currently working on reading quite a voluminous book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1095838.Others

I'm OK with Harris. Not thrilled, but OK.

It would have been nice to get Warren. Sanders has the same age issue (though is still mentally there in interviews) as Biden, and that window has closed. So many people at the federal level have clung to their positions for so long, it feels like as a country, we wouldn't be familiar with people in the primes of their life actually running the show.

At 45, I shouldn't still be waiting for my generation to have any level of power. AARP is coming for me in 10 years.

I've been trying to clean for a week, yesterday and today I've spent actually making some headway. My grandma is coming to town so I'm trying to spruce up the place! Not very exciting for the fleeting weekends of the summer, so I thought I'd live vicariously through you all!

P.S. you can't clean without music: Sorry for the YouTube link but I've been unable to use the alternatives recently

I just noticed this come into existence, and I don't know if it will take off, but I figure it can't hurt to let people know and give it a chance.

Here's the beehaw view: https://beehaw.org/post/15083973

P.S. I don't have an account there, but I like their "Bot Art".

My friend wants to punch their aggressor, so they tell me. They think about running into him on the street and punching him on the face. Between the two of us, I’m definitely the pacifist and I would always want a world without violent solutions, but, in this case, I wholeheartedly support their desire to simply punch him in the face.

You see, they ended up hurting themselves days after their incident, weeks later they got the courage to finally look for legal counsel, then their family withdrew support for the supposed well-being of not my friend. To make matters worse, the same night the little bit of power my friend could’ve had was denied, they had an encounter with their aggressor. They didn’t punch his face, they left for home shaking.

Should I tell my friend to not think about punching their aggressor’s face? Should I deny them their small coping mechanism? I’m the pacifist, but my fantasies would not be of simply punching him in the face. I would go low, very low, lower than him, in creative and cruel ways that make me actually sick by just considering them in passage, but that wouldn’t be more terrible than the actual reality so many people have to endure because of people like him.

Stop judging the words of those suffering under the boot when that’s the only power they really have, their only solace. We are mostly not David, we are Don Quixote.

Aside from heat that I am fundamentally not built for, we had an actual tornado near me yesterday. Tornadoes are not completely unheard I guess, but they’re not common or something that we really plan for where I live. Humidity has also been wildly over the top, and pretty consistent instead of occasional. It feels almost tropical, or what I would imagine tropical weather to be. I’m from a traditionally cold-ish, temperate place. We have always gotten all kinds of weird weather but it feels a lot more consistently steamy and intense than it used to. What weird new weather things are happening where you live? How are you adapting to them? (How on earth do you cope when everything feels wet?)

Hello. So, since 2022 I visited several Mastodon servers or created an account on them, and I somehow feel uncomfortable on all of them. Either they're filled with activism / politics, which I don't give a fck about, or they're filled with people from the US or people who cares more about US than about their own countries (admins included), and I'm tired of that sht.

I was looking for international Mastodon servers with the less amount of Usonian shenanigans, but it's impossible to do that kind of search, and I don't know any other fediverse place to hang out as a non-Usonian person. Any recommendation?

I'm putting this in chat and not in Technology because I'm also wondering about things like clothes, appliances—basically any sort of consumer product, virtual or physical, you can think of that you feel has retained some standard of quality and has not yet been enshittified. I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified, but perhaps you disagree? Post is inspired by this video.

EDIT: coyotino correctly points out that Wikipedia isn't a product but a service; poor word choice on my part, just trying to cast a wide a net as possible here in the hopes of making a list of "things that are still good that don't suck." Like I said, a wide net 🙂.

we recently watched maxxxine, which i thought was a good ending to that trilogy. (x and pearl are the other two.) in a violent nature was another one i enjoyed, even if it was a bit slow... perhaps intentionally.

we're watching longlegs tomorrow, which is supposed to be very unsettling (my favorite kind of movie). beetlejuice beetlejuice is coming out later this year, and with tim burton directing and a lot of the original cast returning, i think it's going to be decent!

if you hadn't already guessed, my favorite genre is horror. ;)

I am speaking from a, purely, unofficial standpoint. I have not conferred with the other Beehaw admins prior to posting this.

However, it looks like that huge sum of money is making it's way from our former fiscal collective to our new collective.

I worked on the initial transition process, months ago, and it became increasingly frustrating. When spring/summer arrived here, I no longer wanted to devote my time to it for several reasons.

First, I live in a very northern/cold/icy/snowy place. And when the weather broke, I wanted to be outdoors as much as possible.

