This. So much this. I don’t know why it’s so tolerated so widely here, and I hate that it’s becoming normalized. You nailed it: normal people do not behave or talk like that.

People abusing rules that go unenforced

Can say that at least some of that is due to a lot of communities getting created during the initial 2023 Rexodous, abandoned shortly after, and picked up later by new mods. They often don’t change the community sidebar info. Suggestion there is to reach out to the mods (polite DM or even a meta post in the community) asking that the specific rule be enforced or removed.

To a lesser but still important degree, there’s nuances to the interpretation of every rule. As an example, I’ve removed many posts in this community that have the exact same title as this post. The difference is those were not-at-all thinly veiled rants about getting modded or banned from another community/instance (rule 5) where this one is describing specific aspects of the platform.

mods removing posts/banning users only when they take offense

Mods are people, people are fallible. Beats an overaggressive modbot, though. Also keep in mind mods put up with a lot of shit you don’t see (abusive DMs, persistent trolls, absurd conspiracy theories and rumor mongering over in YPTB, rules lawyers who come within one Planck unit of the spirit of every rule just because they can, etc). We also don’t get paid, and it’s a neverending job where you’re severely outnumbered and outgunned. Often, if you sincerely apologize and express regret they’ll reconsider. You’d be surprised how far a genuine apology will get you. And I don’t mean some phony-baloney “sorry I said the quiet part out loud” apology but actually realizing you fucked up and owning it.

users (and even mods) fighting each other over instances like rival gangs

I’m going to assume this is related to the recent LW defed announcement, and I’m not touching that with a 10 foot pole other than say “about time”.

communities propped up by single users

That’s something you can help with. Unless it’s a mods only community, which I don’t think is what you’re referring to, then you can absolutely tag in and contribute. I’m guilty of lurking, especially lately as I’ve been super busy with work, but used to try to post content to random communities to help grow them.

There are some good faith users of course, but it seems the vast majority just want to be in a safe space echo chamber and talk shit about each other.

Honestly, just try to notice which users those are and block them. Seriously, don’t be afraid. Blocks are free and cut out so much of the immature bullshit around here. The comment sections on news/politics articles here (from my perspective) has gone from a raging dumpster fire of echo chamber circle jerking to a ghost town because I’ve just blocked so many people who do nothing but comment low effort knee-jerk reactionary garbage. The plus side is the actual insightful comments really stand out that way.

The point is, to a large degree, the experience here is what you make of it. Don’t be afraid to curate your experience, and don’t give into FOMO just because you’ve blocked a lot of communities, users, and instances

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I stand by what I originally said. It wasn’t inflammatory, but don’t have enough fucks to give to deal with the inevitable replies.

NPC: (Says literally anything)

Dragonborn: What did you just say to me?!

[Quicksaving…]

Bonus panel based on my own life: Guy gets home, unloads all the groceries that weren’t on the list, realizes he forgot to buy bread and milk.

That’s basically what goes through my head when someone compliments me on my punctuality.

You do realize who would appoint his replacement, right??

The only Tony Todd episode I occasionally skip is “The Visitor” but not because it’s bad. Just “too soon” from a losing my own father perspective.

Although when I sold mine, we had people literally break our counter during a viewing

I’m assuming your state based on the dubvee lol

lol, yeah.

I went through inspection and appraisal 5 years ago when I refinanced, so that’s all fine. But I would lose my insanely good mortgage (15 year at 2.2% APR) and have to start again with whatever current rates are though I could likely put down a very large down payment.

I wasn’t seriously considering the offer so much as wondering how legit it was in preparation to sit down and think about thinking about considering the offer lol. But the replies here have cleared up how predatory these offers are, so, yeah, it’s going in the trash with the rest of the similar offers.

Nothing wrong with a realtor, but I’d have to have somewhere to move to while it’s on the market which could be any length of time. I only skimmed the offer, but it mentioned something about transition period for moving, etc.

I was mostly hoping this would let me short-circuit the usual process of selling and moving, letting me get the money for it, and find somewhere temporary while I look for something permanent.

Other than just wanting out of this awful state, I really don’t want to move/sell. I’d worry about finding another job later as I work remotely now but am expected to go in on occasionally so couldn’t work from another state for too long.

But as the replies have made clear, this entire industry is more of a scam than I assumed it already was, so I’m just gonna keep buying lotto tickets and hoping for the best.

That makes sense, and is most likely what the offer is. House isn’t a slum, and I’m not facing foreclosure, so I guess they think they can make a profit on it.

I wasn’t seriously considering it, but I was at least looking into it because, yeah, I want out of here.

I’d have to look, but I’m going with ignorance of its toxicity like with other things such as radium being used frivolously .

We painted our kids’ rooms with it, painted pencils yellow with it, used it for water lines, put it in gasoline where we then breathed the leaded fumes for decades, and more.

As for finally getting around to replacing lead water lines, well, infrastructure isn’t sexy and no one wants to pay for it.

The toxic material/element lead (Pb). A lot of old water mains and service lines were made out of lead or had lead in them which leaches into the drinking water.

I don’t really understand what’s going on in the above picture, but maybe they’re changing old pipes for new ones?

Possibly replacing old, lead pipes. They’re doing a lot of that in my area because of federal funding from a couple years ago.

Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments over birthright citizenship went very poorly for Donald Trump.

The phrase “went very poorly for Donald Trump” can pretty much universally be translated as “Went well for literally everyone else”.

The default UI makes it clunky, but I think you can go to you profile settings (https://lemmy.world/settings) and on the “Blocks” tab search for the community and add it to your blocks.

Ah, nice. I recommend that one to OP then since it’s 1st party and not an alpha version haha.

Not sure if sh.itjust.works offers Tesseract as a UI option, but you can direct ban/unban users and bulk-mod comments among other improvements to mod tooling and report actions.

If not, then I’d normally point you to the unlocked hosted instance (https://tesseract.dubvee.org/) but the VPS provider it uses is having issues right now, and my 3 hour old ticket has not yet been acknowledged.

Edit: Oh, they answered my ticket and I was able to start it back up, so the hosted instance should be working if you’d want to try it.

Bombadil was referred to as “The Hermit” before they revealed his identity when GrandElf (aka Gandalf née The Stranger) crosses paths with him.