Sure, I understand what an oligarch is. I just think their influence is overestimated, and the amount of people that think neo-liberalism is legitimately a good thing from a philosophical standpoint is underestimated.

People tend to blame that on oligarchs, which is a convenient cop-out imo. Oligarchs have become this boogey-man we can conveniently blame our problems on instead of having to take a more critical look at our problems in things like messaging and communication.

edit: Like, look at Joe Rogan. I don’t think his success in communication is due to oligarchy in any of its forms. That’s an example of the kind of communication and outreach that we lack, though. They’ve got it, we don’t.

I think it’s less an oligarchic conspiracy to keep power and more often a misguided belief that neo-liberalism is a viable political philosophy, alongside our campaign finance laws leaving us fundamentally vulnerable in a way that cannot be fixed without an amendment or winning the Supreme Court finally. Not that there aren’t oligarchs that want more power, but blaming everything on them is missing half the picture of the reality of our situation. We would still be in this mess without any oligarchs, so long as the other two problems remain, as they create more systemic weaknesses.

Frankly, so be it. Keeping the “mood” acceptable to certain sorts is no different from a mentally ill person being disturbed by “the mood” of suicide content. If you can’t handle that mood, that’s on you. It can be a legit threat to a vulnerable person though, and afaik this place takes that stuff seriously.

Doesn’t matter, in a free country they can get offended by whatever they want, and still create communities with like-minded people that also find whatever offensive.

You are the one trying to control them by coming into the space they created and wishing to mold it to your own idea of how a space should be, instead of how they wanted it when they created it.

When you go to someone’s house, you play by their rules or you leave. You do not get to set the values in other people’s houses, and these Lemmy servers are literally just sitting in different people’s homes. Their house, their rules. In the case of .world, where this community is located, pretty sensitive. This is fine, they have that freedom to be sensitive about pixels if they wish.

You do have to vote for the right ones in the primaries first. Someone being a part of a coalition does not mean they universally support all of a certain set of issues. Universal health care is a good example, some dems support it and some do not. Need to primary in the ones that do.

The idea that everyone needs to be “hard” is laughable. In a free country, people can be as hard or as soft as they wish, and form communities based around their own values with like-minded people.

I think it’s often personal, as opposed to objective. A lot of people simply like it and do not want to lose access to something they like.

So, you think it’s realistic that if I start talking about weed, acid, cocaine and heroin that I’m going to wind up on a watchlist for that?

Nothing concrete, certainly, but that’s part of the point. It all seems like an exploration for various ways one can throw sand into the gears of a society without risking anything genuinely escalatory. It’s a long game.

Uh … why SCMP? Isn’t that a party-friendly newspaper anyway?

Assuming this is the US, I doubt it’s that easy to land on any sort of watchlist. Unfortunately, paranoia doesn’t require any actual hard evidence.

Kinda interesting to see an English language political comic with an English mistake that no native speaker would ever make.

edit: No? You guys don’t find it interesting that people are influencing the politics of cultures whose language they don’t even speak proficiently? That’s interesting too.

Yeah, this song is gonna be stuck in my head for the rest of the day now. I did it to myself though.

Rah rah Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine…

No, it is not only limited to pic or vid. It can also be a short phrase or even just simple shared reaction. When someone is “meme-ing”, they are not solely sharing pics or vids. For instance, if I were to count out 69 of something, and someone were to say “nice”, that is an example of a meme that has no associated pic or vid.

Pics and vids are among the most common forms of internet memes, but that does not mean they are the only forms.

Let’s take a Rickroll. Is the actual Rick Astley video the meme? Not really, no. The meme is sending someone to that video when they’re not expecting it. Here the meme is an activity, the fooling of your target with a link to the video. If I just post a link to the video without trying to fool you, like so:

https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ <—link to Rick Astley song

Have I done the meme? No, I haven’t, despite the fact that I’m linking the “meme video”. The meme is in the context.

It’s the audio quality. He’s not just MRE review, it’s also an ASMR channel. Figuring out to combine the two was just unbelievably savvy, dude deserves every bit of his success.

Lead researcher has a youtube channel linked at the bottom of that article, too.

Part of it was Ukraine wanting to avoid angering some of the Europeans that weren’t weaning themselves off of Russian NG quick enough. Had they cut it off earlier, it would have given people like Orban in Hungary ammunition to say to his own people “look how the Ukrainians don’t care about us!”

Ukraine’s fall without US support is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. That would assume Russian offensives are sustainable, which they are not. They’re involved in a surge of their warfighting potential, which is steadily depleting their arsenals and straining their economy.

It remains to be seen how long they can keep it up.

Y’know, I was of the opinion that destroying vodka factories would be a good way to apply more discomfort to the Russian people, helping turn them against the war.

On the other hand, though, maybe just let them drink.