Second, I did not want my growing frustrations to bloom into anger that would cast unwanted negativity onto the other Beehaw admins and the new collective that we were seeking to move to.

So, @Gaywallet@beehaw.org agreed to take over at that point. Thankfully, they have done an incredible job at keeping level-headed despite the enormous challenge with getting this done.

If I am not jumping the gun here, then I believe we have overcome a significant hurdle.

Trump was a lying liar and Biden was a hoarse doddering old man who got lost mid sentence.

On MSNBC, Joy Reid pointed out that Americans want their president to be an avatar. They want a commander who looks strong and tough, and we saw that when the populace couldn't get behind Al Gore (who she credited as being a great mind) who acted more like a policy wank than Bush, who felt more like a (New England) cowboy.

Earlier in the week, I caught a bit of Steve Bannon's radio show where he railed about how we need to eliminate the deep state -- the Praetorian Guard -- that indicted Trump and props up Biden. At the time, I wondered who this Praetorian Guard was supposed to have assassinated, who was bribing them, and which combat actions they'd fought in. If nothing else, I think this debate proves there is no deep state/Praetorian Guard because they'd have assassinated Biden last week during his preparation rather than let him get on stage.

Look, in any large enough group, there are going to be some incompetent people and some competent bad actors. We have to vote for the people who will admit to that and get rid of them. The U.S. is going to have to choose between a leader who tries to install good people to run the government and one who intends to install people bent on dismantling the government and giving loyalty to the leader alone. Even IN the debate, Trump asked Biden, "Who did you fire?" -- that you have to fire bad people ... but this was in reference to firing the General who claimed to have heard Trump call veterans "suckers and losers". I can't prove Trump did or didn't say that, but I do remember Trump skipping the memorial ceremony.

Trump said Charlottesville never happened. I remember it. Trump said Nancy Pelosi admitted responsibility for January 6th. She did not. Trump said the ex-governor of Virginia was not just for late term abortion, but infanticide. He is not. His lies were too numerous to count.

Biden lost track of his thoughts early on and blurted out "We finally beat Medicare." Trump said, "He did beat Medicare and he beat it to death." Biden said Trump had sex with a porn star while (uh, uhm stumble) his wife was pregnant. Trump asserted he did not. Biden called Trump a criminal. Trump said Biden would be the criminal when his term was over (not exact words).

It wasn't good in any direction. It was ugly. Through it, though, Trump maintained his TV-personality persona while Biden generally looked infirm.

Personally, I want a deep state that does things like: build roads, enforce food labeling laws so that the box accurately reflects the food inside, eventually hires enough judges to have a fast turn-around time for family court and the like. It should be really hard to fire them when they are speaking the truth as the understand it and easy to fire them if they are distorting the truth. Alas, I worry that Joy Reid is correct and the U.S. will vote for the guy they think is most like John Wayne.

No link here; we're getting new decisions at the rate one expects from late June, and there are still far larger ones to drop, including regarding Trump's claim of absolute immunity. No one is going to be talking about Idaho once we get that.

We get the big decisions at this point in the term, but I'm surprised by A) how reality-based some of these have been and B) fealty so far is not an issue. Do we have a corruption problem? Sure ... but these decisions don't reflect that.

We may have some Souters on our hands. To be frank, the biggest shock to me from this term has been Kavanaugh, though Barrett has also been surprising.

having to sort out an administrative clusterfuck this week, thank you government

I mean, whenever I hear an alarm I ignore it, because I just hear it so often. But what if instead we used these types of alarms for real emergencies? For example a personal alarm to protect yourself.

today’s the summer solstice (for the northern hemisphere), so tell me your favorite way to cool down while we’re watching the world burn. 🔥

hey beeple! I didn't quite know what to title this, I apologize.

feeling a bit insecure about what would be interesting to post about here on beehaw. so, I thought I'd ask, what kind of posts interest you in the communities you're involved in?

I personally like to learn a lot of things (provided I'm interested in the topic! school was not great for that) and like to learn from other people. for example, I'm recently dipping my toes into linux, and I've started doing things with self hosting (also linux...) as well as trying out new video games and such. I don't have many people to talk about these things with, so I'd like to turn to beehaw for this, but wanted to see if people are generally discouraged by seeing if 1) the same person is posting a lot of topics and 2) that person is a newbie to what they're posting about most of the time.

I know I can't "win it all" per se and have everyone enjoy that kind of thing. just wanted to post a general feeling out thread of how people feel I guess? I came from reddit (unfortunately) and am still trying to grasp what a community like this is open to. since my experience on reddit was not great.

