distractionfactory

Without being directly involved, the media / news / social media is the only information anyone has access to if you don't know someone with first hand knowledge and even that is probably anecdotal. So that is unfortunately impossible to avoid.

There's certainly justification for comparing self serving military actions of the US. It doesn't make it right whoever is doing it. It's hard to see this as directly comparable, but I am sure I don't fully understand the situation so I am hesitant to argue details. But from an uninformed perspective it seems difficult to deny who is the aggressor who could just stop at any time.

"Warmonger bad" FTFY

Blame those who start and continue wars. It's not entirely the fault of any one country, but there's only one leader who could put a stop to this latest one.

Conditions? yeah like that's not just going to inject needed capitol for an extended conflict so they can keep it going at this point. I don't like how tangled up the world is getting in to this mess and I definitely don't like how much it's impacting civilians, but sanctions is clearly not the ONE thing keeping this war going, it was a response to it. It certainly didn't start it and it's clear that some leaders value pride over logic. Money isn't solving that issue (more or less) now that it's started even if it started as a distraction from economic problems. Whatever that leader is telling the people, he's the only one who can end this. We need to end this mess. I'd encourage you to be open minded about what factors are keeping this war going, but I understand that's hazardous in some parts of the world.

I've noticed this even when trying to find the name of a song. I used to be able to search:

lyrics "a specific part of the song I remember" whatever random words I can remember out of order

and it would very reliably find songs, even obscure ones. Now the only way it works is if I happen to remember part of the name of the song, usually it's full of entries for the same popular song that has one word in the title that I included that is definitely not what I'm looking for.

It sounds stupid, but I really miss that working.

You have some great points. I wanted to expand on the idea of speaking to a therapist and self reflection. It's hard to make friends, and it definitely gets harder as we get older. But it's even harder to keep friends.

Forming surface level relationships is a skill that can be learned. There are tricks and strategies that make it easier. Deep, meaningful relationships are a totally different challenge. That challenge involves understanding yourself as much if not more than the other person. It's work, and it's not always fun. It's Also something that you can't expect others to help or lead you to, so you have to be motivated to keep working through tough spots. Most people aren't willing to admit (especially to themselves) their own flaws in a meaningful way. This is where a therapist might be able to help. It's their job to help people through this process, even if it's difficult. Better understanding your own role in previous relationships and how that might have contributed to their end (or not contributed to maintaining their growth) is important to avoid future relationships struggling at the same stage.

Just like romantic relationships close friendships are risky. It's hard to not grow more jaded as you've been through more negative experiences. The natural tendency is to transfer distrust learned from people you've known in the past to people who you are getting to know. It's a way of protecting yourself from getting hurt, but it can also make you unwilling to work around other people's flaws or even see problems that aren't there. That effect works both ways, not only do you have to fight your own tendency to distrust people, the person you're getting to know will be struggling with the same distrust from their own past. Unfortunately, you can't force anyone on a journey they are not willing to take, so finding someone who is willing to do that kind of self reflection is important. And obviously, if you aren't familiar with and willing to pursue that process in yourself you won't know to see it and build on it with others.

Sorry for the rant, just something I've observed as I age.

I can definitely see getting fed up with dealing with the same arguments or statements all the time. It's a tight-rope balance to keep a thread from devolving. A lot times an episode or a series will rub you the wrong way and you just don't enjoy it the first time through. Some of my most enlightening conversations about Star Trek have started with either myself or a friend talking about how bad a certain episode or scene was, but as you talk through why you see it in a different light. Most of the time if I'm saying I didn't like something in Trek it's because I'm looking for someone to either confirm my interpretation or point out that I missed something earlier in the episode or in the series that made it make sense to be there. I didn't dislike DS9 when it first aired, but I couldn't really get into it. But once I was able to watch it on streaming in order and at my own pace, it quickly became my absolute favorite series. It was an issue with the airing schedule and the pacing didn't work as well for broadcast TV. A lot of that is pretty well known now, but I didn't realize it at the time. And if some aspects of a show actually don't stand up to scrutiny, I think it's good to have that available in a public forum for the (very slim) possibility that those fan reactions get taken into consideration for future productions. I have been hesitant to voice that kind of opinion based on the perception that it will not be well received.

The thing I was talking about involved a very new user making a similar complaint about getting banned for differing opinions back on reddit, no specific accusation just a general question. Maybe there was a history from reddit, I don't know, but a moderator responded in-chat and the very first thing he said was inappropriate and demeaning. It was unprovoked and it escalated into juvenile name calling (by the mod, not the original commenter). I can't remember exactly what he said and he has since removed it. The entire comment thread was removed by the mod, so maybe he realized how inappropriate it was. But he also removed the comment that started it which by itself was fairly innocent and deleted his own comments so they didn't get stored in the mod logs. It just seemed unprofessional. That's the kind of thing that can turn people off and lead to a further perception of censorship and is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people came here to escape. A more appropriate response would have been to point the commenter to another thread or post that might be more appropriate for that kind of discussion. Or (like you just did) he could have explained that this is a common perception but it's a bit more nuanced than it may seem. In this case the post was regarding the move to Lemmy, so a topic of concern regarding community standards seemed reasonable. I think an open discussion or clear statement of philosophy governing the community would go a long way. If one of these kinds of comments get removed they can be directed to an explanation for why it's better for the community to glean certain comments, but also lays out expectations for how users can express their opinions. It tends to be better to direct people to an appropriate outlet, even if their first choice for that outlet was inappropriate.

Keep in mind that posts removed by moderators are visible and documented on this and every federated instance of Lemmy. Please urge your fellow mods to be more professional going forward and improve their de-escalation skills. There is certainly unfair criticism, but some of that criticism has been well earned.

I'm sure that moderation is a difficult and mostly thankless (and probably pay-less) job, but there's still a point at which being toxic undoes the positive contributions of a moderator. Please try to use this as an opportunity to build a better community and consider some self improvement as well.

There is no one among us that couldn't benefit from personal reflection.

If you treat people with hostility they will likely react in kind.

These sentiments are engrained in Trek (new and old), it would be wonderful if we could consider those lessons in our daily lives.

That is likely true for a majority of "the good stuff", but making that determination can be tricky. Let's consider spam emails. In our daily lives they are useless, unwanted trash. However, it's hard to know what a future historian might be able to glean from a complete record of all spam in the world over the span of a decade. They could analyze it for social trends, countries of origin, correlation with major global events, the creation and destruction of world governments. Sometimes the garbage of the day becomes a gold mine of source material that new conclusions can be drawn from many decades down the road.

I'm not proposing that we should preserve all that junk, it's junk, without a doubt. But asking a person today what's going to be valuable to society tomorrow is not always possible.

App can mine more data which is the real product.

/r/wellthatsucks has gone and it's poetic.

Having trouble finding information about a reddit alternative called Tilde, it's one of those words that is too open ended. Is this what they're talking about?

Sounds like a good argument for a crab-bot design

Instance owners could update the descriptions on https://join-lemmy.org/instances to include a link to a "Who are we" kind of readme.

Ultimately I'm not sure any of the instances will look the same in a month.