Currently: @BertramDitore@lemmy.zip

Formerly: @BertramDitore@lemm.ee

Formerly: @BertramDitore@lemmy.world

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • The sheer number of unacceptably loud neighbors I’ve had above and adjacent to me makes me wish this wasn’t true, but it is. If I can hear you peeing, that means you can hear me peeing. So of course you’re keeping me up at night with your booming subwoofer and random 1am furniture rearranging. People are assholes.

    I’ve come to believe it’s not always intentional, but that doesn’t make it any better, it just shows a distinct lack of empathy and disregard for other people around you. I fucking hate living in apartments…

    Oh, and if you live in an upstairs apartment with hard floors, and keep your shoes on or walk around in heels all day, stop doing that. Your downstairs neighbors definitely hate your guts.


  • Composers write the music, musicians play the music, and conductors wave around a stick to keep the musicians playing the composition at the right volume and tempo, and to make sure the different sections of the orchestra (the different groups of instruments) come in and out at the right times.

    Try coordinating all that without a conductor and it’d be a crazy cacophonous mess…

    Fun fact, if you’ve ever watched a string quartet performance, the first violinist basically conducts the other three with their body and bow while playing. Most people have some natural tempo, but keeping multiple people on track usually requires visual queues and well-timed breathing.






  • People, especially young people who are still learning what it means to be a person living in a society, deserve a second chance, and sometimes a third. This whole thing is disgusting, and as the grandchild of holocaust survivors I really struggle to not let these displays of bigotry completely ruin me, but your idea is also pretty upsetting.

    People can and do change their beliefs, especially at the age these offenders are. I thought some pretty nasty things in high school that make me look back in shame. But I’m not that person anymore. I grew up, like most humans do. These students deserve to be punished, but that punishment needs to be serious education about why what they did was so awful. Putting them on a blacklist doesn’t help anyone, but it would help their hatred fester.




  • Of course we need mass protest, it’s critical for building solidarity and sending messages to those in currently power, but by itself it doesn’t solve the problems. Sites like the one mentioned in the article are kind of a bandaid, sure, but when real peoples’ lives are on the line, and a bandaid donated by the community could save their life, why would you dismiss it out of hand like that? Seems pretty crass to me. Bigger systemic solutions are way better, obviously, but when the current power structure is incapable of providing those solutions, local communities need to come up with their own.

    An effective political movement needs protest to expose the problems and bring people on board, and then the movement needs to be get involved in local and national politics by running for office or working to elect people who share the values of those protesting, to convert that solidarity into political power. More than 7 million people turned out to protest last time. What, specifically, would be different about your full massive protest? How would you organize it differently to be more effective than the no kings protests? And would your new mass protest solve the practical problems the orgs in the article are working to solve on the ground right now?




  • That’s a totally legit question, and the host followed up with that same rebuttal during the interview. I won’t get his exact wording right, but his answer was something to the effect of him still being fucked up when he went back as a contractor, but thinking that seeing things from the other side might be better (pretty sure he worked in diplomatic security as a contractor). But it turned out to be worse, and seeing it from that side ended up being the thing that convinced him how pointless it all was. He also said it was the only thing he was ever good at, so he didn’t feel like he had any other options. Makes sense to me even if it’s not something I would ever do.



  • The democratic establishment has labeled him a communist one day, a Nazi the next day and an antifascist another day. You can’t be an antifascist and a Nazi at the same time.

    I listened to the entire Pod Save interview with him, and I’m convinced he’s a solid dude who made some bad decisions when he was younger. He owns up to absolutely everything, and says he has learned from it. He sounded completely genuine to me.

    His background is really important and honestly explains all of this controversy away. He was in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan for multiple tours, and he talks an about how much that fucked him up. He struggled for a long time and shitposting was one of his outlets. Who among us hasn’t regretted something we’ve posted? Owning up to and learning from it is the key.

    If we want to stop electing vanilla spineless establishment candidates, the alternative is electing normal people who haven’t spent their lives hiding themselves from public view to maintain a “clean” persona. Nobody is perfect, everybody has made mistakes, and to me the strength of a candidate comes through most clearly when they take responsibility and demonstrate how their current self has evolved from their younger selves.

    He seems like an awesome candidate to me.


  • I feel this. A few weeks ago I was having problems with the headset I normally use for meetings, so I had to dial into the call on my phone while still watching the screenshare on my computer. When the meeting was over, I forgot I was still connected to the audio call on my phone, and I made a huge loud sigh followed by “ugggghhhh fuck this shit.” Everyone heard me and cracked up. I passed it off as me cursing out a different technical issue, but the people that knew, knew.



  • Just a reminder that JD has three kids (actual kids, not 35 year olds) with his wife, who is a woman of color. If he won’t defend them against blatant racism, do his supporters actually think he gives a fuck about them?

    Also, a good parent would take the opportunity to teach their children why what they said is wrong, not just tell them how to avoid responsibility:

    Vance said he would tell his three kids—“especially my boys”—“don’t put things on the internet. Be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”

    Our Vice President is a huge piece of shit.