• 2 Posts
  • 126 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • EnderMB@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.worldHappy 12 million!
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    1 month ago

    It surprises me a little, because on some instances there seems to be a lot of power users/tech influencer types, but not a lot of engagement between smaller accounts. Active users is around 1 in 12, which is again higher than expected, so maybe it’s just me/Hackyderm?




  • A lot of people see it as needlessly dragging a conflict on, but NATO (probably) knows what it’s doing, and has had plans for scenarios like this for years. Russian escalation in the region isn’t exactly new, and it’s the sort of campaign that NATO as a group will define its legitimacy on.

    I’m sure that if both sides wanted to hurt the other they’d do so, NATO especially so - but to both sides it’s ultimately a game. NATO will flirt with weapons, and Russia will throw citizens at the problem and use grief/loss to restore the “fatherland”. It’s why I don’t see an end to the conflict for as long as Putin is in power.


  • This is sadly quite common, and I think by design in many places.

    Rather than long, open roads having a 30mph speed and smaller residential roads at 20, the opposite is chosen, purely because councils know that they can put speed cameras there to make some money. Making roads safer through design costs money, and many roads where accidents are common are largely ignored.

    It’s these tactics that feed into the hysteria that these measures are an attack on motorists. While I largely agree with the rules, many councils really take the piss. I was caught doing 24mph in a 20, but was able to overturn it because the camera was placed in the middle of a hill with a sharp enough decline to not make it legal to police.

    They probably made a ton from that camera, all while the top of the hill is a small junction where people regularly crash - which is 30 and is only repaired when someone crashes into the traffic lights (not a rare occurrence).


  • EnderMB@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.worldJapan to criminalise cannabis use
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    2 months ago

    I don’t like weed. I’ve tried it throughout my teens, but left it there.

    With that said, it’s amazing to me that we’re still having the same conversations around drugs. Decriminalise EVERYTHING! Ensure what is on the market is clean, drive the costs down to remove criminals from the market, and dedicate every police force to protecting those on the bottom rung of the drug ladder.

    I read a book from a former officer a while back, where he’d spent two years working on infiltrating a drug network. It was successful, and they not only shut down a major network of drugs, but arrested around 100 people, and removed tons of illegal weapons from the market, and arrested several people in the network known to police for being involved in several murders. They believed that the drug market in the UK during this time had been disrupted “for three hours”. That was all it took for another gang to take over, and apparently it’s those successes that cause a lot of people to leave drug enforcement - after all, what’s the point?

    There almost seems to be zero benefit to drug criminalisation, other than “old conservatives hate it”.





  • Several reasons:

    • Mastodon is REALLY unfriendly from a UX perspective. To many, federation is a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist for them. In their mind, the early model of federation is like email, a problem that was “solved” years ago by having one corporate product that was much better than others (Gmail).
    • Reiterating, why should people care about the fediverse?
    • The fediverse is lacking the user numbers, and those that do post don’t really interact with others. Spend some time with the newhere tag and you’ll see a lot of people that make the occasional post, send a lot of replies, and end up leaving because that engagement ends up with maybe 2 followers. It’s rather clique-y.
    • Some fediverse sites (e.g. Lemmy) have bad reputations, and Mastodon partly suffers from this. Outside of tech, where people argue with each other all the time anyway, there isn’t really anything worthwhile being posted.

    Generally speaking, how is Mastodon any better than Bluesky? How is Lemmy any better than Reddit? If you can’t answer that in a way the average person gives a fuck about, what’s the argument for using them?





  • In many ways this gives Putin an out from this incredibly stupid war that he created.

    Agree terms with Ukraine, peacefully take back the land they lost, declare victory, and stop this war for good. He can save face and maintain power until he dies while Russia stays a pariah to the world. Ukraine will still naturally join NATO, but without the threat of war Russia can just sit on what it owns.

    IMO, this is the ideal time for some final sanctions on Russia by heavily fining all western companies that don’t leave within 30 days. Cut them off entirely, and then bring them to the table to negotiate the return once Putin is gone. I don’t see a progressive candidate entering Russian politics any time soon, but a non-KGB candidate without ties to the Kremlin might find power by having the west on their side - they just need to stay away from radiation and balconies.