u/turtle — turtle [he/him]

Yes, definitely a good privacy and security practice. Different passwords is important too. Different email addresses as well, if possible. There are services like simplelogin and anonaddy that make the email part simple.

I agree, you have very good points. I don't particularly think that him having posted for about a month two years ago on a particular instance is any particular mark against that instance, as I think that that could have happened to many (but perhaps not all) Lemmy instances. Good point about backlash hitting eco activists too.

You mean the reporters? I wondered about that, but then realized that the guy tended to use the same online nickname on various sites. Searching the web for that nickname probably turned up a bunch of his accounts and then they could read the comments to determine if they were likely the same person. Pretty good reporting, I thought.

You're welcome! I can totally understand, that would definitely be frustrating. One other factor you may want to consider is which jurisdiction the instance runs under, since some countries do have laws restricting speech. They will sometimes state the jurisdiction in the terms and conditions of the site. Ignore the information you find on sites like FediDB about where the instance is located since often that is only showing things like that they are going through Cloudflare, etc. Good luck in choosing a new instance!

Personally, I try to stick to instances that will only defederate from others if there are major, serious issues, like illegal content and what not, and that are also not largely defederated by other instances. That way, I get to have a more complete experience of Lemmy / the threadiverse without missing out on major chunks of it. I think it's counterproductive that the majority of instances defederate major, legitimate instances, especially now that the Lemmy software allows each individual user to block entire instances if they wish to. This only serves to weaken the threadiverse as an alternative to other major discussion sites. It's even possible for instances to issue default instance blocks on new accounts if they are worried about the new user experience, removeable by the users themselves if they so wish (like lemmy.zip seems to be doing).

The main instances that I've found so far that seem to follow this "defederation only as a last resort" philosophy are the following:

• lemmy.ml (although this one is a bit risky for this purpose because there is constant lobbying on liberal instances to start blocking it, despite it being the original and reference Lemmy instance)

• lemm.ee (my main instance, appears to have the second fewest defederations of other instances)

• lemmy.zip (they don't defederate from much - third fewest out of this list - but I understand that new accounts have for instance hexbear and lemmygrad automatically blocked, which each individual user can unblock)

• lemmy.sdf.org (they defederate from the fewest instances that I'm aware of - the only defederation they currently have seems to be due to technical issues arising from a dead instance)

If you would like to keep contact with the broader range of Lemmy instances, these are the ones I would look into. You can check which instances any Lemmy site defederates from by visiting <site URL>/instances and clicking the "Blocked Instances" tab.

My spouse and I watched it last year and even voted for it. I think it was our first year watching it live? Anyway, we were getting ready to do the same this year until I saw the video I linked in the grandparent post, like the day before the event. That woke me up to the fact that it had already been fucked up the year before too, so we decided to skip it.

If you read some of the other comments here, it's more like they're the two sides of the same coin. Eugenicists want to kill poor and other disadvantaged people and antinatalists (at least going by the bomber's comments) want primarily poor people not to have kids, although they seem to try to dress it up as not wanting anyone to have kids. Who knows, this is all pretty fringe stuff.

Ah, interesting. That pushes it more toward probably not a coincidence.

That seems very minor. I wonder if it was just a coincidence. Someone pointed out in another comment here that he's still the moderator in a couple of other communities.

Relevant video: 8 Ways Eurovision Is Rigged for Israel

I didn't read it as any particular implication, but that they just found the money quotes they wanted on lemmy.world.

I linked his account on Lemmy.world in the original post. I couldn't find an active account on Reddit though, unless the LA Times reporters used the wayback machine themselves to see his old posts. I'm sure that they would be on wayback machine, but the article mentions a different web handle associated with him.

True, that could also happen, but I wonder how transferable this type of research project is. Does the research lead actually own it and can take it with him or her to a new place, or does Scripps own it? I don't know the answer.

It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.

Now consider that Scripps Research, who is developing this, is US-based and receives a lot of federal government funding, and that Trump/Musk/DOGE have been slashing and burning all kinds of federal science staffing and funding. Also consider that their main federal funding comes from HHS, which RFK Jr., notorious vaccine hater, heads.

Then weep. Progress on this may be stalled for a long time.

Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I'm sure it's not a perfect example of malfeasance like "hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let's just bury the cure", but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.

Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits