Lemmy.ca

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33200850

Alt video if above not accessible: https://youtu.be/uZbsAQpUGhk

From VA Marine Mammal Rescue Society via this RSS feed

So I have a Reddit account still because I frequently come across posts that I want to say stuff in, and my local community c/Saskatchewan has not really embraced the boycott US as much as I wish it had but today I was talking with my grandmother when a notification popped up on my screen saying Reddit wanted my eyes on their ads, it was actually someone replying to a comment but what is the difference? I thought about it and decided that it was time for me to turn off Reddit notifications, and man did it feel good doing it!

Any leader serious about renewal should be raising hell and fighting for proportional representation.

OG Source

Catholic priests in Washington cannot be required to report child abuse or neglect they learn of in confession, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/33194000

Of course the implications are deeper than this. No kind of abuse of man, woman, or minor by any member of any religion, sect, or denomination will be mandated reportable.

What are your thoughts on this?

Multiple contractors allege they haven’t been paid for millions of dollars worth of work

If you lived in a neighbourhood where people were dying from poisoned drugs, and over 2,000 were homeless, what would you say the solution is? At the Carnegie Housing Project we asked residents at various Downtown Eastside groups like the Aboriginal Front Door Society, Carnegie Community Centre, Our Streets and the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society.

They said things like: housing people can afford, places to be, safer drugs, more garbage cans on the streets, jobs and job training, more greenery, more washrooms, access to detox and treatment — not a wait-list — and keeping essential service organizations funded. Aboriginal Front Door’s funding has not been renewed and is set to expire in September, bringing an end to this well-loved Downtown Eastside service that stores belongings for hundreds of homeless people, as well as providing food, rest, cultural programs, advocacy and dozens of emergency shelter beds.

No one said the Downtown Eastside, or DTES, needs 32-storey market-rental housing towers with only a tiny percentage affordable to low-income residents. But that’s what the city is about to propose in a report to council this fall.

When it comes to Canada's often tense debate around gun laws, most Canadians likely will not have heard of an RCMP database called the Firearms Reference Table, or FRT.

The FRT is a database used by the RCMP to help classify firearms. That classification determines whether a gun is non-restricted, restricted or prohibited.

Technically, the FRT isn't a legal instrument, but instead just an internal RCMP tool based on definitions set out in the Criminal Code and Firearms Act. But in practice?

"It's both the law and not the law," said A.J. Somerset, the author of Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun.

Clutching a teddy bear and trembling through her story in the witness box, a female former Afghan interpreter who worked for Canada in Afghanistan detailed the harrowing sexual abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of a Canadian government employee.

For four days this week, the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, recounted to an Ottawa courtroom how the alleged abuse started when she was 17, shortly after moving to Canada in October 2011, and went on until 2013.

"He called me his sex toy, a whore and a bitch," the woman said of her alleged attacker, whose family she was living with during some of the alleged abuse.

Isolated, thousands of miles away from her family in Kandahar, she said she couldn't draw on support from her mother, father, siblings or friends. Coming from an honour culture, she said, meant that if word of the alleged abuse reached her father there would be dire consequences.

Whether you are pitching a market expansion, proposing a strategic acquisition, or advocating for a major technology investment, you often face objections. The stakeholders might say the timing is wrong, the risk is too high, or the resources should be allocated elsewhere. Whenever you must bring someone over to your point of view, you are likely to get pushback and objections. Learning to deal with objections is a key negotiation skill and one that every business owner or executive must master.

While objections might raise different concerns, they generally take one of three forms:

“Yes, but…,” such as “Yes, but we already have a strategy that works fine.” 
“What if… ?” as in “What if we adopt this strategy and it doesn’t work?”  
“Why should we… ?” For example, “Why should we make this change now, just as people are recovering from recent layoffs?” “Why should we restructure our leadership reporting now, just as we’re stabilizing after the recent acquisition?” 

To bring your reader or listener over to your side, you must be prepared to deal with these objections—and any others that come your way.
Put yourself in the other person’s position

Imagine you were opposing your own proposal. What objections would you have? Consider what you know about your audience: What are their likely concerns? What are their questions? What form are their objections likely to take? The following responses that can help.

1. Acknowledge the person’s objection

You might say, “I hear that you’re concerned about the regulatory requirements of this proposal and how this might affect our relationship with investors.” Then, restate the objection to be sure you truly grasp their meaning.

You could say, “Let me be sure I understand. You’re saying that moving forward with this proposal could trigger regulatory scrutiny that might complicate our other priorities and potentially concern our key investors. Is that correct?” or “If I understand you, you’re worried this could create compliance risks that outweigh the strategic benefits. Did I get that right?”

