Gold standard at this point in time would be deflationary (if the population is growing faster than new gold is being mined, at least). Deflation incentivizes money hoarding, and disincentivizes loans and investments. Capitalism basically breaks down during times of deflation (investments dry up, people stop spending money on things they don’t absolutely need, companies lay off or go out of business, unemployment rises).

I don’t think DeSantis is charismatic or likable enough to beat Biden. His poll numbers go down as the public gets more exposure to him. He’s starting to shift his messaging from anti-woke to (neo-fascist) populist rhetoric, which may change things. IDK, there’s so many things that could happen between now and the election. I think Trump could beat DeSantis in the primary from prison. A major crisis like a recession would hand the election to the Reps. The Reps could intentionally cause a crisis, by forcing an extended government shutdown or something.

Rep voters =/= Rep politicians. I would say the ~27% of people that identify as Republican support fascist-like policies, even if they don’t think of them as fascist. The Rep party itself is definitely neo-fascist. They even use the same rhetoric as the Nazis and white nationalists (focusing on degeneracy, cultural marxism, great replacement theory, etc). Just this time, LBGT people and hispanic immigrants are the first scapegoats. The current 2nd favored Republican presidential candidate, behind Trump, is most definitely a neo-fascist by just looking at the policies he’s been implementing in Florida; not to mention his campaign sharing a video ad featuring DeSantis in the middle of a sonnegrad.

Yeah, mastodon definitely needs a better algorithm. Algorithms can be designed to promote whatever the maker wants. It doesn’t have to be designed to maximize engagement or the specific kind of engagement that tends to promote crazy conspiracy theories or fascist rhetoric. The algorithm could just be simple collaborative filtering with some randomness thrown in to pop “information bubbles,” which would be much better than what they have now.

Most leftists in the U.S. are democratic socialists, social democrats, are some flavor of anarchists; not authoritarian socialists… Most do not think violence is necessary, except for protection against the increasingly fascist right-wing. Many believe it’s possible to move closer to a socialist-like society by building mutual-aid networks and communities, and promoting candidates for government positions that align with their values; not through a violent revolution.

And yes, I would prefer systems closer to Scandinavian countries, which the right-wing here calls socialism. Ideally, I would like to see some kind of real socialism where the workers own the means of production (factories, stores, farms, etc) and controls it through democratic processes, not the investor-shareholders or the government. I think the term is anarcho-syndicalism, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

I cannot imagine a system that would lead to more freedom, better education or innovation.

LOL.

Even though I acknowledge that other systems have been tried in the past, I also believe that all of them, except capitalism with a few social tweaks, have failed.

Capitalism fails every ~8 years requiring the use of vast amounts of public funds to keep afloat. I’d also say if fails daily if you look at all the needless suffering occuring in the world today, especially in the most “free market” countries and the countries these exploit. We have “socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else,” as Jon Stewart would say.

I’ve spent years working at a fossil-fuel-adjacent company, and I’ve noticed that even some intelligent people (consciously or unconsciously) avoid any information that that might make them think they may not being living a perfectly moral life, or information where the obvious solution goes against their “values” (pro-business, free market). They also grasp for any information that affirms their values and lifestyle, no matter how easily discredited the source.

It’s kinda worrying that it always seems to result in Nazi-like conspiracy theories like “the Agenda,” “Elites,” “groomers,” “cultural marxism,” etc.

If I use a private window, and don’t log in I get a lot of right-wing stuff. I’ve noticed it probably depends on IP/location as well. If at work, youtube seems recommend me things other people at the office listen to.

If I’m logged in, I only get occasional right-wing recommendations interspersed with the left-wing stuff I typically like. About 1/20 videos are right-wing.

YouTube Shorts is different. It’s almost all thirst-traps and right-wing, hustle culture stuff for me.

It could also be because a lot of the people who watch the same videos you do tend to also watch right-wing stuff.

In general, the algorithm tries to boost the stuff that maximizes “engagement,” which is usually outrage-type stuff.

It’s just torture-porn primarily featuring things like rape, pedophilia, etc. The most disgusting movie I’ve ever seen. Plot is contrived, and just serves as a vehicle to deliver the most disgusting scenes of sexual violence they could think of. Acting is OK I guess. It seems like a fairly high-budget movie.

A Serbian Film

I watched it on shrooms when I was a teenager. From what I remember, it was pretty good as an art piece (atmospheric, cool visuals and audio).

Book is better for the plot/storytelling. IIRC the film was supposed to be a companion piece for the book.

I’m not too well-versed in world-history, but when you look up definitions of “left-wing,” and the policies Stalin implemented, there doesn’t seem to be much overlap. Seems like a lot of authoritarian leftists just used the idea of a vanguard party to seize power and implement policies closer to fascism and state-capitalism than those of communism. Similar to the National “Socialist” Party.

Threads doesn’t need to do an EEE attack. They’ve already gained many more users than the entire Fediverse. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to not join the Fediverse at all.

I would never use Threads, but I would use a Mastodon instance that federated with Threads. I already see many journalists and content creators I like trying it out, who either stopped using Mastadon long ago or never even tried it in the first place. If Threads started doing things that negatively affected my experience, I would then switch to a Mastodon instance that wasn’t federated with Threads.