I feel like there should be a way to hold politicians like Tuberville in contempt. Not only is his cause complete bullshit, he is allowing domestic politics to get in the way of national security.

Of course, endangering national security seems to be a part of the republicans platform these days.

TIL that 40.5% of the world’s rice comes from India. That’s a lot of rice that’s no longer going to be circulating in the global market.

Seems like this is also going to have the largest impact on Africa, who have also been impacted by the lack of grain exports from Ukraine since Russia invaded.

As someone who never really used Twitter, I find this to be kinda sad. Everything is shifting to video, and I hate it lol.

Like, what is wrong with reading something? Is it really that hard?

That being said, on the list of stupid ideas Musk has implemented since he bought Twitter this actually seems to be inline with what the rest of the (social media) industry seems to be pushing. TikTok is obviously the first one that comes to mind, but Instagram and Snapchat have been pushing videos for years, too. Even Reddit started promoting a videos over text-based threads - it’s a pain in the ass to get to the comments on a video post with their official app!

I’ll keep my fingers-crossed that lemmy & kbin are able to sustain themselves, because right now its one of the only places where text-based forums are not being pushed off to the side.

I’ve seen their brigading on lemmy communities before. They will also serial downvote anything they don’t like.

Personally, I would vote to defederate from both Hexbear and lemmygrad. Kbin is nice because it feels like the majority of people are posting, commenting, and overall discussing in good faith. It’s a nice culture. Neither of those two instances fit with it.

Yeah, this is an unfortunate advantage republicans have over democrats - their constituents really do fall in line, even if they don’t like their candidate. Democrats constituents fall in love, and will refuse to vote if it is not their preferred candidate.

In fact, the only time I feel like democrats won without falling in love with their candidate was (ironically) Biden. I think he won because people were desperate for a sense of normalcy and to have new leadership because the Trump administration failed so spectacularly in their handling of the pandemic.

This time though, there is no pandemic to boost the democrats. I firmly believe that Trump probably would have won again were it bot for the pandemic, and I am worried he will win again.

I feel like on average their conversation quality is higher than the other alternatives. However, as you said, it is not very diverse.

Tildes also feels very “primp & proper” so to speak. While the conversations are generally very civil and of good quality, I also feel like the place is ruled with an iron fist; step a little bit out of line, and you’re pretty much gone. This is then coupled with the fact that you’re not able to make custom communities.

In the end, its good for civil discussion within the bounds of what is already considered acceptable by the admin. I almost feel like it has the opposite problem Reddit does - whereas conversations on Reddit are largely driven by bots and the hivemind, Tildes is controlled by Deimos and whoever Deimos approves of.

Seriously - the kid lost his hand, and they’re fined just over a grand?

I’m pretty sure some smart phones cost more than that. This might as well be pennies to the owner.

Checks out. The most stressful part of my cat’s day is deciding which of her favorite spots is the most comfortable place to sit lol.

It’s a tough life, being a house cat.

While I think plenty of people have been standing up to him, it’s good to see someone like Jack Smith put a name to what Trump has been doing.

Trump’s strategy is to conflate the legal battles and the political battles, all the while having them reinforce each other. I wonder what a gag order would do to this strategy?

Does anybody else hope (emphasis on hope lol) they’re just saying this out of spite? Perhaps they know he lost, and are just saying this because they know it will “piss off the libs?”

Maybe it’s naive, but while I am pretty liberal a-lot of my family is (unfortunately) republican and they all admit Trump lost, fair and square. They also say they’re sick of him, wish he would drop out of the race, and allow another, younger republican to be nominated. They’ve also not been contacted by any of these pollsters.

Admittedly, this is just my experience with a very narrow slice of republicans; outside my family, I don’t really interact with too many.

Thoughts? Am I just fortunate to not have to interact with the Trump cult on a daily basis? Or is the US just screwed? lol