Yes. I vote for a preemptive defederation lol.

Exactly! I vote to defederate from them on our end, because otherwise they can just decide to federate themselves and brigade and troll their way through our magazines. Some Kbin magazines might not be prepared for that.

Nothing they do is in good faith, so why bother with them?

I’ve seen their brigading on lemmy communities before. They will also serial downvote anything they don’t like.

Personally, I would vote to defederate from both Hexbear and lemmygrad. Kbin is nice because it feels like the majority of people are posting, commenting, and overall discussing in good faith. It’s a nice culture. Neither of those two instances fit with it.

Yeah, same. It’s uncomfortable seeing that type of stuff pop up in the feed.

I am sure he will get to it, but for the moment my solution has just been to block the users when I see them, their community/magazine and sometimes the domain.

I am not sure you can from Lemmy, but you can from kbin. You would have to search @username@mastodon.social, and the user should come up.

I don’t know if this capability has been added to the Artemis app yet for kbin - it’s still in beta.

Checks out. The most stressful part of my cat’s day is deciding which of her favorite spots is the most comfortable place to sit lol.

It’s a tough life, being a house cat.

I feel like on average their conversation quality is higher than the other alternatives. However, as you said, it is not very diverse.

Tildes also feels very “primp & proper” so to speak. While the conversations are generally very civil and of good quality, I also feel like the place is ruled with an iron fist; step a little bit out of line, and you’re pretty much gone. This is then coupled with the fact that you’re not able to make custom communities.

In the end, its good for civil discussion within the bounds of what is already considered acceptable by the admin. I almost feel like it has the opposite problem Reddit does - whereas conversations on Reddit are largely driven by bots and the hivemind, Tildes is controlled by Deimos and whoever Deimos approves of.

Interesting. I do not have a mastodon account, but I wonder if this is not why boosting a comment or post might accelerate federation? I have noticed that (some) of my own comments or posts do not show on other instances unless I boost them myself, which not something I prefer doing as upvoting/boosting my own post seems kinda weird…

Just from quickly poking around, I think Boost only alters the comment order for kbin instances. Lemmy only seems affected by upvotes & downvotes. Lemmy also seems to give each post or comment an automatic upvote (or maybe that is just lemmy.world, idk), whereas kbin does not do this. I am also not sure if the automatic upvote transfers between kbin and Lemmy. This all being said, I could also just be completely wrong and misinterpreting things lol.

As a side-note, I can only seem to get my posts and comments to show if I boost my own post… I am not sure if that is just a kbin thing or something unique to my particular instance.

Darn - I was afraid this might be the case.

I was also wondering what happens if someone from a defederated instance upvotes/downvotes you or your post. Is that even possible?

I am still figuring out this fediverse stuff lol

I’ve not been to this tower, but the whole skyscraper-swaying thing totally weirded me out when I first learned about it. It all seemed so counterintuitive at first, but the fact these things are actually engineered to sway to withstand the wind loads on them is nothing short of remarkable.

Just think about it - the entire design, the architecture, the engineering, the columns, the floor plates, expansion joints (I presume), etc. are all designed to sway within a certain tolerance. These towers are so normal to see in our cities, but they really are hallmarks of human achievement.

It looks like it is possible on other instances? Beehaw apparently has a list of federated and defederated instances, but it also looks like it might be manually updated by their admins.

Does kbin have something similar?

I feel like there should be a way to hold politicians like Tuberville in contempt. Not only is his cause complete bullshit, he is allowing domestic politics to get in the way of national security.

Of course, endangering national security seems to be a part of the republicans platform these days.

The Bible Belt I can believe, though I am not sure about the Rust Belt. It may have been true in 2016, but I think the 2020 election paints a different picture.

When I think of the Rust Belt, I think of places like Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Of those cities, it seems only Missouri is hardcore republican (despite St. Louis’s and Kansas City’s best efforts). Michigan seems to have swung pretty left (though there are definitely still red areas), Pennsylvania voted blue and Wisconsin is on the verge of undoing a-lot of republican gerrymandering. Ohio looks like a red-leaning mixed bag, but it doesn’t strike me as a republican bastion.

Granted, most of these are major battleground states with both parties in almost equal numbers, but their conservative populations don’t seem to be anymore Trump-oriented than other states.

I actually agree with your assessment, though I was specifically referring to the debates, not the elections cycles themselves.

The democrats (and the left in general) had a propensity for hyperbole that labeled McCain and Romney as dire threats to democracy. At the time, I think thought of this as a viable tactic to win the election (in a way not too dissimilar from LBJ’s “Daisy” campaign ad against Goldwater). However, it essentially turned them into the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” when Trump came around, because huge swaths simply refused to believe them.

So, I do actually agree that democrats helped to create Trump, or at least helped to create an environment that allowed him to rise. How we stop Trump now though is beyond me.

Yeah, it is very disheartening to see. I still remember going back and watching previous debates before Trump, and they were all so civil! Even in the most heated moments, the candidates were actually discussing ideas and policy!

I cannot wait for Trump to fade away from the political scene. It’s just so sad to see how he turns everything into a debate about him.

Just based on Queens, NY, I think the republicans in NYC capitalized on some of the things Democrats “beat around the bush” or avoided talking about. The Asian American population in NY is very anti-crime, and the dems perceived inaction on Anti-Asian Hate created an opening some I think local republicans capitalized on. Even the current mayor is a former cop.

Now, how they got to be die-hard Trumpers is not something I understand. He did, after all, cause Asian Americans a-lot of grief with his whole “China Virus” BS during the pandemic…

I am pretty liberal, but I have a-lot of family members who are republican and live in the midwest and they feel like they’re in the same boat as you.

I do have to wonder where he gets all his support.

Same. I still have it installed alongside Alien Blue as part of my Reddit Graveyard. RIP.

I will absolutely be biting my nails lol.

The food and water thing is so ridiculous and just piles onto a series of laws designed to make it difficult for urban Americans to vote. Wasn’t it Texas that decided there should only be one polling center per county? I’m not sure if they’ve actually enacted it, but good luck voting in person if you live in Austin!

Just the fact they feel the need to make it more difficult to vote speaks volumes about the mindset of republican leadership. I don’t think their party is really growing, but I think the smaller they get the more underhanded they will become in their efforts to cling to power.

Idk, sometimes I really wish I could be one of those people who is blissfully unaware of politics and the world at large. They really seem to be happier in their ignorance.