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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: May 4th, 2026

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  • You know,

    First I appreciate the link. People will be able to draw their own conclusions and that’s good.

    But I want to make a little digression.

    I remember, about 5 years ago now, a time when I didn’t know anything about Israel. It was just…that place where where some Jewish people took pilgrimages. It was a historic place that I gave very little thought to.

    And I remember sharing a smoke with a good friend of mine, someone who I consider to be a man of unimpeachable honor and kindness, and I can picture the very moment in my mind that I mentioned something in passing about Israel. It might have had something to do with the Depp trial at the time, I can’t recall.

    but I can recall his face twisting into rage and babbling for 20 minutes about the country. A discussion I would later find to be mostly based on well-documented facts. This was well before October 7th mind you. I don’t even think I knew the meaning of the word ‘Zionist.’

    Anyway. The point of my digression is this: My position on Israel was formed that day and it’s only ever gotten more firm as the years have passed.


  • I would need screenshots of exactly what the person said before I accuse someone of being an antisemite. especially in a world where the UK is jailing people as terrorists for wearing T-shirts against genocide. I don’t have a problem with people of Jewish faith, but you would have to be blind to not see the Israeli influences at play in most of the western world.

    So if this person said things that directly related to ISRAELI meddling I would be inclined to believe them. While if it was general Jews=Bad obviously I would have a problem.

    but frankly, there’s not much someone could say to me in any context that would allow me to support the current Israeli administration or their actions. And I’m happy to see anyone even trying to do so on my home-server being removed.




  • Lemmy isn’t perfect, but it is more honest than Reddit.

    Lemmy’s problems stem mostly from tribalism, as different instance admins ban and censor anyone they don’t like. That makes the environment hostile to users who came here expecting to be able to speak their minds like they did in the old days of the internet.

    The tribalism causes the niche communities of Reddit to generally steer clear of Lemmy because, even if you have the technical knowledge to get here, you may find that your fandom or interest is fractured between six or more instances, with three of them being defederated from the other three or being moderated with such heavy bias that the community is almost unusable. You can be shadow banned, silenced, or just plain banned from an instance at the whims of a bad admin, which is really disheartening. Reddit is a mess, but it’s all in one place still. With Lemmy, you honestly need multiple accounts on different instances, or else you have to choose between your favorite crochet communities or your favorite tech communities. Say one wrong thing, and suddenly you are robbed of interaction.

    I love Lemmy. It reminds me of the Reddit of old. It’s also broken and sick. I had to be in five different Star Trek communities because my instance got targeted by vindictive admins. I have to have multiple accounts because some fandoms are locked into highly toxic communities. Some of the best queer memes I’ve laughed at were in a community that is outright pro-Russia and pro-fascism.

    Reddit felt like a grand bazaar for a long time. You could find a community for everything, and it would be active. While there was drama, it usually boiled down to you having a new sub added to your list to interact with. Lemmy is more like the high school cafeteria. Everyone is cliquish, and even if you have something to add to the discussion about Stargate or TTRPGs, if you voiced the wrong opinion in a completely different space, then you can find yourself a digital pariah.

    At least with old Reddit, the Reddit of 2010, that didn’t happen. We were still a community trying to run things the way Aaron Swartz envisioned. Even if you said something that upset people, the upvote system often allowed that comment to be judged by the community and not one person with an agenda. That’s what I miss. Being able to say something or share something and have the community decide its worth rather than a minority voice deciding what people should see and think. It happens on Reddit, and it happens here on Lemmy, just for different reasons.



  • Not entirely a scam in theory. Though we are currently in a period of unprecedented corruption that is so complicated and complete that it might as well be. Even 5 years ago, I would have attributed certain actions to protect the market as an attempt to protect everyone. The systems in place are such that if a stock company fails, it creates far-reaching market upsets across industries worldwide. Essentially, if something fails, it takes everyone down with them.

    The fix would be the state taking control of those industries to allow them to stabilize. Unfortunately, most state actors are also tied economically to those systems. That is, they’re corrupt as fuck and don’t care about people, but their own money and status.

    So retirement funds and entitlements weren’t entirely a scam, but they are mostly so now. I doubt I will see a dime of mine if I don’t use it soon for school, expating, or buying a house. I certainly won’t see it when I retire.


  • I have some basic understanding of finance (and I mean basic), so take this as an observation rather than investment advice. If your retirement plan allows you to change your asset allocation, and you have a high-conviction thesis that a significant market event is about to occur, it may be worth temporarily rotating from a growth-oriented allocation into a more conservative allocation to reduce downside exposure.

    Under normal circumstances, attempting to time the market is a bad idea, and financial advisors or plan managers will usually push you away from doing so. However, there are rare situations where it’s clear as crystal what’s happening. In those cases, reducing equity exposure and increasing allocations to lower-volatility assets for a short period may be a reasonable risk-management decision.

    Using the recent SpaceX-related market activity as an example, I find it difficult to believe that any fund with a genuinely conservative mandate would have maintained meaningful exposure to assets directly affected by that event. A conservative portfolio, by definition, should prioritize capital preservation over aggressive growth and generally avoid concentrated exposure to higher-risk investments.

    You generally can’t tell them, “I don’t want this stock,” when dealing with index funds, but you can get yourself out of the fund entirely while it’s poisoned. Unfortunately, my company was changing providers right when the SpaceX shit was happening, and I couldn’t make the change myself.

    I haven’t been keeping up with the bond market but last I heard it was it’s own shit show so I’m not really sure anything is ‘safe’ these days.











  • If he wanted to be a mod, then he should have done mod shit. You can’t make a neutral product as a developer and then code it like a mod. The fact that he doesn’t see the problem is the problem.

    I don’t care that he made a ban list. I don’t care that I’m on it. I care that he sold a window into the community for others without telling the people using that window that he erased huge chunks of the community at large. Regardless of his opinions, that is what he did.

    To do what? Gentrify Lemmy? You can’t come into Tortuga and try to sell it as a resort by putting a tarp over the pirates mate.