO during the API thing, they would’ve tanked.

Another one of my favourites was a thread discussing a 10km fun run for mostly non serious athletes, where it was suggested that it was a little silly to have separate male and female categories (I think it might have even involveda woman getting best time but a lesser prize). And the thread kinda filled up with walls of text about hand grip strength and in depth analysis on Olympic athletes. For a fun run.

But imagine going around calling teenage girls “whores”. What pieces of shit. Funnily enough, the comment that got me banned from Reddit was a comment calling out men in general for allowing men in general to be pieces of shit (in a subreddit meant for calling out misogyny no less). But calling teenage girls “whores” is ok. I guess I’d expect nothing less from the ex moderator of jailbait.

English or history. They were both subjects in high school where I could not even study and just wing it with walls of text. As long as spelling and grammar and shit were good and in the case of history, being able to refer to key things from the text book occasionally, I was scoring in the 90s. I’ve gone a bit feral in that regard over the years since then but if my path was to be a teacher, I think that’s what I would’ve gone for.

Just want to add that a big deciding factor in that as well is how cool my english and history teachers in high school were. A married couple that I honestly credit with helping shape certain good parts of who I am. I was honestly borderline anarchistic (definitely anti-authoritarian) in my writings and I think they liked it and nurtured it a little bit.

One moment that stuck with me that I never realised the significance of was my history teacher bringing up how schools have a hidden curriculum. How beyond being taught how to behave in society, it also enforces cultural things like one race’s set of norms and standards or teaching boys to behave like boys and girls to behave like girls (which is a line I even specifically remember him using). And I remember being a little bit outraged about the idea of a hidden curriculum and this fucking guy smiled and kept the conversation going and told me more.

Here’s to you Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They’d be pretty old if they were still alive. I’d be either an english or history teacher because of them.

Edit: just for extra context, for high school I went a boarding school in a very Christian and religious small town and it wasn’t the best of times for me, to say the least. There were a couple of decent teachers but most are wrinkled up, mean, dogmatic pieces of shit in my memory. So these two teachers were special.

Or the right wing way is just to say one thing and do another thing. Honestly to me as a non-American, it’s pretty weird that the right wingers have latched onto this ‘free speech’ thing and that everyone just goes along with it because to me, things like free speech and freedom of expression always seemed like liberal or left wing ideals.

These guys talk about free speech, then burn a pile of schoolbooks that spread the ‘librul’ agenda and call for anyone that isn’t white and Christian to be removed from their sight. The only small part of free speech that they’re interested in is being able to call groups of people subhuman and they don’t just want that sort of free speech, they want freedom from consequences too and act like getting punched in the mouth for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place isn’t a thing in real life either. And more than that, based on the extreme pearl clutching when the ‘tOlERanT lEFt’ ever comes down from their high horses, they want that free speech for themselves and themselves only.

Basically they’re liars, bad faith trolls and people that actually believe that their bigotry means that they stand for ‘freedom’. They also ‘care about the kids’ but want to marry and fuck them and send them to the mines. So isn’t it obvious by now that everything is opposite day with these people?

I’m only a day in of trying to get away from this, and I’m mostly talking about Lemmy right now (but it would also work / help on Bluesky), but something that’s already made a huge difference for me personally since yesterday, is separating the feeds. I woke up this morning and scrolled through content that didn’t make me want to start a revolution first thing in the morning and I’m already having a pretty good day for it.

I decided to cut most news and politics out of my subscriptions, other than maybe some small communities that don’t show up on ‘All’ on a 24 hour cycle. So from now on, my subscriptions will be only things that interest me and not enrage me. And ‘All’ is still there if I happen to feel like indulging in the rage for a little bit.

Also, finding a server that’s more tailored to what you personally vibe with adds a 3rd option in the ‘Local’ tab for a feed that doesn’t destroy your soul piece by piece.

So the ‘Reddit’ experience is still there in the ‘All’ tab, for everything. From rage to cool shit you haven’t subscribed to yet. But you don’t have to spend all day there. You can fill the other two tabs with stuff that makes you smile or learn or that aligns with your interests / career / philosophy or whatever. And spend more time there.

I was doing the same when I gave Bluesky a try, making use of different feeds for different things. Keep the news and politics in its own tab and only go there when you feel like catching up, or if you’re specifically in the mood to rage against the machine.