JubilantJaguar @ JubilantJaguar @lemmy.world

European. Contrarian liberal. Insufferable green. History graduate. **I nev

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2 yr. ago

Here's an alternative take to upset the boring consensus here.

Patriotic pride (not necessarily nationalism) is the inevitable product of social cohesion. A society which is cohesive is one where people look at strangers and see them as members of their tribe - essentially, as extended family. It's a society where citizens are therefore willing to pay high taxes to fund those strangers' welfare benefits, for example. No welfare state has ever arisen in a country without this essential quality. Almost by definition, social cohesion is closely correlated with patriotism. In the world's most redistributive countries - I'm talking about Scandinavia, of course - you will see more national flags than you might think given their "leftist" reputation. In Sweden, ordinary houses sometime have flagpoles in the garden, I've seen them. None of this is coincidental.

Patriotism can be a dangerous slippery slope, yes. But it's also what empowers strong states and collective action. Nobody wants a patriotism-free world more than the billionaires that everyone hates here. Be careful what you wish for.

Genocide is a big powerful word that gets your blood pumping, that's why you use it twice in the same sentence. But what exactly was October 7th, for you?

There are no massive contradictions here, only a lot of ignorant keyboard warriors who look at a complex world and see black and white.

non-TERFs

There you go again. You know very well that this is a derogatory term that is used to shut down debate. And you must also know there are a handful of situations (females in sports, children's medicine) where legitimate rights come into conflict. You have your views and values about these situations, I'm sure, but it's silly (I will refrain from any worse judgements) to pretend that debate on these subjects is morally illegitimate.

Personally I find this whole subject incredibly boring so that's all I have to say here.

And your inflammatory vocab choices suggest that you're not interested in calm discussion over issues where people's individual rights do, indeed, sometimes come into conflict.

I support Palestine and trans people

This feels like some kind of religious catechism, uttered to allay the suspicions of those who might question your standing as a member of a virtuous tribe.

Personally, I support Palestine and Israel, trans people and feminists. The world is complicated, history even more so, and individual moral situations must be judged on their merits.

I like to think that one difference between mainstream social media and this place is that here people might choose to think a bit more.

This is the right answer IMO. This is the way representative democracy is supposed to work. And contrary to what many people assume, politicians are in fact very sensitive to direct contact from their own voters.

At this point the best argument for protests is that they serve to keep up the morale of the protestors. The danger of protests is that they get out of hand. Obviously that doesn't look likely right now, but for people tempted to advocate mass action, you need to be aware of the hazards. A protest that gets out of hand or becomes violent is a godsend for any would-be dictator. If gives them the chance to crack down and say "I told you so, this exactly why you elected me". Trump is dreaming of a protest that gets out of hand, just as he's dreaming of more political assassinations (which people in this community have been ignorantly cheerleading).

As I understand the theory of authoritarian collapse, the ideal strategy for protests is to pick your moment very carefully, get out in large numbers, and stay peaceful and orderly at all costs. Everything is else will be useless or catastrophically counter-productive. There is now plenty of case study to back this up. Including very recent situations in Venezuela (so far futile but at least no bloodbath), South Korea (success), and right this minute in Georgia (teetering between violent crackdown and revolution).

In America, the moment for such action would perhaps be if Trump were to explicitly ignore a Supreme Court order.

Not really, and the reason is very simple. Ordinary folks don't buy computers any more. A mobile device is all they need. So might as well get one with as big a screen as possible.

There are a handful of niche brands that make small models for weird people like us, including Cubot and Unihertz. I have one of the former, it's tiny and works fine.

Clarification. I have a Cubot King Kong Mini. 3.5in screen or thereabouts, standard 2 cameras (i.e. as many as you need), NFC, unskinned stock Android latest version. People assume its a dumbphone although really it's not. But I don't use it for much, intentionally.

