• 0 Posts
  • 143 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 1st, 2023
  • donuts@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml•Relatable
    8·
    5 months ago

    Armed with what?

    Guns, knives, blunt weapons, tasers, bear spray, hand cuffs and zip ties.

    Taking the stand in the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates, Terry Cummings showed jurors an AR-15 firearm and an orange box for ammunition that he contributed to the so-called quick reaction force the Oath Keepers had staged at the hotel outside of Washington in case they needed weapons.

    “I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” said Cummings, a veteran who joined the Oath Keepers in Florida in 2020.

    https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-florida-virginia-conspiracy-government-and-politics-6ac80882e8cf61af36be6c46252ac24c

    But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs. An additional suspect also allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters-were-armed-here-are-the-weapons-prosecutors-say-they-used

    Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI who is currently individual No. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. “I was in the D.C. riots,” he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. “I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/new-jan-6-footage-appears-show-rioter-firing-gun-air-capitol-attack-rcna138137

    And I recall Hillary’s plot to get electors to “vote their concious”

    The source you’ve linked quotes Martin Sheen and other “celebrities”, not Hillary Clinton, who conceded the election as someone who believed in democracy would (despite being much more popular than Trump and winning the national vote by millions).

    Also, you should know that official electors are not always bound. As a Trump voter I know you’re not big on education or knowledge, but if you want you can read all about unpledged electors here.

    Meanwhile, what Trump and his gang of indicted co-conspirators did was to submit a slate of fraudulent and fake electors to the election certification process in order to literally steal swing state electoral college votes and appoint himself President. Or as he likes to say “dictator on day one”.

    Here’s a list of the names of the fraudulent electors in each state that Trump tried to overthrow.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml•Relatable
    223·
    5 months ago

    Just because he wasn’t charged with treason doesn’t mean he didn’t commit treason by advocating an armed insurrection against our democracy. (See: the US post-Civil War Reconstruction Era for further examples.)

    And if you want to why he wasn’t charged for that, it’s because of Republican Special Counsel Ken Starr’s disastrous opinion that sitting presidents are above the law and can’t be prosecuted, and must instead be impeached–which, if you remember, Trump was, not once but twice. Of course now Trump is arguing that he’s still above the law and deserves “total immunity”, which only further shows that he is, in fact, a wanna-be dictator.

    Saying “Trump wasn’t charged with a crime so therefore he did nothing wrong” and “Trump can’t be charged with a crime because current and former US Presidents must have total immunity from prosecution” is very clearly circular logic.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•I've recently turned 20. What highly specific advice you, lemmy users, would offer me?
    8·
    5 months ago

    Whatever you want to do in life, start right away.

    • If you want to start a business, start developing it and putting the pieces into place as soon as you can.
    • If you want to be a artist/musician/writer/etc, take yourself seriously and start gigging or creating right away.
    • If you want to reach the top of the academic pyramid, study more than what you’re assigned and start developing your ideas.
    • If you want to be involved in politics, then start getting involved in politics.
    • etc…

    I’m not saying this because it’ll be too late if you don’t, or anything like that. It’s never really too late to change course or start doing what you want.

    But don’t wait until you’re finished school. Don’t wait until you feel “ready”. Dispel is the idea that you’re still a kid or that you’re just going through the motions until your life really begins. Life is now. So, plant the seeds of your future as soon as you possibly can.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•Considering Starting Linux
    5·
    5 months ago

    Hardware wise, you’ll be hard pressed to find any even half-way popular computer that can’t run some form of Linux. So I’d say just get something that’s within your budget. Those x86 APU-based mini pcs that you can find for ~$200 are becoming pretty popular for projects these days. Something like a Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi or whatever might also be fine depending on what you want to do with it, just keep your power expectations in check. If you want to spend more money on something with graphics hardware, I’d recommend going for AMD over NVidia, just because the drivers are built into the kernel and essentially no-hassle.

    When it comes to software, especially if you’re on x86, just arbitrarily pick one of the reasonably popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, PopOS, or any of the other ones you’ve probably heard of. One of the first things to learn about “Linux” is that there’s a whole ecosystem of software projects behind it, and there is a lot of overlap between the software that each distro runs. Yes, there are some meaningful differences between, for example, Ubuntu and Fedora, but I think they are much less meaningful to a noobie (who is just learning the basics of Linux) or an expert (who probably knows enough to bend and customize just about any distro into whatever they want).

    Small caveat #1: If you prefer to have a desktop that more closely resembles Windows (like the one of the Steam Deck’s desktop mode) you might want to pick a distro spin that uses the KDE Plasma desktop. On the other hand, if you want to play around with something that’s a bit different than what you’re used to, it might be worth checking out a distro spin that uses the Gnome desktop. I can recommend them both for different reasons, so you might want to check out some videos of them to see what you’re more into before picking. (Other desktops are available, these are just the two big ones! So there truly are a ton of options to explore here if you want to.)

    Small caveat #2: At this point in time are you more interested in stability or customization? If you want a truly rock-solid Linux system that’s hard to ever break, you might want to consider one of the new “atomic” distributions like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (or others), though you might find some of their limitations annoying. On the other side of the spectrum, if deep customization and flexibility is what you’re looking for, then you might want to venture into the deep end with things like NixOS or ArchLinux, just keep in mind that they can be very technical and overwhelming for noobs. Personally I have been using Fedora Silverblue for a couple years now and I love the stability of it, and I can work around it’s limitations with distrobox.

