1. My cat
2. Tough one, but probably my cat.
3. Not only do I love my cats, taking care of your pets if your responsibility as a pet owner. I have no love or relationship to a stranger, they don’t care about me and I don’t care about them, and It’s also not my responsibility to protect other people. An animal that I raised from near-birth, and who has always shown me basically unconditional love and affection seriously means as much to me as a child. My pets are there for me when I have a bad day, and they’re with me when I’m having a great day too. They bring so much joy and comfort into my life and they are so innocent and kind. Even after a lifetime of interactions I never have a single bad or negative moment with my pets. I don’t hate people and I wouldn’t like to have to decide in a fucked up scenario like you’re describing here. But to be honest, I’m probably saving my pet. Sorry.

The majority of American elections are winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post races decided with plurality voting. Among other things, this means that if you are voting for someone outside of the realm of the statistical possibility for victory, you are simply throwing your vote away. That is the way the system works today, whether we like it or not, and wasting my vote by writing in Bugs Bunny or whatever isn’t actually a reasonable, productive, grown-up, or intelligent thing to do–especially not in the face of impending autocratic fascism.

In other words, the winner of the 2024 Presidential Election will either be Joe Biden (D) or Donald Trump ®. Of those two, I can easily pick Joe Biden as the person I would like to see running the country, controlling the US nuclear arsenal, and watching over the western world. Again, it’s an easy choice for me. As someone who does probably too much research and overthinking into voting, I’ve never had an easier choice.

But hey, if you’re like me and you don’t like the current American two-party political system, then I encourage you to vote for democratic reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, STAR voting, approval voting, etc. Multiple states have implemented better, more democratic voting systems, and more will hopefully continue to in future years, because unsurprisingly they are almost all better and more democratic than plurality voting.

I understand what you mean, and people should get a chance to vote in the primaries for the person who they think is best, but Biden is the incumbent, and he’s out there winning primaries with like >85% of the vote. Hell, he even won the write-in campaign in Iowa. ( That’s to say nothing of him winning against more than a dozen other, younger candidates in 2020. ) Marianne Williamson is the only other candidate to regularly crack 1%, and she’s not exactly “president material” if you ask me.

It’s going to Biden vs Trump. Two old ass white dudes who aren’t exactly sharp (though Trump is most certainly dumber, weirder and not to mention a fucking criminal fascist). For me, that makes it the easiest choice of my year.

Whatever you want to do in life, start right away.

• If you want to start a business, start developing it and putting the pieces into place as soon as you can.
• If you want to be a artist/musician/writer/etc, take yourself seriously and start gigging or creating right away.
• If you want to reach the top of the academic pyramid, study more than what you’re assigned and start developing your ideas.
• If you want to be involved in politics, then start getting involved in politics.
• etc…

I’m not saying this because it’ll be too late if you don’t, or anything like that. It’s never really too late to change course or start doing what you want.

But don’t wait until you’re finished school. Don’t wait until you feel “ready”. Dispel is the idea that you’re still a kid or that you’re just going through the motions until your life really begins. Life is now. So, plant the seeds of your future as soon as you possibly can.

I’d also say to develop a healthy attitude towards soft drugs like alcohol and weed.

Hard drugs can fuck your life up faster, but addiction to soft drugs can also do a lot of damage. Have fun, but keep perspective. You’re probably gonna be around people do stupid shit from time to time, but resist the temptation to be the person doing the stupidest shit.

Microsoft basically tied with Apple for the title of richest company in the world, by the way.

Good for him. Nobody should be forced to fight in a war they don’t believe in.

I wasn’t trying to imply that. I’ve edited my post to reflect that I’m speaking generally. Sorry.

Personally I think that asexual people also benefit from sex-positivity and an honest discussion about the wide variety of forms of sexual expression. When we stop treating sex as some dirty taboo thing, and when we start accepting that everybody wants something different out of it (or maybe doesn’t want it at all), I think it becomes easier to understand that all different kinds of people exist with different relationships to sex. That’s not only OK, but a good thing.

A lot of social ills have come from the idea that people who express different forms of sexuality are wrong, gross, bad, sinful, mentally ill, etc. The sooner we move past that flawed and harmful concept, the better, in my opinion.

We were doing so well in realising that all human beings are worthy individuals with emotional and intellectual depth, yet now so many of us don’t seem to see any problem with society encouraging many to reduce themselves to sexual objects.

Human beings, like most other animals and plants, are fundamentally sexual beings.

It’s good to value emotions and intellect, of course, but even before all of that comes the primitive basis of sexuality, sensual and sensory pleasure, and the propagation of species. Sex (with others or by yourself) is just as much a natural and core part of the human experience as eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on, and embracing sexual freedom and sex-positivity is in no way incompatible with emotional balance, intellectualism, or any other meaningful pursuit.

