PhilipTheBucket

joined 2 weeks ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 22 hours ago

Look at the goalposts go lol

"He's not a REAL supporter of Palestine"

"Why does it not count, all these things he did to materially support Palestine, from inside the US government where it can actually make a real material difference in a way that almost no one else on earth is able to do when they care about Palestine?"

"Because he doesn't want to see Israel destroyed. That means it doesn't count."

Fuck outta here

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 points 22 hours ago

Yeah. I missed some drama because I tend to avoid lemmy.world politics forums because they are unbearable. Point taken.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 3 points 22 hours ago

That's legit. The UN report clearly found that people from the Hamas side of the fighting had committed widespread sexual assaults. Bringing up misleading talking points and blog posts to try to spin it around into the report finding the opposite is textbook misinformation.

I actually don't agree with banning people for this type of misinformation, I think arguing back in kind is the right way in most cases. But if you're going to ban misinformation (which most of Lemmy seems to think is okay), then this is a pretty reasonable ban.

(It's probably offtopic to get into an extended argument about the original Hamas sexual assault claims under this post... if anyone wants to re-inaugurate my whole "debatebro" community by having it out with me there about it though let me know and I'm down a little later today.)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"Everyone who doesn't want the destruction of Israel = Zionist"

Well, by that definition, sure, he's a Zionist. On the other hand, if you say that a Zionist is a ham sandwich, he's not a Zionist. The point is: Words are fun, we can redefine them to make all kinds of great arguments.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Gatekeeping is when you don't think what I want you to, so I have to remove you from my community because you didn't think what I wanted you to (edit: means YOU were gatekeeping, obviously, in case somehow it wasn't clear)

Abuse is when you downvote people I say you can't downvote

Ban is okay though, for someone I say it's okay for. That's not abuse like downvotes are. Obviously.

Get with the program

/s

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 9 points 1 day ago

So I said "Hey here's what I think"

And so then you said "well you're WRONG because here's what I think instead"

So far so good

And then I said "Well I have reasons for what I think and you seem to be just shouting your opinion and only that so it seems like I win"

And then you said "HOW DARE YOU HERE'S WHAT I THINK YOU'RE BEING UNFAIR"

And then I got even more sarcastic about it and now you are hurt because of it

It's understandable I guess. I still think that opinion + reasons is better than just OPINION OPINION OPINION even if I do grasp that you might have had different experiences than I have had and so different perspectives to bring to bear. Like I say you are refusing to elaborate even in the slightest which I feel like is a fair thing to ask you to do if you're going to call another human being a "twat."

All good, you're free to block me if the sarcasm is overly hurtful, I do do that sometimes.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yeah what was I thinking looking up his modlog, quoting some of the stuff that got him banned, and weighing in on it and specifically why. I should have just said I liked him, and "if he got banned, he probably didn't deserve it" all confident-like, and called it a day. It's easier, too.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yeah, dealing with people is the absolute worst. Just put me in the back with people who are working for a living. Just way better.

I forgot this one: One of the customers said she loved our house-made whatever dip. I said no, it comes from a tub. She said no, it's definitely house made, it's so good. I went to the back and got one of the tubs to show her where it came from.

There's a reason some of the managers hated me 😃

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 13 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Honestly, if you look at the receipts, it's even worse. It's a pattern of instance admins harassing this guy, banning him, and then accusing him of being abusive somehow to them (by, for example, using his downvote button) and also telling people he's a piece of shit.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 6 points 1 day ago (7 children)

AHAHAHAHA no. Funny, but no.

Can I do that too? I mean, I have enough respect for the people reading my stuff to explain why I think things so they can think it over, see if it makes sense, I mean they're free to agree or disagree but I guess I was wasting my time with that when AHAHAHAHAHA means obviously I'm right and the other person is wrong...

I can't remember exactly why but I've had him blocked for at least a year and I remember his username and him being a twat

Okay. Who are you? Why do I take your opinion about him seriously just because you say it and actively refuse to give any reason?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 1 day ago

Ceasefire?

They already broke the code, just turn off the food and let them starve to the last person.

What the fuck? I know why the politicians are doing it, creating an illusion of normalcy is part of their job. I just don't get why anyone is reporting on it within that framing without lightning striking them while they're in the middle of talking.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 1 day ago

I mean they asked

 

Democratic politicians have a chronic problem: they keep accepting Republican framing instead of creating their own. They run scared of Fox News, moderate their positions to appease the unappeasable, and let political consultants convince them that authenticity is dangerous. They are so worried about how Fox News will portray anything they say, they try not to say anything interesting at all.

