[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Maybe - and hear me out - it's the dogs that are the problem?

"Can't control their prey drive" is a bad excuse. You control your dog or you don't deserve to have one. End of story. A dog barking endlessly is the responsibility of the owner to control or get rid of their damn dog.

It isn't hard to teach your dog not to be a nuisance. I've done it before. Blaming the dog because you failed to teach/control it is not correct, and simply shows that you do not have what it takes to be a dog owner.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 46 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is a third bottleneck, earlier than the 2 we already knew about.

Specifically, this affects the entire human population.

The other 2 bottlenecks were specifically the humans which moved out of Africa - with one being as humans crossed into the Middle East and a second as humans crossed the Bering Strait.

This third one was earlier, and covers all humans, even the ones which never left Africa. These are separate from the more localized "founder events" that we see all over the world.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 36 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Murrieta

That's the problem right there.

Murrieta is very much part of an island of conservativism in the rest of California. It's very much a green grass, "whites only" kind of place. Oodles of Mormons. Not exactly friendly to LGBTQ folk.

I lived there. I went to high school there. It was where I voted for the first time.

I remember in high school thinking a girl was cute and she invited me over on a Sunday morning. She picked me up for what I thought was going to be a day of just hanging out at her place - but instead, she dragged me to her Mormon church. The preacher spoke out about how proud they were that they were able to pass Prop 8 (which banned gay marriage in California), how hard they fought for it, and how evil LGBTQ folk were. I was disgusted, but at the time I couldn't drive (and thus couldn't leave). When I finally escaped, I made a point to never talk to that girl again.

That is absolutely par for the course in Murrieta (and Temecula). They live in a total bubble and refuse to acknowledge that they're part of California proper. A friendly reminder that the Temecula Valley School District (which represents both Murrieta and Temecula) is being sued by the State of California because they decided to promote racism and anti-LGBTQ sentiment within schools, in violation of state law.

Public Counsel, the nonprofit group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Temecula students, parents and teachers, claims the policy has been used by school board members to stop teaching "any concepts that conflict with their ideological viewpoints, including the history of the LGBTQ rights movement and the existence of racism in today's society."

Murrieta-Temecula is full of bigots, all hiding under their mask. But when you live there, you see the mask slip... especially if you're a cis white male "good ol' boy" like how I present.

36
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by EnglishMobster@kbin.social to c/newcommunities@lemmy.world

Wizardposting

!wizardposting (for Lemmy users)

@wizardposting (for Kbin users)

There was a community like this on Vlemmy, but it never got made elsewhere and got lost when Vlemmy shut down. I kept hoping someone else would make it, but alas. So I made it on my own!

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 38 points 10 months ago

Here's a video from an all-hands meeting the day after she quit. (Reddit, sorry.)

The following is a transcript if you'd rather avoid Reddit:

(speaker 1, Linus) So we called this meeting because it's come to our attention that we need to have a quick chat about the best way to handle HR related feedback and rumors. We won't be giving any names for what I hope are extraordinarily obvious reasons, but what we can do is give you the following guidelines for problem solving and conflict resolution.

Sorry that this is all boring and corporate, but here we are. Number one, always stand up for what's right. We're only a team as long as we're all working together and working for each other. That's the most important one. Number two, always reflect on your own personal experiences and use your common sense. Few things in life are truly black and white. Number three, always wait to hear both sides of a story before passing your own judgment. Be cautious when you know that one side is bound by legal and ethical disclosure guidelines, when the other is not. Carefully consider what it says about the character of someone who would engage in that type of gossip against someone who has no power to defend themselves.

Number four, always encourage openness and transparency. If you have a problem, you need to speak up. We want to fix it. If you receive feedback about somebody else at this company, the first response is, have you spoken with this person? Followed closely by, you need to speak with this person. We don't solve interpersonal issues here, or really anywhere in your life, if you wish to live in a drama free zone, by engaging in water cooler politicking. So, if for any reason that individual is not comfortable approaching the person they're having a conflict with, we have a chain that they're supposed to follow.

