The concerning thing is how many people seem to appeal to the same system that enabled this to happen. It’s a liberalist attitude of looking for legal loopholes, technicalities and abstract contradictions of ideas instead of recognizing real power and fighting it directly.

Recall Trump’s first term, all the comments of endless smug “gotchas” and lists of laws and constitutional laws broken by Trump. How’d that impeachment end up?

Now we see the same nonsense again, people implying that ICE can be defeated by suing them, thinking that the police assisting ICE will be leashed by the mayor, thinking that this time the Democrat Party will do what Biden didn’t and reverse the slide into fascism.

No, the sad fact is that you can’t just let The System solve this one. You can’t vote fascism away at this point. It requires mass community-led solutions, and the sooner that’s organized, the less people die.

Admittedly I often see this discussion through the lens of Internet comment sections so hopefully that’s making this seem worse than it truly is.

I play sport near-daily but I don’t follow professional sports, and I honestly think ideally it should be abolished. It’s exploitative entertainment.

• Athletes often end up with horrible overwork injuries. I remember an interview where a range of former Olympians were asked “Was it worth it?” and the overwhelming answer was no, they now had life-long injury from training.
• Sport doesn’t need to be professional to be enjoyable to play and watch at a high-level.
• Like OP has said, it’s a business. They are parasocial and don’t care to truly involve you. They will platform advertisers who foster addiction, to make money. And I feel disgust every time I see a stadium absolutely covered with ads and uniforms covered in sponsorships. It might as well be a billboard with a patch of grass on it.

I’m obviously not against either sports or high-level competition, but as a profession? No way.

While many existing sports develop some useful life skills (physical skills, communication, decision making, strategy, … ) I have an interest in alternative games that emphasise these. Two of my favorites at the moment are Firefigher’s Olympics and Three-Sided Football.

Paper news subscription or any printed magazine

I’ve only bought printed local zines/papers as a form of donation to alternative media, the same material is published by them online for free anyway.

With the caveat that if it’s small and you pickle it, I’m down.

Good answer.

I gather the hatred some people like me carry for pukecumber has a genetic root.

not g••gling something

If you’re censoring because it’s a horrible company name, I just say “searching”.

Television. It’s like paying to see ads.

+. And the only couple of local channels I’d even consider watching can be viewed online for free anyway.

At some point if you decide you want a significantly newer or more powerful CPU or GPU (for example), there’s a solid chance you’ll need to replace the motherboard or the power supply. At that point, we’re playing Theseus.

Then again, mine was a 10 year old budget build and my hobbies changed significantly, so you might not actually need to upgrade at all if your computing needs aren’t hungry.

Yep. Although…

Is it safe to use the OK hand signal again?

Words and symbols cannot be divorced from context. Like @SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de hinted at, putting a date of birth in a username is common and there are so many other meanings for these numbers so it would be ridiculous to jump down someone’s throat for simply using them, or using common gestures. Unless that friend in the story was also saying some reactionary things in their comments, I think it’s silly and careless that someone challenged them on their name.

I been told by some international friends that one of the political flags over in Australia, the Eureka flag, has a similar situation where both trade unions and white nationalists try to claim its legacy, so it’s common to see in both the pro and anti immigration rallies. Context is what makes it either a potential nationalist/racist dogwhistle or a symbol of workers’ rights.

That’s just coincidence, I’ve been using the term for a long time. It’s not new.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-fascism

A happy ending!

To take this a step further, wolf-whistles (neo-Nazi dog-whistles) are often intentionally vague, and spotting them is important in recognizing cryptofascists because they will try and claim plausible deniability, “oh leftists call everyone a nazi” is something open nazis say to downplay themselves to other reactionaries. They know that their beliefs are still unspeakably disgusting to most societies, they tend to disguise it, downplay it and rationalize it.

[1]

Sometimes it’s language and phrases itself, you can often see cryptofascists use the same phrases, euphemisms or odd terms as famous fascist speeches or texts, whether as an intentional subtle allusion or just unwittingly echoing what they’ve read. And that’s where they’ll chuck in terms like “Final solution” in memes.

Other times, it’s more direct coded language and symbols. It’s probably less unknown these days, but some common examples of codes are the sonnenrad ‘Black Sun’ symbol, Nazi-era pseudo-runes (not to be confused with legitimate historical Germanic runes!), the numbers 14 and 88, and more.

A few people are saying “streaming services”, I go further and rarely-if-ever buy entertainment media. Music, videos, games, websites.

Not even pirating most of the time, there’s a whole world of good Creative Commons music, FOSS games and actual creative communities (not just parasocial fan communities) for me to be entertained for lifetimes. It’s just healthier to be outside the world of profit and addiction machines. (It amazes me that people can think ‘influencer’ is not a creepy ominous title)

Adding to this, anything where I’d be paying a publisher middleman. Avoid whenever possible, pay directly if you’re in a position to support the creator/s of smaller projects.

This also applies to other things, like food ordering and travel accommodation. Some places offer a significant discount if you go directly to them - both of you get a bigger cut.

I highly recommend the /c/piracy / /r/piracy wiki. Has guides, advice and links to the better public sites.

See the links on the sidebar of https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy

The World Press Freedom Index only uses safety as one part of their score. It’s not a refutation of the statement you’re replying to.

But since you brought them up, here’s their breakdown of:

• the Zionist Regime https://rsf.org/en/country/israel
• and occupied West Bank + Gaza https://rsf.org/en/country/palestine

"In 2024, Palestine became the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Close to 200 reporters were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza in the first 18 months of war, including at least 42 slain while doing their job, and dozens more detained in Israeli prisons. Trapped in the enclave, journalists in Gaza have no shelter and lack everything, including food and water. In the West Bank, journalists are routinely harassed and attacked by both settlers and Israeli forces, but repression reached new heights with a wave of arrests after 7 October, when impunity for crimes committed against journalists became a new rule. "

And not to mention they were one of the other receivers of Hbomberguy’s famous plagarism video.

[removed my post: someone else already mentioned Captain Crunch]

Money going online really changed the mood.

I recall a conference talk mentioning that the speaker (from a nordic country) told their friend to look at their online banking account, and then transferred them $-10. Either they were spotted or they disclosed it, I forget which, and luckily they were hired instead of jailed.

Yep. And also for bonus points, learn the basics of asking for help. Even simple things like writing a useful subject for a post, being respectful and how to share useful error codes or logs.

Some people on Reddit were talking about how only dictators would want to disarm people

“I don’t know why any individual should ever have a right to have a revolver in his house […] people should not have handguns.”

• Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan and the NRA advocated for gun control once the Black Panthers started arming black communities. See: Mulford Act

Banning weapons is a problem if the government needs to be overthrown by its people. In places like the USA, this is increasingly obvious that traditional systems of government regulation are rapidly dissolving.