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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 29th, 2023

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  • This would be a good thing, though I think it’s trickier than it appears:

    • How arbitrary are “best before” and “expires on” labels and how do they differ from food to food?
    • How do the labels themselves differ from each other and how to do they differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction?
    • Could acknowledging that “expired” food is still good cause expiry dates to just be extended? How far could they be extended before food actually is dangerous past the label?
    • How does liability work when someone gets sick from “expired” food? Does it change when it’s part of a structured donation system?

  • Lots of comments already telling you to stay home so I don’t think I need to. What I will say is if you don’t want to contribute to the growing number of variants, you’ll stay home. Variants largely arise from mutations in the virus during replication. Humans are virus-replication machines. If you’re infected you could be carrying a new variant right now and the only way to stop it is to let it die inside you. Your body’s immune system will already be in full swing and be in the best position to deal with it as opposed to an uninfected person.

    Don’t contribute to the endemicity of COVID.






  • Kbin does that in terms of function as in kbin has its own microblogging element to the experience, but it doesn’t do anything to bring the existing kbin and mastodon universes together.

    Mastodon can do this. Mastodon interprets Lemmy communities as users, Lemmy threads as boosted posts with user mentions, and Lemmy comments as replies. If you search on Mastodon for a Lemmy community using the Mastodon format e.g. @community@domain instead of !community@domain you’ll find the community and posts.






  • Nobody is “inserting” or “shoe-horning” anyone anywhere they don’t belong. My argument has always been that systems of power have artificially, non-meritocratically, prevented competent and able people from gaining positions of power or influence because of their membership to a particular group. They’re just not given a fair shot.

    Now depending on how used to the traditional landscape of power some people are, a legitimately fair shot may appear like some sinister replacement theory-like plot, but that’s not justice and you can’t please everyone anyway. There’s only so much identity a group can strategically yield before they’ve lost the issues they originally wanted solved.

    America voted for Obama in part because he was an actual option. When people are made aware there are options for better representation, they’ll take them.


  • I agree that technically it’s not necessary; very few things are. But that begs the question, why settle for a proxy? There are many who are willing and able to represent in an equally competent way, but with the advantage of being closer to the issues. There’s nothing stopping those individuals from starting the same conversations and advocating for speaking up and empathy in the same way, they are just less likely to need a figurative, and sometimes literal, translator.

    You’ve avoided saying explicitly whether aiming for more than what’s “necessary” would be detrimental to overall efforts for progressive change, but the obvious implication of the argument is “yes”. The whole “perfect is the enemy of good” thing. Something like “leverage the current not-so-representative individuals in power to solve the issues because getting new, more representative people in would be” somewhere between “wasteful” and “token”, depending on who’s talking. I believe this is the case not because it’s what works, but because we’ve landed here after aiming for better. The middle outcome will always be the winning one. Aim for the middle and the winning outcome will just be worse.

    Additionally, the reason I specifically mention visible representation is because of how much visibility plays a part in inspiring and motivating action from the people that identify with that visible person. The backgrounds and history of these people are known and it’s a significant thing to see the background you share with them not only acknowledged, but vindicated as something that didn’t hold them back in finding success.


  • I agree, the populace needs to be taken care of and empowered. However, those supports are beholden to the systems set and maintained by those with power i.e. the “high status” positions I refer to. There’s no lifting up a populace with a system that’s designed to keep them down. You need a change in the people with power to create change in the systems in a way that can actually help people. That includes getting people into power that are not just sympathetic to a variety of groups, but who are part of those groups so they can bring their lived experience and visible representation to the places where meaningful decisions are made.