The call to action button is the free plan, with subscribe having a secondary button style. That alone makes it clear they want to show you ads more than they want you to subscribe.

The bit about "no" not meaning "no" means they're specifically implying meta employees can be sexually assaulted even if they say no. I'm sure it's said in jest, but it's still a fairly offensive comment.

I'm not sure I agree with the take that blahaj.zone has a facism problem. They're explicitly anti-tankie and anti-nazi, which are the authoritarian end of the political spectrum. It's a very left leaning space, and I think anyone in the lower left quadrant, e.g. libertarianism to anarchism and socialism to communism, would be well received.

A ttrpg called .dungeon got a remaster recently and I keep coming back to one of the screenshots on the store page, because I'm such a big fan of the rules for community moderation it enumerated:

I think this article makes reasonable sense. Also that quote from Spez is so disheartening. Glad I'm not on reddit anymore

That's a really interesting article on how Amazon makes it money when prime is such a good deal for the consumers. I really hope Amazon gets broken up

Walkable cities produce less pollution per capita than suburban or rural areas due to less pollution from commutes and increased efficiency delivering utilities (due to the population density).

Suburban sprawl is what truly makes ugly stains on our word - concrete everywhere, destroying the watershed, with no native grass in the medians, and so many cars spewing out fumes, micro plastics, and disrupting migration patterns. They're depressing places to live.

Fwiw, I think using a self hosted home automation setup (shout out to home assistant) paired with smart devices that don't use internet (e.g. zigbee, zwave, or matter once it comes out) can allow you to have a smart home without these kinds of fears.

That said, I would definitely agree to using mechanical locks. Although a monitored smart security system is probably still a good idea - you're letting a company virtually enter your house, but you can't rely on a self hosted solution to notify you when your power goes out, for example.

Older rural areas are actually typically much more walkable than American cities. Keep in mind, rural towns were very common before cars existed. They're typically structured to have a small center, sometimes basically just a "main street", with all the places you need to regularly visit, and houses surrounding them, and the farmland surrounding that. This way the people are all relatively close, and the farmland is not between you and others. These towns are all about self sufficiency within the community, but ofc if you keep a car for when you need to travel somewhere else that's fine, and no one is begrudging you for using gas powered farm equipment on your farm. The main point is you don't have a daily commute that requires a car, because it's either your farm or one of the lose shops that are close to everyone.

And for what it's worth, a lot of train networks used to go to these rural towns as well, and it'd be awesome to see those return for Intercity travel.

Did you know we throw away more food than it would take to feed the hungry? That there are more empty homes than homeless people? Capitalism incentivizes scarcity, so it is artificially created. The only thing stopping us from achieving post scarcity immediately is working out the logistics, but those in power don't want that to happen, as they are currently high up in society.

Just as a heads up, anarchism doesn't preclude monetization. Co-ops are anarchist alternatives to corporations and already exist in many of the more progressive areas of the US today. The principle is just to remove unjust hierarchies, and you can still do that as much as possible while living under capitalism. Sure maybe some have founded some anarchist commune and live completely cash free, but I think the majority are just trying to flatten the hierarchies as much as is reasonable, and acknowledge the necessity of money in our current society.

As an anecdote, I'm pretty far left myself and will regularly read and participate in anarchist communities, but am totally okay with people trying to earn money in an as fair and ethical way as is reasonable in our current society.

I'd really really love for matrix to take off and to effectively replace discord, with continued development so things like stickers are supported in more clients, and to let servers be leaner.

However, if the friends and communities I want to talk to are all on discord, it's hard to pioneer the alternative chat.

I'll keep my matrix account and use it when I can, but discord will have to be on all my devices for the foreseeable future