I budget my donations so I make an effort to see who I think need it the most. For example, I use Tor daily, but they have huge institutional funding. My to-do list app doesn’t.

There are also some worthy candidates who simply reject donations, like Handbrake.

A few I haven’t seen mentioned:

• Small websites anyone can use for FOSS services, like (e.g. Private.coffee, Disroot, Nadeko, Riseup)
• Any of the 5 remaining Invidious instances, Google has put effort into killing off other instances. Same with other social media alternative frontends.
• Someone mentioned F-Droid, I don’t know what I’d do without the Google Store alternatives like Aurora.
• yt-dlp devs
• Lemmy and various instances
• Your operating systems, incl phones and servers if relevant
• Codeberg
• A few FOSS softwares used for non-fediverse sites I use. Look at all the sites you use and think about which ones are probably underfunded. Don’t be afraid to ask if they haven’t said anything.

You can’t just say “The USSR was bad because of communism, end of story”, for example. It was never communist, and I would argue it eas never trying to get there.

On one hand, I know you’re right that socialist rhetoric is abused. It’s vitally important to be alert to it, and fascists have a proven history of trying to exploit socialist sentiment, given their rise in response to a string of 1920s socialist uprisings in Europe.

On the other, I can’t look at the decades-worth of writings and actions of the RSDLP and Bolsheviks and conclude they weren’t honestly trying to build a vanguard party with the aim of building a communist society. I’m open to critique of whether or not Leninist theory has been shown to be right or wrong, but I struggle to see how Lenin could have been pretending to be a communist full-time for 20 years at extended self-sacrifice. An opportunist wouldn’t have chosen a path with such little opportunity. The Bolsheviks were evidently a vanguardist party trying to eventually achieve communism - a ‘communist party’.

You’re using all these fraught terms like “socialism” and “liberalism” incorrectly

I’m using them in a way consistent with political dictionaries.

Fascism is, openly, anti-liberal. This is not a contested fact, they say it openly. It’s one of the few consistent parts of fascism, along with being anti-socialist (‘socialist’, in this context, meaning in support of social ownership of the means of production - a very standard and common definition in English dictionaries and encyclopedias alike).

You accuse me of using those terms incorrectly, so what would you consider a correct usage?

The Nazis rose out of National Bolshevism, after all.

No, they didn’t.

A cursory look at the Nazi Party’s history clearly shows their utter disdain and scapegoating of Bolshevism as a grave evil. The Nazi Party founder (Anton Drexler) was an anti-Marxist. Drexler emphasised the only thing ‘socialist’ about the party was social welfare for those deemed Aryan. The Nazi Party considered nazbols to be a strand of Bolshevism and therefore part of a Jewish conspiracy.

No, fascism and communism aren’t “opposites”

I don’t believe politics is simple enough to allow opposites, but if there were such a thing, those two ideologies would be pretty close. Fascists are ideologically anti-communist and communists are always among the first they mass murder. Communists (along with anarchists) are consistently the foundation of anti-fascist action.

while communism is a highly ideological philosophy that’s never existed

“Yes, and,”

This is where terminology plays tricks:

• A communist society is the ultimate goal of the ideology called ‘communism’.
• You’re absolutely correct that no country has a communist society; in fact, it’s a contradiction, since a communist society is stateless by definition.
• The countries that are labelled ‘communist’ (by themselves and others) are states with a communist government in power. This strategy of vanguardism is strongly debated among communists: many would agree with you that it’s a contradiction, while others consider it a necessary transitional phase in order to defend from capitalist counter-attack. If we assume that the vanguard government is not corrupt (and we shouldn’t assume that without evidence!), then it’s a government that aims to create the material conditions that would cause itself to wither away, piece by piece. Obviously none has succeeded in that goal, but it’s not wrong to call those governments ‘communist’, in the same way a person who supports socialism is called a ‘socialist’ - it’s about a school of thought, about ideology, rather than describing the current situation they govern over. And to characterize authoritarian communists as fascist is ignorant about how fascist systems develop - fascism works to kill socialism and liberalism with the backing of the owning-class. No matter how many similar characteristics one may try and find on the surface, the two concepts are foundationally incompatible and opposed, and will act very differently. It’s fine to hate them both, but they are not related.

I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers

For what it’s worth, that thread is openly biased with many of those examples being strawman quotes and misframing events, like a non-sequitur troll post ban being framed as “support for Ukraine”. And frankly, some of those points are cm0002 themselves intentionally trolling, like dubiously reporting a political meme as “Propaganda”.

Personally I think the main devs are terrible at forum moderation. I’m aware that they’re chronically overworked, and that .ml is not intended to be a neutral or liberalist general-purpose instance, and I’m aware that it’s very normal for moderators to be bad at moderating, and yet that doesn’t detract from my belief that they’re technically bad at moderating a forum. For example, simply writing “rule 1” as a ban reason allows people to misinterpret bans as we’re seeing here. Automate that shit, prefill ban reasons with the rule list! Make clearer rules and FAQs describing how memes and talking points considered normal in the US are actually chauvinistic propaganda!