So first, you advise them to take the problem to their manager. Followed by me or Yvonne, followed by our third party HR firm. I hope that you all trust that we're here to make this a safe, fun, and productive workplace, and we won't tolerate mistreatment of any of our team members.

If you have any reason to believe otherwise, then I refer you again to point number four, which is to address the issue with the individual directly, or bring it to me or Yvonne, or bring it to our third party HR firm. Since I'm not at liberty to share any details about what occurred, uh, all I can do is ask that you trust me and Yvonne.

Um, some of you know us very well, I've been here a very long time, um, some of you have not been here for as long, but I like to think that whether you've been here for nine years or nine days, you're here for a reason and you believe that we are utmost to run this company with integrity and compassion.

Um, We can't solve problems we don't know about though, so on that note, I'd like to invite anyone who has concerns about a fellow team member or about a manager to submit their feedback either by speaking with their manager, me or Yvonne directly, or if you would prefer to provide your feedback anonymously, we have an option for that as well.

It's the manager and co-worker feedback form. Uh, Yvonne, if you're not aware of it - show of hands who is not aware of it? Hey, a lot of people aren't aware of it. Good, so now we all know. There's an anonymous form, if for whatever reason you're not comfortable either talking to me me or Yvonne directly about it - and that's okay, that's fine, we understand, that's why we have these options - Yvonne's gonna post it in the general chat.

It's a safe space to provide us ideas for improvement, or if you're consumed by the holiday spirit and you want to say nice things, you can do that too. Does anybody else have any questions?

Not a single question? Wow, that must have been a really good speech.

(speaker 2, James) You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?

(speaker 1, Linus) That's it! So, um, Yvonne, did you have anything you wanted to add?

(speaker 3, Yvonne) (inaudible) Somebody said (inaudible) if you guys want to sanitize your hands, help yourself with free (inaudible)?

(speaker 1, Linus) Yeah, that was actually just totally random timing. It came up the stairs a moment ago. Dennis is on it. Alright. Thank you everyone. Have a wonderful and, uh, productive rest of your day. And weekend.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 55 points 10 months ago

With Lemmygrad hot on their heels!

10
[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 73 points 11 months ago

Let's not forget Android as well!

Google's been slowly killing the open-source part of Android for a while now...

1

I logged into Kbin today to see 18 notifications where the same guy banned me from all of their magazines for downvoting them.

I was only subscribed to 1 of those magazines, but it's still annoying to wake up to 18 ban messages from someone who got easily angered from a downvote.

(Side note: IMO, this is why being able to see downvotes is bad. Even if anyone could see them by spinning up their own instance, that's a lot of work compared to pressing 2 buttons.)

I've blocked the guy, but is there anything that can be done to stop this from proliferating across the site?

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 46 points 11 months ago

You are technically correct, but surely you must know at this point that's not at all how domains are used on the internet. Bit.ly isn't hosted or affiliated with Libya.

And if you ever doubted that the maintainers of Lemmy are tankies, well have I got a post from you, from the horse's mouth:

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Hey all, longtime Marxist-leninist, recorder of left audiobooks, and megathread shitposter here.

Posting this in light of a recent one week Reddit ban I earned for shitting on US police, as I'm sure many of us have gotten in recent weeks.

So I've spent the past few months working on a self hostable, federated, Reddit alternative called Lemmy, and it's pretty much ready to go. Unlike here we'd have ultimate control over all content, and would never have to self censor.

Obviously as communists, we agitate where the people are, so we should never abandon Reddit entirely, but it's been clear to all of us from day one, that communities like this stand on unsteady ground, and could be banned or quarantined at any moment by the white supremacist Reddit admins. This would be both a backup and a potentially better alternative. Moderation abilities are there, as well as a slur filter.

Raddle isn't an option obviously since it's run by this arch anti tankie scum, ziq.

I wanted to ask ppl here if they'd like me to host an instance, and mod all the current mods here.

