left of the average IRL (Reddit, other than some select (mostly American-based) subreddits also leans left of average, but not as far as Lemmy) so it’s very much an echo chamber.

That is a non sequitur.

It has more to do with the respective moderation teams than the respective cities, I think.

They are text files but they are not “plaintext”. They are (optionally) encrypted with a user-supplied password. That is why you need ssh-agent to stay sane.

true but non sequitur

/r/waterloo was good and /r/kitchener was a fascist spawning ground.

On that subreddit, racist shit was okay but calling something racist was not.

The world in microcosm

decades I think

Kovarex got the last dollar he will see out of me. What a horrid person.

You are being hateful towards religion. That is very different than rationally opposing religious oppression and persecution, which obviously is a thing that does exist and needs to be opposed, but which does not define religion. You can’t make things better with hate. Figure your shit out.

WHAT religion? I was one of those edgy young mid 90s atheists.

Look, I’m sorry. I can see that you have trauma. But please don’t take it out on other people.

Is it your poorly stated, smug, so-ironic-no-one-knows-what-you-are-talking-about point that all religions promote oppression based on sexuality and gender, of the poor, and of children? Because that sounds an awful lot like American conservatism, not religion. But since you won’t come right out and state your points clearly in a way that can be directly refuted, how about you just fuck off.

“Serious question,” asks ridiculous question. You don’t need me here for the rest of this conversation, say what you are going to say. As long as you are not about to extrapolate from some abusive sect of Christianity that you are familiar with to the entire concept of religion generally. You know, like I just said.

I mean, you can deny the premise all day long, but it will never win you an argument.

Removed by mod

It is basic political science theory that the role of police is to do violence against members of a state on behalf of that state. That is their only fundamental role that can’t be done by anyone else. Everything else that cops do is a mixture of PR on one hand and misappropriated power on the other. Whatever you think your cops are doing for you could be done better by an organization that doesn’t exist to push your shit in.

lol okay

That is the role of the state and capitalists but that is not what is on the mind of an abusive cop. They believe the bullshit.

Ah, the golden age. I dunno, I was running FreeBSD. It was awesome. It still is.

“Ethical” does not mean “good”, “moral”, or “right”, it means something more like, “consistent with an explicit set of ethical axioms.” It’s meaningless to say something is unethical without stating or at least implying a specific ethical philosophy.

Carnism says that it is sometimes acceptable or even good to be cruel and violent to animals. Veganism says that it only is in cases of absolute necessity. A researcher or scientist for a cosmetics company might follow all the ethical requirements of their profession, and yet by any other standard, do unforgivable harm both to animals they experiment on and to the humans they mean to exploit with their research.

50% grow out of it by mid thirties.

The Internet atheism movement of the late 90s was extremely liberating and enlightening to many people. But, it has gradually become hateful and I think it has long since run out its useful lifetime. We can’t just stop there, we need to collectively develop a more informed, nuanced and compassionate view. Today’s threat isn’t baptist fundamentalism, it’s fucking fascism. You can’t hate yourself out of that, you only sink deeper.