I've heard that water-boarding is a very intense form of torture; and that is essentially about making a person feel like they are drowning. I wonder how the fish experience compares.

It's not a dichotomy. It's just a comparison. There is no suggestion that these are the only two options.

This is quite possibly the best maths joke I've ever seen.

[edit] I guess it still can't beat the 'be rational' / 'get real' one.

Well kind of yes and kind of no. I never closed my R account, and I still check there maybe once a week. So in that since "yes". But on the other hand, the quality of posts and discussion is pretty low. It feels like a lot of the content there is posted to meet some goal, such as selling a product or influencing opinions - rather than just sharing thoughts and ideas. I find that pretty off-putting. Despite the very high comment counts, genuine discussion there is almost non-existent. But the one bit of value I do sometimes get is it often has some piece of niche news that I'm mildly interested in.

My understanding is in the case of lemm.ee they were getting enough donations to cover the technical operating costs, but they did not have enough high-quality volunteers for admins (and presumably not enough money to pay admins. It would require a lot of money to pay fairly for that work).

In 10 days my account will be 2 years old.

I've enjoyed it, and this has been one of my most visited websites during that time. But I'm still not sure I'll stick around after lemm.ee shuts down at the end of this month.

Well sure, they knew this was a likely outcome - because they know the Israel government is batshit. The purpose of the mission was aid and activism. They definitely knew that arrest was likely, but that's not why the did it. They didn't want to be detained. They just want to help the people of Gaza in whatever way is within their power. This is how they chose to do it.

It may not be perfect, but it's definitely more effort and effect than doing nothing. And the more people who get on board with some actions, the more likely they are to succeed.