As for a fork or rewrite, like others have said, alternatives already exist, but I also don’t think this is a case where maintainer opinions are harmful to the user or project (even if I disagree with some). They’re devout anticapitalists, which makes their FOSS and anti-enshitification positions clear, I know it won’t sell out in five years. They only have power over their own instance, which one is welcome to not join or block.

Yep. Like many arts, gamedev is something people will do for free, so it’s very difficult (or torturous) to do it for profit.

I found it fun to do amateur gamedev, for my own little enjoyment (e.g. making a super-basic FPS with a gun that shoots a thousand cubes like a shotgun, then making it shoot a thousands spheres that explode on impact like a grenade launcher). Lots of engines are accessible that you don’t need to learn much/any programming skill to make something fun. You can do plenty with free assets, I never paid for anything, but if you are willing and able to pay small amounts for premade assets, then it will be even faster and easier to make something more pretty.

I’ve also done level design (and LoC) for some open-source FOSS games. This is easier for some games than others, but it’s also rewarding. I was particularly known for making experimental or puzzle-like levels, so it was nice to get feedback from others and improve. I’ve mostly grown apart from games these days, but I don’t regret the time I enjoyed making them.

Yep. If money isn’t a problem, the answer is ‘never’.

Does your local government publish advice? Some have a contact who can tell you what is safe to use in their infrastructure.

It depends what you mean by movement, and where you mean.

There are already some direct action movements on the ground, like Subvertisers International, Adbusters and historically B.U.G.A.U.P to name some famous Western ones.

This might not be what you meant, but I’ve found 90+% of the ‘online left’ regardless of ideology to be far more ultra-left, alienated and toxic than most people on the ground, even including the drama kiddos on college campuses and split rival organizations. To everyone I highly recommend finding people in real life, if possible.

Redlib is an alternate frontend to reddit.com.

I can’t find “Ramble” so I’m guessing they might mean Raddle, which is a reddit-like website of its own, similar to Lemmy (without federation)

If there’s no specific use-case (this is a general introduction, not Intro to Operating System Design) and this isn’t academic Computer Science teaching, then certainly a scripting language.

Easy to learn, easy to use, and much more applicable for simple automation that benefits the people learning.

C is dangerous if someone doesn’t take care. Java is verbose and personally I didn’t enjoy it one bit. You said this is a non-technical crowd and you expect them to follow at home.

Yeah, synesthesia counts!

Find a physical activity you enjoy and do it at least three times a week. Either join an organized religion or specifically curate a group of people you do a weekly activity with who will come check on you if you suddenly stop showing up.

I managed to get both these with sport teams. (At least in my area), the local sports competitions are actively looking for players, and if you have skills or enjoy a role others don’t, you can even just volunteer (instead of pay fees) in a few teams before joining one you like. And one foot in the door will likely get you invited to other teams and competitions when someone’s team needs a substitute player (or you can just ask, “Does anyone have a team that play on Thursday nights?”).

In my favorite team, I became de-facto captain of because I showed up most reliably and was the remaining member of the original team as people left and joined. One week I forgot to tell them I would be away for the match due to travel, and the next day I wake up to a couple of check-in messages just to make sure I haven’t vanished or had a bookshelf fall on me. And it’s a reassuring feeling to realize you’re part of a community that cares about each other.

An end result of liberalist idealism. (plus what others have said)

Celebrating on the 24th. It’s not even a long historical tradition in my own family or local culture, we adopted it after my grandparents celebrated a few Christmases with a Central European immigrant family in the neighborhood who start celebrating at midday 24th December and realized it enabled those of us who were married/etc to celebrate the next day with our other families. It’s much more relaxing like that, I’ve heard my friends complain after trying to fit in a breakfast, lunch and dinner at three different Christmas parties in one day to avoid offending anyone.

only a few hundred

I’m surprised “propaganda” isn’t in the top spots.

This video on conservative influencers and set building comes to mind.

Or to frame it slightly different: I believe that too much money and/or power is what turns most people evil over time.

What are the mechanics of this?

Instead, I believe the means of acquiring money/power from those who have enough of it creates pressures (say, a newspaper sponsored by Coca-Cola is pressured into not reporting on Coca-Cola’s problems), along with the hyperrealities created by conventional rich lifestyles (mainly associating with other wealthy people, being used to paying people to do work instead of doing it yourself, all that kind of thing) distorting ones worldview and alienating them from most of society and its issues.

Inheritance is an interesting aspect: if my grandfather stole and passed it to my father who passed it to me, I can acquire it by doing nothing.

This is not a counter-argument - it highlights that doing nothing is complicity in injustice.