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As you who read this likely well know by this point, things are not looking up for Russia. Not only recently, but pretty much ever since they engaged in an armed conflict with Ukraine. I'm saying this empathetically; they are struggling. Not talking about Kremlin, but the people.

Economy has not only been steadily going downward since the end of Soviet, but now it's really being flushed down the drain. Their population is decreasing from both military losses and emigration. Working-age men are dwindling, and the brain-drain has left many to themselves (read; people who only speak & understand Russian are subject to state propaganda). And let's not forget the numerous sanctions.

That said, I've been thinking a lot lately, and wish to discuss some thoughts with people from around the world: What does their future look like?

With the dwindling population and increasing disproportions of societal roles, will we see even more ghost towns and villages across the country? Will a city like Khabarovsk survive only through the benevolence of China? What are the hopes of those already in poor conditions in such areas that see no hope for any prosperity?

Will there be help packages offered by countries in the forms of deals or treaties? Like "you will get your money/trade deals back if you help rebuild Ukraine"? Or "we will provide fair treatment to Russian expats through this program"? Are there any countries that want to help Russians after the armed conflict is concluded? I can't say I've seen much about this..?

Or are there thoughts among countries that Russia should be further isolated and treated harshly?

And historically, what is the closest comparison to what we're seeing here? Yugoslavia? Will the nation likely become divided into new countries?

NOTE: I'm not here to discuss what is deserved and "what about X". My personal relation is with people whom have family on the other side of the border. That's where my mind is at, and this is not to take away from everything else that happens in the world that is messed up, but I can only focus on so much without going crazy in this brutal world we live in.
The point of the post is rational discussion of the current situation and likely outcomes in order to still some errant minds. I ask you to please refrain from bandwagoning and/or activism here.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I've seen the phrase "leftist infighting" mentioned here and there around Lemmy, but prior to joining it wasn't something I'd ever seen brought up. After it was mentioned, however, I saw it absolutely everywhere leftists are.

The belief system of the infighters seems to be the same even if the details aren't: "There can be no leftist victory without (veganism / giving perceived oppressed group rights that others don't have / complete overhaul and policing of language / rewriting power dynamics to match the stack I have in my head / complete governmental overthrow / anarchy)."

It's one of the reasons my activity on Lemmy has dipped severely. The platform is rife with well-meaning, but overly-aggressive people who are more interested in their particular sliver of political ideology instead of coming together to solve issues. They can't explain why they're right, but they'll sure be angry if challenged even slightly and yell at you before blocking you, sometimes reporting you, maybe PMing you vitriol, and definitely using the word "nazi" in there somewhere (because there's nothing a politically-motivated person likes better than exaggerating and using the worst word they can think of to describe someone they don't like).

Recently (since I'm in Canada), I watched the NDP Convention and it was... well, you can watch for yourself. To call it "inept" would be polite. I can't blame you if you don't want to watch. It's long, it's pretty boring, and everyone has their own pet issues that they feel are more important than running things correctly. There's little to no structure, and everyone is tripping over themselves to not step on toes (even saying that would be a verbal slight against people without legs and now you have people booing you, you ablest jerk) in invented and arbitrary power dynamics.

I described it as "watching a philosophy teacher attempt to teach calculus to cats." Nobody knows how to run it, it wouldn't work if you tried, and the cats all fucking hate each other because they're different cats.

In response to this criticism, you often get people who tell you that people can focus on more than thing at once, which is objectively true... as individuals. But as a group, you wind up with a hot mess and run a show where you prove you can't govern a single room of diverse people and views, let alone a whole country full of them. Even members of just that room can't cohesively come together, how are they going to convince normal voters?

Am I overreacting? Am I overlooking something? Should we be rejecting solutions that do 90% of the population some good and can actually be implemented over letting 1% of leftists angrily dictate a different issue be addressed first? Are you also leftist and angry and now want to block me because I'm not your brand of leftist?

I vote for this group. I want them to win. So how can a leftist group solve this and actually come into power without infighting when we can't even work together between servers on Lemmy?

I'd like to propose an amendment to the list of basic human rights. I think we need to add internet access. Everyone on earth, every person, deserves to be able to get on the internet and talk to whomever they wish. Every person deserves access to the internet's public repositories of information. If someone chooses not to use the internet that's fine, but anyone who wants to talk, or listen, or argue, or make weird art, or ask for help, or offer help, deserves to.

I’m not sure about the troop readiness these days, but afaik, USA is currently very close to its military capacity.

For everything it’s doing by having a quarter of 1 million troop stationed around the world and having between 3 and 5 Aircraft carrier groups floating around the world if they fully commit to an armed conflict with Venezuela they are basically spent.

That’s the moment any army can decide to do whatever the fuck they want and the USA can really basically only bark and look on. (Technically they could of course fight, but that would mean they sacrifice actual defence of homeland). So that would mean that China could take Taiwan, Russia could really take Ukraine or even poke further into Europe. Not to mention the Middle East would basically be without a guard dog.

If this happens this most likely would be the final nail in the coffin of the US Empire and almost analogous with how the Roman empire crumbled. (And of course the ultimate payoff for Vladdy to have helped Donnie get in the White House).

I don’t think there’s a whole lot of risk that the USA will try to take Canada or Greenland because of this.

