Yeah, I used past tense in my comment but the US is still doing a ton of unethical shit (both in Cuba and elsewhere), a lot of which I'm sure we don't hear about.

Our history with Cuba is shameful, and it's complete hypocrisy calling them a "sponsor of terrorism" when the CIA literally sponsored terrorism there and we attempted to assassinate Castro or overthrow their government countless times. All of their economic problems are blamed on "communism" despite the massive US embargo and our continued threatening of other countries that do trade with them. Then we get opinion pieces like Opinion: Mexico shamefully joins Russia, Venezuela in backing Cuba’s dictatorship when the UN almost unanimously votes against the embargo again, like they have for 30 years now.

join-lemmy.org has a list of instances you can join. If you just want to look through a list that's a great place to browse.

If you're looking for specific recommendations I'd say lemm.ee is great in terms of moderation, they don't overmoderate and tend not to defederate from many places so users can kinda choose themselves whether or not to block an instance. Dbzer0 is similar, it's the instance with the big piracy community which .world blocked, and the admin is also great.

Both of those are in the top 10 communities in terms of size though iirc, which ideally people would avoid the biggest instances and join smaller ones to try and prevent centralization like what happened with .world communities.

Lemmy.zip is also great from what I've heard, and while it's not small, it's top 20 instead of top 10 at least.

I've always found that so stupid yeah. "Cop killing" is always painted as this ultimate evil and so much worse than killing a regular person, especially in all the copaganda shows. But theoretically the whole reason cops have so much legal leeway and can use so much force and whatnot is because they're taking on a risk by putting themselves in the line of duty (even though you're actually more likely to die as a pizza delivery driver).

I can't claim to know your exact situation or anything, but it could be possible that some of what you see as people thinking you're gross isn't really that. If you experience enough mistreatment or hate then other things that might have a different explanation can definitely feel related to it. I'm not saying that as a way to try and minimize your experiences or anything, but sometimes it can help to try and find other reasons that people act how they do. If you have a negative image of yourself then it makes sense you'd imagine any sort of negative interaction is because of that, but people are complicated and there's no saying what necessarily causes someone to do anything.

Either way, the people who would bully anyone are assholes. If anyone mistreats someone because they don't conform to their specific standards then they don't deserve to have an opinion on you. I know that it's easier said than done, but try to ignore those people. Your self worth shouldn't be based on how jerks feel.

No matter how people act or how you perceive yourself, you are still worthy of love and happiness. There will always be people who find you unattractive for a variety of reasons, just like anyone else. But there are also tons of people who will find you attractive for those same reasons and more. And like I said before, what matters the most at the end of the day isn't how others feel, it's how you do. So try to go easy on yourself and remember that one person's opinion isn't a fact.

If you want to change something about yourself to make you happy, go for it! But trying to change yourself to make jerks happy will never work, because they can always find something new to criticize.

Hey, I just want to say I'm sorry you feel like this. I know it sucks not being happy with how you look, and it's hard, but try to step back and look at yourself through someone else's eyes. You might not be a supermodel, but you know who else isn't? 99.9% of everyone else. And so what? I find plenty of people attractive who aren't models, and plenty of models are unattractive to me. And honestly that's the thing, everyone has different opinions on what is or isn't attractive. You'll always be your own worse critic, but try to seperate your personal opinions on beauty from the equation. You aren't unattractive, you just might not be your type. I remember seeing some of your older posts, and like many people said then, you actually do look good. Dysphoria and self-image problems can make that hard to accept, but don't let your brain convince you that what some jerks might have said to you elsewhere (or what you imagine people think about you) is more true or important than what people are saying to you here.

Looking at yourself you'll see every flaw, every detail of yourself that you can criticize or compare with others. But when others look at you, I promise that's not what they'll see. They'll just see you, and the happier and more confident in yourself that you are, the better you'll look to them. Being yourself and being happy about that will do miles more than anything else to improve how both you and other people see yourself.

Trying to fight things like this alone can be hard, so if you're able to do so, I'd recommend trying to speak to a therapist. They'll be much better at helping articulate things than any random comment online could. If you can't do that then reach out to the comments offering to talk. I'd always be down to, and while I can't personally offer much advice in the way of makeup or clothes or stuff like that, I'd be more than happy to just chat or help out with anything I do know about.

If nothing else though, I hope you can try and look at yourself through an outside perspective. When you see a stranger on the street you won't scrutinize them for features of their body you dislike, so why should you do that to yourself? All that will do is magnify those thoughts, so try to find the elements of yourself you are happiest with and internalize those feelings instead. They don't even need to be physical, they could be clothes, skills, personality traits, events, whatever. Try to celebrate anything and everything that makes you happy to be you.

I know the Daily Mail is a British publication so they need to be more careful about libel, but it's kinda crazy that the fucking Daily Mail is being so careful not to explicitly call him a nazi or white supremacist when he had a full on tatoo of Hitler on his chest, but so many actual generally respected papers here in the US have basically straight up called Mangione guilty. When the Daily Mail is doing a better job than you at something you should probably reflect lol.

I've said this a few places now, but I'm pretty sure everyone has situations where they believe killing someone is justified. It could be the death penalty, or removing a dictator, self defence, whatever. And everyone will have some they think are wrong that others don't. I'd obviously want to avoid it as often as possible, and in instances where there is another viable alternative I'd prefer that to be taken, but there are plenty of situations where unfortunately there is no other method. I think relying on any rigid set of rules to definitively say something is wrong or right in all contexts is flawed. Laws shouldn't be some ultimate measure of morality, and things that should generally be unacceptable can still have exceptions, because nothing exists in a vacuum and the judgement of an action can't be done without understanding that context.

If you otherwise like lemmy I'd recommend dbzer0 or lemm.ee. Both are kinda large instances which ideally would be avoided, but both of them are also very fair with moderation and don't defederate from many places, which means you can decide whether or not to block one on your own. I also have heard decent stuff about .zip, so that might be worth checking out.

It does suck how many communities ended up centralized on .world, but a lot of the news related ones that are the most susceptible to over-moderation have fairly active alternatives on other instances.

It's crazy how many articles I've seen that just casually imply or outright say he did it.

"Candidate for elective public office in the state of Missouri" could be read either as can't be a candidate on the ballot in Missouri or can't be a candidate for a state position. It depends on if it means [candidate for public office] in Missouri or candidate for [public office in Missouri].

I don't like how laws are always written very formally like that, I feel like English (or any language tbh) is able to be misinterpreted easily enough as is, and the stilted way it's used in legal speak just leads to questions and misunderstandings like this. I'd much rather they be written as plainly as is possible and in ways that attempted to remove ambiguity instead of add it, though a lot of the time that's the point I imagine lol.

With Mangione's action having the "capability to inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence," the NYPD encouraged companies to increase precautions and security for executives.

Isn't this straight up saying that Mangione is the assassin? Obviously innocent until proven guilty has always been bullshit, but where's the bare minimum "alleged" at?