SootyChimney [any]

The local officials (the mayor, legislators, and the president) where I live are all elected and I’m pretty sure that’s already more than what China has

I think what I said is still true.

There’s a lot of handwaving in your reply that China’s population are just ignorant and censorship exists therefore its bad, based on little info. All Western countries also have major systems of censorship on social media. The majority of people in China have access to the internet via unfiltered VPNs - they have basically as much free access to information as you do.

I was literally in that struggle thread (different account) - I wasn’t claiming you said certain things, I was commenting on what that thread was. Unless we’re talking about entirely different threads about the same thing.

Yeah, clearly wasn’t clear, my bad.

It was very much not sincere, but a parody of anti-russ nonsense, alas.

I have literally never heard of it happening anywhere else in the world. I never said American things couldn’t be talked about, but talking about it like it’s a ubiquitous practice, and then getting angry at people who don’t understand why it’s an issue, is just miscommunication, not a big disagreement. And miscommunications caused by America-centrism is a very tiring affair on the internet. Just prepend the post with “Hey Americans:” and there wouldn’t have been any real discussion.

The difference is atheists may be correct, but nowadays whether you’re religious isn’t, on its own, a huge prediction factor in how you affect others’ lives.

When your politics is lib or reactionary, when you’re racist, or nationalist, or just deliberately ignorant and loudmouthed about world politics, you are by definition actively and deliberately conspiring to make peoples’ lives worse. Those people affected are often minority groups, and/or friends, family and comrades. But whatever kind of human it is, it should be obvious why it’s personally important to us to oppose that.

I don’t think they’re arguing echo chambers can never ever be called for, just that Lemmy may be better off not as one.

Eh. This still remains clearly a product of Ameri-centrism in my mind: An America-only issue was being touted as a global problem everyone should be aware of, so everybody else in the world who has never seen or even imagined this weird shit will regard it as so uncommon as to not matter. And no, I don’t think one side was being particularly more ‘calm and patient’ than the other.

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You should honestly investigate how democracy actually works in China - You’ll find that they have far more votes and actual choices for their officials than you ever have, and the approval rate of the government, even when anonymously/independently surveyed, is almost certainly higher than your country’s.

I appreciate the honest tone. Is the dislike on politics threads emojis just emojis in general, or can we lay the blame on lemmy sizing bug?

That is not the assumption. You’re obviously less likely to be involved any crimes labelled as ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’ if your skills lie in accountancy.

As a programmer, I’ve honestly met about one colleague who was actually reactionary. The rest have been pretty much fine and on the level. I don’t know if it’s just American programmers or I’m just a massive outlier, but I’ve never seen justification for this labelling in my own experiences.

I think this probably vastly overcomplicates the issue. ‘extremists’ in this article seems to refer mostly to terrorists or terrorist group members/leaders.

Why would engineers be overrepresented in terrorists or terrorist groups? Because they have the engineering knowledge to make bombs, tell others make bombs, or to do infrastructural damage. It seems a fairly straight forward mechanism of causation.

I don’t think “US and Canada do it” is a very effective argument for something being safe or reasonable. The reality is - We don’t know what the effects are, and we can’t even be completely sure they’re doing what they say they are in the first place. The radioactivity may be low, but the presence of manmade tritium may well cause issues we don’t even realise, and as always we’re playing a gamble that “this number low so it’s probably safe maybe”. And that is undeniably a gamble, even if a low-risk one.

This is basically it, why would the ruling class waste the resources to even try for 100% agreement? The moment the left gains, or has potential to gain, even the slightest sliver of power, watch the ruling class deploy their mass resources to squash us back to irrelevance. I only clearly realised this when the very popular Bernie/Corbyn campaigns were so deliberately choked despite major support of the base.

This is so upsettingly uncannily a Simpsons bit - Rich guy eats fish contaminated by radioactive nuclear plant waste water discharged into natural sources to prove it’s safe?

The classic “I was going to be a caring individual and oppose systemic wrongs but a leftist said things I disliked on the internet” move.

Let’s be clear, in the UK, parents can almost always leave behind over a million pounds worth before any tax starts kicking in. Not to mention the thousands of easy loopholes.

A pact that was a necessity when all the Allies rebuffed the USSR, but also a pact that documents show the USSR never even intended to honour from day one.