There are people who are saying that we are at the same point as we were in Germany In the 1930s. I would argue this is much closer to Hitler having just taken all of Europe and now deciding to also go and take on The Russians.

Also don’t forget that Trump is truly one of the dumbest strategists we’ve ever had. The only success he’s having is because he has a very well oiled machine but even a well oiled machine has absolute nonnegotiable thresholds which Donald and Drunk Pete will probably try to ignore by renaming a department from defence to war and by hoping that will work.

Curious what others think about this situation?

E: spelling

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I've had some discussions in real life about what the best options would be for replacing the Canadian "First Past The Post" (and also the more-broken American system of course) system of voting and there are a ton of ideas.

Shout out to !fairvote@lemmy.world for inspiring this post.

Some examples are:

STAR

Single Transferable Vote

I also have come to find that different systems work better for different sizes of vote. For example, local elections vs. federal elections.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• What systems do you feel would work better for local, provincial, and federal elections?
• Do you even think about how it could be made better?
• Could you be convinced to vote for a single-issue party that would implement better systems and then abscond? This has been a serious topic of discussion within my local group of mayoral and city council members. Since it would benefit those on all sides, do you think people could be convinced?
• Is there a perfect system, or is every system you've seen lacking in some way?

There is a book called “On Being Certain”, by Robert A Burton who’s a neurologist, discussing how we know what we know. He postulates that the sense of “conviction” has less to do with objective reality and far more to do with “a feeling of knowing.” He also suggests that we are far less self-aware than we think we are.

People see a different viewpoint and their body reactively brings up all the conditioning received from popular advice. Instinctively, they hit the downvote button, thinking that they are rightfully decreasing the noise of a dangerous idea and protecting the less aware.

Most people aren’t interested in debate nor challenging the reality they find themselves in, or even the framing and interpretation of that reality.

Is lemmy supposed to be better then other social media?

How do we make lemmy a more thoughtful place? Or how do we create meaningful spaces on lemmy for thoughtful discussion of opposing views?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.

This week, I'd like to discuss something that I've not seen discussed much elsewhere.

Many on Lemmy are the type to want to see their government go through a revolution of some kind and think that slow change is impossible, but what happens after? Say you get a group and topple the oligarchy or shitty government in power, what then?

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you defend what you're building from those who have more resources than you?
• What does the government look like?
• Would you keep anything from the old systems?
• What kind of leaders would you need?
• How do you stop it from turning into the NEXT horrible thing?

Something I see a lot in the Fediverse and left wing spheres is people rejecting, or making enemies of imperfect allies. The video I shared paints a great picture of what it's like.

Here is some examples I've seen, and what reactions they've been met with.

"I ditched Gmail for Proton" is met with "That's terrible the CEO is a Trump boot licker"

"Posts on r/BuyCanadian" is met with "Why are you still using Reddit, it's American?"

"I'm pro trans but, there are some things I'm not 100% onboard with" is met with "Harsh criticism & Ban"

"I sold my diesel SUV for an electric KIA" is met with "You shouldn't support China or drive a SUV, buy European instead"

"I switched to Brave instead of Chrome" is met with "Brave sucks its American and still part of chromium"
etc.

I so often see people harshly criticize and alienate people that are mostly on their side, and might in the near future be fully on their side.

Instead I'd like to see responses like

"Hey fantastic that you switched to Proton away from Gmail, consider moving to Migadu as they're an even better solution"

"Awesome that you're buying Canadian, while you're at it consider checking out Lemmy or PieFed"

"Great job switching to Electric, next time consider buying a smaller European car there are many great reasons why they are better"

"Great that you're pro-trance, what's stopping your from being onboard with XYZ? Maybe I can change your mind?"

"Nice Brave is already a lot better than Chrome, even better would be LibreWolf, also make sure to try out Kagi or Qwant instead of google"

You don't change someone's mind by criticizing them, you need to have a discussion and bring them over, tone matters. How do we stop these criticisms and alienating imperfect allies?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.

This week, I'd like to discuss something that's been a bit of an issue for me personally.

Lemmy (and Reddit before it) appears to have a problem with overly-aggressive bannings for perceived slights. In the topic linked above there were people permanently banning users from multiple communities (any they moderate - dozens in some cases) for single downvotes, 4 downvotes across a ten-month period, and bannings because a moderator thought they maybe sorta kinda read that a user may have had a negative thought about their pet issue.

I've personally been banned from Communities (and been sent some pretty vile PMs) for posting in our weekly threads here playing devil's advocate where I state hard questions that I do not necessarily feel are correct. They think they've discovered some secret agenda by finding posts I've made here and use them as "receipts" in order to dismiss anything they think they're reading that may be contrary to their opinion. Any context provided for the post falls on deaf ears.

I'm someone who operates on the idea of "If you can not defend an opinion from scrutiny, you should probably not hold that opinion."

To quote myself:

It’s pretty tragic that people can't handle opposing opinions. I think the activist nature of Lemmy is kind of a self-destructive spiral and people need to learn how to live with each other again. But I guess that’s the issue with modern social media as a whole… Nobody has any idea how to convince anyone else, only to yell at them louder.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?
• Do downvotes represent a "disagree" button for you (this Community notwithstanding)?
• Most importantly, what would it take to change this?
• Does it help build the Community? What about the platform as a whole?
• Is there a way to build a "safe space" without building an echo chamber online? Is that even a valuable thing to build?