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Since I switched from reddit to lemmy, I have definitely felt safer and encountered less hostility towards women. I still have noticed some misogynistic traits, but mostly “only” belittling of women’s perspective more than anything else. Admittedly, that can be considered booth an improvement or a first step towards worse behaviors, but for now I’ll take it positively.

I have a wild theory as to why. I think the federated structure of lemmy is conducive to reducing bigotry and haters, in particular if compared to reddit and other centralized websites.

This is based on the fact that a centralized website is thought of and built in a specific context (Silicon valley: the white male nerdy america). This kickstart it already within a given, immutable background that then seeps through, reproducing online the same patterns and problems already present irl, in particular the underrepresentation of women.

On the other hand, the federated structure forces the user to confront themselves with a space that is by construction way more varied and multicultural. This automatically incentivize empathy and constructive discussions, on top of being particularly catered towards open-minded individuals that thrive in diversity.

This being said “better” doesn’t mean “perfect”, but I like some suggestions here. In particular, the one encouraging posters to use gender neutral language mainly using “they” as the default pronoun.

Sure, but that’s not what consumerism has been preaching, and not how elections are won. If you are interested in an ethical discussion, I fully agree with you. If you are interested in discussing how the world runs, you and I are outliers.

Between many other things: EU needs more immigration. But doing so the right way doesn’t feed the populist agenda, so we do it the most inhumane way we can manage, exploiting the immigrants without integrating them, expecting them to contribute for 5-10 years and then “go back to their country”.

How could we ever accept inconvenience or less billion-rich billionaires!

We know migrants are coming, why is it always an emergency every year?

The pacts with north African countries have been historically ethically disgusting and practically not very useful, why do we keep drafting them?

So infuriating!

Then Salvini wanting no EU, unless it benefits him… such a beacon of morality /s

If you need to get re-elected, a drop on purchasing power is not going to do it. And many people definitely feel that their quality of life is strongly tied to their purchasing power. Are you really equally happy if you are not able to afford the same things you were buying last year?

I agree, but that is not what’s happening with the latest bout of inflation: everything is getting more expensive, not only meat.

Ideally, cutting meat production increases meat prices while decreasing other vegetarian alternatives prices. I wish that’s what going to happen, but that’s not what I see.

I read it, maybe the translation I had wasn’t great, but it barely left any impression at all. Nice, but little else.

There are so many options that giving a strong answer is impossible. I’m willing to recant everything in here.

“Should read” as in “should enjoy”: either Terry Pratchett or Victor Hugo, pretty much anything from either of them. I’d throw in also Dostoyevski and Le Guin. Pick a book from them and utterly enjoy every word, the world, the people that populate it, the driving concepts that structure the narrative.

“Should read” as in “important information”: Chomsky maybe? Yeah, let’s say Chomsky, in particular any chapter of Understanding Power. Or maybe Washington Bullets? Also extremely informative. Or Why we’re polarized. I’ll stop here, there are just too many options. All of these are historico-political books, mostly about how the US politcs has evolved over time, talking about internal media and propaganda, US interference into other countries, and the creation of the two party hatred system.

Yeah, but that doesn’t bring out votes of the perceived quality of life decreases.

I’d love to see meat prices keeping increasing, but you also need the other prices to keep being accessible.

Thanks, that’s a great read!

Recently ended up neck deep in Japanese teas, love them so much! In particular genmaicha.

I know it should be loose leaves, but I usually use a paper tea bag, because I don’t like to clean the tea pot. 100C for 30seconds. Delicious.