    Another thing to consider is just using what you already have. For example, playing around with Linux in a virtual machine, setting up a Linux-based server on one of the popular VPS services, or just plugging your Steam Deck into a dock with a keyboard and monitor attached and playing with something like distrobox (which you can probably find a guide on how to set that up for your deck).

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoUnpopular Opinion@lemmy.world•Palworld is terrible
    1·
    5 months ago

    Personally I can agree that Pokemon games have themselves been coasting on mediocrity for a long time now, but that doesn’t mean that Palworld isn’t also totally devoid of originality, creativity and artistic integrity. Both can be true, and I’d argue that both are true. There are a lot of ways that Pokemon could and should be better, but clearly they aren’t so bad that they didn’t inspire the Palworld dev team to rip and “remix” their art assets…

    Having said that, you’ll probably never convince me that you or anyone else would have given Palworld the time of day had it not been “the game where you shoot pokemon with guns”. The bootleg pokemon art style is the entire reason for the game’s runaway success; it’s the killer feature. And as someone who values games as a creative medium and not just a product, that shit just rubs me the wrong way. If that makes me a hater too then so be it.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoUnpopular Opinion@lemmy.world•Palworld is terrible
    107·
    5 months ago

    Let’s be totally fucking honest, this game has only sold so many copies because it’s a meme.

    It’s a game where you shoot bootleg pokemon with guns. That’s it. If it didn’t have art that could at best be generously described as “remixed” pokemon assets, few people would have cared about it, and even fewer people would have actually bought it. From the very first time I heard of this game a few weeks before its release, I’ve only ever heard it described as a game where you “play as an anime girl and shoot pokemon with guns”. It’s a great game for YouTubers, TikTokers and Streamers to “react” to and “get hype” about (the thumbnails almost make themselves), it’s an easy topic for every game podcast to talk about, and that’s about it.

    Whether the developers intended for this to be the case or not doesn’t change the fact that the game is a cheap knockoff of various other games mashed together, and it’s very heavily riding on the coattails of a pokemon aesthetic. If the monsters didn’t look almost exactly like pokemon that everybody knows and loves, nobody would give a damn about this game.

    Personally I feel that the runaway success of Palworld shows just how shallow the video game world has become, both from developers and from players. There are so many good games out there that fail to find an audience, while a meme like Palworld sells millions of copies despite being utterly artless and devoid of creativity or individuality. I’m not sure if it’s the influence-economy or what, but I miss the times when the subculture could collectively look at some creatively bankrupt bootleg-ass shit like Palworld and simply laugh it off instead of rewarding people for making low-effort legally-dubious bubblegum trash.

    Or maybe I’m just jaded…

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoUnpopular Opinion@lemmy.world•You should be able to ask "I want a CIS mate" in a dating app without being shamed.
    111·
    5 months ago

    1. I respect other people’s expressions of individuality, romantic preferences and unique sexuality.

    2. I apply broad negative labels on people who don’t want all the same things that I want from a partner.

    Pick one.

    It’s possible to support people without being romantically, physically and/or sexually attracted to them. For example, a straight man might not want a lesbian woman for a partner (and, you know, she probably doesn’t want him either), but they can still support each other, believe in solidarity, be friends and allies to each other and acknowledge each other’s fundamental human rights.

    I genuinely don’t know if I would be attracted to a trans woman (I’m happy to keep an open mind but I haven’t been in a situation where it’s come up in my life), but I do believe in trans rights, I love my trans friends, and I want them (and everyone else) to find happiness in their own skin and be able to live as the person they want to be without some asshole politicians in red ties telling them they cannot. I don’t think it’s hard.

    In my opinion that’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•What are some must have Linux compatible VSTs?
    7·
    5 months ago

    In my experience yabridge is fantastic. With a bit of initial setup, it’s the closest thing to a native experience that I’ve come across.

    You do control it with a CLI interface, so you need to be comfortable with that.

    You also need to have already installed the Windows VSTs manually using WINE or whatever, and so there’s a bit of a typical “how well does this work under wine” crapshoot and a bit of a learning curve there.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How would you feel if Beehaw left the Fediverse?
    1·
    6 months ago

    I feel like I’ve given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before…

    But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or “X”.

    I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we’re talking about “Beehaw.org” or “Kbin.social”, in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn’t see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for “good reasons” or not.

    Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I’m not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.

    I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you’re interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)

    Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta’s interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.

    But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that’s a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.

    I do hope you’ll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I’ll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoShowerthoughts@lemmy.world•Instead of only voting for one candidate we should be able to upvote or downvote each candidate
    3·
    7 months ago

    As a note, Ranked Choice still has bullet voting. About 30% of voters in a ranked choice election bullet vote.

    I think that stat could easily be attributed to a lack of familiarity with what is, to a lot of people, a new and different method of voting. You’d be surprised how many people don’t adequately read or understand directions.

    In other words, what you’re describing isn’t inherent to the system itself and it could be much worse.

    I’d guess that the number of people who bullet vote will decrease as the level of education and familiarity around “new” voting systems like RCV increases.

  • donuts@kbin.socialtoWorld News@beehaw.org•Gaza woman tells Al-Jazeera Hamas stealing all the aid
    5·
    7 months ago

    I’m not conflating anything. Just posting well-sourced and unbiased, objective historical record. Kind of odd how riled up that made you… (Remember, you’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.)

    Frankly I’m not really interested in your interpretation of that history, especially since you don’t seem to have a very good or nuanced grasp of it in the first place. There are plenty of smart, informed and qualified people who have written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No offense but I’ll probably check out what they have to say before I check in with you.

    Anyway, have a good one!