The blood of their own people is also on their hands… because the IDF and the Netanyahu government uses them as human shields; it’s a fact that they play fast and lose with Israeli lives. Remember that they had intelligence an attack was highly likely around the month of Oct… they still let that music festival continue and didn’t attempt to evacuate or even warn the kibbutz near the walls surrounding Gaza. They wanted any kind of attack to be at least marginally successful so they could justify bulldozing and occupying Gaza so that settlements could commence there.

Wait… which part of this headline is biased exactly?

American here but, from what I understand of Pan-European politics generally, it’s more of an attempt to unify everyone else and not necessarily to draw away far-right voters.

Well, they can, but the cost will get more volatile… super oversimplified, it’s the difference between drinking at home booze you bought at wholesale prices and keeping a running tab with a local bar/pub. You’ll be subject to the bar and any price changes they (read: the currency markets) want to make.

In other news, meteorologist says the sky is blue.

Yeah, more clean but not completely… this is not to mention the amount of damage caused by the bomb. Striking Kiev or another city would effectively decimate Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy for decades. If the goal of the war is to subjugate, you don’t want to be in the hook for all those repairs. A nuke on any of Ukraine’s cities would make that dam break last year look like nothing.

If Russia were to strike Ukraine with a nuclear bomb, first and foremost that puts every nation on a knife’s edge globally… someone else with an itchy trigger finger could launch against Russia in the confusing hours afterwards. Next up, the PRC and India would likely abandoned Russia as waves of condemnation would flood the global media. Finally, the whole goal of the war is to take Ukraine, not to make it uninhabitable… why nuke what you want to own?

Unlikely. There’s kind of only two hard-and-fast rules for nuclear war:

• Never strike first.
• Never strike a non-nuclear enemy.

While we sound rabidly pro-Taiwanese, the US diplomatic position on the PRC/ROC is some wild Cold War type shit. Technically, we recognize both claims as claims that both organizations have made and that both organizations have the right to make those claims. Vague as vague can get. The State Department was seriously like “we agree to disagree… with ourselves.”

The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee is one of the largest political lobbies in the United States.

I left the Catholic Church shortly after leaving Catholic school. Like, in Catholic high school, they taught us about the “issues” (read: CA scandal) the church was “going through” and how we all need to “pray for the victims” of these “isolated incidents.” You then step into the real world and learn that the church protected monsters from the law for DECADES (and continues to do so), it really fucks with your head. In college, I went “spiritual but not religious” for a while and then landed squarely into atheism town… been a resident there now for more time than I was ever Catholic.

This is seriously one of my favorite things about the Fediverse… someone decided to make their own experience of it and build a platform… now it’s a thing.

Kudos clever internet person!

Yeah. If you ever have the choice to try to be Facebook… don’t.

deleted by creator

Yeah, I’ve been running around the Fediverse for two years now and the name has yet to grow on me. Makes it slightly difficult to explain to people who are interested. The “iverse” part makes it sound like a metaverse type project which gives some people pause -because of the hype-flop cycle and, of course, all the crypto scams associated with that. Have to begin the pitch with “but it has nothing to do with [that], so don’t worry.” (Edit because autocorrect)

I (37M) am a broadcast TV tech director so I guess that puts me in the “techbro” world, however, I wouldn’t consider myself an “early adopter.” I’d say really I’m just tired of corporate social media and all the algorithms and BS. And I’m not alone.

Why am I on Mastodon and Lemmy:

I was looking for something genuinely different, something human focused, something better. Hopefully the Fediverse can be that and hold the line against the likes of Meta. I’ve gotten four people in my close friends circle to give Fedi a try on three different platforms, all within the last two weeks.

My solution here:

We can’t expect hobbyist server hosts, pro bono web devs, and volunteer modmins to pay to advertise this place. Memories of the marketing classes I was forced to take in college are screaming at me right now that what we need to do is begin an honest to goodness word-of-mouth campaign for the whole of the Fediverse… and by that I don’t mean “posting aggressively” about it on Facebook, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter, BlueSky, etc, etc.

Scary as it may be to some of us “techbros,” we need to go touch some grass and actually talk to people in the real world. “Word of mouth” means face to face, in person, and it’s possibly the most powerful advertising tool ever devised. I’d genuinely advise taking a cue from fundy Christians… evangelize… talk to your friends, your family, your co-workers about what you like about the Fediverse and what they might like. Listen to their problems with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, etc… offer a possible solution that they could give a try. Obviously, don’t be pushy or a dick but also, if they do take the leap, help them get settled. Help them find a platform they’d like and how to find the communities and users with whom they’d like to interact.

Perhaps there are some onerous barriers to entry to places like this, but there are loads of people out there genuinely looking for better online communities and just better social media in general. This place -it’s various platforms and numerous instances- can be that for a load of people, but they won’t know about it unless we tell them.

That was my first thought as well. Facebook is simply too different to Twitter in ways that Instagram is actually similar. On Facebook you’re blogging your life for others to follow. On Instagram and Twitter people are blogging a little of their own, but most users are there to follow others (usually big names or important people) and to comment on events those larger names are blogging about.

My experience looking to join Mastodon instances (after the FB whistle blower a few years ago) was very similar. I ended up in a large “more general” instance, ignoring the local feed in favor of my home feed. I slowly built up my follows and now I feel right at home, but that was a process… as opposed to, say, when I signed up for Twitter ten-ish years ago where an algorithm held my hand for days or weeks until it figured out what it could sell me. I think OP is really onto something, so they’ve got my attention and my up vote.

Meta is already a multi-billion dollar company that is built like an unstoppable content monetization and tax avoidance machine. If they wanted to, they could probably float an unprofitable Threads dot net until the heat death of the universe. Threads doesn’t need to be profitable for it to succeed, it just needs to crush Twitter, BlueSky, TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr, and the Fediverse under foot. That’s it… that’s the win condition they’re going for, not profitability. This is David verses Goliath moment and, in the real world of monopolistic capitalism, Goliath usually wins.

An Instance is the server you’re currently on, it’s running the platform you’re using, and it is also where your user profile is hosted.

A community is the Lemmy equivalent of a Subreddit.

Federations are interconnected groups of Instances and Platforms.

Mastodon is a microblogging platform (similar to Twitter) which can Federate with other ActivityPub platforms like Lemmy.

Kbin in is another Reddit style link aggregator.

ActivityPub is server protocol that allows federated instances to talk to each other and the instances of other platforms.