On Typst its --

Threatening violence on your opponent’s territory right before you have to negotiate with them is stupid though unless you have a reason to want things to escalate

IDK how dumb this idea is, but what if Trump/Republicans that align with him are trying to cause a shutdown to take advantage of the chaos somehow and blame it on the Democrats, and part of the reason for sending the military to Portland/LA was to anger the Democrats enough to not fold?

Right now there isn’t really one (assuming USA which is where I’m located). IMO the best thing you can do right now is first find likeminded people IRL and do stuff that’s interesting to yourselves and other like minded people, then use those shared interests/bonds as a foundation for motivated community outreach.

Where I live I feel like the sense of community is almost nonexistent despite having a large population. IDK how much of that is from me being autistic, but a lot of things that stem from capitalism like car culture, addictive social media platforms, anything AI, shitty work-life balance, and horrible safety net are also strong contributors to society being super isolating, which then causes anger and self centeredness which results in a lot of what else is wrong with society.

One of the reasons Republicans are as successful as they are is that they provide community through stuff like religion and church, which tests people’s commitment through rules and tithes but also results in tighter bonds where people are more open and trust each other more and do a lot of (mentally) uplifting things together. Then politicians use that to create a unified vision of an ideal society and wield that to their advantage to gain political power, and those communities are super motivated to uphold it.

Meanwhile there are tons of churches everywhere, but as for a left-wing equivalent there’s next to nothing and I’m not even fully sure that it’s possible to replicate something like this with left-wing values. Probably the most important things to take from this is being based on an agreed upon set of values, having a shared vision, expecting some level of commitment (including financially), meeting IRL, having regular activities that are enjoyable and based on the shared values/vision, and the most visible outreach being centered around the interests of those being immediately talked to and also around helping the local population which contributes to a positive image of the organization among less informed people and helps boost its popularity (it’s also less difficult to make changes locally than nationally). Once there is enough popular support, then there’s actually a chance of gaining political power and overthrowing capitalists through next step actions, but without popular support or some other form of power the chances of that succeeding is basically none.

As far as organizations that exist right now go, for ones like PSL I’m not sure how other chapters work or how it works on a national level. The problems I have with my local chapter is that it mainly focuses on peaceful controlled protests (has no chance at making meaningful change, sucks for community building, and is ultimately a waste of time) and it rarely focuses on local issues on social media (not good for building local support, and I want to actually do stuff, not just read and yell things). The best organization I’ve found so far which I’m volunteering with is one that stemmed from Food Not Bombs, which is run by leftists and focuses on raising awareness of local issues (specifically related to homelessness), using temporary aid as a way to protest unjust laws and promote a vision for an ideal society that fixes systemic issues that cause homelessness. Outside of the main distribution efforts, the main organizers in the group know some homeless people by name and where they’re located and will help them as well. They’ve also gotten media attention in local mainstream news outlets (not exactly good attention but it’s something). Some other Food Not Bombs chapters have gotten national media attention for breaking laws that hurt homeless people. A more broad organization that still prioritizes local issues (until more can be done outside of that) would be a lot better IMO, but that doesn’t really exist where I live so this is what I’ve been involved with for now.

Helix because it’s simple and works without tweaking it.

That’s Instagram in its normal state, right now my Instagram feed basically turned into LiveLeak

Stuff like this is why I’m nervous to take any medications for my mental health

I used to get a lot of news off Instagram, but lately I’ve noticed that a lot of radical stuff like protests have basically disappeared off my feed, and other people I’ve talked to have said that this is happening with Twitter as well. Now it’s mostly just fear-mongering headlines with no reporting on defensive actions, despite there being tons of protests all over the place in the past few days. The 50501 protests were a lot bigger than I thought they’d be, and the fact that there’s barely any reporting on them is extremely concerning and I think is intentional. Meanwhile I’ve seen an increasing amount of radical stuff pop up on RedNote, like protests and pro-Luigi stuff, while at the same time somehow maintaining a calmer and more unifying vibe (also no ads), so it definitely seems like a better platform (compared to other options that are algorithm-driven) and I’ve been browsing it more instead of Instagram lately. Also, I’m trying to look for ways to connect with more people IRL, which I think is one of the most important things people can do right now to fight the isolating and divisive design of capitalism.

Using AI like Deepseek is a lot easier than shifting through 50 search results, if the question is for a relatively new technology though then it usually doesn’t work

They claim to be anarchist and I’ve seen a lot of users from there criticize Democrats, although they hate Marxists also, so I’m not sure. They’re also one of the few instances that federates with Hexbear, but they do block Lemmygrad.

If by “diverse” you mean “has western conservatives”, then considering how the entire concept of the fediverse is progressive, you’re not going to find many of them here. On Reddit, there’s r/AskPolitics which overall leans liberal and is US centric but is more open to discussion than other subreddits. There’s some other debate subreddits as well which you might be interested in. They’re helpful for developing political views, but after that hearing the same BS from people who have fundamentally different values gets tiring and people leave so that’s why there aren’t many of those spaces.

If you’re open to other viewpoints that are opposed to both Republican and Democrat, leftist instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and dbzer0 have that, and they can have very different stances on other issues as well (i.e. Lemmygrad vs dbzer0). They can still be echo-chambery (which is hard to avoid) but they also tend to have more users that are interested in intellectual debate.

As far as what instance actually has the most diverse points of view, I’d say lemm.ee which federates with basically everybody and I’ve seen users there from all over the political spectrum. However, there’s isn’t much in terms of political discussion there compared to other instances.

I’m not sure, that’s the one reason I use Instagram also. You could use something like MyInsta, which blocks ads and I think lets you disable shit like Reels. You could also try using an RSS feed with proxygram, although I’ve found the public instances to be unreliable and I’m not sure if it still works. Otherwise, you’re going to need to somehow convince them to use a certain Mastodon instance instead (offering to host one for your local area might make people more interested, but even then good luck with that).

“Communities” would work well because most people understand that it describes a group of people with similar interests which is basically what Lemmy instances are (whereas “instance” sounds borderline meaningless to most people as if you’re trying to push them onto a tech project they don’t understand). The Lemmy “c/” could be called “subcommunities” or “sublemmies” or something like that which would help people who are familiar with Reddit understand what they are as well.

no they’re just negative people

Call them “communities”, not “instances”, that might work better

I saw it as an open source Reddit alternative a few years ago and signed up, then left and went back to Reddit because nobody was using it. Then the API stuff happened, some Reddit users switched to Lemmy so I’ve been browsing it now, switched between a few instances and am now back here.

(I do wish it had more communities for specific topics and locations like Reddit has, and ironically a lot of FOSS discussion is still on Reddit also.)

Hey do you want to go get some pizza after work? BTW I love this new messenger called Lemmy, I feel so much safer that we’re not being spied on! C ya

My friend on acid walking into a building and then making the absolute loudest most evil sounding laugh imaginable that echoed throughout the entire area

It might think it’s a video embed or something, this seems like a security issue

I’m addicted to my laptop and basically any social media platform. Block one and I’ll find plenty of others to waste my time on.