It's not that you're an idiot, but it's wise to avoid using a chromium/blink based browser since they are building a dangerous monopoly. Firefox is the best known alternative, but there are a couple other options.

Key difference is that Bitcoin people want/need their numbers to go up,up,up as a measure of success.

Here, we are hoping to cultivate a healthy community (at either/both the instance and fediverse level). From my experience on various subreddits, focusing on growth is not a good way to do this.

Communities are defined more by who is not allowed in than by who is in the community. Lemmy phase 2 kicked off back in June, and it still needs some time to find its footing at a sustainable rate of growth.

Be careful about "unsubscribing" to various services.

They will unsubscribe you, but then they also have all of your information (name, address, anything else) on record and confirmed. They can profit when the sell that data to another mailer "service". It's like a Hydra.

The thing is that on leftist forums, the stakes for a veganism debate are pretty high cause it easily causes a 50-50ish flameout.

Mods would appreciate if people like OP didn't intentionally troll to stir that sort of thing up (if the discussion takes place organically and respectfully, then whatever).

Mods would also appreciate if people didn't feed obvious trolls who are just starting things up, like you pointed out, there are specific places to post about that sort of topic.

Please don't feed obvious trolls

Before that can happen, we (as the non-ownership class) need to shift away from the capitalist mode of production, into a more advanced economy. On a global scale this is incredibly difficult, since the United States has a hegemonic influence over global economic affairs, and has been hostile to any states that attempt to subvert the capitalist mode. This is kinda sorta beginning to wane, but it'll be a couple decades still until we see some real progress IMO.

Sure, like I said I don't think it's really important who is "worse", it's not a useful topic of discussion.

I did want to make a couple of counterpoints though

• just cause Zelensky is popular, doesn't necessarily make him a better leader. If we were to do a comparison (which we shouldn't!) Putin is also widely popular along Russians. In both cases support for a wartime leader is going to rally, especially in Ukraine.
• you certainly have infinitely more experience in the country than I do (dividing by zero ofc haha), but wouldn't you have run into some of the same biases coming in as a foreigner (or foreign-born)? I don't know your itinerary, and I'm not asking you to share, but the who, when and where is gonna make a difference.
• as an example, I was interested in the interviews of the first two people in this video that I saw recently [watch starting at 3:15 till about 20 mins in]: https://youtu.be/drhgjxSJG6M located in the warzone in eastern Ukraine. Both are supportive of the Russian forces and appear to claim that such support in their local area is widespread.

I'd thought that even the most liberal people on nü-Lemmy had at least read some Chomsky (or even watched the documentaries based on his work), but I guess we aren't even there yet.

It seems like you had a point to contribute somewhere in there, but maybe try and communicate it in a way that isn't so pointed at the other user. We'd like to discourage that sort of toxicity here. Maybe if they were being a total shithead or reactionary, feel free to go off, but it seems unwarranted.

Everyone else just lived in pretty poor, if stable, conditions.

That's the thing, they lived in a poor country. Not strictly because of their political system (as many flaws as it had), but because of global economics, and trade hostility from the USA that intentionally hampered growth. It's not like they were purposely kept poor for funsies or cause the government were big meanies (sure, they were meanies in other ways). The wealth inequality between modern political leaders and funding sources (where the real power comes from) and the average citizen (particularly in the USA) is far greater than it ever was in the USSR.

Things are better for some and worse for many since then in Russia, but in other places like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova everyone lost except for the rich guys who pillaged all the private infrastructure.

c/asklemmy is not for support. Please use !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml for support requests and feedback.

It's not "leftist" necessarily, but all leftists should inform themselves about the Russian Revolution IMO, which is covered by season 10 (the final and currently ongoing season) of the Revolutions|^Spotify^ podcast.

Mike Duncan isn't explicitly leftist or anything, but he really does his homework and portrays things in a really neutral way. Whether or not you are a big stan of the USSR and what came after, the Russian Revolution was the most successful attempt at overthrowing capitalism (to an extent), and any future movement should learn from and analyze all aspects of what happened in those years.

Citations Needed|^Spotify^ is my other favorite with their in-depth media criticism (if you like Chomsky's stuff, you'll probably like what they have to say).