The ending of Chinatown really prepares you for a world where evil assholes own everything and continue to get away with anything.

Also, extremely ironic in that way.

Helms Deep is pretty much an ode to fighting back against overwhelming odds and the power of hope. That battle combined with Sam’s words about goodness being worth fighting for. Also, Gandalf’s words in Fellowship about choosing what to do with the world given to you has always stuck with me as motivating words when things seem bleak.

I also really enjoyed the scene in Everything Everywhere All at Once where Waymond talks about how kindness is a strength.

Could probably keep going but those are standing out to me today.

Really strange how many attribute their anecdotes to a wide ranging phenomenon afflicting only one specific generation.

Calling it the Department of War was like the one good thing they’ve ever done. It’s the actual truth instead of the Orwellian nonsense

Isn’t calling him “Iran’s Prince” like calling Charles “USA’s King”?

Libya should demonstrate that things can in fact get worse

I understand how probable things can be, but good lord, I would be so aggravated if people judged me based on my father’s politics

We have Trump in large part thanks to Clinton and the Democratic establishment following Reagan’s lead and embracing neoliberalism and market fundamentalism. Obama continued this trend, with ACA being a literal Heritage Foundation plan and Wall Street being a big early ally. And then with Biden, they ensured nothing “fundamentally changed” after Trump’s first term.

With no left/socialist alternative in this country, Trump appealed to both reactionaries and working class electorates looking for someone to shake things up and “drain the swamp”, even if misguided.

Democrats are losers and have been my entire adult life. They answer to capital and fight for capital, and thus, will never tackle the root causes of our slide into oligarchy and fascism.

.ml is my preferred instance too because you get the latest updates first, you get access to all the same mainstream PieFed and Lemmy communities, and you get to choose whether to interact with communist communities like Lemmygrad or Hexbear.

I wouldn’t recommend it to most people though cause most people can’t handle communists. Most would prefer conservatives, even.

And the downside is that certain people will block you or judge you for your instance, even if you were here years before the other instances came to be.

Except that the people who started suggesting to avoid pushing .ml were the Lemmy devs, the instance admins, and that is what this user is referencing. Exactly for the reasons described.

This was back during the surge from Reddit in 2023.

“Most of Lemmy” was made up of communists before then.

Hell, that’s a large part of why PieFed was developed

I like when people don’t act coy about this being direct motivation so thanks.

deleted by creator

The actual comment was:

Piefed is great at putting in new features and making everything pretty. But it’s so opinionated, you’re better off on Reddit, imo.

Which, I’m sorry, is just incredibly mild. The user isn’t hurling insults or slurs, calling a user names, etc. Not harassing neither.

It’s a disagreement, and yes a comparison to Reddit, but it’s very tepid criticism, imo.

Tone policing is good and ok when the user isn’t attacking, insulting, or harassing an individual?

This was like the 15th post on my active feed scroll. No coordination necessary

I wonder how much the “Russian running ML” is getting paid to shape the opinions of all 25 people on this platform. Must be making bank

To people who downvote comments like this:

Why?

This has also been a thing on Reddit since subreddits were introduced so I don’t really think it’s a major obstacle to user retention compared to the amount (or lack) of quality original content and discourse

Subs to comm called “memes of production”

Checks comments

It’s liberals all the way down

Most of y’all talking about the US presidential elections but how many of y’all live in swing states? We think third party votes kept MS from going Dem? AL? Hell, did they make CA or NY nearly swing red? Miss me with that. In before someone brings up a state and counts RFK votes like they’d have gone to Kamala.

Third party voting can be strategic and no more a waste than voting blue in a deep red state.

I think it’s also clear that you’re not going to “reform” capitalism by voting in liberals

I still love and sometimes go back to the old Digg v Reddit war comics

Russia was wrong for invading Ukraine.

In fact, Russia is an expansionist state with rampant nationalism and homophobia and led by an obvious fascist. I support the political autonomy of Ukrainians.

Catch me in the modlogs.

Now, I believe all of that, but I can also believe that there are geopolitical forces making the situation more nuanced and complex

The devs are Marxist-Leninists. They administrate the .ml instance with that in mind, and they will often ban or strictly moderate low effort anti-China content like depicting Xi as Winnie the Pooh (they see this as racist because yellow bear) and spam posts about Tienanmen Square. I’ve seen people claim they are pro-Russia, but most of what I’ve seen would fall under anti-NATO opinions than pro-Russia. I have never gotten the impression that Putin is popular in .ml, hexbear, or lemmygrad.

But they really just stick to their instance and don’t push their politics on the software’s development.