Glad you enjoy all the different owls!

I did join up with the local rehab center this year. After promoting it every day, it didn’t feel right if I did not participate directly myself. Last year I also had another commenter tell me the community got them to join their rehab center, so we’re making a small positive change in the world.

I’ve been learning a lot there and get to see many adorable animals up close. Here is our newest owl patient:

The spearfishing minigame in Y6 was way more fun than I’d expected it to be!

My whole family played the heck out of Super Black Bass! Probably the best fishing I’ve ever had in a game.

Source

Things like what the Black Panthers were and groups like Unicorn Ranch and posts of the environmental resistance are the types of things I can get behind at this stage.

I’ve also been working to solidify my friendships and get more involved in my community and fixing our local environment as well. As you said, this is our home and we need to hold onto it.

I don’t feel defeatist. I think my feelings on America as a whole are higher than many I’ve been seeing here. But tech has come a long way since a lot of these types of movements have taken place.

I love getting inspiration from people like the Maroons the bands of people hiding out in huge areas of Appalachia before the Civil War and others, but stuff like thermal optics and night vision and whatever other stuff the military and even local police likely have these days is pretty intimidating. It’s also way quicker and stealthier to deploy. There’s license plate readers that can grab the plates of anyone driving to a protest and databases of faces, etc.

I’m not as tech savvy as maybe a lot of you are so I don’t know real life limitations of all this stuff or how to avoid it, and I just keep it in mind.

None of the actions have changed anyone’s opinions though. Polling this week shows everyone still feels 100% the same on their opinions now and they did in November. Until the “This Needs to Change” group starts syphoning people at a solid rate from the “I Don’t Care” and “I Still Love It” camps, I think more harm than good will come of things. All the things you are (rightfully!) upset about will only be made worse if an attempt to seize power takes place with about 50% of the populace against you. That’s my opinion on the aggression anyway.

All you guys are right to want it, and I’d agree you are justified, but the rest of the county I don’t feel has your back yet like they should. And we’ve already alienated our valuable allies on our border, and the same people here are cheering that on too. All the comments telling Canada and the EU that they’re right to hate American people as a whole is sad to see. Hate the leaders and their supporters all you want, but Americans are chiming in saying “don’t trust any of us” like that’s a good thing. If we get Mexico and Canada hating all of us, where do we go if stuff really does pop off? The ocean? Some of you guys are boxing us in. It’s freaking me out as much as the MAGA people are honestly.

SS numbers seemed compromised enough pre-Musk. I feel we should all get a new one that isn’t just tossed blindly onto any form we have to fill out on a daily basis.

I won’t minimize any current issues, we are in the worst times the majority of people alive now have ever seen by far. But the world and even our own country has been through worse and survived. We aren’t in a great depression. We aren’t in a dust bowl. We aren’t dropping nukes. We aren’t lynching. We aren’t mass killing workers or non-mainstream political people. We’re way too close to many of those things, but all that stuff went on way longer in the last century or so alone than we’ve seen in our lives.

A year ago, most of us would have likely said we’re not great, but we’re making progress. I’m not ready to just say all of that is gone just yet. As far as anyone knows, we still have elections and some semblance of a judiciary, as flawed as both may be. We still have at least as many pro-democracy people as we have people in favor of what we have now, same as it’s been for the last decade. Myself and many others have been really upset with the creeping power of the presidency for almost the last half a century through R or D presidents.

Again, I don’t expect or want anyone to sit back and take abuse from those who are there to serve us. But preemptive attacks and defensive actions aren’t the same thing, and the first will get you killed and make it harder for other movements to operate a bit more under the radar so they can build up numbers, support, and resources. Even something like this post is about, it’s not my favorite thing, but nobody was hurt, and there weren’t really any threats to individuals. But getting comfortable with this stuff only leads to worse things, even if they are justifiable.

The sad part is I’m not sure you ever get rapid societal change without a lot of people on both sides of an issue losing their lives. I’m cool for people here getting people mobilized but not radicalized. Anyone calling us to be violent publicly is just going to get people killed. I don’t want to see more homegrown terror in America.

I’d much rather see those willing to wield weapons protecting things like polling places, protests, and the representatives we support. Whitmer’s kidnapping plot, Shapiro’s home arson, Pelosi’s home invasion type events are things where some form of organized watch can try to prevent while looking like the good guys instead of vigilantes.

