Hello? Are the moderators out to lunch?

6. No US politics

This rule is being rampantly ignored literally every day in this community.

Tom Cruise. It’s awkward but undeniable.

Full marks for unpopular (at least everywhere but here).

Counter-moral: any community has the right to decide its own membership.

A genuinely unpopular one and I agree with you!

With a partial caveat on your last claim, which seems a bit shaky. Sometimes it’s genuinely necessary to lock people up in order to protect society. Not very often, but sometimes (and that not mean treating them poorly).

IMO there’s also a case for using prison as symbolic justice. A month here, 2 weeks there, to send a firm message about what’s acceptable in society. But the rule should be community service, not prison.

ITT: lots of morals that most people (here) agree with. Predictable.

Even more interesting IMO: what are the options that do not involve self-hosting (thus avoiding the PITA of babysitting a domain and server security)?

IMO most of the suggestions here are small beer.

If you want to be very scientific about this, and to calculate cumulative sums of harm, with no discount for the future, then just look for some little-known hydrocarbons corp - it will top the list.

If you apply a future discount, but no discount (or a small one) for the suffering of non-human animals, then some meat company will probably top the list.

The correct answer is usually the most boring one.

I’m late to the party

26 years and 5 days late, to be precise!

But really more like 20 years, which was when it took off as the plumbing of the blogosphere (AKA the last form of social media that was arguably healthy for all concerned).

Or in fact you’re not late at all given that you probably listen to podcasts.

PS: to add a useful tool recommendation to this otherwise ruminative contribution: RSSBox

The catastrophic typo has completely undermined your three paragraphs of beautiful typo-free blurb. Re-read your copy before posting, people.

So. Nobody gonna push back? It’s quite a convincing article. Especially this bit:

This is something I want to put a bit more focus on: how important the PDS is.

Giving people their own PDS is soooo crucial to having a free ( as in freedom ) internet. This needs to be something that I can:

• Self host or have somebody else host for me
• Download all of my data from, whenever I want to, and
• Grant other apps read and write access to

That last piece is crucial to the existence of all of these different ATProto apps. We are giving people their own data store and then letting them connect that to all kinds of different tools and experiences.

It does at least seem like the protocol is more sophisticated, and so perhaps carries more potential, than (say) the one powering this site.

Important to keep in mind that decent journalism does not fall from trees. The “greedy and trackers-filled” sites are often just ordinary newspapers and magazines that had their business model turned upside down by the internet. They only have so many options left when big tech has cornered the online ad market using spyware and when most people choose not to subscribe on grounds of “bias” or whatever - very often the same people who have no problem making regular payments to genuinely greedy corporations like Amazon or Netflix.

But I do agree that we should pay more attention how news sources are funded.

The profit-nonprofit metric is pretty good but not perfect. Firstly because journalism is de-facto always nonprofit. That’s why even good newspapers are often beholden to billionaires. Even thousands of subscribers can’t pay for a product of the quality of the Washington Post (though it’s getting close). There are zero evil capitalists skimming off the profits of journalism, because journalism is just not a profitable business.

Secondly because even audience-funded news sources can be biased, usually in line with their audience’s prejudices (Unherd and The Free Press spring to mind). Any NGO or cooperative can write an ostensibly fact-based article but that doesn’t make it a credible source. This is what journalistic ethics are supposed to cover, similar to academic ethics work if you’re writing, say, history.

I think the basic test should be: Does this news source have multiple lines of accountability?

• wholly owned by a single multinational corp? - avoid
• funded entirely by a non-profit foundation - check the owner’s mission
• a cooperative of accredited journalists (a few exist) - fine but beware individual biases
• has lots of subscribers and also ads - should be OK but check specifics
• state broadcaster - fine when accountable to independent board (BBC, CBC), else beware

Calm down. The USA is not by any measure an “authoritarian dictatorship” with “no rule of law”. Not yet. Instead of wailing histrionics like this, Americans would do better to roll up their sleeves and do something to stop the slide.

Make sure your representatives know what you think. Get involved in local politics. Protest. Its precisely because your country is not an authoritarian dictatorship that you (still) have so many options.

True

This guy is obviously borderline famous in Thailand, but all anyone here wants to know about is his money situation! Ahh Americans.

OP won the thread before the first response arrived.

I like to walk around town and ask if people want to hear me sing

I’m pretty introverted

Something’s off.

Not necessarily. All else being equal, mortgage + property charges + maintenance + tax is usually quite a bit more than rent. The issue is that renters almost never save or invest that delta, they spend it.

How does this post not contravene rule #6? Is there any moderation here?

Seriously, it’s a good subject but there must be a more appropriate place for it.

It’s no secret that Ukraine has conscription. It’s a country at war, because it’s been invaded. Wartime rules therefore apply. This is also why the election has been postponed, automatically and legally. Historically, many countries have had peacetime conscription. The UK had it until the 1960s for example, France’s until the late 90s.

Ukraine had conscription for only for 27-and-overs until recently. It’s now 25.

None of this is a secret.

Since you seem especially concerned about the moral aspects of the subject, and cite scandalous abuses, the question is unavoidable: why you are so exercised by Ukraine’s situation when Russia is far, far, far worse on all these fronts? It’s odd.