livus

livus , 34 minutes ago

What if somebody bullies me at school and I genocide him a little bit?

This comment is in poor taste.

livus , 20 minutes ago

Why is it almost always the people who call themselves communists?

It isn't at all. Perhaps those are just the only ones that you are interested in.

• Rwanda
• East Timor
• Myanmar
• Ituri forest in Kivo
• Darfur
• West Papua
• arguably Tigray and Nagorno-Karabahk recently....

The list goes on.

livus , 9 hours ago

Non-clumping pine pellets are great because all the pee soaked pellets turn to sawdust and you can sift it out.

livus OP , 14 hours ago

Castro kept her promise to repeal the ZEDE laws that allowed Honduras Próspera to establish its private libertarian city-state on the island of Roatán. Congress unanimously agreed that the ZEDEs represented a breach of Honduras’s sovereignty.

Thiel and his band of libertarian ideologues weren’t going to go down without a fight. Honduras Próspera launched an $11 billion ISDS case against the government of Honduras, claiming that its repeal of the ZEDE laws violated the terms of existing international treaties. That amount, $11 billion, represents about two-thirds of the government’s annual budget.

Honduras Próspera’s case has been roundly condemned all over the world. Elizabeth Warren and thirty-three other Democratic representatives wrote a letter denouncing the proceedings and calling for the elimination of ISDSs. The US magazine the Atlantic described the case as “neocolonial.”

Despite this condemnation, the case has not made international headlines. With the ISDS system so riggedly in favor of wealthy nations and powerful corporations, Castro’s government faces a difficult road ahead.

livus OP , 14 hours ago

Thiel's probably not interested in space, too busy trying to bring about hell on earth.

He bought himself a New Zealand citizenship and a bunker. Hell he probably has bunkers all over the place.

livus OP , 15 hours ago

Some of the relatives, who spoke to reporters after the hearing, said they wanted the resumption of search efforts and for Malaysia Airlines to directly communicate with them as well as to provide them with psychological counselling.

Many said these demands were more important than the monetary compensation.

"My mother died last year and she brought up my son. Until the very end I hid from her what really happened to him," said Beijing resident Bao Lanfang, 71, who lost her son and daughter-in-law on board. She said her husband had recently died after suffering from severe depression because of the incident.

livus , 11 hours ago

This is key, and why I was not really surprised:

The Moroccan government signed the Accords in return for the US recognizing its occupation of Western Sahara.

Morocco wants the US to support its own colonial occupation, and it can't get that unless it supports the US's pet one.

livus , 13 hours ago

It really does. They should run their own instance and only govt employees can have accounts on them but the rest of us could i teract.

livus , 49 minutes ago

That's so cool!

livus , 13 hours ago

@CoffeeAddict yeah it's made me very responsible about downvoting.

It has also made me more inclined to discuss things because now I don't just lazily "downvote to disagree" and move on.

Also, when someone weird starts following me around and downvoting all my posts, I can see who it is so it doesn't bother me.

It's way better than sitting there thinking "what did I do wrong".

livus , 13 hours ago

If a lot of people outside of your instance think you made a bad comment but few inside your instance do, limited downvote federation creates an inaccurate representation of what people think.

But we're cooler than anyone else. :P

It's much more important to me to know what kbin thinks about my comment, than it is to know what the aggregate of kbin+hexbear or kbin+lemmy.world thinks.

And if you do want to know you just hit view on original instance and see all the votes.

livus , 13 hours ago

I mean beehaw has no downvotes and they're not toxic at all if viewed from within their instance.

livus , 13 hours ago

@ernest

Personally I like the current system because:

1. We on kbin have not developed a knee-jerk "downvote everything I disagree with" behaviour that reddit had and lemmy.world is starting to have.

I think this is because we can see each other's downvotes and so we use them more responsibly. People from other instances don't have that so they behave differently.

Downvote-to-disagree has an offputting effect on discussion and creates echo chambers.

2. Not federating downvotes from much bigger instances allows us to develop our own culture here on kbin without it being buried in an avalanche from elsewhere.

Brigading from places like hexbear doesn't really affect us.

I'd prefer that kbin communities continue to develop based on the ethos of the people here, rather than potentially having our upvotes cancelled out by downvotes from a larger instance.

livus , 13 hours ago

@ThatOneKirbyMain2568

(B) similar expressions from other instances aren't drowned out.

