AceTKen

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This weekly thread will focus on words, their import, and their use / misuse.

With respect to the late, great George Carlin.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you feel about political (or forced) movement of language? For example, pro-life and pro-choice being two sides of the same issue because nobody wants to identify as "anti-"anything.
• What are some words that are nebulous, but everyone "knows" the meaning of?
• Are there any manipulated words that annoy you?
• Do you find any common patterns with how words are used by various groups?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on getting other people to watch movies we love, but others may not have seen or even know about.

In order to make a recommendation or two, simply let others know an appropriate amount about a movie and why they should give it a chance.

If you want to deeply discuss one, please remember to use Spoiler tags where applicable!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Great bad movies
• Hilarious garbage for a big group movie night
• Best genre movies
• Underrated films

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on the phrase "The Cruelty Is The Point", which may take some explanation.

Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.

This does not mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Do you believe this? If so, why?
• Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
• Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
• Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
• Is what is considered "kind" always the best course of action?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on Protests, both effective and ineffective.

Over the past 15 years, we've seen more protesting since the 1960's in North America. Some feel they are needed, and some feel they are wasteful and silly.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Have you ever taken part? What was it and why?
• What protests have you felt have been effective or ineffective?
• If you feel they are not effective in general, what would you rather people do?
• Have you ever had your opinion swayed by any form of protest? Please note that this could be either to the side of the protesters or away from their cause.
• How would you try to ensure a successful protest?
• Do you feel that violent protest is mostly uncalled for? If not, how do you know when you need to escalate things?
• Just for fun, what is the absolute worst protest you've ever heard of?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on work and work culture.

This has been a back-burnered issue since COVID came and upended many workplace traditions worldwide, but I'd really like to hear about what you all think about it!

Some Starters (and don't feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don't care to):

• What is the ideal work / life balance? Right now, the worldwide average is 5 days per week, 8-5 PM. Is this too much / too little / just right?
• With productivity skyrocketing and wages falling, what would you like to see to fix things?
• Would you accept less money and shorter hours?
• What would you feel minimum wage should do to adjust?
• Do you feel that the current resurgence of Unions is positive or negative?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

No, it's not a joke. I'm frustrated and I'm probably not choosing my words carefully.

This community has had steadily falling engagement - our last 3 weekly threads have had a grand total of 1 (excellent and well-articulated) response, and the number of topics not generated by myself (or the other mod) since the inception of the community has also been 1.

Very few people want to actually talk. From what I've seen, the masses want the same things that they wanted on Reddit:

1. Memes
2. Articles they don't read (but will bitch about endlessly) that reinforce their opinion
3. Angry responses to someone (who may be trolling) that reinforce the current politics of the reader (that they couldn't have given a fuck about a few years ago until it became heavily politicized)
4. Shitty easy jokes
5. Personal politics circlejerking

I hate that I can see a hundredth point-free meme post and view 200 replies on it. I hate that it's just the same talking points being strawmanned over and over again in every thread. I hate that any point outside common groupthink is downvoted to oblivion and buried instead of discussed.

The reason I'd like to back away from Lemmy seems to be the same reason I started this community: we need more people who can articulate points, and less downvoting, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Maybe one day, but today is not that day. Lemmy needs to mature in more ways than one.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on current political divisiveness occurring nearly worldwide. I'd post links, but I feel that everyone knows what I'm speaking about.

This issue has been especially prevalent in American politics as of late, but it is felt nearly everywhere.

Some Starters:

• What do you feel has caused it? Add proofs if possible.
• Once caused, what has added to it and why?
• What can be done to ameliorate the issue, if anything? On a personal scale or a national one.
• Can it be remedied or is civil war the only option?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread we will focus on Activism, both positive and negative.

Here is the definition we will be using, so please make sure your argument matches.

Some starters:

• What would you classify as effective forms of activism?
• What are ineffective forms of activism?
• How does a group know when their mission is achieved? What if the mission is ambiguous or changes over time?
• Do you feel they stop too early or too late?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be trying something new. We'll be focusing on the age old question "If you could change one thing positively in the world what would you change?"

Difficulty Level: (Pick your difficulty, let us know what you picked, and stick to it)

0. Go wild.
1. You can't harm others.
2. The change has to be somewhat realistic or believable.
3. If I could convince 1,000,000 people right now, it would work.
4. If I could convince 100,000 people right now, it would work.
5. Souls Mode: If I could just get motivated, I could do this myself.

(Also, let me know if these "fun" weeks are welcome here, or just stupid)

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Linux. I know that Lemmy is VERY biased towards Linux and FOSS, but I'm curious what non-technical people feel about it and what your thoughts are.

Some starters:

• Have you used Linux? If so, what was your experience like?
• Would you run it as your primary system? Why or why not?
• What would it take to get you to do so?
• Do you feel it's a solid option?
• Are there any changes that you'd think would benefit consumers and aid with adoption?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

• Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
• Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
• How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
• Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.

Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.

Let's do a thought experiment:

If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?

If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.

Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.

Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.