• 0 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 4th, 2025

help-circle
  • I used to want to work for the federal government and once upon a time it was a very good job. Decent, but not the best, pay along with good health benefits, large amounts (in US terms) of leave, extra holidays, and a pension program. Now I don’t see why anyone would want to work for the federal government. A common sentiment amongst government workers are that you are there for at least one of four things:

    1.) Early retirement/pension - In the older days you could potentially fully retire as early as 50.

    2.) Healthcare - You got to keep it into early retirement and it was typically better than any private or business insurance or medicare.

    3.) Stability - Once in you would probably never be laid off or fired.

    4.) Ulterior motives - A lot of government workers do what they do because they get something else out of it. Someone working at the EPA might get a sense of fulfillment and earnestly believe they are making a difference. Likewise someone working in ICE might be getting their failed-military-abuse-of-power rocks off on the bit of power they have over others.

    Well the stability is gone, the pension only matters if you have the stability to get to 30 years, and the healthcare is getting worse over time.



  • What my own eyes see? You then sent a video where you can’t see shit, half the video it looks like he’s on the floor and they’re kicking the shit out of him. Also in another comment I stated that a big part of my difficulty to believe the issue is as wide spread as you are saying is because the overall poor standards of evidence and shitty journalism.

    The incident of supposed rape started with a report that a prisoner had been transferred from the Sde Teiman camp with anus and rectal injuries, but every article I can find (from Haaertz, Times of Israel, Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, and People’s Dispatch) only reference a report without saying where the report came from or who released it, it’s just a report that’s out there but no one knows where. Secondly the IDF went to the prison as part of their investigation and fought the guards because they were refusing to cooperate with military police. Yes right wing Israeli’s rioted, but that’s hardly proof that the entire country is onboard with that and each picture of the riot it’s like 50 people. Furthermore the IDF put one reservist in prison in February 2025 for punching handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners. To prove the point, there are cases going through the Israeli Supreme Court right now to potentially close the prison. The court has not yet decided to close the prison but they phased out long term detention in June 2024, issued a compliance order in September 2024, and in September 2025 made rulings that the government is intentionally denying prisoners adequate nutrition and must meet required prisoner standards.

    Are some Israeli’s or members of the IDF doing these things, probably so, but I have a hard time believing it’s a systemic problem throughout their whole culture especially when no one can seem to provide any actual evidence, the IDF appear to be acting how they should to such allegations, and the country’s supreme court is actively making rulings against the government for the treatment of prisoners.

    The standards of evidence/proof are so shitty that one person can say something on twitter, a journalist uses it as a reference for an article, their article gets copied a dozen times, and suddenly that counts as proof. Then a claim like this escalates with the logic that if it happened over here then it must be happening everywhere.


  • Largely in part because of an overall poor standard of evidence and multiple different forms of bias to perpetuate “proof.” A lot of people, even here, are pointing to the UN commission reports, but they don’t really look beyond the legitimacy of the UN to determine if it’s accurate.

    The commission is made up of 3 people, at least one of which has made statements about jews controlling social media. In their report on their findings they state that their methodology for their reports was by pairing digital content with victim and witness testimony, but then state that the standard of proof was if 1 or more testimonies corroborated the digital content.

    That’s not proof in my eyes.


  • These are disturbing links, if at face value they are true then this is truly disturbing. That said most of the information comes from second or third hand sources. It’s entirely possible that some Israeli’s are doing these things but it’s hard to believe that this is happening systemically throughout their entire military organization. It’s not forgivable and anyone doing it should be justly punished, but it seems crazy to assume that the mistreatment of prisoners is across the board as others have alleged.

    I might be on the wrong side of history here, but it’s a bit hard to believe that jews in Israel are raping men, women, and children left and right.



  • Let me just say, earnestly, THANK YOU. I haven’t read your link yet, but you are the first person to respond with an actual response to the given question. I’m gonna take a few minutes to read what you linked, if I have any thought’s I’ll post an edit.}

    EDIT: This is disturbing news, but it’s hardly evidence of systemic actions. I like the BBC a lot, but the testimonies given aren’t surprising. I’m all for condemning the actions stated, but they are also second hand accounts. For example the account of sexual misconduct comes from only one person interviewed. I’m not unwilling to believe that some Israeli’s have done something illegal, but I’m not surprised either. Rage all anyone might want but the laws of war only matter if someone is willing to enforce them and it seems like the world won’t enforce them here, much to my disappointment.