The costs of this approach became painfully clear in 2024. There was a brief shining moment last summer when the Harris Walz campaign appeared to be scoring real damage to the Trump Vance campaign by not falling into this predictable pattern. Instead, they were being authentic, calling out how fucking weird the MAGA world’s positions actually were, and it was working.

It was highlighting just how ridiculous the GOP’s policies are, and how damaging they can be. And yet, within weeks, Democratic political consultants killed it.

Over the line came a lot of praise, but also some suggested tweaks. First, said veteran Democratic numbers man Geoff Garin, summarizing their analysis, stop saying, “We’re not going back.” It wasn’t focused enough on the future, he argued. Second, lay off all the “weird” talk — too negative.

In retrospect, not letting Tim Walz be Tim Walz was a huge blunder. When he spoke in a relatable way, people got it. He was authentic and real and, even if he made an occasional policy blunder, you got the sense that he actually cared. But the traditional Democratic advisors couldn’t stand that level of risk. They ran so scared of any potential “gaffe” that might give Fox News or the NY Post fodder, that they’d rather silence the candidates who actually resonate with people.

There were also efforts to curb some of his signature lines, including casting Trump and Republicans as “weird,” which slipped out of Walz’s speeches.

“He was encouraged to stop focusing on the ‘weird’ criticism,” said another former Harris aide. “I think it is fair to ask whether, even if ‘weird’ wasn’t quite right, his instinct about how to approach Trump, to make him seem small, and a huckster, wasn’t closer to correct than the more self-serious tone that may have made us sound too in defense of the status quo.”

Mockery yields results. As does not being afraid of the way the other side is framing things. They’re going to call any Democrat a “socialist” or “communist” anyway. Stop letting Fox News decide how you act. People are hungry for someone who will actually say what’s really happening, rather than playing it safe and political.

Instead, the Democrats tried to run as “traditional Republican lite,” spending much of the campaign appearing with Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, which came off as incredibly inauthentic and designed only to appeal to people who want Republicans to like them. It turned off Democrats and didn’t attract any Trump supporters.

That’s part of why Zohran Mamdani is so refreshing in the NYC mayoral race. He’s been incredibly natural and authentic in making it clear he absolutely loves NYC and he won’t cave to misleading framing by either Republicans or the traditional Democratic political consultants. Now, winning a NYC mayoral primary is different from winning a national election—the media environment and stakes are different—but the core lesson about authentic messaging still applies.

Over the weekend, he put out a hilarious video that demonstrates this clearly:

Good morning! I'm in Uganda to visit family and friends. But depending on your perspective, don't worry or I'm sorry: I'll be back by the end of the month. See you soon, NYC.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social) 2025-07-20T14:37:21.480Z

In it, he notes that he’s on a short planned trip to Uganda, where he was born and raised, to celebrate his wedding from earlier this year with family and friends who are still in Uganda. The video is very good political theater. It takes criticism from the screeching class on X who keep telling him (obnoxiously) to “go back to Africa” and turns it into a joke.

The traditional Democratic consultant would say to try to keep this trip quiet overall, or cite “privacy” in not providing details. Mamdani makes it a joke, points out how he’s listening to his critics, and then caps it off with a knowing wink to the fact that some of his haters won’t want him to come back:

But depending on your perspective, don’t worry or I’m sorry: I’ll be back by the end of the month.

In the video he also says “I want to apologize to the haters, because I will undoubtedly be coming back.”

But, even better, he spends the latter half of the video jokingly suggesting potential NY Post headlines to exaggerate his celebratory trip (I’ll leave the best joke to those who watch the video itself rather than posting it here), but tonally, it’s perfect.

This does so many important things well that Democrats often fail it. It defuses a non-controversy before the MAGA world can turn it into a faux controversy. It uses sarcasm and humor to disarm people. And it comes across as someone authentic who loves his family and friends… as well as NYC.

This approach offers a model that Democrats desperately need: don’t accept the frame your opponents set, create your own. Use humor to deflate pompous attacks. Be authentic about who you are and what you care about. Trust that voters can handle complexity and honesty.

The alternative is what we got in 2024: a sanitized, consultant-approved campaign that felt disconnected from real people and real problems. Until Democrats learn to reward politicians who take authentic risks instead of those who play it safe, they’ll keep losing to candidates who may lie constantly but at least sound like they believe what they’re saying.

 

Russia conducted a large-scale strike on Ukraine on the night of 20-21 July using drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, causing fires in four Kyiv's districts. Early reports indicate that one person has been killed and two injured.

