For fucks sake, this is infuriating. Choosing between a young, extremely popular, highly effective congresswoman and a dying man few people have heard of, should have been the easiest choice ever for one of the most important House committees.
People carry debt from their Christmas gifts for the rest of the year, you’re right that it’s totally not harmless. I’m shocked how much some people spend on holiday gifts.
My family, granted we’re Jewish, basically stopped all gift-giving, except for when there’s a new kid in the extended family, which is rare. I wholly agree that Christmas is the best example of conspicuous consumption/consumerism and extreme capitalism. Frankly, Christmas season makes me kind of uncomfortable because of all the social expectations to give gifts. Fortunately I can usually say ‘“nah I’m Jewish, I don’t do Christmas,” but you’d be surprised how many folks are totally confused by that. So yup, spoil your kids if you want to, but don’t expect me to send you a holiday gift if you’re a functional adult.
In the face of blatant propaganda, the best you can do is stay grounded in reality, and only rely on sources that have proven themselves to be independent, fact-based, and free from corporate influence. ProPublica and Democracy Now are the two outlets I always recommend. You won’t miss much if you read them exclusively with maybe some AP and NPR sprinkled in there.
I think it’s also important to be aware of and sometimes read the sources that consistently spout propaganda and misinformation, as long as you can keep the fact that you’re reading bullshit front of mind. Not everyone can do that naturally, but being able to spot propaganda is the best first step in defeating it.
That’s just how I approach it though, I’m sure others have better ideas.
Totally understandable. I was hesitant about it too, but to me it’s sometimes worth a premium to get something that just works, and Infuse works better than any player I’ve used in the past. To each their own, good luck!
As suggested above, I would try Infuse player. I recently switched from a Kodi/Jellyfin setup to an Apple TV/Jellyfin setup and I’m extremely happy with it. Infuse has a free trial, and then you can choose to pay a few different ways (they do have a rather expensive lifetime option, but it might be worth it). The Infuse app has no trouble playing directly from my Jellyfin server, no transcoding, even for full 4K Bluray rips, and yes it even supports Dolby Vision (which the native Jellyfin app struggles with). No hiccups, no issues with multiple audio tracks or subtitles, it’s just buttery smooth direct playback.
It also has a couple different ways of interacting with your Jellyfin library, so it feels completely seamless to me.
Time to put the Capitol Switchboard on speed dial, gonna be calling them a lot these next few years.
For those who don’t know, here’s the switchboard number:
202-224-3121
Call, tell them where you live, and they’ll connect you to your representative’s constituent services. It’ll only take you a few minutes, but they keep track of every call. It matters.
I’m so glad this guy is sticking with the bit. Patrick Gathara for those wondering. This framing does a spectacular job of exposing the absurdity of American politics and ‘American Exceptionalism’ on the world stage.
He did one for the Democratic Convention too, which was excellent.
I wish there were more people here, too. But I don’t think it can ever realistically be, nor does it need to be a competition. As long as there are a default millions of people willing to spend their valuable attention contributing to corporate ad-powered social media companies, the more socially responsible platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon will always be a niche corner of an aspirational web that at least attempts to trust and respect its users. I’d flip it around: the smallness of these mostly positive communities on Lemmy reflects how content the huge crowds at reddit, meta, twitter etc are at being surrounded by utter shit. If the last few years haven’t shown them that there are better places to spend their time online, I’m not sure what will. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m also starting to be okay with the size and scope of things over here.