That’s simply unrealistic to implement right away though. The best realistic system I could see would be the Swiss system except online.

There the citizens vote on all major decisions, requiring politicians to either take on issues of importance to the people or to make their policies palatable to the general population if they hope for it to pass.

This seems like a reasonable middle ground to ensure that citizens stay informed and engaged - at least on big issues - and that their leaders are generally required to consider the wishes of the people.

I could see monthly or bimonthly digital voting on a handful of current issues work out well, provided they are presented in a digestible format to the average citizen.

If people have to do hours of research to even understand what the question is they will very likely just vote whatever or ask their friends what they voted. Worst case even sell their votes on issues they don’t care about.

The problem with that is that the average citizen cannot possibly keep up with and stay informed on all issues that the government makes decisions on, and for the most part they don’t want to have to either.

That is why representative systems were created in the first place, so the average person would not have to bother with politics and instead would vote for someone they trust to represent their interests for a while.

Fair, but those were volunteers. Obviously he is referring to Americans deployed by the government in some form, nobody died in the line of duty so to say.

I generally agree, but as long as there is no safe way to prevent malware spam posts (of which I reported plenty whenever I encountered them) I find it a minefield that is uncomfortable to navigate when I just want to browse some content lying in bed.

So you replied to the first sentence and ignored the paragraphs in which I describe why supporting either is misguided to malicious.

I understand the arguments that are constantly being spewed about the evil western imperialists, and they are of course true for the most part. Only that this doesn’t in turn validate or justify the human rights violations, atrocities or even genocides committed by either Russia or China; they cannot be guides or aides on the path to the desired egalitarian utopia.

If either of them had their way, would that do us in the west any good? The answer is no.

China desires a global hegemony under their sino-centric ideology, and to extend its control structures outside its own national borders. They employ the same imperialist strategies and methods to acquire influence and resource access in emerging countries as the west has or is doing. Russia currently displays its own imperial ambitions by its war of aggression on Ukraine. At least they don’t even bother with any greater good pretense, and are straight up about it.

The only real option is to consolidate the west in ethical and ideological opposition to these totalitarian parodies of their former goals, to create a new economic system that works for the people and not the reverse, without sacrificing our freedoms and individuality in the process.

One that truly represents what socialism is about.

But the speed doesn’t really matter, so it shouldn’t be very energy intensive at all. Just gather up some junk, launch it at the sun with an expendable thruster, and be done with it. If it travels at a couple hundred kph, or even less is completely irrelevant. Let it take a couple hundred years to get there, it is supposed to burn up anyway no? And if it collides or is otherwise destroyed en route during that time won’t matter much either.

Tankies are so fucking weird to me, and I would consider myself a progressive socialist as well.

How can they so unapologetically support Russia and China, when both nations are objectively not socialist in any sense of the word.

China does state capitalism, just because they have a one party state installed by the communist party doesn’t automatically mean they still are. All that is left is intense authoritarianism, with dystopian ambitions on global hegemony.

Russia is a failed state in the grasp of a kleptocratic oligarchy, with an extreme degree of corruption and disturbing moral decay in all levels of society. The only thing communist about it today is the old soviet ordnance they make their conscripts die in at the ukranian front.

Modern China and Russia are antithetical to actual leftist ideals, and any tankie supporting them just screams misinformed idiot or foreign propaganda shill and should be dismissed by default.

One thing I dislike about Lemmy so far is the amount of highly suspicious links no one has ever heard of, that are constantly being shared. Makes me as a user really paranoid to touch any links before examining the url closely, which is good practice I guess, but makes the whole content browsing process a bit stressful.

I don’t know much about it myself, but I would guess it is negligible. Maybe for small propeller machines with a fairly limited amount of fuel capacity; but larger planes, especially commercial ones, have reserve fuel for quite some time.

Situations where landing at the destination is temporarily unavailable, air traffic requires the plane to circle for some time, or they are even rerouted to a different airport can always occur and are accounted for. A minor increase from rainfall shouldn’t make a dent. I would think.

Counterpoints: extralegal prisons and black sites, several flavors of secret police, excessive police brutality, a constant state of conflict to sustain an overgrown military industrial complex.

Please don’t get me wrong, the United States are in my European opinion still leagues above the dystopian shitholes that are China and Russia, but regardless plenty flawed themselves. As are we Europeans

This doesn’t fit very well. The United States are plenty authoritarian, so the statement isn’t delusional, and also they are not unequivocally sucking chinas and russias dicks so most likely not a tankie, just a leftist who tries to engage in good faith discourse (without realizing that he’s in the wrong place for that)

Why is being disrespectful towards religions even an issue? I do not respect them and have in fact strong contempt for religions. I consider islam a new cancer growing, after we finally managed to largely push Christianity out of policy making and into the realm of personal choice in the west.

There cannot be topics forbidden to be made fun of in a free society. If we cannot make fun of Muslims and Islam in any way without causing religious riots and violence then current form Islam has no place in a free society. The difference between Islam and the other monotheistic abrahamic religions is that the older two of the three have had enough time to go through cycles of reformation and ideological modernization, making them somewhat compatible with a modern pluralist society. Islam still insists a bunch of fables from when the book was written are literally true and valid today, and not just apocryphal advice on how to be a decent person.

And before someone brings up the inevitable American evangelicals as comparison, they are equally incompatible. Luckily that scourge is largely confined to the United States and not my problem.

I hate the idea that we have different kinds of prisons for different classes of people. In my opinion any kind of tax fraud or financial cheating on the public is a worse crime than most of the ones we currently punish with years of regular prison, except those causing physical / psychological harm to others.

Car stickers are never a good idea, ever. Not only do they look ridiculous, they give random strangers access to important information about you and your life situation. Do not volunteer personal Information.

And then there is the uniquely stupid prospect of a piracy car sticker. What in the fuck gave you the idea that is somehow a good addition to your car? The activity ranges from unsavory to straight up illegal depending on where you live, why would anyone advertise they are doing that irl?

I hate all of this

As i argued in another comment, there are many useful bots for certain niche communities that I really think have a place here, even though I am generally wary of AI accounts infesting the fediverse as well.

Good examples for good and very useful, yet not mod work related bots are on TCG/CCG subs like magic the gathering and hearthstone to provide context to card names, or convert deck codes into a nicely formatted table of the used cards. Or on the Lego sub, returning any set number as a link to the proper bricklink entry. This kind of bot should be allowed and even encouraged to be used where appropriate.

Then there are the plenty of irrelevant and annoying bots we really can do without, like the alphabetical order bot, haiku bot, the dozens of bots quoting LOTR or Star Wars characters, and so on. Like most reddit jokes they stopped being funny fairly quickly and now add nothing to the conversation, but are being kept around for karma.

And then there are the more insidious bots that are about to become widespread, being harder to detect the more their refinement advances. It is going to be a constant arms race between bot detection and bot deception skills.

Fühlt sich für mich immer so an wie humor an Karneval: typisch deutsch, schmerzhaft unlustig, und auf kleinkarierteste Weise institutionalisiert.

Aber den downvotes nach zu urteilen wollen die Leute aus Gewohnheit wohl so weitermachen wie bisher (auch typisch deutsch).

Schade dass der sub auch in seiner neuen Form wieder auf der filterliste landen muss

His name is Prince. And he is funky.