South pole

I have seen them at protests, and they do seem organized and they definitely can yell. What the fuck, I’ll take it. I feel like it’s probably mostly the central leadership that’s somehow been corrupted into trying to throw elections to the Republicans and getting upset about us sending aid to Ukraine.

I don’t know if the person on the microphone I saw spend most of their speech yelling about Democrats (literally more than 50%) was from the PSL, but I don’t know that they were. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe not, fuck it, come along with us, you can do your thing and I can do mine, sounds good.

You and Five aren’t 100% wrong, I do take the point that the infighting is a waste of energy. I was all set to apologize and acknowledge, and then I looked at the PSL’s web site and it’s all still talking about the election, they don’t give a shit about progress now that it doesn’t involve an election with a Democrat in it, they literally can’t even be bothered to take down the video yelling about the election that happened a lifetime ago in a different type of country. Literally the day the election happened, they stopped caring, I guess.

I mean like I say, I do get it. I just felt embittered. Now that I’ve got it out of my system for a second, yes, we can all rally together and fight this bullshit whether or not the PSL is aware of its role in this catastrophe or interested in self-preservation in future elections going forward.

Take a look at https://pslweb.org/. There’s nothing about the protests on Saturday, it doesn’t seem to have been updated since the election.

Watch the video. “A system that presents two options, but for all intents and purposes, represents a single billionaire agenda.” “I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime. The reality is, over time, it doesn’t matter.”

I turned it off when they got upset about us sending aid to Ukraine. It’s a little wild and incongruous that they found time to fit that in there, in the same breath as aid to Israel.

Now that millions of people are in the streets and there might be some momentum for lasting change (as well as a terrifying outcome if the resistance isn’t strong enough.)… nothing. Now that they fucked up the election, the page hasn’t been updated, they don’t care anymore. They’re not working on building anything non-electoral now that that’s getting wildly popular. All their focus was (and still is, apparently), on the election.

They aren’t leftists. I feel fine attacking them. Honestly? If there are some confused leftists in their ranks, who unlike the leadership are interested in protests and are getting attacked as a result, then absolutely, let’s defend them. That goes without saying. But the PSL doesn’t have any sympathy from me. I’m not happy about the leadership being in any crosshairs because of the predictable disaster they helped to cause, no one deserves to get shot because they advocated for something good. But, that was part of the point about rallying against Trump, was that hopefully no one would have to get shot. If they realize it’s a big deal now and start fighting, then they should update the web site to talk about that, instead of the election.

Party for Socialism and Liberation: “I plan to continue to express absolutely no urgency about the idea of keeping Republicans out of power. The most important party to criticize is and always has been the Democrats. It’s super important not to vote for Democrats. That’s the key thing. It’s the only way to real forward progress.”

The KDP did the exact same thing in Germany in 1932. Most of them were executed in the years following the election.

Pretty much every modern election system tabulates the ballots electronically, but keeps around the paper ballots for random recounts or investigations. The only reason not to have the paper involved is if you’re cheap / incompetent / don’t care about election security, or if you specifically want to steal the election.

If the accusation are accurate, then the amount that is confirmed by a comically and flagrantly obvious amount of blatant fraud is limited to one county that we know of.

Sure, it could be that one county and no other. Why are you assuming that it definitely is limited to just that county though?

https://librewolf.net/

Not even sure what you’re talking about, and also, no ads on YouTube. Whenever I enter the internet without it, it’s alarming at this point.

I love how sincere he is about really emphasizing how worthless the product is.

I would really encourage everyone to go to https://www.berries.com/ just to see that the same uncanny valley person who wrote the ad copy is still making images for the site.

Also, a hundred and nine dollars for twenty-four strawberries?

Bill was right, man. Spending over a hundred dollars on not very many strawberries to give to your father is definitely not going to make his heart swell with happiness to be your dad. He’s going to think “Jesus Christ I raised a person who can’t function.”

The genuine version of this: Shari’s Berries

Edit: “I’m sure you have… wonderful… chocolate covered berries.”