I do want to post some other things and get feedback and possibly stir up discussion if that ends up happening! I'm trying to participate hahaha.

as an additional question, somewhat related, but is there a new hobby you've recently gotten into?

Reading the post and comments on Softbank plans to cancel out angry customer voices using AI made me think it could be an interesting topic to chat about.

I think the best support I received was in the chat application and service Slack. A competent, friendly human responds. I had two or three support inquiries with them.

The last issue I had in Slack was when I opened via try icon click my clipboard content was being pasted. I was surprised they were able to identify the issue which was due to a third-party application that had only just released with the issue a day earlier. Slack support was responsive with a first message before the solution, and fast to respond with the second message with the identified cause.

I'm not sure any stand out as particularly awful for me. [Kinda] Bad seems to be the norm. Sometimes bots sit in front of being able to write a message (my bank, I have to write the same inquiry a second time), sometimes the first response is automated or templated, sometimes the first response is automated and immediately but a human will follow up, sometimes you call and can hardly understand them because of accent or even awful intonation. Often you receive incompetent answers that don't respond to your message or issue. Sometimes they're unwilling or incapable of resolution or agreeable conclusions.

Reddit users are called Redditors, Tumblr has Tumblrinas, Lemmy has Lemmings, ~~Twitter has Twits~~...

I feel like Beehaw is separate enough from the rest of the Fediverse both in terms of ideals and the space you're trying to create and in terms of actually being separate (defederated) from many of the most popular Lemmy instances to deserve its own demonym. Beehaw users aren't just any old Lemmings. We should have our own word. What do you think it should be?

busy as always

Black history month has passed and gone. Pride month is in full effect. One wonders what marginalised group will be put on the chopping block, the next witch to be burned at the stake, the next symbolic month that celebrates their plight.

In Europe, the most discriminated group are the Roma people - also known as the "gypsies", but arguably, antisemitism is on the rise - largely thanks to Zionism, but I've also heard "the Jews run Hollywood" one too many times this year. I've sort of gotten re-woke, because I've also realised that I've failed one of my rhetorical heroes.

I watch Vaush (yes, I know - booo) and he recently had a video about using the pejorative "orc". If you check my comments, in various Ukranian communities, you'll see I've used that word a couple of times.

It speaks to a deeper issuer and a problem that is hard to focus on, simply because enemy mentality is on the rise, humanism is being subverted by naturalism, nationalist fascism is en vogue again. People are paying lip service to the honour system in a time of law and contracts.

I am a Norwegian. The first part of our constitution is weird, because it juxtaposes two things that could arguably be seen as opposed - since the former is traditionally associated with naturalism. "We hold that this country has it's values and morals in its Christian and humanist tradition."

I am a humanist, but in calling Russian conscripts "orcs", I abandoned this philosophy in a moment of catharsis. I have also been telling people to help Russians, that common Russians abroad should be empowered to oppose the Russian, nationalist regime. There's some cognitive dissonance in these stances.

I'm often drawn back to Martin Luther King when he spoke on non-violent protest. So many people flip on MLK when their violent revolutionary pops out of their gonads, when people with melanin content of the skin start to talk about Malcolm X and his attitude towards violent oppressors.

These people almost always forget Malcolm X's journey to Mecca and his change in philosophy upon returning to the US, but he was also assassinated shortly after, which means there is more media about Malcolm X before he went to Mecca than after.

But what he saw, despite rampant Islamophobia in the west, was all kinds of people praying and worshipping together, albeit not in the colours of the rainbow, but at the time it was something so diametrically opposed to what he had experienced in the US that it inspired and moved him deeply. One wonders what he could have said and done if his life wasn't cut short.

When MLK talked about non-violent protest, his stance was to not dehumanise your opponent, that the act of dehumanization makes you no better than your opponent, that you've intrinsically sacrificed your principles to fight the thing you might ultimately become.

MLK's rhetoric is still being taught in Norwegian schools, in both English and Norwegian language classes, studied for his powerful rhetoric. But I hope that his message and the philosophy of stoic humanism sets it's seed in the young mind, and I hope more people can see why dehumanization makes monsters of us all.

Thank you for reading.

Personally, While i appreciate the good moderation and have never had issues here. I have noticed that communities are a lot smaller when viewed from here?

Anyone else think here is a little too closed off?

"Plan to follow, look to overtake". That's quite a simple rule that should be taught to everyone. It's a nice instructional video they won't put drivers in the defensive.