The original and a still large instance is Lemmy.ml. The ML meaning Marxist Leninist.

Yeah I know, I subscribe to some communities there.

They even preemptively ban accounts who post outside of their instance if you say truthful things like NATO is a defensive alliance, Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine, or China is being imperialist themselves in SE Asia.

I will test this then! Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine and Putin is a cunt. Stalin was a monster. I'll make similar comments over on ml at the next opportunity.

Just to be clear. I don't doubt that there are normal people here who are pro Russia or are tankies. What I doubt is that real people are being paid money to "influence the conversation" on this relatively obscure platform. That's all

Yeah but on Lemmy? Of all places?

Why would anyone pay someone to post on Lemmy? Not the biggest expense/exposure ratio, surely?

Lemmy is flooded with Russian influence

What do you mean by that? That people use "Russian" talking points or that there are literally bots/agitators directly from Russia trying to shape the narrative here?

Most moral army in the world

That would be a really shit poll though, your methodology would be "I found people who I knew would answer the question this way" and everyone would see. If there is a methodological issue with this poll that isn't hand-waving I'd be interested to hear it.

E.g. "but who answers the phone anymore?" They know this issue and use a bunch of complicated statistical shit to adjust for it or just improve the methodology. The people making these polls actually tend to know what they're doing.

This is just the "I won't vote for Biden because Israel refuses to sign a ceasefire" bullshit all over again.

This is incredibly disingenuous. More like "Because he is arming, supporting and diplomatically protecting a genocidal government." We know it's not his fault Israel are assholes, it's the stuff he is doing that is the problem.

They have no problem whatsoever with Trump's policies. They have no problem whatsoever with project 2025.

My brother in christ why do you think we want Biden to actually be a good candidate?

Genocide supporting, doddering old Biden is a much better candidate than the unhinged far right felon that wouldn't know the truth if it pissed on his face, BUT HE NEEDS TO WIN THE ELECTION FIRST. If being not as bad as trump was enough Hilary would have won.

It is precisely because I hate trump so much that I want Biden to be better. If you are in a debate with Trump and most people watching think you lost, you fucked up big time. The pigeon you're playing chess with might have shit on the board and felt like he won, but you should have at least done enough so that the audience watching this didn't fucking agree with him.

There were reflectors left on the moon that you can shine a significantly strong laser to and have it reflected back if you have a sensor that can pick it back up.

Yeah this is the huge issue for moon landing deniers. Also they have pictures of the landing site from the lunar reconnaissance orbiter, not that "school of hard knocks" alumni would believe that anyway (I tried once, did not convince them).

I was mainly using it as an example of how you could argue there was an element of "faith" at play, being generous. But of course you are right.

I'm unable to articulate the natural reaction that I have when somebody tries to sell me garbage. I can't articulate it when somebody explains to me, 'Well, the moon landings definitely happened.'"

Owens continued: "I'm just like, no, I don't know. Instinctually, it just doesn't register to me. Just feels like that is a lie. And I've realized that I've been thinking deeply about this, this pagan cult that we exist in. It is backed by a false science deity. That is what it is. It is the science. This is the new god."

So she just "instinctively" doesn't believe stuff that "feels" like a lie, and this proof that everyone else worships the "science deity." No mention of the giant rocket that left the surface of the earth and the video footage of both that and the surface of the moon itself?

This is the fundamental problem with this type of thinking. Sure you have some aspect of faith (I wasn't there, can't 100% confirm the authenticity of the footage myself), but it's clearly based on quite a solid piece of evidence. Dismissing that, on the other hand, is literally based on faith, her faith that this footage is fake based on no evidence whatsoever.

I contribute that, maybe, to coming from the school of hard knocks," she said, adding, "I am grateful for having gone through the school of hard knocks because you are required to have an element of common sense in order to survive."

The "school of hard knocks" apparently does not have a good science program.

I only read this article to work out why she specified "pagan" and I still have no idea.

Åkesson joined SD when it was openly a Nazi party to "change it from the inside." Could not be more like the comic. All he got them to do was update the rhetoric. If there was another panel of the comic, all of the same people would be there but they just wouldn't be wearing the uniforms anymore and he'd be sitting there all smug saying "mission accomplished."

Yep, everyone claims to be a "moderate" when it suits them, especially the far right. Like Åkesson they realise the optics are bad and put on a nice suit while supporting the same horrendous shit they always did

All the downvoters like...

