OpenStars

To name one example, he deregulated the inspection of train safety, despite internal whistleblowers (who were ofc subsequently fired) claiming that the industry was not regulating itself in anything remotely resembling a "safe" manner. Keep in mind, this was before all those famous train derailments happened. Multiple people especially train engineers predicted they would happen, they went to a large amount of trouble - and were fired as a result - of warning that they would happen, but Trump ignored all of that and deregulated the industry to help make it more profitable... and then the derailments happened, whereupon we all paid the price. Socialization of costs, privatization of profits, it is the exact opposite of both socialism and of capitalism both - it was sheer foolishness, period.

And ofc there was his handling of the pandemic - note the initial cause of the pandemic was not his fault, but his poor handling of it is on him. First, at minimum, if nothing else "the buck stops here". But above & beyond the latter, as the audio recording with Bob Woodsworth revealed, Trump knew that the virus was airborne - he told his friend that much - and yet even knowing that, afterwards he lied and told people that it explicitly was not airborne (again, to aid "the economy", at the expense of the workers who died as a result). When others, e.g. Bill Clinton, have lied previously, conservatives got angry and tried to impeach them - and rightfully so - so why ignore it when it happens on the other side? Also this lie, measured in the form of "excess deaths", contributed to the deaths of more Americans than all of our wars combined. That seems like "harm" to me.

Then too there is how he inserted himself between a Congressional decision and the intended recipient of funding, with his attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian government to "just do me a favor though". By some definitions of the word that might even have constituted "treason" - I am no lawyer though, so be skeptical ofc, especially extreme claims require more extreme evidence, which the first impeachment trial was meant to bring forth except it was halted by Republicans in Congress.

The list really can go on and on... whatever you think of conservative vs. liberal philosophies, or of Republican vs. Democrat politics, he really was quite a dangerous President. Yes, most of us are still alive after his Presidency, but again... many of us are not now, with a good number of those deaths directly traceable to his decisions. Biden may not be "good", but extremely few Presidents in all of American history come close to how dangerous Trump was, by many objective metrics. History will reveal that, but right now it can be difficult to distinguish b/t the lying liberal media and the lying conservative media sources both lie, for the sake of their own profits. In all of that muddiness of facts, it can be super difficult to find out what is really going on. But the fate of people in and maybe the fate of our actual nation is on the line, so it is worth the effort for those of us who would consider ourselves "leaders" aka citizens, whose votes will determine the course ahead for us all.

Oh I did not know that. Sometimes the answer to "where would you go, if you were a troll" may just happen to be the same answer as "where would you go, if you were not a troll":-).

If they are incapable of seeing the beauty that is right in front of them, then pity them.

Social media algorithms & enshittification really are destroying everything online, with their "engagement statistics" that predate upon hate & fear to drive continual profits. Trash talk sells, e.g. on X or Reddit, hence people use it, and then spread it to other platforms.

Meh, to be fair, communism gave us all the likes of Mastodon and Lemmy, whereas capitalism gave us all Twitter/X and Reddit so... it's not like I'm knocking the politics even, so much as the extremely annoying manner in which those thoughts are handled, sometimes.

Imagine a Karen who regardless of actual right vs. wrong, thinks they are right, but more importantly just enjoys slamming it into people's faces. Like, if you really think that you are correct, why work so hard to convince people of that "fact" - you catch more flies with honey than vinegar - and who exactly are you trying to ~~convince~~ bully even?

Likewise even a factually correct endpoint can be made into part of an incorrect statement if arrived at via a false chain of logical deduction - i.e., even a stopped watch is right twice a day, but that doesn't mean that you should trust the watch from then on!? A statement that includes a logical fallacy, even if deployed in order to defend a true statement, is still false, even if the underlying fact also happened to be true.

And if there is anything I am learning from the internet, it is that trolling exists, yet not everyone is a troll, and it improves my mental sanity >95% to block such. I used to be proud of never blocking anyone, ever. I grew up though, in seeing how others refuse to grow.:-D

You might try an experiment and make an account somewhere, and see how different some posts and their complement of comments look, in terms of which instances you may choose to block, and also which individuals may have blocked your instance in return...

What I see of management styles today is "make a plan". Period. End of sentence. End of matter. End of discussion. Short-term thinking is the only type of thinking allowed. Want to do more? You're fired, and replaced with someone who will be more of a "team player". Even/especially the CEO, by the Board. i.e., you are overestimating their willingness & capacity to think beyond their greed - YOU (& I/we) see that, but they ~~don't~~ won't.

YOUR veins, not THEIRS.

You don't get to become a CEO by remembering the human. Hate the playa, but even more so hate the game.

Well *I* don't, thus keep in mind that I may be summarizing here the reasons that others do incorrectly &/or unfairly, but from what I understand people are saying:

(1) often when people get extremely argumentative (aka bat shit insane crazy trolling) it is from there. Who wants to talk to someone who is rude, condescending, and doesn't listen in the slightest to your POV before loudly proclaiming how very wrong you are, even while using logical fallacies (such as strawman) as they do so?:-P Counterpoint: that can happen on any sufficiently large instance e.g. lemmy.world too? Though it does seem to happen more often on lemmy.ml for whatever reason.

(2) it may be relevant (tbh I'm not entirely sure how though?) that it leans fairly hardcore to what many people e.g. in the USA would consider an extreme leftist viewpoint, as in so far to the left that it may even become uncomfortable to someone living in a society that leans more rightwards even if the person in it considers themselves an "extreme leftist" in relation to that center point. Along these lines, are "memes" merely political propaganda that happens to be drawn in a cartoonish form? (Though this is an argument pertaining to merely a community, not an entire instance.)

Thank you so much for the update. Oh wow what a turn-around. I can only guess he was desperate to grow the site and did whatever he thought would help his profits. I really do enjoy the mode of thinking behind the Fediverse so much more!:-)

There are several closed group options or other closed source ones that aim to be just like Reddit in practice but not exactly it in theory. Ironically the Reddit alternatives sub on Reddit is probably the best place to get such a list 😜.

I enjoyed Squabbles for a bit - it was described at the time as toxically non-toxic as in very much anti-hate speech, though I don't know how it's fared recently. At the end of the day though it's just one guy's project, and while he's no Huffman, still the entire thing turns around him, very unlike the Fediverse that can become anything we want it to be.

If you do remain on Lemmy, learn which things to block bc that will improve your experience substantially. Just blocking lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net improved mine 95%, and ironically some people (not me) also block Lemmy.ml. You will come to find what works for you, I am just saying that the experience varies enormously depending on that one factor!

I strongly hesitated saying anything at all b/c there are so very many different rules governing the behavior of every single kind of symbol. Though one jumping off point is the use of the parenthesis, without slashes prior to them and them meaning alternatives within a grouping context rather than merely "remembering", for the sake of e.g. replacement or copying, so e.g. in the Unix CLI "grep" command this would not work even with the -e parameter (I am not so sure about perl-style though, or rather, this would work within pure perl, but perl-style regexps from within grep is another matter, plus that option itself is not universal across all forms of Unix).

In any case, I hoped that the YoMama joke would be universally understood and appreciated regardless, across all of the many & varied language barriers 😜.

Also matches TakesOutzTheYourMother, since the asterisk allows for zero matches to the group, and there seems no bounding constraints:-).