“It wasn’t because Biden voters shifted to Trump—but because so many of them stayed home.”

I’m sorry but that is bullshit. That’s like saying that the protestor died because the gun released a bullet, completely forgetting that the police aimed at them in the first place.

Voters stayed home because they felt uninspired by whatever democratic candidates tried to represent. The thing is, i’m in europe and i do follow the news, but i barely ever heard any specific plans from Kamala. i never got the “oh wow that’s a good idea” thought, because there was poor communication, no exposure, etc. It’s all a bubble. If you’re inside it, it seems like there’s a lot of communication. But that communication doesn’t leave the bubble because it doesn’t speak the other’s language. It refuses to communicate with people who are not already on the same page. That’s why a lot of commenters are gonna reply to my comment, saying “no, actually, Kamala’s messaging was great”. Because they experienced it like that, because they actively seeked out the communication, and found it. But to the typical voter, who’s not specially politically involved, and not specifically seeking out the communication, they don’t get exposed to it.

On top of that what i’m strongly considering is that our political stances need to recognize that people really just want to live, both now and in the future. They want to have the economical perspective that they can buy nice stuff, and that the world is somehow gonna develop into a better tomorrow. A political party is gonna win exactly if it can provide these two to the people. That’s what we need.

further proof that the “left/right” political divide is bullshit

i heard a great lecture on it last week calling it an “empty significand” because it doesn’t mean anything. the idea behind it is that if you reduce the meaning within your category, that’s a good thing because you’re implementing the intersection set of many different people’s political view, which is necessarily going to be rather small.

most people just want to live. they vote for mamdani, because they want to live and recognize they need economic support to do so, and they voted for trump because he promised (but didn’t deliver) on lowering the cost of living. most people don’t really care about anything else.

ngl, i thought about becoming a farmer, but i value living in a society above living on a farm, though both are actually important to me.

the thing is to be a farmer in today’s economy is close to impossible, and also i lack experience and equipment.

can confirm, this user has 0 posts and 1 comment

i’ve always found mastodon unintuitive, mostly because older versions used to not have a “local” feed, only a global feed,

and i think a charm of the fediverse is to have local instances, like for specific topics. and they added that local feed recently, which i like

better on the can than on the can’t

u know what? maybe we should start actively advertising the fediverse in local hacker clubs and such.

oh yeah that makes sense, thanks

by the way, i’m curious, what does “reactionary” even mean?

is it re-action in the sense of acting again? is it reaction in the sense of responding to somebody else’s actions?

taxing wealth instead of work is also an economically sound decision if you want to boost productivity and your economy’s revenue.

As a general rule, when taxes on products are lower, that means these products cost less to the consumer, so consumers buy more of it [rule of supply and demand, also speaks about the connection between price and traded quantity]. So there’s more revenue and more products sold, which boosts production.

I remember reading somewhere that the Irish “low tax” area was deliberately accepted by the EU as a sort of reparation payments for the irish potato famine, which was largely caused by english politics.

but idk whether that’s actually true or just a rumor.

hmm, groceries, that sounds … gross

something something final, most essential command …

Edit: Here’s a potentially alternative frontend for Instagram, but YMMV

i was gonna ask you for exactly this but you already posted it ^^

interesting!

does anybody know whether weed smoke has the same bad health effects on your lungs as cigarettes?

i assume yes if the dose of smoke is the same, since it’s the smoke that’s acid and not the nicotine.

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The best way to implement that ban is to have a variable on the device (smartphone) that holds the approximate birthdate of the user (sth like 2002-01-01) and then the device gives forward the information about whether the user is 16+, 18+ forward to any app of maybe even website that requests that info.

The parent who buys the device gets a code to configure the device to set the birthdate, and without that code, it’s not changeable for the user. The platforms then only have to look at that variable to figure out whether the user is old enough.

This way, you shift responsibility to the user, but in a way that is technically possible. Because today, it’s almost impossible for a not ultra-tech-affine parent to actually implement age controls on their children’s devices.

This might be what makes the fediverse finally become mainstream.