Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her] @ Zuzak @hexbear.net

Posts

3

Comments

108

Joined

5 yr. ago

This is trolling to try to get us defederated. "Hope they defed soon" in another comment.

Thanks for that. Fwiw I believe we've been staying clear of discussion threads when requested, the rule clarification helped.

Btw the elites don't want you to know this but those ducks right there are free, you can take them home with you. I have 458 ducks.

:::spoiler emoji

I posted here only after one of our admins said this:

I talked with the lemm.ee admin and he did not mind if hexbear users engaged in that post in a way that was not low-effort. I've removed a couple comments from there that were inappropriate. Basically if the meta community does not have a sidebar rule specifying it is for local users only or the post explicitly asks for only local users to comment then hexbear users are free to defend themselves/hexbear. Abiding by the CoC of course.

Whataboutism.

I'm firmly in the "tone it down" camp on Hexbear (especially on other instances) and I appreciate people's patience and I'm glad that some people have gotten past our rough exterior. I'm hoping things will quiet down and stabilize before we burn our bridges. I'm glad to hear that your experience with our mods was positive and that you're focusing more on that, over the years I've come to trust our mods and I believe they're committed to making this work.

As has already been mentioned and acknowledged, clarification on Kremlin propaganda would be appreciated. I agree with removing false information, but I'm of the belief that it's important to understand the positions and perspective of every nation, especially those considered enemies, for the sake of peace. I do not trust any source from any state implicitly, but rather I believe in gathering information from a variety of sources and critically examining each. I grew up in a "post 9/11 world" and in that context, any attempt to understand the motivations or historical context behind that event, beyond "They hate us for our freedom," was treated with suspicion, along with all sorts of lies about Muslims in general. Since then, I don't go along with hating who I'm told to hate, at least until I feel I've investigated the matter fully. To that end, I think there is value in listening critically to state-affiliated sources, from every side.

I look forward to having productive discussions in the future.

Had an interview about a teacher residency program and idk. It's a way to try to make something of myself but my brain is screaming "No" but I think it's a "Nooo you'll have commitments and responsibilities, you should just keep doing low-stakes jobs and playing video games." But idk. I don't want to be professional and engage with society. I don't want to get merc'ed by some fash who thinks I'm a "groomer." Idk if the residency program is even the best route for me if I wanted to do it. But I'd also like to get a job that would let me retire someday and I'd like to do something with my life. I just want to retreat into fantasy and stay there forever.

That would also be a reasonable approach, sure. Maybe it'd be better. But our approach hasn't caused any problems as far as I'm aware, I've never seen anyone say that we didn't have the pronouns they wanted, and I'm confident that if they did the mods would add the option for them, like what happened with doe/deer. We were just concerned about opening up an avenue of misuse, and it's very rare that someone uses pronouns not on the list so it's easy for the mods to accommodate when it happens.

:::spoiler Here's the list fyi

        none/use name
    any
    comrade/them
    des/pair
    doe/deer
    e/em/eir
    ey/em
    fae/faer
    he/him
    hy/hym
    it/its
    love/loves
    she/her
    they/them
    undecided
    xe/xem
    xey/xem
    ze/hir
  

Fair enough, but it's just a formality and idk of anyone ever being denied. We just do it that way to prevent trolls from putting helicopter jokes in there because we hate when the trolls are boring.

It's been like a week lol. We're mostly happy about federation but we still have closer ties to each other than to the fediverse, even if every instance defederated with us tomorrow we'd just go back to normal.

This was a concern we had when we were discussing how to handle pronouns, and it's the reason that we decided not to have a custom field option. Instead, our policy is that we'll add pronouns if someone requests them and they seem to be acting in good faith. We have a couple strange ones like doe/deer, but that's because a longtime user used them and requested them, and doe never showed any signs that doe was a troll.

What the other user said was part of our reasoning for adopting them. On the cases where we've had trolls come in and use them, they tend to go mask off pretty quickly and get banned, and we don't really care if they think their owning us somehow.

If you mean people use neopronouns to make people who hate neopronouns mad, I mean I don't know how to distinguish unless you're a mind reader but honestly who cares. You can use whatever neopronouns you want for whatever reason you want, unless it's mocking trans people.

We stuck around for 3 years before being able to federate with anyone.

I can confirm that

Absolutely they're in the toolbox. But that's not the same thing as being reliable enough to be treated as the lynchpin of this whole plot, especially with a country as large as Russia. And did they just fail to consider the difficulty of co-ordinating sanctions with places like India, let alone China? What, they had this whole plot years in the making that was completely dependent on sanctions, and then right before it pops off, they start saber-rattling and starting shit with China? None of it lines up and there are more plausible explanations that don't rely on that assumption.

The ruling class being full of people living in a bubble that insulates them from material reality is a historical trope

"Historical tropes" aren't a substitute for material analysis.

When has america ever needed an excuse to spend more on its military?

Sorry, what? All the time! Constantly! At this point I'm inclined to say we are living in totally different realities and there's not much point in continuing.

If anything I think this war is convincing governments that they are getting too little for what they are spending.

They're getting slightly skeptical of the EXTRA billions of dollars their spending specifically on aid. Meanwhile, the conflict is used to justify increasing the already absurdly high US military budget, which is the highest it's ever been in all time.

The idea that this war could cause governments to be convinced to spend less on the military is one of the most absurd suggestions I've ever heard.

I guess my view is that it's more about seizing control of Ukraine than having designs on Russia, although that could be a long term goal. They wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO and they didn't want to give the people the option of saying no. Some people didn't like that, so they seized control of their provinces and declared independence, and Ukraine wasn't going to allow that but Russia backed them up. I think the explanation that it was about bringing Ukraine into NATO better fits with these events than that all of this is a plot to loot Russia. The latter is speculation that is only supported by further speculation, that they thought Russia would fold like a house of cards as soon as they imposed sanctions, which I find unbelievable.

Of course, they'd loot Russia given the chance, but the same is true of anywhere. I don't think there's any reason Russia would be specifically targeted, as it's not as if they were particularly vulnerable. I also haven't heard any explations for how the West supposedly made such a huge miscalculation regarding sactions, aside from "they're all just really stupid."

Generally my position is that I think that the people of Donbas ought to be able to have a representative government and be able to choose their own fate, and I'm coming around to the argument that that was impossible to achieve through peaceful means. But at the same time I'm skeptical of a lot of other Russian narratives about the war, and that includes the idea that the whole thing is a plot to pillage Russia.

I'm not sure whether the foreign or domestic pressure was the bigger influence but that certainly played a role.

I stand corrected on that point, but I still don't think NATO went down this path thinking that all they had to do was press the sanction button and watch Russia collapse.

But if Russia loses (or didn't intervene) then Donbas wouldn't have any protection if it declared independence, and no representation if it didn't. I don't particularly trust Russia but I don't see much hope for the people of Donbas without them.