• 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • It’s smaller, but more personable. It’s full of neurodivergent, queer, and tech oriented people. It has its own inside jokes—you will want to read up on beans.

    Overall, I have enjoyed the experience. Sometimes, I have been surprised when people can’t detect obvious jokes or sarcasm, but then I remember how many people here are neurodivergent and try to reply with something kind and straightforward so we’re on the same page.

    People tend to be very leftist compared to the rest of the internet, so it’s good to remember that the opinions here are not always representative of the world at large.

    A huge chunk of Lemmy is German, and that part of the community remains a total mystery to me because I don’t speak German. They seem cool from afar.

    Which communities you are able to see depends pretty heavily on which instance is your home base—I’m with DB0, and we federate with pretty much everyone who isn’t doing something detestably illegal, but LemmyWorld is much more exclusive with who they federate with, so their users don’t see the same instances that I do. Pick a home instance that fits you best because it will matter a lot as you find communities.

    You will see interactions between communists and anarchists. Try to remember that you don’t have to comment on everything you might disagree with.

    Welcome to the Fediverse—we’re happy to have you.






  • There are a lot of ways to look at this ranging from the more dismissive options that other users have proposed to more philosophical, sociological, and psychological ones. I’m going to focus on the latter.

    Carl Jung had a theory of synchronicity where repeat coincidences with no obvious connection to each other seemed to be a common experience in human lives. Nobody really knows why this is the case—maybe it’s some sort of data saving aspect of the universe, predestined fate, or just a pattern recognition quirk in our brains. Regardless, he collected a lot of data over his career of many people, including himself, experiencing the effect in various ways.

    A potential sociological explanation would be found in the personalities of people who choose to wear track suits and gold—that outfit is typically associated with “alpha” personality types, athletes, and hooligans. I would imagine that someone in those personality categories would have the necessary qualities to make the somewhat brazen choice to interact with a stranger and take control of a situation, and in the case of the athlete, potentially be more likely to recognize a health problem. 10 people around you might have noticed something was off with you, but the person with the more dominant personality in the room might be more likely to take action first.

    There is also the woo woo explanation that some kind of destiny awaits you and those people were there at that time to save you specifically. If you were a time traveler aiming for a time between 1960 and 2060, a track suit would be a comfortable choice of clothing that wasn’t trying to fit into any particular fad, and it would be hard to track that person down later because a lot of people wear that.

    The interpretation is up to you to decide, but it sure is an interesting thing to think about. Unlike some other users, I don’t immediately think you’re crazy, I just think you just noticed a very unusual set of circumstances that have multiple possible explanations.






  • Misusing a term does not necessarily make the underlying concept invalid. For instance, ICE is subjecting people to rendition in the name of “national security”.

    National security, in reality, is a good thing if it is used justly and wisely to prevent loss of life and real threats against the people. When it is co-opted and misused to target minority groups, it becomes a verbal cloak to disguise injustice, but that doesn’t mean that the original need for protection has been invalidated.

    Likewise, patriots who love their country enough to criticize it and change it towards becoming a decent and fair place for all people to live both exist and are an asset to the nation. When the word is co-opted by nationalists and jingoists, it is used as a cloak, but the role of the true patriot still remains vital.

    “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” - Thomas Jefferson