Source: Tymur Tkachenko, Head of Kyiv City Military Administration; Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko; Ukraine's Air Force

Quote: "The attack caused a fire on the roof of a non-residential building in the Darnytskyi district. Further information is being gathered."

Updated: As of 04:00, Tkachenko reported that fires had occurred on the roof of a high-rise building and a non-residential building in the Darnytskyi district. A supermarket also caught fire.

A residential building caught fire in the Shevchenkivskyi district. Balconies at another address are also burning.

A fire in a shopping arcade was recorded in the Dniprovskyi district and debris fell on the grounds of a kindergarten.

A non-residential building caught fire in the Solomianskyi district.

Klitschko said medical teams had been dispatched to the Darnytskyi, Solomianskyi and Dniprovskyi districts.

Updated: The entrance to the Lukianivska metro station was damaged in the Russian attack. People were using it as a shelter during the large-scale Russian strike. Early reports indicate that there were no casualties.

At 04:39, Tkachenko reported one fatality.

"A man has been hospitalised with multiple injuries in the Darnytskyi district," he added.

The city authorities urged residents not to leave shelters, as Russia continued its attack.

Updated: As of 05:30, the number of injured has increased to two.

"One person was injured in the Shevchenkivskyi district, where a fire broke out on the first and second floors of a residential building. Medical treatment was provided at the scene," Klitschko said.

Updated:

Ukraine's Air Force warned that several Tu-95 strategic bombers had taken off from Olenya air base in Russia's Murmansk Oblast.At 02:12 on 21 July, the Air Force reported that Kalibr cruise missiles had been launched from the Black Sea.Air-raid warnings were issued in all oblasts three times overnight due to the take-off of MiG-31K jets. They carry Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles.On the evening of 20 July, an air-raid warning was issued in Kyiv and several oblasts due to a Russian drone attack. Air defence systems were responding to Russian targets.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!

 

Hey, there are some communities on sh.itjust.works that are supposed to be fed from RSS feeds:

Is it possible to get someone to un-restrict those and then make the !rss@ibbit.at bot a mod? Or else just delete them since they're not getting updated? I reached out to the human mod but I didn't hear anything back.

Also, this I think should be deleted, since it's moved to ibbit.at now:

 

Lead Belly, Wikipedia.

It was a warning — a spoken-word portent of the dangers lurking in plain sight. A call to vigilance. A whispered watchword passed between those who knew the system was not built for them. From churches to courtrooms, ballrooms to drinking fountains, every institution was wired against them.

“Liberty and justice for all” was a hollow mantra, a borrowed line from movie scripts, not a manifest reality. A promise that never crossed the color barrier. A refrain as empty as the bridge of a vapid pop song, sung past the millions it excluded. The very same who weren’t included in the declaration that claimed that all men were created equal and who were barred from the promised unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there [Alabama]—best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

The word is short. It bursts from puckered lips and explodes in a dead-end consonant. It’s a four-letter epithet, one that its user might not even fully comprehend. Its deliberate morphosyntactic rebellion only adds to its iconoclastic aura. It refused to follow the rules and didn’t care whether it was misunderstood and today it challenges those that use it to grapple with its depth and true meaning.

It was in 1938, during the segregated black-and-white days of the American South, that this zeitgeist word was first recorded. Linguistic history was made by a man who carried a thousand songs in his memory from across generations and was himself a product of the nineteenth century. Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, the self-described “musicianer” (to avoid pigeonholing tags like bluesman or folk singer) was first recorded using the word in this context, warning his listeners to be vigilant against a system raised against them. He finishes his song with a warning, a stark reminder to northern blacks that the freedom they believed they possessed was fragile; in the segregationist South, those rights could vanish in an instant. He intones that they best stay ‘woke’.

The song preceding the warning is deceptively cheerful, the kind of tune that might get your foot tapping while your civil rights disappear. It jumps, it swings, it practically begs for a dance floor. You can picture Lead Belly smiling as he plays it, which only adds to its cunning. The genius lies in the bait: rhythm first, truth second. The listener is already halfway to the chorus before the full weight of the message sets in, this charming little ditty is a canary in the coal mine.

“Be careful. Stay woke. Keep your eyes open.” He wasn’t offering travel advice. He was sounding the alarm. The subject of the song? The Scottsboro Boys: nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in what was, at the time, not so much a miscarriage of justice as it was standard operating procedure. The evidence was flimsy, the trials a farce, and the outrage, when it came at all, was years too late. But such was the legal pageantry of the Jim Crow South, robes, gavels, and a healthy disdain for anything resembling due process. The case would go on to help ignite the civil rights movement and loosely inspire To Kill A Mockingbird, a work of fiction that, ironically, became more widely taught in American schools than the real event ever was. Until, of course, it too was deemed dangerous and became one of the most banned books in America.

