I'm pasting an old comment of mine from the official lemmy.world post discussing potential future federation with threads/meta:

I would like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude and appreciation for the hard work you've done with lemmy.world. But I am strongly opposed to federating with Threads. Please read this comment in full, as I believe it outlines the sentiment and reservations held by many within our community.

I think it might be helpful to use an analogy that I think will help express the feelings of many of those within our community regarding the problem with the "wait and see" approach.

What's to say Threads won't follow in their very well-established footprints under Meta as a company?

If I go to a friend's house and their child spits in my face every time, I don't want to go to my friend's house. I tell them this. The friend again says, "Well this time just might be different, let's just wait and see!" Meanwhile, this kid spits in my face without fail, every chance they get. There is a very consistent and pervasive pattern of this.

Why should I believe this kid won't spit in my face all of a sudden, when they've taken every single chance they could repeatedly, knowing that it was wrong and not caring what repercussions would befall them? Do you really think this kid is going to refrain from spitting in my face this time?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. -~~Albert Einstein~~ -someone.

Meta/FB have continually demonstrated their core business practices are unethical and that they will continue carrying them out without regard for laws or their users' well-being. There's no reason to wait and see. It's not logical to believe this time will be different.

Threads would bring such a large influx of hateful, racist, violent, bigoted political extremists to the fediverse. They will also do whatever they can to exploit users on this site for their own gain. Their modus operandi has been to exploit their users.

Instead of just conjecture and analogies, I will now provide factual information regarding Meta's practices as a company.

This really should be obvious by now.. but Meta mines and sells their user's information. Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads... That alone should tell you there's no reason to "wait and see." Just look right now. They haven't changed...

FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. Their first published research was where they manipulated users' feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!

Meta has played a very key role in spreading misinformation, perpetuating dangerous conspiracy theories, and radicalizing the alt right. This is present across nations, but it certainly contributed heavily to the climate of political extremism that led to a mass of insurrectionists to attempt to overthrow my duly elected government...

I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:

• Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];

• Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;

• Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;

• Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;

• Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and

• Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design.

I ask you now if you truly believe this is the sort of player you want on the Fediverse? Do you really want to federate lemmy.world with such a blatantly immoral and detrimental corporation?

I have really enjoyed my time here on Lemmy.world and have so greatly appreciated the hard work of you and your team. I have been donating to you to help with the costs of running this instance.

However, federating with Threads contradicts my philosophy and ethical principles, and I will be sadly canceling my donations and finding a new home should we federate with Threads in the future. I firmly believe that most users on lemmy.world share this sentiment. I hope this comment helped express the resistance and fears of our community.

Once again, I appreciate all the work you guys have done. But I respectfully and severely dissent on this issue.

How to pass/invalidate a lie-detector test.

They are not considered admissible evidence in court (but the criminal justice system still use them to a degree..), and they can be interpreted with intentional bias, so I think it's fine to share.

One of my psychology professors told me that if you hide something like a sewing needle in your shoe's insole, you can ever so slightly apply pressure so that the poke causes a physiological spike. They monitor for movement, so it has to be very minute. The goal is to do this on every control question so that they cannot establish a baseline and have to give up.

Calling his opponents vermin is a classic dehumanizing technique. Viewing a group as sub-human makes it easier to justify cruelty, and is a component of most genocidal regimes.

And that's totally in line with trump's open love and praise of murderous, genocidal dictators across the globe. Like most everything trump does, it's sickening and blatantly obvious.

Edit: Thought this was a great graphic I just saw on MeidasTouch Network.

Important to note that the population of the study all had a history of cardiovascular health issues, and were not representative of the rest of the population.

Also important to note is the failure to assess a distinction between combustion and non-combustion consumption.

Combusting marijuana results in particulates, carcinogens [1], lack of oxygen, and off-gasses benzene. [2] These are very important factors to control for, and this distinction was not addressed at all.

Definitely in need of further studies on the topic. This is an interesting area to explore, but this study falls a little flat in addressing any causation.

He says: "Yesterday Sam flew the plane and said that just 8 people were sitting in the trench, just 8 khohols [Ukrainains], f*ck! And our men go there by the hundreds, and they are not even capable of taking a f**king thing!"

Ukrainians are a force to be reckoned with when they dig in.. I will never forget how long the Cyborgs lasted at Donetsk Airport. The Cyborgs' nickname was coined by russians trying to cope with how disproportionate their losses were against dug-in Ukrainains with small arms.

Ukrainains are tough as hell.

Absolutely hilarious that they think they can remove 3rd party search engines when reddit itself can't be navigated for shit, especially with their atrocious search feature. Blocking 3rd party search engines just ensures no one will be able to find any specific posts/content.

Literally the only time I've gone back to reddit in months is to find an answer for a game-related issue from a search engine query. Forcing a log-in or disabling search engines is just going to ensure less traffic/none from me.

