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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • I think this is showing how much faith people have in regular commercial pet food. Normal pet food isnt great for your pets, look into what the ingredients actually are and their quality.

    Not stepping into the vegan drama here, just wanted to chime in here about cat food. Two of my three family cats growing up had terrible kidney issues in their elder years. It turns out that - even setting aside the grains and fillers added to kibble - dry food is bad for cats unless they drink a ton of water with it.

    Domestic cats are descended from desert wildcats that obtained most of their water content from their prey, and they inherited a low natural thirst drive because of this. Kidney issues are common if cats don’t get enough moisture in their diet, and since they instinctively hide symptoms of illness, you might not notice anything is wrong until it’s too late.

    Kibble became the norm because a) most people are used to dogs and b) it’s cheaper and way more convenient than canned food (which is a messy bacterial magnet that can’t be safely left out for more than an hour). If anyone reading this feeds their cat exclusively dry food, consider switching to at least a partially wet food diet or buying a cat fountain (the sound of flowing water entices some cats to drink more often). Watching your beloved family members suffer from kidney failure is a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone.



  • We could also have “karma” on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

    It’s strange that they removed total account karma visibility a while back but are now thinking about making votes public.

    I think a good compromise (since Lemmy already tracks that data) would have been to show the upvote/downvote ratio a user receives on their profile page, without showing their total karma. That’d help you spot toxic users without incentivising karma whoring.

    Similarly, a display of how often a user upvotes versus downvotes others would help spot bots and trolls without completely obliterating privacy like their suggestion would.

    (But ultimately none of this solves the problem of privacy on the Fediverse being one federated bad actor away from nonexistence)






  • A reminder that in Florida in 2000, Republicans were experimenting with these disenfranchisement tactics (roll purges, closing polling stations, convenient road blockages in cities, the works). They won that state* by a few hundred votes in key districts, and these dirty tactics became a mainstay for the party. And that was before the SCOTUS basically said “racism is over, these voter protection laws are unnecessary now”. Every vote counts, especially where they’ve made it difficult to do so.

    * Gore probably would have won Florida, and thus the presidency, if the SCOTUS didn’t halt the recount - in large part due to Roger Stone, one of the biggest pushers of dirty tactics. There are a small number of people who have caused a great deal of harm in this country.