The increasing calls for physical violence on Lemmy are really getting concerning. I used to frequent the news and politics stuff more often, but lately it feels a bit too hot for me and I just try to add something when there’s outright disinformation. I get things are bad for many, but this is a door that can’t really be closed once it gets opened. I just want everyone here to be safe and not act recklessly, but some commentary here I feel is testing some boundaries.

Appreciate that! Was good to hear it right from them.

Yes, exactly, and once I read this yesterday I allowed myself to rule out that I was just thinking the worst.

Daniel Bertulis appeared on The Lead, joined by his attorney Andrew Bakaj, and explained the details of how he apparently uncovered a massive amount of missing data from the NLRB following DOGE’s efforts. He ostensibly mocked a White House statement touting the transparency at play, noting that none of the code used by DOGE technicians has been shared publicly.

But the most shocking allegations came from Bakaj, who not only claimed that accounts based in Russia were using newly created DOGE usernames and passwords to access sensitive data, but also directly tied the effort to Elon Musk and his Starlink concerns, which has a relationship with the Kremlin.

“There are two data points that I wanna point out that should give everybody pause,” Bakaj said. “The first thing, what Dan witnessed was that within 15 minutes of DOGE employees creating user accounts, i.e. Usernames and passwords, within 15 minutes of those accounts being created, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with the right username and right passwords — that is to say — the right credentials. And that happened over 20 times.”

“The second data point, which is really critical, is that DOGE has also been using Starlink as a means to exfiltrate data,” he continued. “What that means is that, from our understanding, Russia has a direct pipeline of information through Starlink, which means that anything going through Starlink is going to Russia.”

I think I got this link from some Lemmy post yesterday, and I don’t like that I don’t know the source, but it seems to fit what is being talked about in regular mainstream reporting.

Almost had me excited there until I tried to look to see if they named who they were going to primary… Source

The military budget doesn’t seem to have gone up by anything that hasnt been trending the last decade or 2, and despite all the talk about going to fight other countries, I don’t think there is enough support for anything other than Iran, and even that I dont think would be done directly by the US military.

I do worry more about a more internally agro surveillance state, but with facial recognition and a camera on every doorbell, I think we’ve already long traded privacy for security. I keep learning about previous rebellions and having covert places to gather, plan, and stage have really been crucial, and I don’t know how one does that in the modern world.

Well, username checks out.

But I enjoyed going back and listening to the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff 2 parter about the hand-in-hand relationships between violent and non-violent protesting throughout the civil rights movement.

I’m thinking you will be able to find many more people willing to do non-violent and legal or civil disobedience type activities than you will people willing to face jailtime or death. But at the same time, there needs to be appreciation for people who will get their hands dirty to keep the peaceful co-protesters safe. It only takes so many armed people to be a deterrent, for example.

To dismiss one group or the other overlooks the historic contributions of many people, and who’s going to be thrilled about a takeover by any group of solely violent and/or criminalistic individuals with no peaceful support? I don’t want to live under left wing authoritarianism any more than the right wing variety.

I’m possibly more worried about what he didn’t destroy at this point. What’s gone will at least be rebuilt largely from scratch by people that care about restoring those institutions.

My huge worry now is what backdoors are now in systems like social security that impacts us all and we may not find out about for a long time. How much identity theft and scamming will go on now that outside actors likely have access to some or all of that data?

No matter what it is you’re doing, I’m sure it’s important to your clients. With the news this week that all the government data is going over Starlink and likely collected by Russia, I’m waiting for a waterfall of things like identity theft and all sorts of scams and who knows what else, you may be even more important. You’re still in a position to help people, and that’s something very important in unsure times.

Give 'em hell! 🔥

Thank you for what you do.

I read your other reply to this thread and appreciated it.

It gets frustrating to see people say “well just do the questionable things they do back to them and ignore the rules like they do.” I get the desire to give them a taste of their own medicine, but building a lefty authoritarian regime isn’t any more desirable to me than a righty one.

We don’t all need to become radicals, but we don’t need to roll out the carpet to those trying to twist the legal and political systems for corrupt purposes.

So what would move the needle in your view?