Hi, I’m B.

  • 10 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: February 16th, 2021

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  • I don’t think housing can “solve” drug addiction. However, there are factors that have been shown to contribute to addiction from homelessness. Less stability, regular trauma, mental health, etc causes all of these things to interact and exasperate each other.

    The frustrating part is that voters keep telling the city, county, and state to invest in all of these areas. Measure 110 was supposed to create more space to have drug addiction treated, and there was no follow through. Now, further existing infrastructure is closing with no replacement. Similarly with housing, voters overwhelmingly keep calling for housing solutions, but any progress turns into new vendor procurement, deals with developers that don’t follow through, and half baked plans that don’t materialize.

    Also, I think it’s important to remember that a lot of drug addiction happens amongst the housed. We just don’t see it. But as our coworker who is struggling falls apart, loses their job, and times get tough the more likely they will be the one moving from pain pills at home to fentanyl in the streets.

    I’m glad some of the electeds are at least acting like they are as frustrated as I am. I hope they actually do something about it. (thought the need for national reform on both housing and drug addiction also can’t be ignored).











  • I never understood this logic.

    I’ve been on Mastodon since 2016 and never really got into Twitter. I just don’t understand why the “algorithm” matters. Who cares if people who don’t follow you see your post? I want my followers to see my posts, and then favorites allow me to know that my followers liked what I posted. It’s a nice dopamine boost and helps me feel closer to my community.

    A lot of posts I make unboostable as well (followers only). “Promotion” doesn’t really factor much into my use of Mastodon so much as being “social”.




  • What’s happening with PSR is so frustrating. I had a coworker ask me the other day what he should do to get help for an unhoused guy who seemed to be in distress but not need an ambulance. The police weren’t really the right answer (the unhoused guy wasn’t doing anything), but my coworker wanted someone to go talk to him. PSR was the only answer we could find for him to call.

    Regardless of people’s positions on funding the police, regardless on their complaints on addressing the symptoms of poverty, I can’t understand why anyone would not want a group of people to be on call to help with these types of situations. Let the police tend to other priorities.

    PSR is a really popular program in Portland. Most people want it expanded. A single city councilor leading it to failure makes me angry.




  • It’s “arch based”. How are the repos setup? What packages are pinned? What bloatware is added?

    Sure I can write a script to migrate everything to how I want it, but at a point it becomes easier (and cleaner) to do a custom install script that will build it up how I want it.






  • I definitely wouldn’t feel safe on an instance that tolerates fascists and/or racists.

    Personally, I don’t use the label “tankie” to describe people. I just think it’s outdated and doesn’t really relay where I might have disagreements with authoritarian leftists and staunch nation state supporters. Where I don’t feel welcome on some other lemmy instances has more to do with those authoritarian leftists and staunch nation state supporters not making enough room for a nuanced discussion about the balance and tension of individual autonomy and collective action (where does the liberation/rights of the individual end and the state/commune begin?). I don’t really feel like I would be silenced here for exploring that nuance though.


  • I really like this project. I think there are some areas for improvement in community building tools and moderation, but the software isn’t even at 1.0 yet. So, that makes sense. It will be interesting to see how the structure of the software influences community building. How will the up vote aggregation affect what is seen? How will that differ between instances?

    As far as the politics of this instance. I’ve found it fine as an anarchist. As lemmy spreads and there are more instances I might find a more fitting home, but I feel welcome here in all my identities for now. There are certainly other lemmy instances I don’t feel welcome at so :woman shrugging: .