Thank you for taking the time to write that out for me. Between this and absGeekNZ’s reply to another person, I feel I really learned a lot.

As someone who basically knows nothing about this but what is in the article, the Maori sound like they have the right idea to me.

The Maori version of the original treaty seems very generous and would make sense to most people how it was written. How anyone would believe the British version was legitimate unless it was signed under coercion or misrepresentation makes zero sense.

Despite the bill being highly likely to fail, many believe that just by allowing the bill to be tabled in Parliament, the coalition government has ignited dangerous social division.

That they are protesting even though the new bill is unlikely to pass seems very smart, given what is going on in other parts of the world and how manipulation by governments works in history. By entertaining it as any form of reasonable proposal, it gives it credence, no matter how small, and each time it is suggested, it will be normalized a bit more, and they will pick up another supporter here and there until they can pass it.

It’s just frustrating in the same way as when you see someone doing any risky behavior. I don’t want them to be hurt, and maybe they’ll be fine, but I worry because I care about them.

Recent events have really shown me I must be more left than most people I know, because the amount of people recently that I’ve thought were liberal are talking anti-immigrant and anti-minority group things much more than I would have thought.

This is the message I keep trying to give myself and others. Our goals and priorities haven’t changed since losing an election. The fight may be tougher than if people more aligned with us may have won, but it was still going to be a fight either way. We aren’t starting from nothing, we’re still at the same point we were the day before the election. It’s our job to hold our ground that we’ve won until now, and to push forward into new territory where possible in the future.

I still need to protect the people and causes I care about. That is the motivation for change I have, and no matter who is in charge and how much they dislike it will change that. It’s up to me to give up or not.

From my understanding, 14th amendment protections are still being battled over in the courts. Many have sided in favor or sexual orientation or gender being something that should be considered in equal protection of the laws, but some have not, so this will probably be coming to the Supreme Court, especially if the majority in charge of everything see it as an advantageous time to do so.

Agenda 47, the immediate plans for implementing Project 2025, has eliminating gender affirming care as a key priority. More money was spent on anti-trans campaigning than on many other topics combined this election cycle.

In theory, the laws of individual states protecting LGBT people would still apply, but other parts of Agenda 47 call for economically hammering states that try to go against expanded executive power, sounding similar to how the national drinking age was raised by withholding funding for highways.

I think there is a time bomb on these protections right now, and I would be hesitant to count on them for very long. I feel like writing all this makes me sound alarmist, but that is how I feel based on what they’ve been saying and running on these last 8+ years. My best friends are gay, but also public educators. They’re Republican leaning centrists, and don’t seem to be concerned, so I may be off base, but I tend to trust people when they come out in the open as bad people without shame.

Should be hamberders instead of pistols as well, but he does look to have the heal lifts. Hell, the hat isn’t even too far off from the hair and the face has more orange than fleshtone. It seems to have more in common with him than I first thought…

Should be hamberders instead of pistols as well, but he does look to have the heal lifts. Hell, the hat isn’t even too far off from the hair and the face has more orange than fleshtone. It seems to have more in common with him than I first thought…

It’s a shame we’ve heard more about Trump these last four years than we have about the actual president, as it does seem a lot of good was done, but most people probably wouldn’t know it as a pile of buffoons have been shouting over it the whole time. I don’t know if there’s been a single day in the last 8 years I haven’t seen his name or heard his ramblings.

I’m sad to be losing the protections that have been attempted for the environment and green energy, and the realization I had yesterday that we’ll be losing Lina Khan, who looked to have such a promising career helping the American people. There were a lot of flaws and oversights still, and the weak support of Ukraine and the situation is Gaza are pretty damning mistakes, but overall it felt like things had been going in a good direction from where we were with COVID and Trump.

As someone who went into the Biden presidency with extremely low expectations, I think he largely did good given with both what he had to work with, and with the expectation that something would have been done by the justice system to ensure Trump was kept out of office legally. I guess add that to the huge oversight list…

I’m left very torn on how to approach the future. If the left starts playing dirty like the right, I don’t feel that will get them to stop doing it. When both sides are just resorting to dirty tricks, I don’t know how we get a civil society back. At the same time, counting on norms and elected officials respecting their offices seems to be all but dead, at least if we wish to still to try combat some level of authoritarianism.

I would have much rather had a dottering old man eating ice cream and telling old anecdotes than anything coming our way though.

