But you can be mad and still love someone.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused establishment Democrats of treating her “like shit” as progressive activists urged her to run for president in 2028.

In a 100-minute long video posted on Instagram, the 37-year-old congresswoman from New York said that the party had a “remarkable opportunity” to pass left-wing policies after the midterm elections. She also accused the party’s leadership of starving funds from left-wing candidates during the campaign.

“There’s this huge conversation about candidates that were under invested in,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She cited Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who came within 240,000 votes of flipping Florida from red to blue, but ultimately lost to the Republican candidate Ashley Moody.

“If Angie Nixon had just had a little bit of that support, that outcome could have changed. But that money has to come from somewhere and it comes from these people,” Ocasio-Cortez said in reference to the party’s Senate leadership.

Reflecting on the period after she was first elected to Congress in 2018 at the age of 29, Ocasio-Cortez accused senior Democrats of being “horrifically cruel” to her. “I mean I was treated like shit,” she said. “Everybody took a swing at me.”

The Bronx congresswoman is seen as the likeliest progressive candidate to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.

Broke my Leatherman today.

I won a raffle in 2008 I think.

The first prize was a gift card which I used to buy the most expensive leatherman that was available in the store at the time.

I have used it so much and still somehow taken way too good care of it. Never abused the blades. I bet the tool I have used the most have been the pliers and the screwdriver.

The leather holster that I used occasionally looks still almost like new.

Cutting hot dog buns for kids when out and about, fixing my bike…

F for respect 🫡

Today has been especially bad, and was inspired sadly by about 6 straight posts of only negativity here.

I want to say that being negative towards something is not a bad thing, it's very valid to critique things. However, a community becomes toxic when the majority of it's content is negative.

Gaming is an obvious one. It's very obvious all around the internet that gaming communities are negative generally, and Lemmy certainly takes the cake. In the case of GTA 6 coming out this month we can (and have) had multiple stories about Rockstar's unethical practices, the pricing, ownership, and to be clear I agree with all of it. However, there is also valid positive things that people want to discuss but are immediately downvoted to hell, or have comments brigaded on with responses like "Don't you know about X, Y, or Z??"

I've been in comment threads where people have told me that they are afraid to post here because of the responses they might get. Now this is absolutely true everywhere, and we will often respond "You just have to tune them out" but the scales are shifting to the majority of responses are negative.

New users will not simply block/tune out the majority of commenters. New users will see that a community is toxic and turn around and go back to where they felt it was better.

This is the root of my frustration - that Lemmy is no longer a geeky place where people can talk about Star Trek and Linux - but that it's becoming a toxic place where if you aren't talking about why Star Trek and Linux are the only good things on the planet that it should be called out over and over.

Worse is that the scales a tipping to simply being "If it is popular, it is not good" which is a huge red flag for toxic community. To be clear it does not mean that if something is popular that it must be good, but instead we are falling for the same trap that is on corporate social media.

Anger and toxicity are fun, they are dopamine hits. So when there's a huge post about <> and everyone dogpiles, everyone has that dopamine hit and it spreads, and it makes people want to dogpile more. Unfortunately I think this has left individual posts, and this is now driving a large part of our comment sections, that people feel included when they are all dogpiling on a popular thing. It's addictive.

It's incessant and exhausting being here some days.

Some examples to think on:

• Harry Potter fans (who have already said they will not buy anything from Rowling again and are aware) who still want to enjoy the books/movies they already own, but are shouted down and downvoted
• Sports fans posting about football, to have jokes about "sportsball" made to them.
  • (Is that really any different from nerds being made fun of by jocks in highschool, only this is in reverse and worse yet, we're supposedly more mature now?)
• Freaking pumpkin spice. The world is on fire and people get a tiny bit of joy out of cinnamon and allspice, can we let them just enjoy that?!

I think that sums it all up, I wish people could just enjoy things here without having the majority of comments be about why they shouldn't enjoy it. I think this attitude has already lost of a good chunk of users who could be adding to the fediverse, instead now back on corporate social media.

It's anecdotal but I've shown the fediverse to 3 other people who are trekkie nerds like me. They gave up in less than a week not because the fediverse was complicated, but because they felt like they weren't wanted here.

Be the positive change, be encouraging. Don't belittle for someone for liking a popular thing if you like something more obscure, instead post about obscure thing and why you like it and share it! Inform users of things like Rowlings insane shit-headery, but don't demean them for still enjoying the books. If you don't like sports that's cool, but let them cheer on their team.

Thanks for listening. I'm going to have a pumpkin spice latte now.

Washington (United States) (AFP) – A Republican lawmaker moved Monday to impeach US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran, setting up a potentially explosive vote in Congress days after President Donald Trump's party suffered a crushing midterm defeat.

Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment accusing Hegseth of illegally waging war without congressional authorization and abusing his powers as Pentagon chief.

The Republican-controlled House could vote as early as Wednesday, with some lawmakers from Trump's party signaling they might join Democrats in backing the charges.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to Hegseth's defense Monday while visiting Paris.

"I think it's unfair. Look, I think Pete's done a good job, I really do," Rubio told reporters, praising his colleague as hardworking and "incredibly smart."

Rubio credited Hegseth with helping build counter-cartel partnerships in the Americas, severely weakening Iran's military and overseeing the operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Impeachment would be a humiliating blow for the Trump administration, but would not automatically remove Hegseth. Conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate -- a much higher hurdle, even after Democrats take control in January.

The move has gathered momentum since Tuesday's midterms, when Democrats swept both chambers amid voter anger over the Iran war and soaring fuel prices.

Republicans retain control until the new Congress takes office on January 3, but their defeat has fueled recriminations. Defeated Republicans could skip votes, making impeachment easier to pass.

...

As always, stay tuned here on !comicstrips@lemmy.world for a slow trickle out of Jucika comics, but if you want to find more, here’s a good post with a large collection that /u/JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social posted last year: https://piefed.social/post/1258520

**Also, check out some Jucika fan art! https://piefed.social/c/eurographicnovels/p/2128207/the-best-of-jucika-fan-art-12-pieces-with-two-videos

**You can find more Jucika content in c/graphicnovels by using this search

Across the coalition, some supporters who once viewed Trump as MAGA’s greatest asset are beginning to question whether he’s become its biggest liability.

The midterm losses amounted to more than a repudiation of Trump. They were a referendum on the political and cultural movement he built. A defining force in American politics that began as a campaign slogan during Trump’s 2016 presidential run now faces a potentially existential reckoning after voters disillusioned with soaring fuel prices, the Iran war and Washington corruption delivered Democrats decisive congressional majorities.

😬
That's like...a normal thing, right? Right?? Cause you can see if you made a mistake, if you actually said what you wanted to say and not some gibberish instead...right?? I'm normal, aren't I???

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1525937/reddit-is-turning-user-conversations-into-ai-powered-product-reviews