Yeah that works up until a point. But once you hit a certain point, it's not worth it anymore. Why should I log in and comment on anything if there's a high chance I'll receive abuse and nothing will be done about it? What's the point then?

Just wait until you work out that it's not actually the "he/hims" engaging in a specific behaviour, and that an equal amount of users with feminine or gender neutral pronouns engage in the same behaviour. That's when it gets really nasty, from misgendering and accusations of internalised misogyny aimed at femme users (the second of which is already happening in this thread), and up to including public messages containing death threats and violent fantasties about murdering your family made from a network of alt accounts on another instance, because whoever said such was too much of a coward to do it on their main account.

Also profiling behaviour according to pronoun tags is foolish anyway. It opens up a whole new avenue to trolls and discourages honesty. If trolls are aware that the mod team is annoyed with "he/him" users, they can just cook up some accounts with that pronoun choice and inflame the situation. On the opposite end, trolls could pick "she/her" pronouns, say some vile stuff, and hide behind that. What is said is what should be judged, not the pronoun tags of who said it. Anyone can pick any pronoun tag. Lying on the internet is easy. Anyone can claim to be anything. I don't know who anyone on here actually is, you don't know who I actually am. The whole point of the pronoun tags was to have openness, honestly and to engage with others from different backgrounds and walks of life. That disappears if people think that their comments are going to be judged differently by the mod team based on what tag they pick.

I'm just commenting this as a warning for new users. I've been here since the beginning. Don't engage with this nonsense. Actually just leave. It's not worth it.

Ok I see my app (I use Boost for Lemmy and it sent me a bunch of notifications) has had some notifications with regards to this, I don't have time to respond to all messages or individual comments, so all I'm going to say is: I'm doing fine, don't worry about me, I just don't feel comfortable posting under this given the situation, which I don't want to re-ignite. From what I've seen on my brief browse, there are accounts and users attempting to do the same thing I did in the news megathread and elevate it, so the information is still getting out there and that is what is most important. Hold them to a high standard, as you did to me. Lots of new developments. Love you all and stay safe.

If you're just going to misinterpret everything I say in bad faith, why even reply?

Seriously, if you have no plans to address the arguments presented why even reply.

You know what, I'm done with this bullshit. Last time I got death threats, this time no one even bothers to read the comments in good faith. Bye bye.

Now before someone misinterprets my comment, I'm not saying that women and non-binary people cannot be sexist or racist

I literally said this in the comment. You could've actually read the comment instead of misinterpreting it. This is not the first time this has happened. In the previous effort to combat misogyny, a bunch of women and non-binary people were misgendered and stated to exhibit cishet men behaviour because they posted in a certain community. Now in an effort to combat misogyny again, a bunch of women and non binary people were banned for upvoting a single comment. Not even a pattern of behaviour, a single vote. This didn't even happen during the transphobe banning spree, there it was established that it would have to be at least a couple of comment.

If you're just going to misinterpret everything I say in bad faith, why even reply?

And somehow the users that don't post and don't upvote will be the most affected by the rule change lol.

That is some severe gender essentialist brainrot.

to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site

Of the hexbear users that were banned for an upvote on the reactionary comment, four had she/her pronouns, three had they/them pronouns, three had he/him pronouns, and two had any/no pronouns. Now before someone misinterprets my comment, I'm not saying that women and non-binary people cannot be sexist or racist, I'm just saying that our renewed efforts to combat this undesirable behaviour appear to be hurting those we aim to protect. Maybe we need to re-evaluate our strategies given this reality, and the events of the past week(s). Using the same methods we used in the past to combat undesirable behaviour (in regards to voting bans) are not working and just causing more tension between the userbase and moderators/administrators.

The illegal mining syndicates (whom are heavily armed) that control the illegal mining activities already do what you have described, though their fees are much higher. So are you asking why the government doesn't just take the place of the syndicates if people are going to mine illegally anyway?