As such, masturbation or pornography aren’t inherently bad or problematic in any way.

There are absolutely potential problems surrounding pornography, like human trafficking, but those issues are separate things that can and should be treated and handled as distinct. We have the tools as a society to deal with human trafficking and sexual violence, and we can do it without throwing sexual freedom and bodily autonomy under the bus.

In my view the last thing we should do as a society is to continue to engage in mindless sex-negativity, which has a long documented history of direct ties to the persecution of women and LGBTQ+ sexual minorities, as well as needlessly shaming people (sometimes to the point of inflicting real psychological damage) for exploring the full space of sexual possibilities by themselves or with consenting partners. Like everything else, ethics, responsibility, moderation and legality are things to consider, but you can do all of that while still being sex-positive and open minded about personal sexual liberty.

Changing the way you think about and practice sexuality (your own, others, and in general) allows you to know yourself and others in a more intimate, authentic and human way.

I feel like I’ve given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before…

But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or “X”.

I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we’re talking about “Beehaw.org” or “Kbin.social”, in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn’t see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for “good reasons” or not.

Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I’m not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.

I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you’re interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)

Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta’s interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.

But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that’s a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.

I do hope you’ll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I’ll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.

I could say that the head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv hospital who is treating the people in question (people who were, in a matter of obvious and well-documented fact, taken hostage by Hamas) is a reliable source. Certainly they’re more reliable than you are.

For example?

I’ll always be on the side of the innocent. Innocent Palestinians who are caught up in a war between Netenyahu’s IDF and Hamas terrorists. Innocent Israelis who have been murdered, kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists who were propped up for decades by far-right Israeli politicians.

You have nothing. No response but made-up straw-man accusations. You would be embarrassed if you weren’t completely incapable of shame and logic.

If there is no justice, there can be no peace.

Oh ok, “no peace”… So then you want war in Gaza.

Good luck with your war, amigo.

It’s only hard to believe victims when you don’t want to believe them.

We saw people captured and murdered by Hamas terrorists with out very eyes. They were taken into Gaza, which very soon became a war zone. They, as in the victims themselves, have provided first hand accounts of trauma, physical abuse, sexual assault, torture, and many of them are still being treated in hospitals for that trauma.

So what exactly are you contesting here? Are you trying to say that innocent people weren’t and aren’t kidnapped and being held by Hamas terrorists? Or maybe you’re trying to say that they were treated like kings over the last months since October 7th…?

“Safe space”, huh? You argue like Ron Desantis.

Next thing you’ll be calling me “woke” because you clearly don’t have a leg to stand on or a brain to think with.

Of the 14 hostages treated by Eitan’s team, nine are under 18 and two are under 10. Most need long-term treatment for trauma.

Go ahead and explain to us how 9 teens and 2 children are guilty of oppressing anyone.
Or maybe you hear “jew” in your head and can’t help but create some kind of twisted mental image?

Either way, I’ll wait for your top mind to come up with an answer, because I just love a good laugh.

Removed by mod

They’re either too stupid to read or too biased to read.

Either way, they’re probably beyond help at this point. It’s frankly just sad at this point.

What the fuck are you even talking about? Seriously, did you even take 3 minutes to read the article?

These people, who were (and still are) being taken captive by Hamas, are not “the oppressors” by any stretch.

They are innocent people (in this case women and children) who were taken captive by terrorists and murderers, brought into a terrifying war zone, physically and sexually abused, drugged without consent, kept in 1x1.5 animal cages, kept in pitch black darkness, deprived of food, water, medication, and never knowing whether they or their families are going to die.

You shouldn’t have to choose between sympathy to the innocent people of Gaza who are suffering in this war, and the innocent people of Israel who are also suffering. The fact that you even feel the need to “choose a side” or complain about media bias here is a stain on your soul and you should be fucking ashamed of that.

Happy New Year, bitch.

You probably shouldn’t have…

Among the 14 freed hostages treated at her centre, she said, were child hostages who had been drugged by their captors – including with ketamine – and were suffering from withdrawal, those who had subjected to or witnessed sexual abuse, a woman who had been kept in a tiny [1 x 1.5m, with another woman] cage, and another who had a breakdown after being kept in complete darkness for days.

Rather than picking a side between the IDF and Hamas, be on the side of the innocent people on both sides of this war who are victims of unspeakable atrocities. It’s not hard for me. It shouldn’t be hard for you. And if it is, that speaks to the darkness of bias and hatred within you.

• AI “content” is trivial to make and will soon be everywhere.

• Nobody wants to read, watch or listen to AI generated “content”

Infinite supply, zero demand. Sounds pretty devoid of value to me.