Erikatharsis

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

I tried to report this magazine using the "contact" page a while back as it violates the kbin.social terms of service, but I guess as long as it's only one nutjob posting and all the posts are getting disliked, it isn't really a priority to remove.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

For every Daryl Davis who can successfully talk down 100 Klansmen, you'll find 100 Black people begging for their lives trying to reason with the Klan in their last moments. For every thought of "I can fix them!" that you may have, you have to weigh that against how many more people you'll need to fix if you platform their ideas and treat them as something worth "respectfully debating".

Convincing people to leave hate groups is a great thing to do, but if respectful debate were effective on the large scale, and we have no shortage of people respectfully arguing that hate is a bad thing, why is the far right a bigger threat now than it was ten years ago? Do not tolerate the intolerant, do not debate the undebatable, do not respect the unrespectable.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

So basically, Reddit.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

I also definitely feel like it's best to take more decisive action against hateful magazines, but I'm just assuming that this is @ernest's logic: That people can block or clown on bigots until the bigots feel unwelcome, grow bored at the lack of an audience, and leave.

I've personally been thinking of migrating to Blåhaj Lemmy because of the inadequate moderation against hateful magazines on this instance, but I'm waiting to see how kbin.social's administration approach goes long-term. I think it would definitely be worthwhile for Ernest to invest in a bigger admin team and a more democratic approach to administration.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

There are not a lot of Kbin instances yet, so it's hard to say at a glance whether an instance has actually good moderation or if it just doesn't have enough users to cause trouble to begin with.

Edit: I found a more expansive list of instances and fedi196.gay seems like a good one

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

Indeed. It's easy enough to back up your posts/threads/comments with "save page as" on each page of your profile, but you can't automatically transfer your followers, following, subscriptions, or moderated in a migration. You'd have to ask to be re-added as a moderator, have to contact your followers individually, have to add your subscriptions and following one by one to your new account... Has anybody made any sort of third-party tool to make migration easier?

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

You can't moderate from another Kbin instance?!

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

In other news, water is wet, as anyone detained at Guantanamo Bay can readily attest

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

How fucking grim is it to read "topics forbidden by the state"

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

I have a question:

Well, on Reddit, with subreddits, you can go inside with your shoes on, right? Then, what if you stepped on dog poop out on the street, and you went to a subreddit without realizing it... If the Redditor father and mother and eldest son and eldest daughter all stepped on poop and went to a subreddit without realizing it...

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

It's just a reference to some weeb shit from 2002

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

Honestly, I feel like Mastodon is kinda never going to be like Twitter, even if its user count were to grow by two orders of magnitude. There are several reasons why, as the other replies point out, but the most important (IMO) is that Mastodon is just not a profit-driven platform. And if Mastodon is not a profit-driven platform, it is not designed to maximize user engagement. And if it is not designed to maximize user engagement, it is not designed to encourage toxic behavior.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

I guess I'm drawn to the Japonic world that exists beyond textbooks for learners of Japanese. I feel like Japanese is taught very inefficiently much of the time, because language teaching tends to be a bit superficial in general, and Japanese in particular (and I'm sure also other Japonic or East Asian languages) sees some features unnecessarily exoticized, while other features are contrarily forced into ill-fitting categories of European origin.

So I guess for me, Japonic linguistics is about getting to know Japanese on sort of a deeper level: where the language came from and where it's going, the diversities of its dialects and sociolects, the various shades of its registers, and the sort of underlying logic of the language.

I really would like to broaden my scope into other Japonic languages than just the big one, and into East Asian languages more broadly, but so far my forays into those other languages have been much more limited.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

Osaka never was quite the same after the microplastics

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

Déjà vu, have I been in this place before?

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

But Venezuela, you need to understand that there is no good place to put the V in the acronym, wait for some other countries to join first

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

It's a nice, simple, evocative design, and it flies very nicely with Colorado's state flag!

