Does anything other than the style of the skull and crossbones of his ex-tattoo suggest that he is in any way a Nazi or fascist?

Finally got my last PC switched off Windows. It feels good.

I think there may be more opportunity for success here than your argument seems to suggest.

I agree with the focus on inequality. The sense that society is fundamentally unfair has a corrosive and a radicalising effect on politics. People can react to it in very different ways, from redistribution to out-group scapegoating, but the underlying motivation is that people see that there is vast wealth available in our society and they’re still struggling.

Where I may disagree is that most people are non-ideological. Not everyone, but a healthy majority. They aren’t focused on the philosophical roots of a candidate’s policies. They care that the candidate

1. Sees, likes, and cares about themselves and their group
2. Has a vision that gives them hope for something better

Many people can find that in candidates with a variety of ideological positions. The overlap between people who supported Bernie after the great recession, and went on to support Trump is bigger than one would expect.

So the equation is much less zero sum. You don’t lose one reactionary for every radical you bring into your camp. There really aren’t that many committed radicals and reactionaries.

The most toxic message today is the economic moderate. “Hey, it’s not so bad. Things could be a lot worse.” This is the zero sum relationship. You can’t keep both the people who are doing well and like how things work, and the people who are struggling and want the life they deserve. The material difference isn’t left vs right, it’s status quo versus change. There’s a lot more room for flexibility in the change camp.

Fucking cool, and also remember to leave your phone at home, or at least on airplane mode.

Pretty sure they’re typically publicly owned. Maybe some places lease them. Couldn’t find a national survey, but here’s at least one example of a county that bought some machines and a service contract.

https://fm.kuac.org/elections/2025-03-10/assembly-fails-voting-machine-contract-may-force-change-to-hand-counting-ballots

Maybe a car fleet is a good example. Ford designs and builds the cars. Counties buy them, and often buy service and maintenance contracts to keep them running. The counties still own the cars.

I suppose counties could receive the source code, have it audited, and then compile and load it themselves.

I thought about this for a second, and I don’t actually think being open source would do any good. It’s not like we can compile and run our own voting booths. There’s no way to know what’s actually running in the machine at your polling place.

And voting machines are publicly owned, but perhaps you meant designed and manufactured by the government?

Exactly. They’re trying to scare us off. A little courage now may spare us the need for really scary things later.

It would be interesting to learn something about the demographics on Lemmy.

I usually liken the bad vibes on Lemmy to being stuck with a bunch of cynical teenagers. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing good can happen. They know this with absolute certainty.

I am also probably older than average here.

They do, but I’m a little surprised by how well they’ve positioned themselves on this one. It seems to me that the most likely scenario is that the Republicans will give nothing on principal, the shutdown will go until November when the premiums increase, and the country will see that the Republicans would rather close the government for two months than spare them a doubling or tripling of their healthcare costs.

And all the while Trump trashes the government in an attempt to retaliate, without really understanding that the government provides services that people, his voters included, depend on. I’m not sure, “the Democrats made me do it,” will save him with anyone other than his cult members.

I am cautiously optimistic.

Rage bait?

I try to stay skeptical about conspiracy theories, but I have yet to see an explanation for why this guy had so much money and connections. To talk about “science” and “money markets”? At Bill Clinton’s request? None of that makes sense to me.

Looking forward to more vindictive prosecution findings.

Recognizing that the physical can affect the mental, and vice versa, isn’t really the end of the dualism argument. Dualists have incorporated that simple observation from the beginning.

From your quote, the key word is “purely.” Is consciousness purely physical, or is some other substance involved, that’s the question.

You can take either side of the argument, but physical-mental interactions only suggest that mental phenomena are not purely separate. It does not indicate that there are no non-physical elements of consciousness. In other words, that mental states are purely physical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism

If you want to read through some of the arguments for and against.

Are you objecting to him being described as a refugee?

In 1922?

I thought the healthcare tax credits were too technical to grab popular support, and turn the shutdown against Republicans. Maybe I was wrong.

A counterpoint would be to ask which platforms digg and reddit began as clones of. Seems they were pretty unique and yet exploded almost from the beginning. Snapchat? Vine? They were both pretty unique.

To OPs point, basically all of the fediverse apps are clones, which aside from the federation element, don’t add anything to the formula they are cloning. Even if you prefer the incremental strategy, where things are basically the same with a few new features, it would be hard to argue the fediverse apps even meet that bar. To the average user, federation is a technical issue they’d rather not be bothered with.

So I’m inclined to agree that this first wave of open source, federated social platforms have ended up, in terms of social features, pretty uninnovative. But before I sound too critical, I appreciate the work these app builders have put in, and clearly use the apps myself.

It may be a question of project scope. If what you aim to do is liberate yourself and your fellow nerds from corporate platforms, the clones suffice. If, perhaps, your aim is to liberate everyone, you’ll need innovation in both the backend, and the social features to draw in everyone else.

Caveat - I’ve only really used Mastodon and Lemmy. Perhaps others are different.

I’m holding out hope that the real world remains separate from social media. We shall see. And for the Americans in the audience, remember No Kings Oct 18!

This comment chain is just chef’s kiss

But the governor of Louisiana already has command of the Louisiana National Guard. Is there some funding advantage to having them federalized? Is it to normalize National Guard use for law enforcement? Maybe fishing for a case to bring to the supreme court on posse commitatus? This doesn’t make obvious sense.