It's not that you're an idiot, but it's wise to avoid using a chromium/blink based browser since they are building a dangerous monopoly. Firefox is the best known alternative, but there are a couple other options.

Yeah that tracks, do Google next haha

If I'm making a mistake, I don't think that would be it. I've been observing Bitcoin and its community since 2011.

Right, many Europeans have basic consumer protections lol

Key difference is that Bitcoin people want/need their numbers to go up,up,up as a measure of success.

Here, we are hoping to cultivate a healthy community (at either/both the instance and fediverse level). From my experience on various subreddits, focusing on growth is not a good way to do this.

Communities are defined more by who is not allowed in than by who is in the community. Lemmy phase 2 kicked off back in June, and it still needs some time to find its footing at a sustainable rate of growth.

Be careful about "unsubscribing" to various services.

They will unsubscribe you, but then they also have all of your information (name, address, anything else) on record and confirmed. They can profit when the sell that data to another mailer "service". It's like a Hydra.

Co-signed

The thing is that on leftist forums, the stakes for a veganism debate are pretty high cause it easily causes a 50-50ish flameout.

Mods would appreciate if people like OP didn't intentionally troll to stir that sort of thing up (if the discussion takes place organically and respectfully, then whatever).

Mods would also appreciate if people didn't feed obvious trolls who are just starting things up, like you pointed out, there are specific places to post about that sort of topic.

Please don't feed obvious trolls

Leave the personal attack off in the future please

Don't do whatever this is.

Can you provide a source for this? Makes it easier to moderate if you can back up what you're saying.

Before that can happen, we (as the non-ownership class) need to shift away from the capitalist mode of production, into a more advanced economy. On a global scale this is incredibly difficult, since the United States has a hegemonic influence over global economic affairs, and has been hostile to any states that attempt to subvert the capitalist mode. This is kinda sorta beginning to wane, but it'll be a couple decades still until we see some real progress IMO.

They should clarify for themselves I guess, but by my reading they were commenting on the general topic of "unemployment metrics" rather than the specific situation in the article. If that's the case it'd be a different discussion entirely.

I'd hope that people understand that the PRC doesn't have a robust social safety net as it stands currently.

Literally this, nobody really cares about your "online persona". If i haven't added you on discord or something you're just a star her to me IDC what your Lemmy account is

Fair, I'd be interested in examples, since I mostly know of him from seeing people talk about him on Lemmygrad or wherever (who have their own issues, of course). I can go find them myself though, I appreciate you giving me a general idea about what's up wtih the guy.

I do appreciate him bringing these interviews on the ground, but I always want to do my best to account for bias and spin, even for things like that that appear straightforward. I haven't even watched the second half of the video cause I figured it would feature him more (maybe that assumption was incorrect idk).

Definitely sounds like a crackpot who shouldn't be taken too seriously from Wikipedia though. I just think calling something "propaganda" is a shallow criticism on its own.

I see, I'm gonna make a low-ish effort post, but I'm happy to discuss further if you'd like:

• Colonization still happens, but I think it matters that it happened in the past too. I would say that one of the most prominent recent examples would be the American invasion of Iraq. There are many political and economic aspects to the invasion, but one cultural angle is that it was widely supported by religious conservatives due to their opposition to Islam. American leadership was ghoulish in their own way, and to incompetent to actually colonize the country, but many of the literal footsoldiers joined the military to "get back at them for what they did to us", although as we know, none of the 9-11 terrorists were Iraqi.
• Another example that springs to mind is the ongoing homophobic and transphobic hate crimes. One specific example would be the Pulse nightclub mass shooting. I would suggest that most American Christians don't support death for being gay, just the same as most American/Western Muslims don't support death for burning the Quran, but in other countries where religion overlaps more with politics, both of these can be considered serious criminial offenses.

I only mean to suggest that both religions have a bit of bloodthirst in them, which doesn't apply to everyone, but is certainly comparable. We can go deeper into the details, I just felt like you were giving Christians a bit of a pass that they don't deserve.

Right, you can assume that people around here aren't racist/homophobic/transphobic etc... Cause even if they are, they're gonna catch a ban as soon as they expose themselves. They generally don't deserve your full wrath if we're fundamentally "on the same side" just cause they are kinda naive and not big fat theory nerds like some people around here.

In the future you can go against the position, but you repeatedly used "you" in this post making it personal and right up against our civility guidelines.

Can you substantiate that? I'm only tangentially familiar with his work. He's certainly softer on Russia than other sources, but is he doing more than bringing "balance" to the conversation?

Watching the clip I showed, I could suspect that he may be leaving out other interviews he did where people were more pro-ukrainian, but at the same time, the woman in the video claims that about 80% of the town supports Russia, which would line up with what I previously understood about the politics of their region.

I don't particularly care that much about the guys personal politics, and I haven't had that much exposure to them, since my only interest so far has been these two interviews which I personally interpret as primary sources. I would in now way claim that these two people speak for anyone besides themselves, but what they both say is loosely backed up by the data I've seen.

Sure, like I said I don't think it's really important who is "worse", it's not a useful topic of discussion.

I did want to make a couple of counterpoints though

• just cause Zelensky is popular, doesn't necessarily make him a better leader. If we were to do a comparison (which we shouldn't!) Putin is also widely popular along Russians. In both cases support for a wartime leader is going to rally, especially in Ukraine.
• you certainly have infinitely more experience in the country than I do (dividing by zero ofc haha), but wouldn't you have run into some of the same biases coming in as a foreigner (or foreign-born)? I don't know your itinerary, and I'm not asking you to share, but the who, when and where is gonna make a difference.
• as an example, I was interested in the interviews of the first two people in this video that I saw recently [watch starting at 3:15 till about 20 mins in]: https://youtu.be/drhgjxSJG6M located in the warzone in eastern Ukraine. Both are supportive of the Russian forces and appear to claim that such support in their local area is widespread.