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Reubens also definitely did not possess dozens of photos of child sexual abuse, for which he was arrested in 2002

Edit: The photos were classified by authorities as ｢child pornography｣, ｢obscene material improperly depicting a child under the age of 18 in sexual conduct｣, and most specifically as ｢people underage engaged in masturbation or oral copulation｣. Reubens denied all of these classifications of the photos, saying that the photos were just art and 100% not sexual. I wrote this comment under the assumption that Reubens was BS'ing, because I feel like the justice system would have no reason nor ability to arrest him and intentionally or accidentally describe his photo collection as worse than it actually was, and would on the contrary have every reason to let him off easy by accepting his plea bargain.

But I guess from the response to this comment that he was actually being truthful and I misunderstood/misrepresented the situation. As tends to happen when your only knowledge of a situation comes from Wikipedia. Sorry!

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

It could be that the type of Redditor who appreciates that type of transparency is also the same type of person who is most likely to migrate to a platform whose very code is based on transparency. I would get replies similar to yours whenever I admitted to mistakes on Reddit as well, and those types of replies always gave me mixed feelings, because something so bare-minimum really should be both mundane and expected...

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

This is unrelated to the very poignant graphic but I like your username

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

I mean, it's probably not a particularly fun experience to only find out that you have this allergy after you almost fucking die eight hours after getting a vaccine with trace amounts of alpha-gal in it, in severe cases.

As the disease rises in prominence, I reckon we'll start to see at-home tests. I certainly hope that happens.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

The absolute absurdity of a news article on nefarious data collection requiring that I enable JS to read it, just so that it can load a ridiculous number of trackers.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

Indeed! Here in Norway we have a flag with "split and tongue" used as the state and war flag and ensign, but our civil flag is rectangular.

Nepal's flag is a thing of beauty. While the shape of the flag is ultimately based on a historical double-pennant, the shape is nowadays taken as representing a pagoda, or the shape of the Himalayas... I think this is a very clever form of symbolism, to utilize the shape of the flag itself to convey meaning. More flags should do that!

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

This flag uses a pall to represent the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the city, similarly to how the flag of Tuva represents the confluence of the Bii-Khem and Kaa-Khem into the Yenisei River, in their capital, Kyzyl. It's things like this that make some flag design experts recommend that flags shouldn't represent local bodies of water: it is very common for cities to be founded on confluences or forks.

Nevertheless, the flag of St. Louis is very distinctive and attractive, and I'd easily consider it to be among the best city flags of the Americas!

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

The motto of the Isle of Man is "Quocunque Jeceris Stabit", meaning "Wherever you throw it, it will stand". While the Manx triskelion well predates this motto, the motto is still a very nice piece of retroactive symbolism for what could be described as a very unique and striking flag, to say the least.

Erikatharsis, 10 months ago

What's the symbolism of these designs?

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

What Erik Moeller is trying to say is that posting to a Twitter alternative owned by rich people is doing free work for said rich people.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

All of these flags I designed years ago. If I were to design them today I'd probably focus a bit more on indigenous representation.

Not included in this picture are my redesigns for the flags of Utah and Mississippi, since both those states have changed their flags.

The Florida redesign alludes to citrus production, Castillo de San Marcos, and the Cross of Burgundy.

The Montana redesign uses yellow and white to represent gold and silver, or "oro y plata", since these are important elements in the state's history. The blue field alludes to the "Big Sky Country" and to the current flag. The emblem is based on the national guard patch, which is obviously itself in reference to the state being named after the Spanish word for "mountain".

The Pennsylvania redesign is based on William Penn's coat of arms and the hex signs of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The red of the flag I'd imagine would represent Pennsylvania as a "red stripe" on the American flag, i.e. one of the Thirteen Colonies.

The Minnesota redesign has black and white for the state bird, the common loon; pink and white for the state flower, the pink-and-white lady's slipper; and blue for the various waterways of the state, most notably Lake Superior, the Minnesota River, the Mississippi River, and of course the ten thousand lakes. The star represents the North Star, and the deer... is cute. It's just meant to be evocative of Minnesota's wildlife.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

I agree on Pennsylvania. While the colors are grounded in history, they still don't feel very "Pennsylvania".