You just said it yourself. In a civilized order it's the state that monopolizes violence. You don't get to invent the laws and prosecute them yourself. Personally I don't want to live in a society of vigilantism or civil war. Bluster aside, I suspect that you don't either.

ITT: lots of people who misunderstood a clever but badly-phrased question.

This is a terrible take. Introducing violence into politics always, always, leads to dark places nobody wanted to go. Besides being wrong, it's completely counter-productive.

PS. Yeah, downvoting doesn't make you right to advocate cold-blooded murder that would probably trigger civil war. Jesus.

Interesting. I stand corrected then! Thanks for the tips.

Interesting. Sorry for jumping to conclusions! I had a private exchange with the mod in which every reasonable thing I said just made him more convinced that I was secretly a fascist. A pretty disturbing experience. I think we need to take back that community, not sure how to go about it though.

They're usual for non-participants, IMO. When you're a passive consumer looking for actual information or insight, the sortable comment score is what makes all the difference.

emoji reactions on Github where you can give like 6 specific ones

Forgot about that. Yes exactly, would definitely be progress.

I don’t know how to tie this up

Upvote and move on. :) But still, emojis would be better.

To clarify, I'm in Europe. None of these brands are available in shops, you'd have to order them.

Just the way you guys are reeling off all these names is so American! Reminds me of the trope of asking advice on the internet. "What should I use to clean my shower?" - Americans will list 10 brand-names, Europeans will say "bleach". :)

people can just click downvote and be done with it and move on with their day. I think that avoids some unhealthy conversations.

I'd heard this argument before but you must put it better because I now understand it. An off-ramp for sterile conflict, basically. Yep that's fair and I never even thought of it.

Still, fact remains that I personally have never (literally never) downvoted a comment. Which inevitably makes the downvotes I receive feel even more unjust. Can't win!

Slashdot's system was a good compromise: no upvoting or downvoting, just labels like "insightful", "informative", "funny", (uh) "troll" etc. At least that forces people to be honest about what they're really trying to say.

Any Intel-based laptop (i.e. with Windows) should run Linux no problem. But best avoid cutting-edge peripherals and Nvidia graphics chips and always look up the model before buying.

Chromebooks are ARM-based (and have locked bootloaders), so they're out. This is a bit of an annoyance because they now occupy the netbook niche, i.e. cheap and small. I once paid 240€ for a small fanless Asus netbook and got six years of constant use out of it on Linux, with no speed issues at all. That would never have been possible running bloated Windows spyware. For the replacement I had to go up to 400€ for pretty much the same thing (Acer Swift) because these days all the cheapies are Chromebooks. But still, it's a good deal.

There are a handful of Linux laptop makers, for instance Tuxedo, but they are expensive. If you can afford it, go for it, it's good to support them. I can't afford it.

For the distro, don't panic, they're functionally pretty much all the same. Download its .iso and burn it to a USB stick using the official instructions. For it to boot you'll probably have to go into the laptop's UEFI (BIOS) and uncheck Secure boot first. This opens you up to the Evil Maid attack vector (requires physical access), which is very unlikely to be a problem for you. Then follow the prompts and a few minutes later you'll have a computer connected to the internet.

Pick a mainstream distro which will update itself and not need babysiting. Ubuntu gets hate from techies, but it's rock-solid reliable. Same for Fedora. The FOSS purist choice is Debian, which is just Ubuntu with some rough edges.

Amazing, some of these really fit the bill. Saving your list for future reference.

You mean sandals?

Well you didn't ask but I'll tell my solution anyway! No downvote button. That's it! In my experience downvoting is almost always about opinion and almost never about the quality of the comment. It's toxic. It's the equivalent of shouting "Shut up!" and so obviously discourages more sensitive contributors from expressing themselves. It's even technically a form of censorship because it makes the comment less visible. It's useless and pernicious and I don't get why we need it. End of rant.

I agree with you about meme pictures. Personally I'd love a setting to block all images completely.