1. Be informed. Read books rather than endless snippets of doom. Arendt, Orwell, Graeber, Steinbeck—there’s plenty of options. Avoid spiralling into ideological rabbit holes—reading Marxist literature is good, exclusively reading Marxist literature is deeply concerning.
2. Share quality content on the open web where fascists cannot sensor speech. Focus on building communities.
3. Encourage others by being kind and supportive, and understanding of differences. Inspite of popular opinion there’s still a big gap between centrists and fascists—welcome the centrists with open arms, take their points seriously, and debate on reasonable terms. You can both learn something from each other—just because you understand the contours of the system of oppression it doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out. Remain humble.
4. Take care of yourself, if it feels heavy maybe make some tea and craft something or read a pleasent book.

That would be my advice, I guess. In general I think there’s more positivity to be found in long-form content, as people have had time to think about issues beyond the initial shock and disgust of the state of affairs expressed in daily news and short form content.

I think these might be more typical traits of totalitarianism. It often goes hand in hand with authoritarianism of course.

Maybe fighting fire with fire and setting the whole board with olive oil now would help at least hide the spot. Beyond that, only time and use helps in my experience.

I guess this is where the insight that you should judge a society by how it treats its weakest comes from. That’s a problem with OP’s scenario, as you’d be thrown into a completely foreign context without access to the more family and community-based security nets that are essential in poorer parts of the world.

I have travelled to some not very wealthy regions to small communities that can only be accessed by a 4x4, horse, or motorcycle (or by foot, as I prefer), and seen severely handicapped people in such places live what at least appears from the outside to be highly dignified and decent lives as the community works together to take care of them. It’s not at all obvious that they would be happier in a western city. Once anyone needs professional medical care or expensive treatments it of course becomes more clear-cut, and if you’re an outsider (or just unlucky) you’re of course out of luck.

Taking away enforced regulations on housing, employment, and banking makes things easier for me, not harder

In the short run, maybe, but sawing off the branch one is sitting on is dangerous business. :)

Yeah, in general if you have a good starting point anywhare not affected by tyranny, war, or genocide you’ll be alright. Behind a veil of ignorance there’s a whole lot of developing countries I’d go to before I’d risk being poor in the United States.

I wonder what people in this thread think the third world is, and what they imagine living there is like.

It’s not like there’s a clear answer. I guess technically Sweden is a third world county, while North Korea and Slovenia are both second world. America is as first world as it gets, and it’s a fucking mess.

If I could choose my own third world country I’d be quite alright. If they sent me to the worst first world country they could find, well, Alabama.

Also in Europe it would be totally normal to respond with measurements. 200 ml, 0.33, and half liter are the standard ones. In the UK there’s pints and half pints.

If somebody just pointed at the container for me instead of telling me the size I would probably consider it weird. Maybe it’s normal in fast food joints.

Learning the language is not a political statement, and you’ll outlive Putin. Besides we’re not solving anything by refusing to communicate with each other. If you want to learn Russian, learn Russian. Just be careful not to fall for the propaganda.

Don’t forget to report, if you have good reason to believe you’re seeing a bot that is not properly marked as such.

The fur covered in snow is a very good sign - it means it’s keeping its heat well inside, with the heat that is escaping not even managing to melt the snow that’s stuck to it. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s actually doing alright under there.

I think instances with ideological underpinnings is fine, and maybe inevitable. The crucial thing is that they need to be honest about it, so that those not interested can go elsewhere.

The problem with lemmy.ml is that it pretends to be a catch-all instance when it’s in fact very much not, and that it doesn’t tell users up front what it’s all about. Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are better in that respect—at least they’re honest.

The admins over there have some profoundly questionable views, which tends to push away reasonable people and attract bootlickers.

The problem is not the users as much as the site itself and its admins. I wish reasonable people (not bootlickers) would stop using lemmy.ml and go somewhere better. Lemmy.ml’s biggest function right now is to scare away good people who would have been happy elsewhere.

I think whoever wants to promote anything on the fediverse should probably just pick an instance they enjoy and promote that, without caring to explain how it’s all part of a federated network or whatnot.

To be fair, telling people it was founded by Motorhead fans is a better selling point than that it was started by Marxist leninists.

Yes, this is true - I forgot that the trial happened in Lithuania where crime of passion actually has a formalized role. But the french media nevertheless accepted the narrative and the French public largely followed suit.

As for the second murder/death which happened in France, there has been what is hard to describe as anything else than at best an active neglectance on the side of both the French police and justice system, both leading up to and following the death. I guess this is more symptomatic of the French tendency to simply not take women or their deaths seriously—ascribing the crime of passion to France was probably unfair of me.

I had Bertrand Cantat in mind when I wrote the comment. The fucker got away (except a very minor prison sentence once) with murdering two of his partners, all in full view of a public spectacle. There’s a Netflix series about him from this year that’s well worth a watch. It’s not that the crime of passion is explicitly used as a legal argument, but there is a romanticized idea that men will sometimes kill their partners out of “loving them too much” and that this is only tragic and not something that we should blame them too harshly for. So it’s not recognized in the law, but French judges have more or less routinely shown themselves to be sympathetic to the argument.

The European Court of Human Rights has recently had a series of rulings in which it calls out France for being particularly shit with regards to women’s rights.

When a cop murders a black man it’s self defence, when a man murders a woman it’s a brief display of bad judgment in a moment of passion. Society has never seen murder as murder “the end”.

Meanwhile in France they’ll label it a crime of passion and let you go scot-free.

Anyone questioning why this is necessary should probably take a minute or two to read up about femicide and how we tend to treat it as a society.

It’s threatening our god-given right to murder our women, after all. The woke agenda has gone too far.

I been sitting over here on Parchment Farm Ain’t ever done nobody no wrong

Oh Lord, I believe I’ll be here for the rest of my life All I did was shoot my wife

I’d say it’s about recognizing a fact of life that we have traditionally brushed under the carpet. By introducing femicide as a specific category it’ll be easier to talk about (or rather, harder not to talk about) just how fucking common it is for men to murder women.

It’s a huge problem in most if not all countries, and it doesn’t receive nearly as much attention as it deserves. The attention it does get is primarily through folk songs or true crime podcasts, not actual attention as a systematic issue that needs to be addressed as a societal problem.

So it won’t deter anyone from murdering women, but when it does happen it might make it easier for us to start actually doing something about it as a society.