My take is Bugs is the embodiment of society as a whole, but since Trump is bigger and heavier than Sam, the edge of the cliff will break off and we all go off the edge together.

A few apps have multi-community support where you can group whatever you want, how you want, in one stream. I’m using Summit, but I feel a few other of the bigger apps support it now. I group the AskLemmys, tv/movie communities and different art communities into groups so I can view by category.

The next 4(?) years:

That was my initial gripe with the other commenters. Nobody ever likes the one-size-fits-all software platforms. It’s always got too much of what you dont want and not enough what you do. All these social platforms are free., why mix them when we can use the ones we want. Installing Lemmy and Bluesky apps is easy, but if you later decide you dont want Bluesky, you just uninstall. If all those people would come here, you’d have to get people to defederate or you have to pack up and leave for another instance. That seems a lot more hassle to me than just using a second app.

Lemmy is great as-is. Let’s be proud of it. It gives me a day’s worth of content as it stands now…probably more than I actually should use it already!

Yup, I just replied to another comment, what’s so bad about having a place that’s just regular people? I enjoy having my comments actually read here and getting to know some of you to some level. I’d lose interest in this place if it turned into new Twitter. I can’t compete with Taylor or Beyonce or whoever the flavor of the week is. We can have both platforms if we so choose, so why wreck one for the sake of another?

Exactly. For all the things that typically get complained about: one product trying to do everything, people coming in to monetize things, feeling like your voice gets lost in oceans of comments, it seems like people forget that when it comes to the Fediverse.

The same guys that spent all that time being mad about potential federation with Threads are mad that this place isn’t going to be Twitter 2.0? It doesn’t make sense to me. If you want ads and celebs, go see them at their place. Keeping this just place us regular people doesn’t need to be a negative. There’s room for both.

I saw the mention of it protecting abortion rights, but I was confused about that because as far as I know, nowhere requires someone to be married for abortions or any type of healthcare.

The quotes and comments I saw made it sound like the stance was this doesnt happen enough we should risk losing any rights unnecessarily, but I feel there should have been some specifics mentions what those rights they’re protecting actually were. The stats seem all over the place too, from as low as IIRC around 50 child marriages since 2019 to an estimated 1600.

This all seems like something people should have some real facts and figures on, but that I cant find them is really raising my eyebrows for a number of reasons.

I don’t disagree that what you’re saying shouldn’t be controversial, but after the crying they’ve had about athletes taking a knee, a one-off promotional beer can, and whatever other snowflake stuff I’ve repressed memories of, it just sounds extremely risky.

Lethal response training as a whole definitely needs work, but it’s something beyond the abilities of volunteer vets and animal handler. It feels like a psychological issue more than an educational one I obviously care about the animals, but shooting people is a greater priority, and reducing that should in turn help the doggos also.

We’re here for fun. Celebs are on social media as part of their brand. It’s them doing business, and they’re going to use what the feel will reach the largest audience with the least effort on their part, and something with corporate backing likely has customer support for moderation, hacking, and whatever else. They’re not here for a digital revolution, they’re here to keep their name and income stream out there.

I imagine it’s the same reasoning why a business will pay for Red Hat when they could run Linux for free. It may or may not be the best option, but they feel it offers tangible benefits.

Rescues have no guaranteed funding. I have not encountered one anywhere in the world that gets a single cent of public money. They also get free help rescuing animals on occasion from police. Even the hint of going after them politically I can guarantee would get them a Bud Light style boycott and nobody wants to be the private business or donor that supports the shelter that hates cops. They don’t have time or resources to deal with that. Drama is the last thing a rescue needs.

I’ve been thinking about how Ukraine has been able to hold out against Russia for so long, but the US just surrendered to them without a fight. Never thought I’d see the day. But at least our pending top intelligence person already has contacts inside the Kremlin… SMH

My first thought was what’s up with California?

I could find a bunch of articles talking about the usual stuff like conservatives and evangelicals arguing in favor of avoiding a ban, but Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are also frequent supporters of avoiding a ban on child marriage. The only reasoning I could find was “we don’t have enough data,” but I’m struggling to think of any positive things about allowing it. From the articles, it sounded like fringe religious beliefs and questionable things regarding immigration laws, but I am skeptical the pros of allowing child marriage for those outweigh a number of cons I could name.

I wasn’t able to find any actual articles from PP or ACLU themselves about it, so does anyone have any insight? This seems a bit out of character for both orgs.