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It's an interesting thing, finding a field and then watching it disappear.

I never wanted to be rich or famous. I just wanted to go skiing once a year and then head off to Europe every other summer. (Being Swiss, this was an option.)

But the reality of journalism is somewhat different. Especially over the past 30 years. I was committing journalism in college. I was still doing the same in my first three jobs. And then, well ...

I don't want another fucking career. This simply suggests that I'd chosen poorly, but you know what didn't fuck buggy-whip manufacturers over? Ford. They were separate things.

Now, we have this weird environment where "why did anyone want journalism in the first place?" is somehow the question.

As Elon would say -- and has -- let that sink in. As a society, we've been trained via the gutting of education to, well, not care about truth. This is a bad environment in which to want an independent Fourth Estate. Yet here we are.

Everything domestic has gone off the rails, and this means no job opportunities. I can't see how we rebuild this within a single generation, let alone whether we'll try.

News has never made money (as with internet firms, the audience is the money-maker for advertisers, and that has nothing to do with single-copy sales). And the more layers of editors and executives, the worse things look.

I was hoping to be in a nice house with a few trees and a nonabusive spouse by my mid-40s. It really doesn't feel like a lot to ask.

idk where else to post this. my state denied me coverage for healthcare and food share for “making too much,” and now since i can’t acquire insurance elsewhere since i simply can’t afford it, i’m going to lose medication that is currently treating a chronic, life shortening illness. i do not have $509 a month to spend on this drug. and since nobody in my state gives a shit about me i am simply going to go without and suffer the consequences of being unmedicated with my disease.

great.

means testing is immoral and fuck everyone who supports it. you are why i won’t be medicated anymore.

My wife is taking it especially hard.

we are all susceptible to manipulation tactics, lies, and propaganda. some of us may be more resilient than others, some may have quite the skill at resisting, but if you are an emotionally responsive person than you are not off the hook.

in 2025, i'm sure most Americans consider themselves immune to dangerous and bigoted messaging. "i'd never support Hitler if i lived back then," they claim. but many of them absolutely would have and they cannot see it. they are incapable of making the connection.

take what we are seeing now with how the average American is responding to the rise of modern American fascism and you can easily apply it to pre-nazi Germany. the banality of evil encompasses all walks of life.

i think to myself who would be a nazi if the Holocaust were to happen in America today?

• Joe Rogan
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Jeff Bezos
• Tim Cook
• Buzz Aldrin
• Paula Deen
• Kelsey Grammer
• Zachary Levi
• Taryn Manning
• Kanye West
• Amber Rose
• Kodak Black
• Kid Rock
• Lil Pump
• Sexyy Red

the potential for this list to all be nazis is unfathomably high. All of these people have supported Trump either vocally or by showing up to rallies or helping by visibly associating with the Trump campaign.

the amount of celebrity nazis we would have to deal with would become overwhelming and tiring. idk, it hit me that Hollywood would be filled with open fascists if it were acceptable.

today's book is the voluminous Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Our current balance is around $6000 and the average monthly cost to keep us running is $250.

If you'd like to take a closer look at our finances, then you can do it here -> https://opencollective.com/beehaw-collective

All of that being said, is there another service that the Beehaw community could provide with the extra funds?

One example could be to establish a Nonprofit Corporation (501(c)(3)) to create a legally recognized nonprofit with a clear charitable mission: education, health services, housing, etc.

this week's book is Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America

I can't believe I'm doing this twice in nine days, but my mom's financial support, while sufficient without any unusual expenses, doesn't extend to months in which life happens.

~~The current situation is this: My 5G internet payment was due Friday, and if I get all the way to disconnection, things get far more expensive.~~ Additionally, my annual prepaid phone service is due this coming Friday ... great timing when mom's payment is on the first.

Essentially, if both of these are shut off, I have no method of contacting the outside world, making me a guy in a van with no means of finding work.

I'm not on any sort of Cadillac plans ... ~~Internet is $50, and there will no doubt be some sort of late fee, but reconnection is $30.~~ My Mint Mobile 5GB plan (the lowest tier) runs $204 for the year. If I do not renew, well, there goes my number.

I'm really freaking out here. I've been offered a few contract gigs over the past few months, but they never get through to actual work, and any sort of payroll work would be garnished to hell due to longstanding debt that I'm just ignoring at this point.

A guy from the burner community has been tipping me off to studies, surveys and such, but the van is not yet cleared out enough to be driveable, though a new friend has helped me make a lot of progress, and apparently "45-year-old childfree homeless guy" is not a target demo (he's in his 20s, so having a very different experience).

I really don't like asking for charity; I'd much rather get paid for doing honest work. But, you know ... any port in a storm. If you have CashApp or Venmo and can spare anything, please DM. I'd rather not lose access to Beehaw just because of shit timing.

Busing it to a place with free Wi-Fi was an option until a few weeks ago, when all two-year passes were canceled because a few people were caught selling them on the black market.

Thanks in advance for any help y'all can provide. This is an amazing community that I'm proud of Beeing part of, and I don't want to say goodbye.

My latest contact for freelance work has gone silent, and I don't really care to keep asking for charity. My design skills are at this point irrelevant, and finding someone to pay me to write is my own problem.

But between those steps lies editing, which is still what I tell people I do, even if I haven't really done so since 2014. It's my identity.

My experience is exclusively in AP Style, but that's nothing the copyed behind me can't fix if we're meandering into Chicago or MLA, APA, what have you.

I've won national awards for my writing, so you won't get some sort of middling treatment.

this week's reading is Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

this week's reading is The Serviceberry

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/20353095

Currently Lemmy has a decent selection of communities and nearly any post gets a good traction, you easily find yourself in convos and can recognise others if you frequent enough

I don't think this would be the case for long if Lemmy got big, maybe 10% of Reddit is enough

But maybe because of how Lemmy is maintained, instances like beehaw might defederate, again allowing for smaller communities

I don't know, I really like where Lemmy is tbh, bit iffy on the .world situation, donated a bit, Lemmy is nice. Yeah. Lemmy is nice. I like Lemmy.

I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.

Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.

• Claiming to be leftists
• Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
• Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
• Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
• Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
• Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
• Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism

When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.

This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.

Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?

By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.

We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.

Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.