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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 8th, 2023

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  • For me its because if you zoom out, the world is a better place to live in now, than it was 1000 years ago. Progress moves in waves, and right now it definitely feels like a significant low tide, but over time the coastline keeps creeping forward.

    • Humanity is the only meat eating animal that has significant percentage of its population willingly avoiding eating meat and instead finding ways to obtain essential nutrients without it (need to add that I am NOT one of those animals, I’m personally waiting for lab grown meat before I obstain from death based meat, if I ever do)

    • Humanity by and large no longer needs to leave its sick and wounded to die because we invented technology and infrastructure to both heal, and take care of those we cant heal

    • We’ve progressed to the point as a species where in order to bring more prosperity to our community, we no longer have to take from other communities, and that wasnt always the case (unfortunately this is only a recent achievement, and as such, not all of our population has adapted to this, hence our current problems)


  • Here’s a summation from another dutch poster @ClamDrinker@lemmy.world a while back:

    I’m sorry, but this is just really kind of disingenuous to start something like this next to a topic such as this. Your experience with one company or something is purely anecdotal and the controversy around Zwarte Piet is also very nuanced to this very day. The kind of nuance someone not from here will not get from a casual google search. For anyone that cares about actually understanding, here’s a rundown:

    Many people attributed Zwarte Piet as a fun and good role model for kids, not some kind of caricature clown to laugh at. Literally almost everyone grew up knowing and having a fond enjoyment of Zwarte Piet, like a childhood imaginary friend that always showed up when you needed a smile the most. And that creates a strong desire to set that positivity forth by continuing the tradition. It takes really good reasons to destroy something most people attribute to be part of the greater good of their lives.

    We try to understand racism, and strive to effectively reduce it rather than just mindlessly treat symptoms. Many people saw the existence of Zwarte Piet as a way to instill positive experiences to kids who might be isolated from having positive experiences with actual people of color. We know that in part racism comes about from not having enough (or too many bad) real world experiences with people of different skin colors. It is a type of fear of the unknown. As such, this still seems like solid reasoning. (Fun note, rats will also not help other stranger rats with a different fur color to escape even with no direct harm to themselves except when they have already lived alongside aside a rat with that fur color)

    Even people of color were not completely on one side, but for the ones that it hurt, it hurt loudly. Black people in the Caribbean (Also part of the Netherlands) still use Zwarte Piet to this day, because they do not care - They do not see the racism in it. Unfortunately there seems to be a correlation between being affected by racism and seeing the racism in Zwarte Piet, as many of us learned as the conversation marched on. And racists definitely did wield Zwarte Piet to make their racism be known. In a world without racism, Zwarte Piet would not be controversial. And many people were not acutely aware of the racism some people of color faced.

    The majority has wanted to get rid of it (since about 2018, actually), and most places have more accepted solutions in place now. But this does not mean that many people agree because we think Zwarte Piet is actually inherently racist. It’s because we’ve heard the concerns of people of color and weighed their burden to be more important to relieve than the perceived benefit of tradition and instilling a positive message on people that look different from yourself. It also didn’t help that the vast majority of people that still wanted to overrule those concerns were pretty obviously racist, which pushed even more people over the edge, because we don’t want to hold traditions in place that shield racists and bigots. Some countries could really learn from that.













  • So like, I get that first point, echo chambers arent particularly healthy, but I have two points counter to that

    1: The people I’ve decided to shut out arent really driving any real nuanced discussion. Its heavily “America Bad, Russia Good”. Sure we can talk about American Hegemony, but if you want to bring it up in response to Countries seeing one of their neighbors invading another neighbor and seeking military protection from being invaded themselves, yeah no, America wasnt the driving force behind this recent push. Further, it was the most recent ignition of the Isreal Gaza clusterfuck that drove my particular hatred of Tankies. You see enough people cheering on a massacre and you dont really want to listen to them anymore

    2: I’m on the internet in my free time, I’m not paid to be here, nor am I here to make the world a better place, my own mental health takes priority over contributing to a more fair and varied discussions, and Tankies are particularly bad for engaging in bad faith discussions and I dont want to get 4-5 comments into an arguement before I realise that half of what a person is saying to me is manipulative bulshit, so if they are showing all the red flags of being a Tankie, I’m just going to remove them from being a problem for my future. I’ve half quit Lemmy about 3 times already because of the extremism present here. I dont particularly want to hang out on r/thedonald to see the rights opinion, I’m not gonna listen to a tankie to try and figure out what a reasonable communist might think



  • Look man, North America sucks, but I’d rather have the States as a Superpower than Russia or China. So if you’re gonna suck those two off by defending the invasion of Ukraine or suggesting Taiwan should merge back with China, I dont have time for that. And for the Gaza thing? I dont particularly value the opinions of those who relish the thought of dehumanizing a population, The Isreal/Gaza situation is a horrific generational clusterfuck and both Hamas and the Israeli Government can go fuck theirselves, a terrorist attack, while “understandable” is never something to celebrate, and what the Isreali Government is using that as an excuse to do is abhorrent.

    Edit: (Trump getting in again would definitely fuck with whether or not I’d prefer the States being the Superpower tho, although I’m not sure yet how that’d change the rankings)



  • 1: I’m just a user, if its just me blocking you, it’s likely not going to impact your lemmy experience much

    2: While the .ml tag means I instantly am wary/distrust you, the autoblock happens when you try and justify anything Russia and China has done.

    Maybe Ukraine deserved to be invaded? Block

    Countries surrounding Russia lining up to join Nato is a sign of expanding US Hegemony? Block

    Isreali citizens deserved to be gunned down and r***** because they are settlers and not human? You better believe thats an autoblock

    (China’s not currently on this example list because they havent done anything in the last few months. I guess you could replace Ukraine for Taiwan in the first example)

    (But really, if you are still in .ml and not a Tankie, you should move instances, that instance is too far gone for it to recover)

    edit: And before one of you fucknuts “WHATABOUT GAZA” 's me, yeah FUCK the GOVERNMENT of Isreal for what they are doing to Gaza currently, two warcrimes dont make a right