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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • They want to cut welfare by any means, because then they can lower the taxes on the rich and powerful. Starting a war is a fantastic source of both fear for the populace (making them more willing to treat permanent loss of quality of life as a merely temporary set back) and contracts with which to funnel money to the already rich and powerful.

    Don’t be fooled. Russia is a threat to the sovereignty of Ukraine and other nearby countries and we should absolutely help them defend themselves (and even push the offensive if it means ending the war). But we should absolutely not funnel money into a war machine designed only to ratchet funding further up and eventually demand a foe we can use our weapons on.

    We should not start a war because we refuse to tax the rich. This journalist and this outlet should be publicly ridiculed for their pro-warfare, anti-welfare stance. Society should be about progress and strong financial security for every person is a meaningful metric of said progress.


  • I think your responses to this are taking extreme theoretical positions that aren’t true. So for instance, the extreme theory of “I don’t support them because one of their (still financially connected) founders is a nazi” is “I must research all company’s I support for their political beliefs” and that’s not true - that’s an extreme stance.

    My real stance is “everyone should strive to be as ethical a consumer as they possibly can be - given their time, energy, and financial situations.” It’s not my job to research every company and I don’t have time/energy to research every provider of every product I consume; but I do what I can. It’s the job of the journalist to dig up these meaningful stories and distribute them to their community, that’s why that job is so important. And easily getting these stories distributed to me is why I’m on Lemmy (or back in the day reddit).

    So no, I do not have to research everyone to reduce my euros from going to Nazi’s. If my options are known Nazi or unknown something - I expect a reasonable person to always go with the unknown.

    And I do want to live in a society where Nazi beliefs have real life consequences, including and especially at work. The extreme stance is “all beliefs can be held against you at work” and that’s wrong. There’s a difference between a person wanting their government to tax them 2% less and a person wanting their government to expunge all black people to countries they may have never even visited. There’s a difference between being a part of the NRA and being a part of the KKK. You can be in party that worsens your country and your quality of life and makes the world slowly worse (like pre-trump modern republicans in the US or the CDU in Germany). You can’t be in party that is actively looking to dismantle civil rights, harm the out-groups, and make society rapidly worse (like Republicans, AfD, reform for britain, or the Nazi party).

    Everyone should want to live in a society where, if their coworkers are racist their company does something about it. Because that gets rid of racists at best or at worst it makes them sneakier - more quiet. Their has to be societal consequences for holding societally destructive beliefs. Should they starve? No. We should have Universal Basic Income. Should they be kicked out of their home? No, they should own their home and there shouldn’t be landlords. Should they be removed from any position of power and barred from ever holding one again? Yes, absolutely. They should be “tarred and feathered”, we should put a badge on them that says “dangerous and hateful” and we should treat them as such - they only get to hold jobs which can’t hurt other people they seek to hurt.

    There is a difference between ideas destructive to society and most normal ideas and you should want to treat them differently.



  • My understanding is one of mullvads primary owners and creators donates a significant portion of their country’s far right party’s annual budget. Their policies, last I checked, included things like remigration or the forced expulsion of citizens based off of arbitrary and immutable characteristics (think bloodline or skin color). They’re akin to the AfD or Republicans. Theoretically a meaningful % of money spent on Mullvad goes to a person actively trying to make the world worse, like Elon Musk or JK Rowling.

    So some people, including me, stopped supporting mullvad until the person is completely financially and influentially disconnected from the company.


  • Hey, I’m a real person who organically discovered this news and made behavioral changes based on the news.

    I am not a nazi. I do not want to support nazi policies or beliefs or people who would strengthen and distribute Nazi policies or beliefs. If someone supports forcibly relocating citizens based off their bloodline history or the color of their present day skin, I think they should be as far away from a position of power as society can possibly manage while still treating them like a human.

    I believe, based on the Mullvad news, that one of the main benefactors if mullvad - meaning one of the guys who got a % for every euro I spent on the service - actively and meaningfully supports a national party with policies akin to Nazis. I want as much of my money to go to NOT-Nazis as possible, ideally 100%. So I left Mullvad for… I think it’s airvpn. Or ivpn actually, although I considered airvpn.

    I don’t think this is a crazy response. I also wish it was the overwhelmingly common response.


  • In your eyes is it ever okay for there to be enough pollution such that even during an inversion (as you’re claiming) that a city should look like it does on the right of this picture?

