Hogwarts Legacy? Wasn't that the game with, like, the plot that was suspiciously similar to blood libel, especially considering how similar goblins are to certain stereotypes and caricatures to begin with? The game where early access players found a horn that looked suspiciously similar to a shofar being described as some sort of annoying goblin instrument? The game where, even setting Rowling aside, several of the staff behind it had some very gross political views? The one where they named the one transfem character "Sirona Ryan" and had her voiced by a cis woman with her voice pitched-down in post to sound more masculine?

I mean, I never played Hogwarts Legacy, so that could all be wrong, but that is nevertheless what I remember people talking about... People have a right to play games even if they have problematic content, sure, but I also have a right to hear "yeah I just had to play the Blood Libel Game because it's just so nostalgic" and think "wtf"

Actual quotes from Hexbears that I got when discussing Russia with them:

"Those reactionary shitstains [the Russian government] has little to be proud of."

"Russia is extremly Reactionary [...] thats why Russia has a Real Problem with "White Supremacy" , [and] no problems with hunting down LGBTQ+ [...]"

Now I don't exactly see anybody on Hexbear presently discussing this particular bit of news about crackdowns on LGBT+, but I'll go post about this news on Hexbear and see how the people there react. I have a feeling it's going to be consistent with my previous experiences discussing Russia with Hexbears, which is also going to be the reaction that I'd expect from an instance that skews heavily LGBT+.

※The person who lived in the USSR was born in December of 1991

STOP POSTING ABOUT POLITICS. I'M TIRED OF SEEING IT. MY FRIENDS ON LEMMY SEND ME MEMES. ON KBIN IT'S FUCKIN' MEMES. I WAS ON AN INSTANCE, RIGHT, AND AAAAAAALLLL OF THE COMMUNITIES ARE JUST POLITICS STUFF. I- I SHOWED MY CHAMPION UNDERWEAR TO MY GIRLFRIEND, AND THE LOGO, I LOOKED AT IT, AND I SAID, "HEY BABE, WHEN THE COMMODITY IS FETISHIZED" [ding-ding-dings to the tune of The Internationale] I FUCKIN' LOOKED AT A TRASH CAN, I SAID, "UNDER CAPITALISM, WASTE PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN THE ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY THAT UNDERPINS THE ENTIRE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM". I LOOK AT MY PENIS, I THINK OF THE OMNIPRESENT PHALLOCENTRISM IN OUR PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY, AND I GO, "POLITICS? MORE LIKE POLY-DICKS!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

This happens sometimes for me too. You can try opening it in browser, but I'll write a transcription for our screen-reader-using friends, too.

Transcription:

tlirsgender | Nov 6, 2020

Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones "fake" is stupid because it's the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it's all fuckign carbon

spacefroggity | 45m ago

It's carbon it's pretty and it didn't involve slave labor what's not to love??? Hi I'm having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I'm right

spacefroggity | 45m ago

There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don't have the time to unpack all that

val-ritz | Nov 29, 2020

not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself "man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce

fuckyeahmineralogy | Dec 8, 2020

We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.

thegreenpea | Mar 8, 2021

another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond's 2.419 and here is the difference

and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less

rubixpsyche | Aug 6, 2021

Also it's just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em

dadzathechaosgod | 46m ago

for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we're making gemstones out of it and suddenly "it doesn't count" anymore

Anyone looking to remember the difference: "id est" (that is) vs "exemplī grātiā" (for the sake of an example). You use the first to clarify meaning, and the second to begin a non-exhaustive list of examples.

What matters is ultimately if you can convey your ideas, so using the wrong term is fine when people can still figure out what you meant. But it's still a good idea to learn the difference, because there will be times when mixing up "i.e." and "e.g." will create ambiguity or misunderstanding.

The best idea is maybe to use "for example" or "that is to say". The former could be abbreviated to "f.ex." like in Norwegian, and the latter could be abbreviated "t.i.t.s."

...Alright, on second thought maybe don't abbreviate that one.

In any case, the Wikipedia Manual of Style recommends avoiding use of "e.g." and "i.e." in regular running text altogether, saying that these abbreviations are better fit for parentheticals, quotations, citations, tables, and lists. This is because there is no word or character limit on Wikipedia, nor is there on Tumblr, and so the language is more clear when abbreviations are avoided. Even when someone is using "i.e." and "e.g." in the prescribed way, that doesn't guarantee that the reader knows the distinction.

