stu

I agree, any loss of votes in a swing state could theoretically be significant.

Does your phone not turn off hotspot automatically when nothing is connected for a period of time?

Well it's not really numerically the same as voting for the candidate you hate the most, it's numerically the same as not voting. And to be honest, it really only matters if you're in a potential swing state. And I'm saying this as someone who still votes despite having lived in a deep red state where my presidential vote always doesn't matter (but I go anyway because down ballot votes do matter and I might as well vote the whole ballot).

Well, I don't know about you, but I haven't been particularly impressed by the results that an already dumb populace has achieved recently in America. So America getting even dumber doesn't particularly bode well...

We ought to be concerned about the numbers even if there's not much we can do about the kids entering adulthood.

What you're describing is only possible on de-anonymized platforms that essentially have "know your customer" type policies where users have to provide some kind of proof of their identity. While I agree that there is value in social spaces where everyone generally knows the people they're interacting with are who they say they are, I don't think this is ever going to be feasible in a federated social platform. I think Facebook is the closest thing we have to what you're describing, to be honest, and I believe Meta has even kicked around having a more sandboxed Instagram for minors (though I don't use Instagram, so I'm not certain on the details there).

For me, in most cases on a platform like Lemmy, a person's age is not something I care about. I care about what people are sharing and saying. But then again, none of my interests for online discussion at this point in my life are really age centric. I think there are clearly better platforms than Lemmy if people want to guarantee they're only interacting within their age specific peer groups.

I don't want to make it sound like the Lemmy situation is rosier than it is, but considering how sharply users dropped off, say, Threads... I think Lemmy is doing alright. There are a number of factors that might contribute to user counts dropping, but mostly it's unavoidable when you have a sharp uptick of anything. I think accounts and activity are going to flatten and then start trending back upward. If Reddit keeps fucking around, that'll definitely bring more people in and this cycle will repeat. I'm actually fairly pleased with how many people have been sticking around on Lemmy.

The event staff fucked up thinking they were ejecting some no-name punk. This young man has a platform and the ability to do damage to campaigns that are afraid to answer tough questions and who instead toss out the people asking them. He's built up a following online and has made a bit of a name for himself in New England.

https://www.hegre.com/models/isabella

A study paid for by casinos shows casinos are a benefit to society instead of a drain? *Shocked Pikachu face*

It's easy to look at all the positives when you just ignore the negatives, after all.

It all starts with defining what morality means. The way I would define morality is behaviors that maximize flourishing for sentient creatures and minimize suffering. While it is clearly difficult to quantify flourishing and suffering, there are behaviors that clearly cause suffering in this world and impede the opportunity for flourishing and, by the above definition of morality, are plainly immoral. The way I see it, rejecting the possibility that flourishing and suffering can be quantified at all is the only argument that can be made against moral absolutism. Everything else is just quibbling over relevant variables across the spectrum of available behaviors to determine what makes them more or less moral. There is always a behavior that is objectively the more moral choice, but it might be difficult in practice to determine which is the more moral choice due to a lack of available relevant data. The absence of said data shouldn't be assumed to be because it doesn't/can't exist, but rather that it hasn't been collected. Rejecting the idea that there is always a more moral behavior amongst several choices is the dangerous assumption, imo.

I've never heard a rational defense of moral relativism that made any sense. If there are no moral truths, then serial killers have done nothing wrong for example. If a moral relativist admits that there are some moral truths, then moral relativism is completely indefensible. At that point, you're just arguing over what is and what is not a moral truth.

Yeah, I'm holding on to the lifetime grandfathered premium and don't foresee myself using anything else until they end it.