Israel levelled multiple multi storey apartment buildings in Beirut, Lebanon last night/early this morning, and the scenes are apocalyptic. No evacuation order was given for this bombing, many were sleeping in the early hours of the morning when the buildings that they were sleeping in were destroyed. Hundreds of probable casualties.

Daytime footage twitter and xcancel mirror

Night search footage twitter and xcancel mirror

Ground view of night search footage, to put the scale of destruction into perspective twitter and xcancel mirror

Just saw that, could be a massacre if a lot of people were sleeping in the levelled building... I just hope that they passed in their sleep and without pain. And that all survivors are found quickly and heal quickly from any injuries of course.

Appreciate your posts comrade, just wanted to add that this:

The hypersonic Oreshnik flying toward its target, yesterday: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hypersonic-Oreshnik.mp4?_=3

Is likely the Soyuz launch towards the International Space Station that took place on the same day, but in the evening and not the morning, and not the IRBM launch. I did a comment on it, and the time of day doesn't match up with the IRBM launch and impact.

Don't feel too bad about confusing the Soyuz launch for an IRBM launch, the Ukrainian air defence operators did the same, and issued an air raid warning for the entire country when the Soyuz was launched. Still cool footage though, a nice clip of a stage 2 seperation at the end.

This Milei guy is the gift that keeps on giving, every day we hear about something foolish or unintentionally humourous that this clown did. Poor workers of Argentina, having to deal with this guy's terrible economy.

So true

That introduction is too much, I can't watch the rest.

The mining stories are the stuff of nightmares. Part two, the second article linked at the bottom of the first one, describing an unofficial rescue operation, is horrifying.

Individual damage isn't that bad because it seems to be six main warheads, that then split up into 6 sub-warheads/submunitions each. So the submunitions are quite small. If it were a nuclear payload, it would only be 6 nuclear armed warheads, not 36. Still incredibly devastating to be hit by six nukes.

Though 36 submunitions, and six submunitions per target, from one missile is quite a payload. Just firing 6 missiles for example, allows you to hit 36 targets, and each target is hit with 6 submunitions, for a total of 216 submunition hits. That's quite cost effective if you think about it.

I was going to make a post on it, but then with the expansion of the de-electrification campaign in Ukraine by Russia (I think Odessa is still without electricity), the response by NATO to directly attack Russia, within it's internationally recognised borders, using NATO weapons that have to have their flight path programmed and loaded onto Ukrainian warplanes by NATO military service members, and then the response by Russia to deploy a previously unknown Conventional Prompt Strike weapon in the Oreshnik IRBM in Ukraine, it's been a lot of news to try keep up with, and I forgot/didn't have time. Here's an article for anyone interested:

Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry, GroundUp Media, 18 November 2024

The part about the fake countries is so true in a way, especially with regards to South Africa were so many got illegally stripped of their South African citizenship and forced to live in the "bantustans" during apartheid. It's a seperate issue, but it just shows how fickle the identity of a state can be when the government decides that they don't want you.

The media thing is maddening, what I find more insidious than the outright right wing media which is mainly treated as a joke, is so called liberal/progressive media, often funded by NGOs, that's centre left to left wing on internal issues, but takes a hard right, pro USA/NATO swing on foreign policy issues. Looking at the "Daily Maverick" in particular.

Technically it's an IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) as it's designed to operate over shorter ranges.

But yes, much of the same technology used in ICBMs, especially with regards to multiple re-entry vehicles and a MIRV bus/post boost vehicle that deploys the MIRVs. MIRVs with submunitions is a new technology though.

In South Africa we have over 4000 of illegal mine workers, who are mostly foreigners, currently besieged underground, and a lot of people, including government officials, are talking about "smoking them out", and not providing them with any food or water until they come up from underground and face arrest or worse. Thankfully the police did provide them with ARV medication a few days ago.

I can see how the current situation in Lebanon and Syria would unfortunately produce more xenophobia.