The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. They chose ".ml" because they are Marxist-Leninists. They first advertised on /r/communism and that post outright states they're Marxist-Leninists.

Thinking they chose .ml because they really like Mali is absolutely ridiculous.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 223 points 11 months ago

Your phone doesn't listen to you, but it builds a fingerprint and uses that fingerprint to serve ads.

It also serves ads for things based on who you've been around recently. The example given was the guy's wife asked for a power drill for her birthday, and then the guy started seeing power drill ads.

This wasn't because of the conversation, but because his wife had looked up power drills and opened herself up to ads about them. Because the husband had been around the wife, the ad algorithms thought he might be into the same sort of things she is, and so they started serving him ads based on what they think his wife would like.

The article takes issue with this and considers it an invasion of privacy. It's the same sort of story we've seen dozens of times before; John Oliver did it better.

0

Citing "lack of transparency from Fandom [...] loss of features [...] and toxic company culture."

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 46 points 1 year ago

They had me until they started pushing their Web3 bullshit. Crypto bros co-opted the term and kept it away from "real" Web 3.0 tech like the fediverse.

2

Those two are my favorite authors, but sadly I've read all their work and neither are making any more.

I absolutely love that style of writing and I'd love to know if there's more like them!

1
Disney rule (media.kbin.social)
[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm a mod of /r/Disneyland, and we recreated our sub over here on Kbin ( @Disneyland, https://kbin.social/m/Disneyland).

The issue is that we had 500k subs on Reddit. That sounds like a lot, but in reality it equates to about a dozen posts a day, maybe less.

Over here on Kbin, we almost have 100 subs - and I'm really proud of that! - but 100 subs is basically nothing. A fraction of a percent of people are actually content contributors, and the whole community rests on them. Then combine that with the fact that we're a niche subject (not some general thing like "video games") and that impacts what can be contributed.

On top of that, the magazine is fairly empty. Not barren - we have a few posts - but it certainly looks and feels empty. And because it's empty, nobody wants to post, which means it stays empty.

Compare that to Reddit, which has a very dedicated community for us. Not a massive community, but certainly a passionate one. We care about our community; we've stewarded it for years. All of us mods started out as members of that community (the subreddit founder is long gone), and we're all unpaid volunteers that want to keep that community healthy.

Reddit threatened to take it from us and give it to another mod team for a related Disney subreddit that played along with the admins. The issue is that multiple Disney subreddits have, uh, issues with those mods (which has been the case for years to the point where explaining the history is part of onboarding for a lot of Disney mods).

So the issue was reframed - either we reopen our sub on our terms... or we stick to our guns, force Reddit to remove us, and get replaced by a different mod team. This other team is known to be harsh about banning users for any kind of dissent, they abuse their mod powers to spread anti-vax nonsense all over their "non-political" subreddit, they have multiple subreddit drama threads talking about their actions, they've been gunning for all of the Disney subs for years... and they'd immediately jump at the chance to reopen the subreddit we've worked hard on so they could run it their way.

When you look at it like that... there's only one real choice. I hate Reddit, but our community doesn't deserve that.

I realize saying "we choose to keep our powers for your own good" makes me sound like, oh, I dunno, "landed gentry"... but users don't see that side of moderation or Reddit drama, and frankly they shouldn't have to.

So we opened and are taking the abuse. Users are torn between "you caved, scabs" and "told you this was a useless gesture, how dare you take my sub away". Neither one is great.

But there's more to it than what appears on the surface, and frankly that's true across a lot of subs.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago

Technically, the domain name is itjust.works. ;)

0

"We got down from the car and went inside."

1
o7 (media.kbin.social)
0

It was sold as a 'conversation starter', which was certainly correct.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 40 points 1 year ago

On Lemmy, they are "communities".

On Kbin, they are "magazines". I am told that "magazine" is a pun in Polish (Kbin's maintainer is Polish).

7
me_irl (media.kbin.social)
view more: next ›

EnglishMobster

joined 1 year ago