I guess it's just different preferences for detail when it comes to Montana and Minnesota.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Cornsider this

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Forgive me for boosting my own thread; I just want to make sure this tutorial is visible on "hot", since this is a potential fix to a problem a lot of people are having.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

• The right to solidarity, i.e. all should be allowed to partake in solidary action during a strike.
• The right of initiative and right to recall.
• The right to free software, or freedom from proprietary software.
• The right to a third place, i.e. ready access to physical spaces that allow for socializing with strangers.
• Freedom from eviction (mainly wrt rent strikes and squatting.)
• The right to democratic education.
• The right to cross borders.
• The right to be forgotten.
• The right to purpose, or freedom from meaningless labor. This includes the right to an employee fund.

And there are of course other things. I just think that under the world's current paradigm, these, at least individually, seem relatively attainable without a literal revolution.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

I'm all but one of those things!

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

♫ Which side are you on, which side are you on? ♫

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Awesome! What's the symbolism?

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Oracle are the VirtualBox people, right? I just installed that program today to try desktop Linux for the first time. I'm inferring from the comments under this post that Oracle apparently has some sort of negative reputation in the Linux community...? Frankly, I feel like a real troy-returning-with-pizza.jpeg right now.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

A shame you seemed an honest man (because you now seem like an honest woman)

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

I think I first heard of the fediverse from the Shonalika video on Mastodon, which I would've seen in 2020. I think I would've had some experience browsing Peertube without an account prior to signing up to Kbin, too. But Kbin is my first time having an actual fediverse account. It's pretty cool!

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Are people really saying "the fediverse is doomed"?

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Honestly, I don't see why Threads couldn't be intended to destroy both Twitter foremost, and also the fediverse before it's big enough to pose any real threat: Mastodon has some two million monthly active users right now, which is tiny compared to Twitter/Threads, yes, but it's also not nothing, especially for what Mastodon is and how quickly it managed to reach that level of usage.

So I don't doubt that Threads has ill intentions for both the underdog and overdog. I just don't think that the fediverse can be killed that easily.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

That's the more common variant, but "embrace, extend, exterminate" is also used.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

I have put in place a number of restrictions for my "rudimentary" use of Reddit. Most of these restrictions have to do with using Reddit to promote its alternatives, deleting/rewriting old posts/comments, decreasing my usage of Reddit overall and increasing my use of Kbin, and countering and deplatforming bigotry on Reddit. Some people can argue that even "rudimentary" use of Reddit is too much use, and maybe it is, but it's still a pretty good improvement compared to the alternative of not being on the fediverse at all. I think that's what matters in our current landscape.

Regarding ad blockers, which I've seen mentioned a few times in this thread: Ad blocking doesn't really "stick it to the man" like a lot of people seem to think it does. The people who block ads are those who'd never click an ad, anyways, and if ad blocking is what it takes for them to use a website and build its value, then that's what it takes. So ad-blocking doesn't really decrease the click-through rate — I've actually heard that ad-blocking can sometimes increase the click-through rate, since ads are only shown to those most likely to click them.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

Or a V-line, or iliac furrows, or Adonis belt, or Apollo's belt.

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

If by "strongest soldier" you mean "wannabe anarchist insurrectionary with twig arms and a repainted NERF gun from 2008", then yeah, that's me. Is the Star-'n'-Bull really that iconic? :P

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

The flag is a banner of arms. The flag and coat of arms were both adopted on February 14th, 2018. The flag and coat of arms were primarily created by Tikhoretsk-based heraldist Vladimir Nagaevsky, with his wife Natalia co-writing the official description of the flag's symbolism. The main ideas of the flag are attributed to the local Valentina Paisyeva.

From my understanding of the Geraldika page as an intermediate-level Russian speaker, the green trees rather plainly represent the taiga, while the white stripe just above represents in particular the Belika river after which Belyaki and Belyakinsky Selsoviet were named. The two bears represent not only the local wildlife, but also enumerate the two settlements of the selsoviet. And the windmill and solar panels obviously just represent the fact that the selsoviet has a lot of, well, solar and wind energy.

While there isn't necessarily much uniquely Belyaki about the flag, I still find it very charming. I almost wish more flags represented their hometowns' windmills and solar panels. If anybody's familiar with any other flags that represent their referents' environmental bents, please let me know!

Erikatharsis, 11 months ago

("Come Out Ye Black and Tans" x "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" Eurobeat remix intensifies)