People have their preferences, and that's fine. I certainly think we would benefit from different instances making use of different user interfaces by default, appealing in return to different kinds of people.
I've heard some people are not into Piefed because it's too bare bones or something. For me, that's exactly why I love it. Besides, they have even added (optional) support for decorative drop shadows - it's futuristic as fuck, as far as I'm concerned.
Fun fact: if you're an artist on Spotify receiving less than 1000 streams in a year, they won't even bother paying you. You also need a minimum number of unique listeners. That number is secret.
Spotify is good for those already rich, and bad for those who isn't.
They also have Joe Rogan and Gwyneth Paltrow on their payroll, and they actively lobby for more relaxed AI legislatiolegislation in the EU.
If you have a subscription, the best thing you van do is to cancel it, get your music from the high seas, and instead donate $12 per month or however much it costs directly to artists you enjoy by buying their music or merch online.
Yeah, generally people need quite a bit of nudging before they get off their asses.
So now seems like a good time to start - no reason to wait for things to get even worse. This is why I stress the community building - it only really requires people to fight back, but it does require people to fight back.
She'll be happy to hear that it has worked on numerous occasions throughout history! After the fall of Fascism in Europe, people in many countries got together and created strong welfare states in the post war period. Some were more successful than others, but even in the ultraconservative UK they managed to create a national health service that hs proven difficult to kill off.
Sadly, I'll have to break to her that the fight never ends. The second you stop fighting for progress, some asshole will pop up and try to instill feudalism again. After a generation or two people tend to forget the ongoing nature of this threat, and it seems we haven't managed to come up with ways to permanently get rid of it, despite our best efforts following the French and American revolutions.
Maybe the time has come to go back to the drawing board, and rethink some of the decisions that were made back then. Jefferson said every generation should have its own constitution. Maybe he was right.
If your friend is willing to make the effort to combat this, she should get organized. She should find like-minded people, act locally to gain political power, and create a stronghold where the illegitimate government will face resistance. She should base this around ideological lines, rather than willingly subscribing to what experienced members in established political elites in her country are trying to make her say or do. She should write down whether values are and make sure to keep them close at all times, knowing that she just might be successful and that power corrupts.
She should not give up hope, but she should give up the belief that others will change anything for her. She needs recognize that her country is already broken, and she needs to act to be the change.
She needs to recognize that she's not powerless. She can make a difference.
Likewise, she needs to recognize that it's a long and painful process. It needs to start locally, and it might always stay local. But that is fine.
She needs to realize strength is in the community. Building the community of like minded people working for local action is crucial. She'll be disappointed in them at times, but she'll just have to keep going. There's power in community.
At least that's what I think I'd advice her. But I don't know your friend or her situation, obviously.
American capitalists are really, really good at cracking down on any civil attempt at unionising and/or improving society at the cost of the ultra rich.
You could recite the extensive history of violence, but honestly the greatest achievement is in the propaganda. Solidarity seems to be commonly understood - by all classes - as having to take the bill for somebody even poorer than yourself, and nobody seems to be comfortable with the idea that they might themselves one day benefit.
Americans can't have good things before they start fighting back. Read up on union history. Organize. Educate. Teach people what solidarity is and what the Battle of Blair Mountain was. Learn what was taken away from you, and help others understand as well. Begin locally.
Either that, or keep watching the fascists take over day by day, as they have been doing for decades.
Strong agree. Mastodon already works so that your feed won't be filled up with shit you don't want to see.
On a personal level, I couldn't care less.
On a professional level, I want people to be able to follow me no matter which idiotic service they are using. So I'm bridging to Bluesky and I would be happy with my content being spread on Threads as well, though it doesn't seem to attract many academic users. I have no idea who that platform is for. But if they're interested in seeing my boring academic self-promotion, that's cool with me.
Fediverse users are sceptical, so for now threads uses can only find users who willingly intact with people on threads. They're taking a carefcareful approach.
I assume if threads users follow fediverse users the content makes its way to their feed as normal.
For sure, the American left were blue eyed in regards to what was happening in the Soviet Union during McCarthyism. I just find it hard to judge them too harshly for that, considering their experience of being prosecuted at home for no good reason, and their first hand experience of how American capitalists wage a full-on war against organized labour.
My way into Guthrie's thinking is through the songs he wrote, and what emerges through that is a man who absolutely has his heart and brain in the right place. I have no doubt he had his shortcomings as a human, as we all do.
At the height of McCarthyism, I think anyone would be a fool to believe anything told by the American government or official narratives.
Unlike Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, Guthrie died in 1967 with Huntington's disease so severe he hadn't been able to talk for a good while when he died. It's also a fact that Huntington's disease affects your mental state, and Guthrie did to some degree go crazy before he died. He got the disease from his mother, and her reaction to the illness is the origin of the family tragedies that made it so natural for Guthrie to write about his hard travelling.
There's also accounts Guthrie was a real jerk in the final years, which again can be attributed to Huntington's disease.
As for Korea, America had no fucking business there.
Scotland and Norway have the right to roam, where there are land owners but they do not have the right to keep you off their land. As far as I'm concerned that's the bare minimum for a decency, even though it's a long shot from communism.
But Guthrie was a communist. This was before Stalinism and a lot of the bad connotations given to communism since - I doubt he would have embraced much of what have happened in the name of communism. But he was a union man.
Where are you based? US? If so, which state? Which field? Are you willing to travel far?
There are huge differences in costs (from free to insanely expensive) and quality (not necessarily correlated with costs). But if you want to do a PhD, it could be a good idea to search out a research environment right away and to use the Master's as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with their work.
Edit: Oh, and be ready to change plans. Maybe it's not so fun after all, and you redecide on the whole PhD thing. Or maybe you change your topic. That's fine. Don't force yourself to write a PhD you're not interested in.
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, saying "private property"
But on the back side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me
People have their preferences, and that's fine. I certainly think we would benefit from different instances making use of different user interfaces by default, appealing in return to different kinds of people.
I've heard some people are not into Piefed because it's too bare bones or something. For me, that's exactly why I love it. Besides, they have even added (optional) support for decorative drop shadows - it's futuristic as fuck, as far as I'm concerned.