Lead Belly, born around 1888, a mere 23 years after slavery was technically abolished, though its spirit hung around like a houseguest who wouldn’t take the hint, became a voice for the voiceless. His music carried the bruises of a people told they were free while being worked, watched, and whipped by other means. He lived a wandering life, not out of whimsy, but because opportunity had a habit of walking right past Black men with guitars. He learned songs the old way, by ear, by heart, by necessity, preserving the history of a people the country had tried very hard to keep illiterate, and thus, conveniently forgettable, without history.

His oeuvre is a pillar of that noble cry from the depths of the Black experience, of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, systemic racism, and the ways that society is stratified and not equal. It was carved from the lived experience of being on the wrong side of every American promise. It was a clarion call for awareness of the steaming pile of racial injustice that the West has been drowning in since the first slave ship hit their shores.

“Woke” was never meant to be a fashion statement, nor a punchline for late-night pundits. It was forged in fire — a warning against complacency, a code of survival in a hostile world, a whispered truth passed hand to hand in places where speaking too loudly could cost you your job, your freedom, your life. And now? It’s been defanged, ridiculed, and repurposed as a laughable tool for the establishment to twist and use as a weapon against the very people who coined it. A tool turned trap.

But here we are.

That once-powerful symbol of resistance has been seized by the very institutions that have spent centuries systematically grinding Black lives into the dirt. The term’s true meaning – an enlightened awareness of the raw, open wound that is America’s racial nightmare – has been hijacked, rebranded, and bastardized by the media, politicians, and every smarmy corporate entity looking to peddle their brand of faux-progressive vacuousness.

White power structures, always ready to neutralize any threat to their dominion, have managed to take “woke” and turn it into a bad word. What was once a rallying cry for justice has been twisted into a political cudgel used to mock and discredit any real attempt to rip the veil off the charade of equality. It’s not just a matter of words, it’s an all out war on language itself. These are the same tricks they’ve been pulling for centuries, using distorted definitions and reworked narratives to keep the oppressed on the back foot.

The message is clear: If you’re Black and you’ve got the audacity to say, “Enough is enough,” you better brace yourself for a full-throttle media blitz designed to slap you back into line. “Woke” isn’t just a word anymore; it’s a weapon in the arsenal of those who would rather keep things as they are. Keep the system in place. Maintain the lie.

The war on the word is real. One must admire Governor Ron DeSantis, a man of such moral fortitude and delicate constitution that he has taken it upon himself to wage battle not against poverty, corruption, or corporate greed, but against a single four-letter word. With all the thunderous pomp of a preacher chasing demons out of a tent revival, he stood tall, or as tall as his platform shoes would allow, and declared with Churchillian solemnity: “We will fight the woke in the legislature. We will fight the woke in education. We will fight the woke in the businesses. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

One would think he was rallying troops at the Somme, not banning Dr. Seuss in suburban Florida. And then, with the air of a man who had just won a duel at dawn, he announced, “Our state is where woke goes to die.” Which is to say, Florida has bravely volunteered to become the final resting place of empathy, historical accuracy, and critical thought, a noble sacrifice indeed. If only all public servants had such vision, such valor, such tireless commitment to the extermination of adjectives. The republic would be saved in no time.

But perhaps the word isn’t dead. Perhaps it’s only been buried alive, waiting to be reclaimed. Not diluted. Not defanged. Reclaimed.

Woke should still mean what it always did — a refusal to sleep through injustice, a refusal to walk blind through a rigged world. But now, we must open our eyes even wider. Because the danger has spread. The systems of domination are no longer content to whisper their intentions, they’re marching proudly through parliaments and prime-time, saluting strongmen and silencing dissent. Expansion of its meaning doesn’t mean dilution. It means depth. Woke must grow to meet the scale of the threat, but never lose sight of its roots.

The cruelty has gone global. In Hungary, in India, in Israel, in Italy, in Turkey, in Russia, in El Salvador, in Argentina and in the United States authoritarians are in power, while in consolidated democracies like France, Germany and Spain they are waiting in the wings for their chance to dismantle decades of hard-fought freedoms. From refugee camps to pride bans, from book bans and even book burnings to surveillance states, the machinery of control is humming louder than ever. Fascism might be wearing a friendlier face, corporate-backed and algorithm-approved, but its boots are just as heavy. And they still land first on the necks of the most vulnerable who then get sent to concentration camps with merch-friendly, tourist-board names like Alligator Alcatraz, where malice is privatized, sanitized, and sold with a Cruella smile.

