Zedstrian @ Zedstrian @lemmy.dbzer0.com

Posts

17

Comments

302

Joined

2 yr. ago

Yes, since the pronunciation of Volkswagen can be inferred from taking 'Volks' as rhyming with 'Folks' and either pronouncing 'wagen' as intended—with 'gen' rhyming with the 'gain' in 'again'—or just pronouncing it as 'wagon'. In contrast, the pronunciation of 'kt' at the end of 'flohmarkt' can't be inferred from an existing English word. Additionally, using the spelling 'flow' disambiguates the English pronunciation of 'floh', especially when dialect is taken into account.

Ultimately, because Volkswagen has had decades of advertisements marketing its proper pronunciation and making the brand name widely-recognized, it has an inherent advantage in terms of brand recognition to start with.

I didn't say it was. An important aspect of promoting the adoption of any product or service is having a brand name that is easily pronounceable to facilitate word-of-mouth promotion. It's something that's all the more important for a Fediverse service, given the lack of means to promote Flohmarkt with paid advertising campaigns.

While Flohmarkt works as a brand name in German, it's not immediately clear how to pronounce it in English, versus the easily pronounced Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, Loops, and Friendica. For that reason, 'Flohmarkt' should be kept as the platform's name in German-speaking countries, but be localized as 'Flowmarkt' or 'Flowmarket' in English-speaking ones.

I think an English localization as 'Flowmarkt' or 'Flowmarket' might be more catchy in English-speaking countries, since the intended pronunciation for 'Flohmarkt' isn't clear at a first glance.

"Use your memory" doesn't make for a great reference in trying to dispute a statement made in a well-referenced encyclopedia article.

The article itself has an abundant number of reliable references. Reviewing details throughout the article such as the Junta taking an anti-Ukraine stance merely to stay on Putin's good side in terms of weapon shipments, selling out to China as yet another source of weapons, India engaging in the same sort of war profiteering that they've done with Russian oil by providing them with yet more weapons, and the Junta proceeding to use all of those weapons on its own people, at times intentionally targeting civilians, any sympathy towards the Junta seems difficult to comprehend.

As an analogy, many far-right extremists have framed the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol Building as a valid protest of a "rigged" election, but their unsubstantiated claims neither change the fact that the 2020 US presidential election hadn't been rigged, nor that the violent MAGA protestors deserved the prison time that they were subsequently sentenced to.

In a political landscape as heated as Myanmar, there were bound to be protests regardless of who won the election, but protests alone don't invalidate election results. So, unless you have reliable sources to base your claims off of, "memory" isn't a valid reference on Wikipedia.

[Citation needed]

US Private Security Company Is Hiring Nearly 100 Armed US Veterans Mercenaries to Run Gaza Checkpoint, Report Says

FTFY

Thanks; that worked for me 👍

An iron dome to protect against what? If we're going to spend money building one, it's Ukraine that needs one, not the US.

I'm guessing they included that to distract people from the other executive orders.

Switched to Apple Maps a few months ago, just one more reason to never switch back.

Why do you think the U.S. decided to withdraw

Trump was elected.

what role did concerns about economic burdens play in that decision?

Those were the only concerns taken into account.

Do you agree with the argument that the agreement was unfair to the U.S.

No.

do you think it was a necessary commitment to addressing climate change?

Yes.

How do you think the withdrawal impacted global efforts and international relations

It'll discourage other countries from living up to the targets of the agreement, whether they continue participating on paper or not.

It makes China's environmental efforts look good in comparison, so the logical thing to do (if lobbyist bribes weren't holding us back) would have been for the US to outcompete China in that field too, since being a market leader in renewable energy is getting more and more valuable with each passing year.

did it weaken the collective fight against climate change or influence other nations’ decisions

Undoubtedly.

Should economic concerns ever take precedence over environmental responsibilities in agreements like this?

For long term economic success, those environmental responsibilities must be fulfilled to account for the negative externalities of any industry that pollutes the environment. Ignoring them offsets those costs onto others, artificially increasing short-term profits.