  • No, you’re making a lot of unsubstantiated statements. Am I willing to believe that Greta is being treated differently than Gazan prisoners? Yeah, I can believe that. I could also believe that Greta is being treated similarly to how anyone without Hamas affiliations would be treated. What I don’t believe is that just because Greta has bed bugs in her cell Gazans are getting raped and electro tortured. Like I said, I don’t have a dog in the fight, but just because Greta is being treated like a prisoner doesn’t mean she’s being treated differently than other prisoners. Furthermore, having bed bugs doesn’t mean shit when bed bugs are a problem in every prison. Having bed bugs doesn’t mean other people are getting raped and electro shock tortured unless you have some evidence of that, which is the evidence I asked for.


  • Can’t you see that that is a very different argument? Just because Greta has bed bugs in her cell doesn’t prove that other prisoners have worse conditions. The OP said:

    As a foreign famous activist she probably has a “good” treatment for a detainee. Imagine what the Gazan child hostages go through in Israeli prisons (spoiler: reported electrical shock torture and sexual crimes)

    So the OP has setup a binary situation where Greta is getting bed bugs while Gazan’s are getting electrical shock torture and sexual crimes. I asked if the OP has any evidence to that because they created a false equivalency. Just because one prisoner has bed bugs doesn’t mean everyone else is getting electro shocked and raped.


  • Do you have any evidence to support that or are you just using conjecture? I don’t have a dog in the fight, but you’re literally making shit up out of thin air. Given how persistent bed bugs are I would imagine they are a significant problem in any prison in the world. Keeping bed bugs out is probably like trying to keep a cold/flu/covid out of any concentrated living facility (prison, nursing home, welfare home, or homeless shelter).

    If hotels struggle to prevent bed bugs then you can be assured that prisons will too. If you’re gonna peacefully protest with the knowledge that you will be detained then you should also know that you’re gonna deal with jail/prison conditions which include bed bugs.


  • At the very least, I don’t think OP deserves to be dragged like they were for what is to me a pretty reasonable take. In Lemmy, blocking someone acts like getting blocked on pretty much every platform, which is going to be confusing for many

    I can agree that I understand the confusion and I also don’t think the OP deserves to get dragged for their initial post, but I think their opinion is fundamentally flawed and the reason they got dragged is mostly because they went in the comments trying to defend their opinion. The problem is that the term “Social Media” has gotten so hackneyed that multiple different things are all called Social Media and the rules of the most common version are expected in the others.

    Growing up Social Media referred to Social Networks which are user-centric platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace (I guess potentially TikTok) where you create an account which is central to your experience on the website. Connections on these platforms are made through creating individual friends lists and following specific users which makes it super easy to block someone in the manner described. Now basically everything is called Social Media, including forums and image boards. On an image board or forum you might have to create an account, but the experience was more defined by going through an index of posts not connected to your account. Places like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, 4chan, and any random ass forum functioned pretty similarly to how blocking works on Lemmy. In most cases the blocked user can still see any public posts you make; they may not be able to search for your posts within their account or respond to your messages directly, but they typically could still see your posts and respond to other people in a thread (even your own). The only exception to this is if they posted on a forum (or subreddit/instance/board/blog) you moderated or otherwise controlled. In some cases Social Networks and image boards are similar, if you run a blog on Tumblr it functions more like a Social Network but if you only browse other people’s public blogs then it functions like an image board

    The whole argument is basically “Why don’t forums work like social networks?”



  • I’m sorry, but I feel like you need to support the statement “This comes from discussions I’ve had with minorities about the harassment they face on Lemmy and mastodon” a bit more. Your whole argument for limiting the speech of others is predicated on this statement.

    I’m not saying that minorities couldn’t face harassment on Lemmy, but Lemmy is by far the most liberal and minority supportive online forum I have ever experienced. Part of the reason Lemmy is so niche is because it doesn’t have the mainstream attention other platforms have and is heavily moderated.