If the logistics of the trip make it realistic, trains are infinitely better in every respect.

Real human-sized tables. Plugs for charging. No security, no entering a whole other little authoritarian world where people make you take your shoes off and throw away your water. Get up and walk around. Go get a sandwich! The world is your oyster. Watch cool stuff going past (this one can also be true on airplanes but is more intermittent). It’s just better.

No idea about tools although I hope you find something.

Two related suggestions that will change your life:

1. Grunt Fund if you are making decisions about equity
2. Have people estimate the total time for a task, rigidly enforce that every man-hour spent on a project has to be allocated to one of those tasks (including the elusive but vital “oh shit we forgot” task), keep track of the coefficient between the two. It’ll be different for different people sometimes. When estimating a project, have people come up with estimates and then multiply by the coefficient. Be transparent with everyone about this system. It’ll revolutionize your project management life once people get used to it. I tried to find a blog post which explains more detail, but honestly, it’s not complicated, and Google is too shit now to find it.

https://archive.md/GQHLB

Agreed. I have such a distrust at this point of any media that fits a particular format and style, and that whole instance checked a bunch of the boxes.

Like, as far as I know, “Drop Site News” and “In These Times” have not done a thing wrong, and still every time I see them I instantly think “What the fuck! Are you guys Russian? What are you up to?”

The majority of these people that are visible online are likely just literal teenagers trying to deep dive into concepts they have no foundational understanding of and glomming onto whatever sounds the best to their 14 year old, completely externally enforced, worldview.

I 100% agree with this. I was actually confused for a long time by how people on Lemmy.ml are so universal about using the same types of bad thought patterns and arguments… they came across as genuine, individual people, not like some of the propaganda accounts that all employ the same lazy dishonest methods because they are literally just reading from the same handbook. But certain ways of looking at things and flaws in their critical thinking, all the .ml people just happen to share (or it happens to be really common for users there). It was really odd and I couldn’t understand it.

I have reached a tentative conclusion that maybe they just tend to be young or be really unfamiliar with reading critically or being rigorous about judging an argument… and that is why they are still comfortable on .ml. I think it is self-selecting. They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t taken in by certain types of failed logic, because that is the logic that is enforced from above over there.

I’m still not 100% sure but it kind of seems to me like that is what is going on.

Pointing out this stuff like this post does, showing how information warfare gets injected into discourse and hidden as real journalism, is the exact thing that causes this discordant worldview to stop holding weight. The more exposure this gets the less likely people will just take some report and form an opinion completely unaware that opinion is the manufactured outcome of the organization publishing that report.

Completely agree with this also. I don’t think deleting or blocking this stuff is the answer, because that will always be a temporary solution. I think vigorously pushing back on it is the answer for exactly the reason that you said.

Lies in public discourse isn’t anywhere near a new problem, and humans do have methods to deal with it. It just takes time and it takes a sensible community where some of the tools that can give traction to the truth can get some leverage.

So long as people are willing to care for one another and stand up against injustice they are not my enemy. Learn to identify and counteract the actual bad actors with information so that anyone who mistakenly comes across their viewpoint is immediately greeted by a counterpoint from a real person with a conscience.

Yeah. Even Trump voters, I don’t really think are “the enemy.” Self defense is fine, they can be deadly dangerous in the short run. But in the long run they are more than anything victims of that same powerful machine, and the way to save ourselves will be to save them from it, too, so we can all survive together.

Yeah. I’ve started to get suspicious of people who go out of their way to tell you that they are bold leftist media, and they’re bringing a needed perspective that is super-vital and not just all propaganda and lies like everything else is. It sort of reminds me of those bank billboards that say, “To us, you’re more than just a number.”

Update: It looks to me at least pretty likely that !altmedia@altmedia.house is also Russian propaganda. Maybe they just wanted to post this thing, and are short of any of the critical thinking skills that would let them evaluate my argument that MPN is Russian when I told them it was. Mostly they seem to be posting pro-Palestinian stuff from reliable sources. But, the sidebar is super sus to me.