    Because my answer is no. I don’t care if it’s L.A. or London or New Delhi or Beijing, I don’t think that amount of pollution is healthy. Or I know it isn’t, I don’t think it should be acceptable and we should be building towards a society in which that doesn’t happen.


  • I agree that the feeling should be addressed but I don’t think immigration should be treated at all like the watering down of the political identity. Immigrants come to other countries, in part, to seek a better life. They become just as nationalist as anyone if given a country who cares for them and is worthy of being prideful about.

    In Germany, the CDU and Merz work to strip Germans of their culture when they attack public healthcare or enforce working on Sundays. They would and will reduce vacation time, make trains worse, and deregulate the things that make Germany Germany the longer they’re in power. Culture is something that is generated when the common person is wealthy and influential to their community, not just the millionaires. Especially not the millionaires like Merz who are selling our home and our quality of life nickle by nickel.



  • This is what happens with conservative governments. They make things worse for everyone under the guise of making things better, while stripping away cultural touchstones.

    When Germans worry about their culture being washed away, I don’t want them to think about immigrants I want them to think about this and the CDU. Germany is like top 10 places to live in the world, it’s doing well in all human centric metrics. But the only thing the news and conservative media focus on is GDP and how rich the rich can get inside our country by pillaging it’s people. Don’t fall for it!

    Conservatives want you to work longer, have less protections as a worker, a harder time going to the doctor, a shorter retirement, and a bigger military so we can make life worse for everyone else in the world while paying fat contracts to the ultra wealthy.

    Stop letting them Germany, please I beg you. Vote the CDU out and never let them back in. They will only benefit an even worse party like the AfD and then we will repeat history.





  • Just want to say, I bought a framework 13 and it’s fantastic. Been running arch off of it for two years and it’s been a workhorse.

    It was expensive comparable to a similar specced PC at the time but I make enough to vote with my wallet so that’s what I did. I think anyone who has the money but doesn’t, simply because there’s a better deal that’s worse for the environment and the makers of the item, while holding a right to repair or anti-corporate mindset are hypocritical at best.

    The world gets better if we make it that way, and I see buying a framework (if you have the extra money) as a small step in a better direction.


  • Germany has laws about requiring a certain heating level in the winter for safety and comfort reasons. I hope we can vote the CDU out next opportunity and talk about requiring a certain cooling level in the summer because it’s dangerously hot in most apartments these days.

    I won’t rant about landlords here but like, if there isn’t a law this change won’t happen and people will die because of it. I can’t imagine living in a Dachgeschoss right now. My last one got ~5-10 degrees hotter than outside.



  • True! There was a period where I swore PF was better than 5E but then Draw Steel started posting their early system versions and I realized I was arguing for a couple of degrees of difference when the real improvement was an entirely new way of thinking.

    Draw Steel isn’t for everyone or every group or especially every genre/playstyle, but I think it should force everyone playing generic fantasy style hero games like 5E and PF and 13th Age, etc to reexamine the lineage of games we’ve been used to.



  • Right now I have 3 sources:

    • mate drinks like Mio Mate (found in Germany) and that’s 100 mg a bottle which is all I’ll have a day unless I’m really feeling it (so max 200).
    • black coffee which I hand grind and brew via aeropress. Just one cup normally. I don’t have any idea how many mg that is but it feels as fast as the mate although maybe anecdotally weaker.
    • loose leaf tea, which I brew once or twice a day, using old leaves from the day before (if I’m on a streak) and a splash of new ones (unless it’s the first day where it’s all new). Feels slower but lasts longer so maybe it’s more caffeine? I guess it depends on if I’m doing black or green or white etc.

    So I’d guess 100-150 mg on average on days where I’m having caffeine. I try to do long breaks between a couple weeks of having it. So like a week or two of drinking caffeinated drinks and a week or two not having it. Not too stringent but just something I’m cognizant of to not get dependent.


  • Because from what I can tell Matrix isn’t a good Discord replacement. I’ll spin up a server just to trial it, but every person I’ve talked to who isn’t already on Matrix and every thing I’ve seen or read says it’s not a discord replacement, it’s just a chat app.

    Stoat and Fluxer can be self-hosted which is my main desire. Something fully under my control, with my data security, that won’t rely on another service to keep it running (although naturally I rely on the code base being maintained, hence donating as if it was a paid product).