Just like with Twitter, it seems like the reddit team is purposefully tanking their platform. I understand that much of it is for short-sighted payout, but even then, their decisions have been asinine and self-sabotaging.

I'm not happy with this development, but I'm slightly amused by the irony being that lemmy.ml is pro-china and has been moderated as such.

I trained my previous German Shepherd to understand a conditional question. It took a few years to teach, but I would ask "What do you want? Do you want [option]?" Could be go out, food, water, treat, play, love, walk, ride.

After enough conditioning, I could ask him "What do you want?" and he would literally tell me. I'd ask him and sometimes it was clear he was just bored, and would literally start to slow wag his tail and try out options. Like he'd go up to his treats and I'd say "No, you don't need any more of those.." and he'd get this little tail wag and then go try a toy or something. Was really handy if he ran out of water or something. I'd ask "What do you want?" and he'd lead me to his empty water bowl.

Incidentally thru different keyword use for toys, he learned to differentiate the names his favorite toys. Like his basketballs were always one of his favorites, and he comprehended that his ball had a specific name, but still fell into the category of "toy." So if you said "Go get a toy" he might bring his basketball, but if you said "Go get your ball" he would only grab his basketball.

He sadly died a couple years ago. He imprinted a bit on one of my current dogs (also a GSD), and I've been trying to expand on toy names with this guy. The names he's got down well so far are blue ball, basketball, jack, long jack, cactus, pineapple, donut, and the ring. Maybe a couple other toys I can't think of that he's learned. (we spoil our dogs with too many toys..) But I can tell him "Go get the cactus!" and he'll tear off and search until he finds the specific toy.

It's very enriching for him and really shows off the intelligence of dogs that people take for granted (intelligence definitely varies on breed tho..).

This pertains to the US:

A lot of people are unaware of cancelation lists, and a lot of providers don't really advertise that. When I was a casemanager for adults with severe mental illness, I would always ask to have my clients added to the cancelation list, and this would often get them in much sooner.

Also butted heads with a receptionist last year when my client was literally experiencing congestive heartfailure and she wanted to schedule him like 1.5 months out to see his specialist about having a defibrillator implanted. I said it was unacceptable and said he needed to be added to the emergency openings I know the providers reserve. She got a look on her face and said "But I need to get provider approval for that.." I told her "I think you better talk to the doctor then."

Specialist eventually came over to scheduling and asked what was going on. The receptionist said what we wanted and asked if she would approve it, with a real dismissing inflection. The specialist said "Oh my god, yeah of course he's approved for the emergency list.."

Some of these things are just so overlooked/unknown by the general public. And sometimes you've got to be assertive and stick with your guns to be treated fairly and get the attention you deserve. Especially now more than ever. Our healthcare system was bad before, but it's been so strained ever since covid...

The healthcare system can be a nightmare for average people functioning well. It is so much worse for the population experiencing severe mental illness/with cognitive disability. This barrier for care plays a significant role in the reduced life expectancy in the disadvantaged population I worked with.

Patients suffering from severe mental disorders, including schizophrenia, major depression and bipolar disorders, have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population of up to 10–25 years. This mortality gap requires urgent actions from a public health perspective in order to be reduced. Source

If anyone reading this has family or friends with severe mental illness or trouble with intellectual functioning, you may want to offer some support for doctors appointments. Honestly, everyone would benefit from having another person in their appointments for support and as a second set of ears.

Anyone reading this with severe mental illness, don't be afraid to reach out for support. If you don't have a social support system, there are services out there to help. Try to find social services in your area to get some help navigating thru all the bullshit. And don't give up hope.

Always like to share this website with free evidence-based resources that I used all the time with my clients. I personally benefitted from the material as well.

I'm sure the attacks are just as annoying for you guys as they are to us, if not more. Appreciate the update.

Edit: Loving the endless scroll for the front page! I've been eagerly awaiting that. Such a small change, but such a big impact.

Appreciate your update and I'm glad to see more people donating.

I've been outspoken on my disinterest and resistance to Threads, but you and your team should not have been harrased like that..

That's wrong regardless, but you guys have clearly been working your asses off to create this space for everyone, and people need to respect that you are doing this on your own free time for the benefit of others.

I feel I've leveled heavy criticism against federating with Threads, but this is something to be addressed with open discussion, not emotional reasoning and vitriol..

I see so many users acting like your team has already announced definitively to federate with Threads and that it's implementation is immediately around the corner. That's just not true.. Instead of jumping to conclusions and throwing threats and tantrums, users should actually voice their concerns if they want them heard... That means arguing points, not threatening or insulting others...

I appreciate everything you guys have done and I'm sorry for how some in our community have acted. With that said, I still desperately hope that Threads is not federated with. But that's a topic that should continue to be fleshed out within the community in a healthy manner.

The only post visible between ads is one that's been reposted thousands of times... This perfectly captures the steaming pile of shit that is the official app (and the reddit experience in general).