Words form sentences form paragraphs. You need to be able to hold more than one thought in your head to be able to comprehend an argument. You should try it.

If your reading comprehension is really that bad, it might explain the low quality of your opinions. You should probably try working on it instead of embarrassing yourself in public.

The kinds of things that some parents bully, punish, disown and/or murder their children for should very much be hidden from them if the child chooses to hide it. It’s no one else’s business and, if the child has not yet told them themselves, breaking their confidence is an attempt to ruin their life and quite possibly end it.

This is stochastic terrorism from this fascist government, desperate for any distraction at all from their kleptocratic ways.

Lots of lovely laws, none of them enforced. Liberals* are really very bad** at this game.

*in the political science meaning of the word, not the US colloquial meaning

**or good, depending on your perspective and/or the sincerity of their declared intent

applied by centre left and liberals

It’s a term that originates with the left. Specifically, those who broke with the USSR over imperialist invasions, referring to those who did not. More broadly, it refers to the authoritarian left (as opposed to the anarchist left).

That’s not true. Instagram has 1.6bn users and all can use their Instagram logins to sign in to Threads. The roughly 1% who have signed up already have chosen to activate Threads, it’s not done automatically.

You don’t know what clutter is but you do have a very cool rabbit.

An influential 1966 symposium at the University of Chicago reinforced this idea. Attended by 70 men and five women…

Oh.

but maybe not something you want to put your life on the line over.

To be fair, their hubris usually only kills poor people so, progress?

I doubt he’s ignoring anything. And I know nothing but I think it’s a little unfair to bash him for this.

Meta does not need the Fediverse to create a ready-populated instance all of its own. It doesn’t need to federate with anyone, it can probably kill Twitter and Reddit with a single stone (if it pours enough resource into moderating and siloing). Just stick a fediwidget in every logged in account page with some thoughtful seeding of content and it’s done.

The danger of federating with Meta is much the same as not federating. It has such a massive userbase it will suck the lifeblood out of everywhere else whether or not it can see us.

The possible silver lining is that there are other very large corporates which can do the same (some of which have said they plan to). We could all end up with multiple logins on corporate instances simply because we have accounts with them for other reasons. And that means a lot of very large instances with name recognition, and easy access, making it much harder for any of them to stop federation and keep their users to themselves.

Being federated with one or more behemoths might well be hell. Some instances won’t do it. Moderation standards will be key for those that do. But multiple federated behemoths can hold each other hostage because their users can all jump ship to the competition so easily.

This is much, much more complicated than just boycott or not. They cannot be trusted one tiny fraction of an inch but this is coming whether we like it or not. We need to work out how to protect ourselves and I’m starting to think that encouraging every site with a user login to make the fediverse a widget on their account pages might be the very best way to do it.

Good stuff, thanks.

You can check their post history? Karma doesn’t tell you anything, really. Mine went up tenfold one day just because I replied to what ended up as the top post in a top thread in a much bigger sub than those I normally post in. Some people spend all their time in big subs making short, smart remarks that get a lot of karma, others spend their time in enemy territory battling people they disagree with. Some toxic people have a lot of karma because they hang out in toxic subs.

The problem to be solved is how to order threads. Old skool bulletin boards just bump the most recently replied one to the top. Which works well on an old skool bulletin board as long as it isn’t too large, but very badly on a big site where a few big active threads can drown out all the others.

I don’t know what the solution is. But the numbers don’t mean anything without checking the context. Karma is useful for ordering threads/comments, and giving users a bit of dopamine when they get some attention. But there (probably) are better ways to do it.

That works surprisingly well. Although maybe turn the TV down …

Thank you!

Put a pissmat in front of your bedroom door.

Perhaps show more affection towards your flatmate? I mean, I’m not saying you treat her like shit. But perhaps the dog needs to know you’re not a threat to her? Bring her food or something, I dunno.

It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.

Astroturf is created by billionaires to make it seem like a bunch of ordinary people agree with them. A legit article about several actual instances of corporations killing FOSS does not become astroturf just because a lot of ordinary people found it useful enough to post and cite.

The solution offered is not entirely clear but I read it as “do not federate with huge corporations because they will bury you”.

I’m not on Lemmy. I posted in my kbin instance.

If your employer would not want to lose you, think about what would make it work better for you and then talk to your manager. More days WFH, or shorter hours on days you’re in the office, or a big fat relocation package, or whatever works for you.

If they can’t/won’t help, don’t quit until you have another job lined up. Make sure they know it’s why you’re leaving.

but not needing two hands/multiple clicks

Also. can we have an option for links to magazines/content opening in a new window/tab? Obviously ctrl-click, shift-click, or right click <…> solves the problem but not needing two hands/multiple clicks to avoid losing the current page would be fab.

Professional bodies or academics do sometimes survey their fields, especially when it’s politically important to make a point, eg

Two thirds of economists say Coalition austerity harmed the economy

Top economists warn ending social distancing too soon would only hurt the economy

Rival schools of thought often organise letters implying that their stance is the ‘consensus’ (whether or not that claim is reasonable). Or a campaign to establish a new consensus is launched in an academic paper.

For some fields, like medicine, various organisations produce guidelines, which are increasingly evidence-based rather than opinion-based (ie they look at the evidence rather than surveying professional opinion). The guidelines are not necessarily the consensus but if there are substantial errors or omissions these are likely to be protested and, where appropriate, corrected. Consensus groups are sometimes convened to produce statements with some weight but they are vulnerable to manipulation; I know of one which reconvened after new data were available and the chair (who was well-funded by the drug company) simply expelled everyone who’d changed their minds.

So, there are some formal and informal mechanisms but it’s really very difficult to discern what ‘the’ consensus is from outside of a field (or even from outside of a very specific niche within a field). The sorts of claims you cite in your OP are often quite reasonable but they’re often also misleading (and quite difficult to prove either way). If anything important rests on the claim, you need to dig a bit (lot) deeper to find out if it’s reasonable. And, of course, bear in mind that facts change and today’s minority might be tomorrow’s majority.