• 8 Posts
  • 56 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Sure, I’m aware of idiots on the internet, but if we tried to avoid idiots on the site we wouldn’t federate with anyone. Lemmy.world is specifically billed as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” I want the gates to be open fairly wide, that’s why I’m here. Not for everyone, like I’m glad we defederated with exploding heads, but we still gave them a shot first and there was at least some more community discussion on it before that decision was made. That’s what would make me feel a lot better about this.







  • I’m gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I’m not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.

    I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.

    But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there’s a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren’t given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?

    If it was just some small instance of trolls that’s one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don’t like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.





  • Regulations are indeed an important part of managing our system as it is, but they’re fundamentally a bandaid to the problems of capitalism.

    You gotta catch the corporations doing a bad thing and then tell them not to do it, meanwhile they’re buying politicians to fight against you on it. And it still doesn’t stop them from committing actions that are horribly unethical and extremely damaging to our society and to the environment, they just tone it down a bit at best, or occasionally they’ll have to put a small fraction of their money into a lawsuit without actually changing their behavior.


  • But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone.

    Why do you think this??

    Look at all the constant environmental disasters and harmful products that happen because corporations did the math and determined that paying a few million to lawsuits every once in a while is cheaper than being more careful. “Voting with your wallet” does not work because the big corporations undercut the competition and bombard us with advertising to ensure they will win no matter what.

    Hell, most of us are on here because Reddit started doing scummy things in the name of money, and we’re a tiny fraction of their userbase; Reddit is still unfortunately doing pretty much fine. Is that the best outcome for everyone?

    And don’t forget that there are a lot of regulations passed in the last hundred years that were necessary because corporations were doing stuff like dumping so many chemicals into our waterways that rivers would constantly catch fire. This is what happens with unfettered capitalism.







  • Dungeons & Dragons is a role-playing game, so you play the role of a character in a game world controlled by the GM (the Game Master, or in D&D they’re also specifically called the DM or Dungeon Master). The GM is the person who describes the world and what all the characters in it are doing, except the players control their own characters. The goal of the game is for the players to complete the challenges created for them by the GM, and of course for everyone to have fun while they do it.

    Each character has a set of particular abilities that you choose for them out of the options in the rulebook. Dungeons & Dragons is a medieval fantasy game so the options are stuff like Wizards and Paladins (Knights) and Druids and stuff like that. The most basic choices for your character are their race, background, and class: so you could choose to be, for example, a Human Farmer Fighter (a class that uses weapons) or an Elf Scholar Wizard or a Gnome Criminal Rogue (Thief), out of the many, many possible options. You also have stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

    Whenever you do something important, you will most likely have to roll dice. The most common die to roll is a d20 (a 20-sided die). Rolling high is good and rolling low is bad, usually: if you roll high enough, you succeed at what you’re trying to do, and if you don’t, you fail (which doesn’t mean you lose the game or anything, just that you fail at that one particular thing). Depending on your character’s stats and abilities, you might have a bonus or a penalty to the roll, which is why you have to choose your character’s abilities and stats based on what you want that character to do. For example, if you want to play a character that uses a sword, playing a Fighter and putting a high number in your Strength score will give you bonuses to using swords, while playing a Wizard wouldn’t.

    The game is designed so that the GM creates a story, but the exact outcome of the story will depend on what the players decide to do with their characters and some amount of random chance with how the rolls go. The most common stories in D&D are usually along the lines where characters play adventuring heroes (more or less) who go around slaying fantasy monsters and gathering treasure, but you can play a game that’s about absolutely anything, really.

    Does that all make sense?