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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • What on earth are you talking about occupying Syria?

    Edit: they’re misconstruing the 32-country military coalition that’s been trying to degrade Da’esh since 2014 as the US military by itself occupying sovereign territory.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State

    Some may remember the breathless daily & weekly map updates on the news showing areas controlled by Da’esh changing. Might remember the coalition partnering with various groups of differing militancy & reliability. I think including us (the coalition) fucking over Iraqi Kurds…? I believe because Syria hated them? Or loved them?

    So, y’know, absolutely nothing like Russia’s completely unprovoked, unilateral decision to invade Ukraine because Putin was afraid of Ukraine getting too chummy with NATO countries, possibility even considering joining NATO.


  • If the point of supporting Ukraine is to support the international order of respecting borders, then an absolutist interpretation would mean you stop at your border when repelling invaders.

    On the other hand, that would certainly result in invaders loading up on personnel and materiel on their side of the border until they reached some critical mass for a re invasion.

    A lot of people might not remember the first Gulf War where the international community defending Kuwait stopped at the Iraq border. I think it could be argued that was a mistake on multiple levels, even ignoring everything we know that came after.



  • If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.

    All these other “like Twitter but ______” micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they’re profitable.

    If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they’ll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can’t kill it.

    I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.

    For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a “just do this part for me” option, probably automatically enabled.

    #3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.

    #4 is hard… Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the “early” Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That’s some very strong “lizard brain” stuff.

    So… let’s get going y’all! :)




  • Ok sure but if Person U from a large city comes to the city council meeting and asks for help because their neighbor, Person R, is building a new garage on Person U’s property, it’s understandable that people from around the city - no matter how far afield - might express support for Person U.

    At the same time, if Person T or Person I or Person M from far across the city don’t express support, so what? What does it matter? Maybe they’re afraid of Person R. Maybe they truly don’t care. Maybe they hate person U.