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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.

    I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the vibes in the room was exactly like you’re opening some of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.

    While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give me a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.

    I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long, due to several authoritarians co-opting his message. I have no clue why it’s not required high school reading at this point, since I feel it’d go a long ways towards helping more people get curious about improving and changing the system for the better.



  • Some of it had to do with there not being enough admins to go around afaik. Lemm.ee for instance couldn’t find enough admins so they shut down. Moderating an instance seems like one of the hurdles that go along with running an instance. I could imagine some people dipped out of Lemmy for a little while if their server was deleted since they’re starting from scratch again. It took me a good month or so to make this account and ramp back up my own activity here for instance.

    The admins across the servers do a good job of keeping bots out imo. If it ever becomes a problem the admins could look to adopt BlueSky’s moderation tools down the line, I feel. As BlueSky makes it easy to filter bots, misinformation spreaders, and have user level content controls.



  • You’re right about it being more of an aggregator. I think having a good aggregator is about as important as the sources. To be more informed, hearing the news from different perspectives is essential, I feel.

    For actual sources, starting internationally is a good bet to get an outside perspective of what’s going on in your country. I feel that the BBC does a great job of covering US news for that reason. Al-Jazeera is another international source that is decent for most news in the US, but has notable biases for issues in the Middle East as far as I am aware.

    For more domestic US sources, PBS and NPR are the gold standards and worth supporting since they are public broadcasting networks. The other major news networks have more notable biases since they are privately owned.

    For business news, Axios, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance do a decent job.




  • If California is allowed to look good, then it hurts the credibility of their ideology.

    I think there are some criticisms about Californians leaving the state raising housing prices in their own state. That’s just how supply and demand works though when the supply of houses suddenly becomes more limited in your area.

    They like to say things along the lines of: “Californians messed up their own state with their high taxes, fled here, are driving all the prices up, and are now trying to bring their fAiLeD PoLiTiCs to the state.” The real answer is that California is such a desirable place to live that there are not enough houses and well paying jobs to go around. People leave the state because of unregulated capitalist pressures, not because of the state’s strong social programs.

    It’s not just Californians moving to other states that are driving prices up. Housing prices going up is also caused by private equity firms buying up available properties, a slowdown on building new houses capping supply, people from other states moving, and Not In My Backyard people trying to prevent lower cost housing in their towns since they don’t want the price of their house to ever drop.

    Having strong social programs in their own states could actually help mitigate the impact of prices going up for housing as well as for other goods and services. For instance, they could have their own state provided healthcare coverage to help them have guaranteed healthcare. They could have better public transportation systems so they are not so car reliant to get to work. Rent controls in place to mitigate landlords pricing people out of the area. Affordable housing construction. Even things like public utilities could be offered for less by the state for gas, electricity, phone, and internet.







  • If I recall correctly, Aristotle proposed something like only the educated being able to vote. I think if everyone was guaranteed free access to both a high school and college education, along with all food and living costs covered for anyone studying, then I could see having at least any associates level degree being an okay barrier of entry to voting.

    However, such a thing would need to be protected by some unremovable barriers. For instance, education would need to continue receiving appropriate funding, food and other living costs such as renting a room would need to be covered even as the cost for these things change. People with disabilities would need to receive proper accommodations.

    A caveat I’ll add is that there would need to be more community colleges built and much more funding for pre-K thru 12th grade as well.





  • I feel you can be somewhat aware of your own beauty in that many people typical find partners that have a similar level of attractiveness to themselves.

    Also, I’ve heard there are some narcissists that are aware of their narcissism. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are trying to subvert it though.

    I think you can have a rough idea of your own intelligence in contrast of others, at least within a defined scope. But there are many different types of intelligences out there so it’s a bit of a spectrum. Especially comparing things like textbook knowledge of the field, on the job experience, interdepartmental knowledge, and emotional intelligence.


  • A life jacket is what can help save you once you exhaust yourself fighting against a torrent of water. If you need to do something a bit reckless to save yourself or someone else, then it can help you catch your breath a bit and keep your head above water.

    The thing is, if you are needing to rely on a lifejacket, the situation may already be a bit desperate. If you are able to get some kind of an early warning system, then that will go a lot farther at helping you get to safety. Getting a lifejacket could help make a difference if you are in a potential flood zone.