Some other instances are so much bigger than ours though. The "drowning out" will likely come the other way.

I don't have time to go through and find it right now but somewhere in my comments is screenshots of the difference in voting patterns on a comment thread (it happened to be one where someone was saying kbin is mostly trolls, so it was polarizing).

Kbin had voted in a completely different way to the lemmy, but because they were so much bigger than us, the aggregate would have looked like lemmy was the consensus.

Part of the appeal of an instance for me is its culture. It's hard to develop that when we risk being drowned out.

livus , 13 hours ago

@CoffeeAddict

Right now, the fediverse is pretty small and Kbin is actually the most welcoming instance I have found so far. I am not sure if the lack of downvote federation has anything to do with this, but so far I actually like it.

Me too. I'm with you on this, I find our current voting culture way better and more welcoming than most of the lemmys.

livus , 13 hours ago

people who are arbitrarily on my instance

I don't think instance membership is all that arbitrary. I'm on kbin.social not hexbear or beehaw or lemmy.world for good reason, and it's not only because kbin is technically better.

livus , 12 hours ago

@ThatOneKirbyMain2568

If we don't federate downvotes, I think we'd be better off just ditching downvotes entirely and instead having something more conducive to how we want instant negative feedback to be used.

This would be my second preference.

livus , 12 hours ago

@HeartyBeast that brings back memories...

livus , 12 hours ago

@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 like I said, it's my second preference.

If you're asking why it's not my first choice, the answer's partly that I'm happy with the status quo for reasons I've already gone into, and partly pragmatism.

@ernest has a really long to-do list and figuring out how to implement it in a way that wouldn't undermine the report button or do something crazy e.g to reputation is probably not the best use of his time right now.

livus , 12 hours ago

@CoffeeAddict I might be wrong but I think boosts are more important when we interact with Mastodon?

livus , 15 hours ago

This is incredibly despicable. They are sabotaging international attempts to cooperate in reducing climate change.

Prof Michael Jacobs of Sheffield University, who is an expert on UN climate politics, told the BBC the COP28 team's actions looked "breathtakingly hypocritical".

"I actually think it's worse than that," he said, "because the UAE at the moment is the custodian of a United Nations process aimed at reducing global emissions. And yet, in the very same meetings where it's apparently trying to pursue that goal, it's actually trying to do side deals which will increase global emissions."

I especially hate it that they want to use COP28 to pressure Brazil and Colombia to start new fossil fuel projects when both those countries are trying so hard at the moment to reduce emissions and halt rainforest destruction.

livus , 1 day ago

They have actually admitted this is going to be revenue gathering. NZ has some of the highest tobacco tax in the world.

Basically their election promise was tax cuts, which they intended to do by allowing more foriegn ownership of real estate and taxing it.

After the election they found out they could only govern with the help of a populist party and a libertarian party.

The populists won't allow more foriegn ownership of real estate. Meanwhile the libertarians' wet dream is stuff like more lung cancer tobacco.

So we get shitty last minute law changes we didn't see coming, like this one.

livus , 1 day ago

No I blame Seymour for this. Luxon went for it because Winston cock blocked him on foriegn ownership and he needs to fund those tax cuts.

livus , 1 day ago

Nope. @Landsharkgun is right. Zealand already has some of the highest tobacco taxes in the world. Tobacco is incredibly expensive here.

What happens is the addicts spend all their money on insanely expensive tobacco and their kids go hungry.

These laws came after years and years of rising prices, massive taxation, plain packs with disgusting health warnings, free nicotine patches and free gum for anyone who wants to quit.

It has been working too. Our smoking rates are way down.

I'm really disappointed that we did the hard yards on this and now these turkeys are going to dismantle over a decade's worth of work and bring a whole new generation into lung cancer land.

livus , 1 day ago

New Zealand is scrapping a whole lot of things right now.

10 years worth of environmental protection laws is another thing being scrapped.

livus , 1 day ago

Yeah it was straight up one of their biggest election promises.

