PolarKraken

You did just fine by my measure, it was folks reading what you wrote who screwed up 🤷‍♂️

The Democrats' stated strategy, after putting their heads together and trying to figure out how they got trounced on the last election - is to go more hardcore "center" than they previously have.

It's basically impossible to tell at this point if they're the most clownishly out of touch group of people imaginable, or actively complicit and just waiting for the pendulum to swing slightly back so they can be "successful" again, for a bit. Certainly a mix, but -

The only reason I lend credence to the former at all, is just how cartoonishly bad Dems are at almost everything lately. I say lately because throughout my life there have been at least sincere-seeming efforts from (some) Dems to help (some) regular people. Some might argue (with ample justification) that it's always been this way, but the situation does feel distinctly bleak to me today.

Meaning that they claim and promise to care about (some) marginalized groups of humans but actually don't give a single fuck and serve the capital-owning class with roughly the same slavering, dogged devotion as the goddamn Republicans?

People watch porn on their work computers, after being told not to. And not just a few. The Venn diagram of folks who do that and who wouldn't give a single shit about handing over their ID has gotta be roughly a circle. A whole lotta folks are seriously ill-equipped for the burgeoning surveillance nightmare, in fact their complacency (and frankly just being thoroughly outmatched in sophistication) will march us all towards it.

Would you be willing to talk about what you're intending to do with this at all? No hard feelings if you'd rather not for any reason.

For context on my request - I've been following this comm for a bit and there seems like a real committed, knowledgeable base of folks here - the dialog just in this post almost brings a tear to my eye, lol.

I work fairly adjacent to this stuff, and have a slowly growing home lab. Time is limited of course and gotta prioritize what to learn and play with - LLMs are obviously both and useful, but I haven't yet encountered a compelling use case for myself (or maybe just enough curiosity about one) to actually dive in.

Selfishly I just wish every post here would give some info about what they're up to so I can start to fill in whatever is apparently missing in my sort of "drum up fun ideas" brain subroutine, regarding this topic. Lol.

Just being charitable here (to be clear I agree with you) - but I think a big contributor to a lot of folks taking these old media organizations more seriously than they should, is how batshit insane the rest of the media ecosystem has gotten.

That combined with the kind of...legacy of trust, for these old "household name" ones? It's hard for us olds to update our mental models in a deep way. I was raised thinking it was a respectable outfit - I know, for sure, that I don't trust them or like them at all today. And yet every time I see "New York Times" my subconscious goes "ah, yep, one of the good ones". Brains are dumb and annoying.

In truth, my drift from gaming stemmed from very similar self knowledge, I have such a wealth of ways I can spend my time (including with my kids when I can convince the older one, lol) with stuff that has small but accumulative impacts.

No shade on gaming, engaging with art and storytelling and just straight up play all have deep value and I'd argue all people need those things, but yeah. For me a few games in particular that end up feeling like "Chores Simulator XYZ" and which I almost consider a genre of its own (Stardew Valley, Valheim, TerraFirmaCraft MC were my few) helped me better understand my changing preferences. I'm like "why am I building this fake house and collecting the materials and etc. when my office, garage, and outside areas all look kinda shitty?" I have pets who like activity, I have projects and chores and people to see.

Now, I also do feel overburdened pretty often and my job is challenging and tiring, but yeah. By and large I just enjoy more IRL time spent these days, while also missing the former thrill of gaming with this kind of deep ache.

Edit to add: I should probably also say, I had lots to "escape from", into fictions of various kinds, and I have over time built a life where that is no longer true, and so my time spent has also internally shifted toward more of a sense of gratitude in general, instead of thinking of things as obligations (though of course they 100% are, of the most critical kind) considering where I came from, and I also get how for many folks games can be some of the only pleasant experiences available.

Yeah I'll be honest, I don't have a lot to say about how those kinda scenarios should be managed at the moment, I haven't thought that stuff through too deeply I'm realizing. I'm pretty happy to defer to folks with experience in community moderation and such, I'm frankly a pretty poor candidate for that, for several reasons (somewhat moody, sometimes fond of borderline hyperbolic takes, etc.).

I do think users should be able to have the experience they want, but that's vague enough to be almost uselessly uncontroversial, and I also recognize that some people's wants can be incompatible with others', without either necessarily being unreasonable or unfair. So, another partial reflection of the human condition in general I guess.

I know that feeling so well, sadly.

Ah yeah that's a reasonable take and I do know what you mean. I broadly like what federation offers over centralization, but it's not without its quirks and some drawbacks, I hear ya.

Pretty much same for me! Not sure if I played the actual first or just one of the real early ones, but that def drew me to this one. You should play it! I paid full price and would have paid double, knowing now how thoughtfully made it was.

I guess I'd add, having returned to this, that it's a bit off-putting for you to be sharing your preferences for how they behave with their own instance, given your non-involvement with that instance itself, or trans things in general.

One of the major points of federation as a concept is for folks to not be mandatorily subject to some overarching singular approach to content moderation. You're here, so I think it's reasonable to assume you care at least a bit about the way this platform works and what makes it unique(ish) and valuable.

At the risk of coming across more hostile than I intend - why on earth does Blahaj need to specifically, only, be about trans topics, to be a valid space in your eyes, when it seems they mostly just want to exist how they prefer and interact with federated Lemmy stuff, in the ways federation explicitly intends?

I'll admit that I don't always remember to look at where a given post originated from before commenting, and I should get better at that - could be that's all you need, too 🤷‍♂️