    If you are engaging in an instance where harassment is occurring the moderators generally ban the person quickly. If the moderators of that instance aren’t doing their job people generally leave and the instance dies from lack of content (there just aren’t that many people on Lemmy). If someone follows you from a different instance to another the current instance moderators will likely ban them even if the one you met them on doesn’t. Finally, if they are direct messaging you you can block them, they can continue to message you but you won’t see their messages and neither will anyone else.

    What minority group have you talked with that are receiving harassment and what extra protections were needed that aren’t already here?




  • Example, god would never allow the mass starvation of children no matter which god.

    What makes you think that? Your concept of a god is that if they exist they would conform to human ideals of good or that their own rules would apply to them. You could instead argue that if god isn’t good then they therefore do not deserve to be worshiped which is a fair argument as well. However, if god does exist, does not conform to human ideals of good, and there are consequences for not believing in it or obeying it’s orders then you’re just up shits creek.

    Just to throw out some examples from the bible but God allowed Satan to torment Job because Job was a loyal and good person, God allowed Lot to offer his daughters for rape rather than some angels, God turned Lots wife into salt for looking in a direction, God flooded the world and killed everyone but one small family, the plagues of Egypt, when the Israelites came to the promised land they encountered other civilizations which God told them to kill every man, woman, child, and beast. We don’t need to look at modern examples, we don’t get past the old testament without it being clear that if the Christian (or Jewish for that matter) God exists he doesn’t follow his own rules.

    I don’t know other religions as well as Christianity, but considering Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share some commonalities I’m going to lump them together. In Greek mythology the gods are straight up sadistic at times and the people were supposed to be ok with it, Hera tormented Hercules for being born and the Trojan War was started because one god didn’t get invited to another god’s wedding. I don’t know a lot about the Aztec gods, but as far as I can tell it was believed they required human sacrifice at least on some frequency. I’m sure there are more examples in other religions, but the fundamental argument is the same.

    I’m not really trying to change your mind, I myself would probably be closer to agnositic, but a lot of atheists try to logic their way around the existence of god as if god is another person when in reality the relationship may be similar to you conversing with an ant. You might be right and god doesn’t exist, but to say they don’t exist because they allow suffering in the world is fundamentally counter to what most religions say about their god(s).



  • Eh, that’s not really a good example. The US already has more people incarcerated per capita than any other country. The biggest limitation is how many people they can arrest at one time, not how many people they will arrest total. You might be able to get enough people to protest at once that they can’t arrest them all at once, but they absolutely will arrest them over 1-3 years. They kept arresting Jan 6th people for 4 years under Biden, you don’t think that the current administration will be after you as long as possible?


  • Except there’s been no supporting evidence of that. Protests, large or small, get the people who protest to go vote. If they are the type to go to a protest then statistically they were already likely to go vote. The problem is the demographic of people who talk about issues but don’t historically go vote.

    Historically conservatives go vote whether they protest, talk at work, or literally say nothing. Conversely, liberals and progressives historically do not go vote despite protesting, arguing, or anything else.

    When I was in college I was still conservative leaning based on my childhood. I had a class with ~60 other people and we were given a group activity in which we could pick 2 guaranteed rights. The rights varied greatly, such as being accepted for your sexuality (as in from this day forth your sexual orientation would always be accepted without question), or you will have the right to universal healthcare, or you can move to any country you want without persecution. The premise of this question was that you would get the things you picked, but the others you would probably lose the other things. Out of that group of ~60 people only 2 chose the right to vote. The professor then pointed out that while each person had picked certain rights that couldn’t be taken away from them, two people now had 100% control of the political decisions for the rest of the group. With this they could give themselves more rights or even strip the unpicked rights from others.

    I’m not sure how it happened, but conservatives instilled in their base that they need to vote no matter what while liberals don’t think it’s that important unless it’s the literal end of the world.


  • It’s a mixed bag in my opinion. I think the majority of people who show up to protest are likely to go vote, but the majority of people don’t protest. There is probably a small subset of people who would show up to protest and not show up to vote, but the biggest problem is people who say they dislike something, brigade it online, tell everyone at their work or school about it, but then don’t turn out to vote. The one side requires action, the other is just talk, the problem with liberals and progressives today is that they talk but don’t vote. For conservatives the majority of them vote, but don’t talk.