When they say "liberals" I personally understand it as referring to liberalism in the textbook economic sense, i.e. support for private property, market economies, Age of Enlightenment ideals of personal liberty, and what could be called "bourgeois" democracy. You may be somewhat familiar with the economic definition of "liberal" from the term "neoliberal", which refers to the types of market liberalization associated with Reagan and Thatcher.

So basically the confusion comes because in the popular discourse of the United States, political terms are often used with completely different meanings from their more international/proper definitions. This is made worse by the fact that leftists use a number of words, such as "anarchy" and "dictatorship", in completely different ways than most of the rest of the world.

The issue of contradictory definitions is particularly problematic for me as a Norwegian-American leftist, because I might say "I'm a republican. I'd never vote for Liberals or Democrats in my life. I strongly oppose liberal ideology." one moment, and then the next I might say, "Oh, no, I'm absolutely a liberal! I hate Republicans like nothing else and only vote Democrat.", with these statements not being contradictory in the slightest because these words are all autoantonyms with meanings depending on who exactly you're speaking to. And don't even get me started on the American versus Norwegian Overton windows!

Edit: I guess you could say these are examples of what the What Is Politics? podcast refers to as political "worbs". Great podcast IMO.

I will summarize my views that I left on the first thread:

• While I do not agree with mandatory pronoun marking, or with needing to have one's neopronouns approved, the number of Hexbear users with neopronouns in their names indicates that the instance is extremely pro-trans and inclusive of all non-binary identities.
• Ada has very poorly handled the response to her "people of NATO" statement in a way that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the administration of Blåhaj Lemmy. I have noticed that a comment left by a Hexbear user saying "death to Nazis and transphobes" is gone now as well, which if this was an act of a Blåhaj Lemmy administrator, further reflects poorly on Blåhaj Lemmy's administration.
• For as much as I've enjoyed some of Hexbear's communities, such as !transenby_liberation@hexbear.net, Hexbear users have often been weird, annoying, or wrong as well. However, I do not think that being weird, annoying, and wrong is cause for defederation, and would prefer that defederation be reserved for illegal content and neo-Nazis, lest we create a culture that is hegemonic in its beliefs and values.
• The ideal solution is for individual users to be able to block Hexbear, but this appears to only be possible using uBlock Origin and half-possible with one of the mobile clients for Lemmy. Until this becomes a feature of Lemmy itself, I believe that Hexbear should be defederated if this is the will of a majority of Blåhaj Lemmy users.

I will also state that I am biased in my views due to the fact that I am an anarchist who doesn't use the word "tankie", I am very strongly opposed to respectability/civility politics, and I am very careful about SIFTing every bit of news that appears on my feed. For these reasons, my experiences with Hexbear and its users will be markedly different from those with differing views or social media practices, a number of whom report experiencing "harassment, brigading, disinformation, and bad faith arguments". I am sure that these people are being honest, but I can only speak from my own experience.

Lastly, I would like to note that I read that a number of Hexbear users were opposed to federation to begin with, due to the potential disruption this could be for the site's culture, and as Hexbear's culture (e.g. emojis, which improperly scale on other instances) are taken to other sites. It is therefore my conjecture that some fraction of Hexbear users may be intentionally going against their admins' words and being annoying on other instances specifically in order to get Hexbear defederated. I do not fully understand Hexbear's culture or site politics, so I would prefer to hear from Hexbear users on this matter: since this thread is local-only, Hexbear users may wish to send me a DM explaining the controversy on their site regarding federation, and if my conjecture has any merit.

I may edit this comment with other thoughts as they come to me.

Edit: I received this DM from a Hexbear user regarding federation politics on the site. I am sharing this with his permission. I will create an audio version upon request.

Relevant links in the DM:

• federation discussion completed
• federation nomination post
• current federation

@JohnBrownsBussy2@hexbear.net also sent me a message reading, "[...] Also, it looks like our admins have posted new rules concerning federated conduct. Some people are being grouchy about it, but I do think moderation is going to improve: https://hexbear.net/post/352119?scrollToComments=false"

Honestly, I really don't see how saying you go by Spivak pronouns when you actually prefer he/him even counts as trolling...? It's like, "Oh wow look at these dingdongs actually referring to me with the word that I told them to refer to me with, I'm such a le epic troll"

If the Hexbears were just a little bit more anthro, suddenly the American pig-dogs building military bases in my country would sound kinda poggers ngl

RDJ_pointing_at_self: What counts as politics is a political question in itself, with a subjective answer melded by the hegemon. Absolutely everything can be connected to politics in some way.

I'd say that queer liberation, women's liberation, and men's liberation are all interlocked: you can't have one without the rest, because these are all contradictions of the same system.