What can I say, their core base is landlords, boomers, and people who want leopards to eat faces.

livus , 1 day ago

Hard to say because they are very sneaky. We do know that Big tobacco ran a fake grassroots campaign with an imaginary dairy owner front man. ("Dairy" is the New Zealand name for corner shops/ drugstores)

Tagging you @AnAngryAlpaca - they may not need it but their greed didn't get the memo.

livus , 3 hours ago

@SangersSequence

educational campaigns to encourage people to stop and limiting it in media/banning advertisements is definitely the way to go

I don't really understand why you think New Zealand hasn't already done that. It banned all tobacco advertising decades ago. Including shops have to keep them out of sight and no signs.

Starting from the 1990s tobacco had to have gruesome pictures of diseased lungs, rotting diabetic toes, etc all over it, and health warnings.

Then they banned companies from using their own fonts, colours or logos and standardised it. Then they made the warnings take up all the pack.

Modern tobacco packs in New Zealand look like this and costs two hours' wages for just one packet.

There are gruesome PSAs about it as well.

Unfortunately it's highly addictive and it kills people.

livus , 3 hours ago

@Amazinghorse that's not really true. It won't affect the bottom tax bracket. National have been pitching it as a tax cut for "middle income earners".

I just went and played around with their tax calculator and low income earners get almost nothing compared to wealthier people.

livus , 3 hours ago

@quindraco in the New Zealand context yes it's extremely conservative. This government is a lot more conservative than previous right-wing govts.

The "smokefree" policies were created by the Maori Party, whose constituency is disproportionately harmed by smoking.

If marijuana was killing thousands of Maori they would probably have wanted to but it isn't.

livus , 3 hours ago

• One in six New Zealanders are Maori.
• New Zealand electoral system is MMP
• The Maori seats are sometimes pivotal. There is also a political party called The Maori Party which has sometimes been in government.

For these reasons it's important to tell the voters at large when a policy affects this particular constituency.

livus , 1 day ago

Billionaires and Guinea Worm.

The good news is we are on the verge of eradicating Guinea Worm.

livus , 1 day ago

Surely part of your 6 minutes is flossing and mouthwash though.

I systematically clean each surface but my electric toothbrush has an automatic timer that buzzes at the 2 min mark and its surprising how close it is. I normally only have one or two teeth to go.

livus , 1 day ago

Modelled after the settler colonial tactics of the Americans, British, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Boer, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Chinese, Germans etc etc

Settler colonialism is an old evil, we saw it do immense damage in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of us live with its legacy and are still picking up the pieces.

livus , 1 day ago

via disease

That doesn't really change the main point though.

If the rest of your family dies and you live alone in your house, then I come and force you out and steal your house. I still stole it.

livus , 1 day ago

@queermunist

Genocide, though, only really started in this millennia

Er, I think you mean the last millenium, not this one!

livus , 15 hours ago

@zerfuffle cherry picking "backwaters" to settle isn't the same as not colonizing at all, nevertheless I wasn't talking about Xinjiang in particular.

Here is a good example of classic settler colonialism by the Chinese.

livus , 15 hours ago

@Rottcodd I agree with this. We know now how bad that stuff back then was and we know the generations of misery it creates.

Doing it now would be like going back to legalising spousal rape and handling plutonium without protection.

livus , 2 days ago

Thanks, that's interesting! Colloquially they're just called coronas here I think, but it sounds like a misnomer.

livus , 2 days ago

Made me smile but as a consequence of the past there are thousands of ethnic Congolese who now live in Belgium, and still a bunch of Belgians living in the DR Congo as well.

livus , 1 day ago

He was such a despicable monster. But after it stopped being run him the colony was still run by Belgium for another 52 years.

And when they granted DRC independence in 1960, Belgians were still in many positions of power, there were white militias and the Belgian govt even sent troops in at one point.

At the independence ceremony the current King of Belgium gave a speech about how Leopold II was a "genius" who had done so much for the Congolese and "civilized" everyone and how grateful they should be.

(Their newly elected Prime Minister disagreeing was probably one of the reasons Belgium and the US had him assassinated soon after).

livus , 2 days ago

• explain the whole thing to my partner and ask them to protect me.

Failing that:

• carefully waddle to where I know people feed ducks
• practice flying and copy other ducks
• ask other ducks for tips

livus , 2 days ago

@testing yeah I like that too. Sometimes when I'm looking for a community I accidentally use the general search instead of the magazine search and end up down all these rabbit holes!