Until January 2nd, 2025 the 'WorldNews` subreddit, with 40 million users automatically subscribed, had an ‘Israel at War’ livethread constantly at the top.

This community was founded to dissent from this forced perspective, and present the Palestinian and anti-establishment position in general.

Fine. I actually completely agree with this, I took a quick look at some of the pinned /r/worldnews threads about Israel’s wars and “wars” and they’re completely full of pro-Israel bullshit. My initial assumption is that the inherent corruptibility of the Reddit / Lemmy moderation model has rendered /r/worldnews subject to propaganda from Israel, but who knows. But yes it’s some bullshit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1h3nk2e/rworldnews_live_thread_israel_at_war_thread_79/

It’s a little bit weird that they are pretending that anything on Lemmy needs to have this pro-Palestinian iconoclasty brought to bear, when everyone on Lemmy is pro-Palestinian anyway, but sure, whatever. Anyway, reading further:

This community is ‘AltMedia’ in the Mearsheimer and Walt sense. Not the Richard Spencer sense.

Not sure why those are the only two options…

And then below that is where it goes off the rails.

This community likes

John Mearsheimer

Good stuff if a little bit of an odd choice for the number 1.

Edward Said, Noam Chomsky

Great stuff

Chris Hedges

Well that’s an odd choice. All I really know about the guy is some email list that gets sent to me that has his name on it which occasionally says some very bizarre stuff. For example “The internet, from its inception, was created to be a tool of mass surveillance. It was developed first as a counterinsurgency tool for the Vietnam War and the rest of the Global South, but like many devices of foreign policy naturally it made its way back to U.S. soil.” He apparently used to be an extremely bold anti-Iraq War voice back in those days, which is obviously fantastic, but since then…

Hedges began hosting the television show On Contact for the Russian-government owned network RT America in June 2016. Hedges, who has claimed not to have known much about the network at the time, was approached to make a show by RT America president Mikhail “Misha” Solodovnikov, who promised him complete editorial independence.[44][57]

On Contact provided commentary on social issues, often profiling nonfiction authors and their recently published works, with Hedges aiming to follow the approach of former public television shows. On Contact was nominated for an Emmy in 2017, RT America’s first significant award nomination, but the award was won by Steve.[44]

On March 3, 2022, RT America ceased operations following the widespread deplatforming of Russian-sponsored media caused by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[44] The run of On Contact ended.

Hedges supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the 2016 election.[44]

On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. After being informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact, Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.[63][64]

Anyway. Back to the list:

Scott Ritter, Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson

I don’t recognize all that many of the names on their list. But, the people that they “like” that I do recognize that are in any way active in the modern day, there is a very distinct through-line (pretty much universal) about how those people feel about the invasion of Ukraine.

Anyway, YSK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY

What the fuck

TIL. I’m so confused by this concept.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/142zr10/what_does_critical_support_mean_in_leftist_spheres/

What level in school did these guys reach that this idea needs a special word for it? Like yes, of course you are allowed to support one action or portion of something but still be critical of the bad stuff, or of that thing as a whole. That’s… that’s how it works. If you’re not some kind of “YAAAAAY MY COUNTRY hooray forever” idiot, then that should be how you look at everything. You decide whether something that’s happening is good or bad, and then you express your support or not accordingly. This whole thing where it is relevant in any respect “which side” is doing the good or bad thing, in order for it to be good or bad or whether and how we need to talk about it, is some State Department bullshit that has no place in a normal person’s brain.

Do they imagine that there are a lot of people who go around uncritically supporting Ukraine / Democrats / NATO / whatever, just because they decided to like them? And that they need to distinguish that their support for their causes is the other kind? I kind of agree with the person who said that in practice it seems to boil down to “Fuck Putin, but Ukraine should just roll over and stop fighting” more often than not. I don’t really know, but that is the only way that to read this that makes sense to me, the on-the-surface reading seems just bizarre and pointless.

There are already .ml people in here, whataboutisming hard.