If the prospect says no, ask for clarification before moving on. This step reassures the other person that you are genuinely listening and that you respect their perspective.

2. Respond to the objections thoughtfully

Respond effectively by demonstrating the benefits of your proposal and describing the costs of not acting. For example, in the board of directors’ case, you could point out that your current strategy does not consider the impact of artificial intelligence on your operations, while the proposed strategy seamlessly integrates AI into the organization. You might also point out that other organizations have successfully implemented similar strategies.

Your description of costs and benefits should focus more on the value of your proposal than the cost. When you clearly convey value, cost becomes less significant.

3. Collaborate to find a solution that feels manageable and worthwhile for everyone

Rather than pushing your position, invite others to share their ideas for addressing the issue. Work together toward an approach that satisfies both sides.

For example, you might establish a phased implementation with designated oversight checkpoints or form a steering committee to oversee the rollout. You could provide data-backed risk assessments, detail contingency plans, and show how the proposal aligns with long-term vision and goals.

For organizational changes, you can offer to hold company-wide meetings where you explain how the prospective change aligns with the company vision, enabling everyone to voice their concerns. Whatever solution you arrive at should feel like a win-win. You should feel heard, and the other party should become an active collaborator in solving the problem.

When you follow these three steps—acknowledge, respond, and collaborate—you will find it easier to respond empathetically and confidently to even the thorniest objections, especially in times when resources are tight, and decisions carry more weight. Please try this method and let me know how it works for you. You can reach me at [email protected] if you’d like to share any examples or have questions.

seasoned with fish sauce and garlic salt

(This is perfectly legal where I live if that matters)

I'm really curious because I used to have a lot of misconceptions about mushrooms of the psilocybe variety and I'm wondering how fly agaric would compare. From what I've heard it's more dissociative and less euphoric and the visuals reflect that too but I'd like to hear some first hand knowledge. I'll probably try some fly agaric tea (that way it's not neurotoxic) at some point, only a small amount to get to know it. I just think it's a fascinating species in general and basically I want to experience some of what it has to offer. But if I do I'd like a rough idea of what to expect.

Okay so here's what happened.

There is a mod of some AI-generated image forums who has been slinging out bans for "anti-AI trolling" to people who have never participated in their community, apparently more or less at random. Full disclosure, I am one of those people, and I'm confident I have never done any anti-AI trolling.

Apparently the justification for this is that other people are being aggressively hateful to this mod, coming in and being incredibly abusive, transphobic, insulting her for alleged alcoholism and making fake pictures of her and generally just being horrible. Conveniently, one of these people showed up in the thread where we were talking about it, on cue, and started slinging around horribleness which provided a convenient cover for people to say "And THAT's why we have to be really strict with the bans!" type of things. We never really got to the bottom of what the connection was between that and the random bans to other people who were longstanding accounts that didn't seem to be doing any of those things.

Anyway, now another abusive alt of the (now obviously bannned) abusive alt that originally stirred up trouble has made a pitch-perfect effort to inflame divisions and create a balkanization between the "pro AI" people, centered around dbzer0 (edit: ~~and blahaj~~), and "anti AI" people, centered around everywhere else.

This is two identical posts, made to two separate communities which are guaranteed to have totally opposite takes on it based on their different levels of information about the issue, which will then lead everyone to assume that the other community is just being horrible about it on purpose when they draw different conclusions:

(Edit: The troll has now been banned, so I can't link to their posts anymore. Just imagine this post, except made by one of the trolls who are featured in the comments of that post, you can dig in the modlog or in spoiler text of some other comments to see some of what they were saying. Anyway, the troll posted the exact same complaint about being "unfairly" banned both to lemmy.world, where they got tons of sympathy and upvotes, and to dbzer0, where people who were aware of what they were up to gave them derision and downvotes.)

Like I said, if the goal is to create division and heated argument between two opposing "camps," this is pretty much as perfect as you can get it. I expect it to work, at least to a certain amount, to get people embittered towards one another and arguing about the issue impassioned that the other side is wrong and stupid.

I can't find the link right now, but there was someone on reddit who claimed that they used to do this professionally (trying to disrupt online communities so that organized shilling could succeed better there, because the previous coherence that they had had had been replaced by confusion and bickering, and then they could insert bullshit without it being pushed back on as strongly.) It's fascinating. What they described isn't exactly like this, but it definitely sort of rings similar to me. Just to throw that out there.

Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.

Edit: Fun with grammar

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kh8GupXrNmY