To be woke today is not to simply repost a tweet or correct someone’s pronouns at brunch. It is to see — really see — the gears turning beneath the spectacle. To understand how the attacks on feminism are connected to the attacks on teachers. How banning history books is connected to banning abortions. How denying Palestinians their humanity is connected to deporting migrants at sea. How billionaires cosplaying as victims is just a distraction from the suffering they bankroll.

Woke is vigilance. Woke is resistance. Woke is knowing the storm is already here and choosing to stand against it, not just for yourself, but for everyone in its path. Being woke isn’t about performative outrage or headline-chasing culture wars. It’s not about manufactured grievances or moral panic over pronouns, casting choices or Happy Holidays. These distractions are meant to trivialize the real fight: your right to vote, your right to exist in freedom, the survival of the planet itself.

While the right derides “wokeness” as someone putting oat milk in their coffee or casting a Black mermaid, real wokeness is about sounding the alarm when protestors are jailed, dissidents are disappeared, elections are rigged, or laws are passed to ban books and criminalize care.

It’s time to pull “woke” out of the mud it’s been dragged through. To scrub off the satire and the sneers and remind people that it was never a joke. It was a lifeline. A warning label. A survival guide written in code. At its core, staying woke means staying alert to the theft of your rights — the right to protest, to learn your history, to love who you love, to exist without fear.

So let the word expand.
Let it rise.
Let it mean Black. Brown. Queer. Poor. Disabled. Undocumented. Defiant.
Let it mean being vigilant against every form of violence that power cloaks in flags, logos, and prayers.
Let it mean choosing the side of the oppressed, even if you’re not one of them, because freedom is a chain that breaks at its weakest link.

Woke was never supposed to be comfortable. It was supposed to keep you up at night.

Lead Belly wasn’t singing about branding or buzzwords. He was warning us. And in this moment, with democracy gasping and the jackboots echoing louder each day, there’s never been a better time to hear his voice. His warning hasn’t changed. The dangers still lurk in plain sight. Best stay woke.

The post The Word That Wouldn’t Die: Awake in the Age of Forgetting appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

 

Fark's title was "Women are smarter than men, and it's hurting their employment prospects"

 

Okay so here's what happened.

There is a mod of some AI-generated image forums who has been slinging out bans for "anti-AI trolling" to people who have never participated in their community, apparently more or less at random. Full disclosure, I am one of those people, and I'm confident I have never done any anti-AI trolling.

Apparently the justification for this is that other people are being aggressively hateful to this mod, coming in and being incredibly abusive, transphobic, insulting her for alleged alcoholism and making fake pictures of her and generally just being horrible. Conveniently, one of these people showed up in the thread where we were talking about it, on cue, and started slinging around horribleness which provided a convenient cover for people to say "And THAT's why we have to be really strict with the bans!" type of things. We never really got to the bottom of what the connection was between that and the random bans to other people who were longstanding accounts that didn't seem to be doing any of those things.

Anyway, now another abusive alt of the (now obviously bannned) abusive alt that originally stirred up trouble has made a pitch-perfect effort to inflame divisions and create a balkanization between the "pro AI" people, centered around dbzer0 (edit: ~~and blahaj~~), and "anti AI" people, centered around everywhere else.

This is two identical posts, made to two separate communities which are guaranteed to have totally opposite takes on it based on their different levels of information about the issue, which will then lead everyone to assume that the other community is just being horrible about it on purpose when they draw different conclusions:

(Edit: The troll has now been banned, so I can't link to their posts anymore. Just imagine this post, except made by one of the trolls who are featured in the comments of that post, you can dig in the modlog or in spoiler text of some other comments to see some of what they were saying. Anyway, the troll posted the exact same complaint about being "unfairly" banned both to lemmy.world, where they got tons of sympathy and upvotes, and to dbzer0, where people who were aware of what they were up to gave them derision and downvotes.)

Like I said, if the goal is to create division and heated argument between two opposing "camps," this is pretty much as perfect as you can get it. I expect it to work, at least to a certain amount, to get people embittered towards one another and arguing about the issue impassioned that the other side is wrong and stupid.

I can't find the link right now, but there was someone on reddit who claimed that they used to do this professionally (trying to disrupt online communities so that organized shilling could succeed better there, because the previous coherence that they had had had been replaced by confusion and bickering, and then they could insert bullshit without it being pushed back on as strongly.) It's fascinating. What they described isn't exactly like this, but it definitely sort of rings similar to me. Just to throw that out there.

Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.

Edit: Fun with grammar

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