Cute! But to be pedantic, this is a jackdaw, a different type of corvid, super chill little guys

Oh look it's Jimmie Åkesson

But also due probability, I simply trust the IDF explanation about a million more times than I trust the explanation of anyone who supports Hamas's ideology.

So by "probability" you mean that you feel that the IDF is less likely to lie than Hamas?

Despite saying (correctly)

I'm very sure that Israel has some liars in charge right now.

The thing is, we don't need to trust Hamas. There is a good chance there are tunnels under any particular building (far under but let's put a pin in that for now). So when Israel bombs a water facility, there is probably a tunnel at least close by, about 10 m down or whatever.

But the question isn't whether there's a tunnel. The question is what Israel is targeting. The only people who can answer that are those in the Israeli government and military, which you acknowledge contains "some liars." We don't even need to see what Hamas says. So why do you trust their explanation?

And now we grasp at straws. Anything to avoid facing the reality of the situation.

He might have had a bad connection for a second. It would be more compelling if it had been, I don't know, on the debate stage with 50 million people watching.

Everyone rightfully talks about how awful Trump is, but as soon as Biden does something like support a genocide or come across like a doddering old man in a debate, all of a sudden "Trump does it too" is apparently a defense.

Before someone jumps down my throat about the election being a choice between two people, it's not. People might also hate both and not vote. Not saying it's wise, just saying it's possible.

Yeah I also watched a 30 minute highlight video because since Trump has been involved I've found watching the whole thing to be intolerable. I am totally open to anybody showing me "high points" for Biden that maybe CNN skipped over in their condensed version.

He got a couple zingers off

Lol please share. "Morals of an alleycat"? (or whatever the exact quote is)

As for the rest, I agree that obviously for general factual content Biden even on his deathbed will beat Trump. However it was undermined by the errors, e.g. getting the price of insulin wrong and millions/billions mixed up more than once. That is the problem.

I'll bet you that if he was on his A game, everyone would have been yelling performance enhancement drugs!

Almost certainly. But he wasn't so it's not really the point here.

Seems like caving into republican talking points way too easily...

You know what they say about stopped clocks. They will always have this shit to say about Biden, absolutely. So why have I (and many others, NYT included) all of a sudden "caved into" republican talking points after ignoring or arguing against them until now?

Honestly to me the more interesting "talking points" at the minute are from some democrats, who after (assumedly) reacting in horror with the rest of us after the debate, have latched onto the "He had a cold" excuse that they came out with and tried to pass the whole thing off as a "stutter" issue.

I think people can see the difference between a stutter and whatever the hell happened at the debate. He wasn't stuttering, he was freezing up and getting sentences jumbled up. He was not capable of having a coherent debate, and the only saving grace is that Trump isn't either (different reasons, but still).

So I find it a little strange how people are talking about his performance, now. We all know what we watched, and that is why everybody freaked the fuck out straight afterwards. Trying to gaslight everyone is not a productive or helpful strategy. (Not you necessarily, by the way, just "the discourse" in general. I would like to see any examples you have of what you're saying)

This is not fair description of his debate performance. He didn't stutter, he crashed like an old computer trying to keep 50 chrome tabs running and then barely dragged himself out of it with incoherent nonsense like "we beat Medicare."

It doesn't disqualify him, it just lowers the bar for Trump.

This is getting down voted here, but it shouldn't be just because some people disagree. The NYT editorial board coming out with this is a Big Deal. It has the potential to change the race. A lot of influential people still read it.

The people downvoting don't care. This community is particularly bad for it, imo. There is a group of people who will downvote literally anything bad for Biden, and think that people like return2ozma, who seems to genuinely be a democrat, are posting bad news as part of some plot to suppress the vote (?) and help Trump win.

One time I saw one poll with good news for Biden upvoted and another, equally legit poll in a different state (I think this was a swing state too) but showing Trump in the lead sitting on zero. It is not about whether it is significant for these people, it is literally "Is this good or bad for My Guy? Does this fit the echo chamber I want to live in?"

They absolutely should not downvote something like this, you're totally right. Any relevant political analysis/news from a respected source should get upvoted. But the (justified) fear of Trump is making tribalism hit hard and turning some people into petulant children with nothing to do but demand we "vote blue" and prop up the narrative.

If they commit a crime then we can lock them up. If they don't then they have the same rights as you and me. And that is a GOOD THING.

So we can class them as a specific subgroup that we're allowed to mistreat and don't have the same rights as everyone else? We could make them wear little badges.