Using life imprisonment to maintain a low-cost source of labor without giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship; sounds familiar...

Then they're likely just auto-assigning you to a server, likely based on geographic proximity.

Aside from the organization's charter mandating editorial independence, the BBC being publicly-funded by the country's annual broadcasting fee ensures that it does not need to pander to politicians to conduct its operations. It's far more effective at this than PBS, which is more likely to be biased due to its need for corporate and charitable sponsors.

RT in contrast is only accountable to the Russian government, and ultimately Putin, and is thus unable to maintain editorial independence from the government's national and foreign policy interests.

RT is a mouthpiece of the Russian government; the only "other side of the story" that would come from it would not only be misleading, but also promote the authoritarianism, war crimes, and aggression of the Russian government.

In an age when LLMs make reading the truth harder and harder, blacklisting publications that are guaranteed propaganda is essential.

In the same vein, even though I'm fully supportive of Ukraine and its right to self-defense, I don't think people should use any of the equivalent American propaganda agencies (U.S. Agency for Global Media: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting), since their reporting is often deliberately biased in favor of American foreign policy interests. Furthermore, there's plenty of Western media sources not backed by state interests, so they're never the only source on something anyhow.

The only reliable public broadcasting organizations are those with independent operations financed via public contributions, such as the BBC.

Private broadcasting organizations often have bias as well, with tabloids and extremist sources such as Newsmax being just as unreliable and misleading as state-backed outlets, so vigilance in maintaining a line in the sand between journalism and propaganda is essential.

Although I'd agree that lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear are far-left, with only one specifically right-wing instance that I can think of, I don't think that most of the remaining Lemmy users on lemmy.world, lemmy.dbzer0.com, lemm.ee, beehaw.org, or any of the other big Lemmy instances are particularly extreme in their views.

On average, Lemmy users do seem to be more left-wing than right-wing, probably due to right-wing Redditors being less likely to mind Reddit's monetization of its userbase, and more likely to mind Lemmy's far-left instances.

While I don't think Lemmy should encourage far-right users to join, given that racism and bigotry degrade any platform that allows such speech, I do think that those on the right who are not extreme and are capable of having thoughts independent of the MAGA cult should be welcomed on any instance, given that echo chambers only serve to propagate existing views, rather than foster discussion.

The key part in joining any instance are the instances that either block it or are blocked by it, so perhaps one that blocks lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear by default, while minimizing the number of instances that in turn block it, would be optimal to have access to as many communities as possible.

Here's a list of Lemmy instances by number of instances blocked and blocking, for reference. Seems to not be quite up-to-date, and can't find the instance I'm on on the list, but it should still be somewhat helpful for comparing. Personally, I prefer being on an instance with as few blocks as possible (implementing those blocks instead on a user level as a means of curating my all feed), since the Lemmy community is already small enough as it is, but new users might not want to have to configure those blocks themselves.

After that same guy didn't tear down the system the first time, rather giving into lobbyist interests far more than any other 'career politician' in modern American history, such as in beating the record for inaugural bribe collection he himself set eight years ago, you'd think more people would at least recognize that Trump's promises are either smoke in the wind or just a means for private interests to enrichen themselves at the expense of the American people.

Counting deaths alone in Gaza and the West Bank ignores all the Palestinian refugees that have been forced to leave Palestine altogether; in either case, Israel wants to settle the rest of Palestine to cement their claim to it and control over it.

If Nadella was visiting Musk, why was Trump there? /s

Terrorism is wrong, whether conducted by Palestinians or Israelis. I therefore think the ideal ceasefire would have war criminals from both sides shipped to The Hague.

Recognizing that that isn't going to happen though, 30–50 Palestinians per Israeli is also around what the war casualties have been thus far...

Anyone who thinks he'll do it at all is delusional; he's gotten $200 million in bribes to increase corporate profits, not lower them.