"I was not in my uniform, and at no point in my interaction with the staff did I identify myself as a member of the law enforcement community," Sheriff Owens said. "At no point did I indicate my position, nor did I ask the responders to do anything that they would not, had not, or have not done for anyone else who makes a business dispute call."

That's disingenuous. The 911 operator, who works for the police department, obviously knows the name of the sheriff. Any police department flags calls from police officers, including non-emergency calls. The sheriff should have known better than to waste public resources to strongarm a business when he could have simply emailed a complaint to corporate.

They're referencing what the second protester (Vaniya Agrawal) mentioned in her email:

Know that Microsoft’s human rights statement prohibits retaliation against anyone who raises a human rights-related concern: Human rights statement | Microsoft CSR

The Microsoft Global Human Rights Statement has a "Foundational principles" section that says:

Our commitment to human rights defenders: Our commitment to respecting and advancing human rights includes respect and support for the work of human rights defenders around the world. Human rights defenders are people who, individually or with others, engage in activities and advocacy that contribute to the protection of human rights and the rule of law, good governance, tolerance, and diversity and inclusion. Human rights defenders face persistent physical, social, economic, and psychological threats. Microsoft does not tolerate threats, intimidation, retaliation, physical, legal or cyber-attacks against human rights defenders. This commitment extends to all human rights defenders, including those working on issues related to Microsoft and those exercising their rights of freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, including to challenge or protest aspects of our own business.

Microsoft is clearly declining to fulfill its commitment as it is written in its statement.

.ml = Marxism-Leninism

This wasn't obvious to me because ML could also mean the country of Mali or machine learning, but based on their content and moderation patterns, it's unmistakable that the ".ml" in Lemmy instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml stands for Marxism-Leninism.

Hope that clears things up.

I know that and that's why I said .ml could stand for the country of Mali. However, the .ml in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml clearly stands for Marxism-Leninism, not Mali, the same way the .tv domain suffix often stands for television, not Tuvalu.

lemmy.ml has changed their level of transparency about their political leanings twice. Look at the history of their home page description:

April 2021 to June 2021:

The flagship instance of lemmy.

June 2021 to November 2022:

A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

November 2022 to now:

A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

Definitely not using or recommending Zorin OS after this. I don't appreciate Brave's integrated cryptocurrency bloatware or the fact that Brave was founded as a competitor to Firefox by a homophobe who was ousted from Mozilla for his anti-LGBT political contributions.

Exactly. Some of these vigilantes are using this act as a cover to conduct violence against LGBT people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_grooming_conspiracy_theory

As written in 411 BCE by Aristophanes as Lysistrata

These far-right white nationalists are so afraid of being a minority that they will breed additional idiots to reduce the amount of representation afforded to progressives and people of color.

1. Trans rights
2. Gay rights, Freedom of expression
3. Women's rights, Free love
4. Free speech, Democracy
5. Freedom of religion, Modernity
6. Literacy

The historical context is not the same. The watermelon stereotype is an anti-black racist trope from the 1800s that arose from resentment against newly emancipated former slaves. It accused black people of being "happy to do nothing but eat watermelon". In comparison, the stereotype of white girls enjoying pumpkin spice doesn't have the same negative connotation.

Kevin Rose (Digg founder) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder) just acquired Digg together, so we'll have to see how it goes. But I don't need to wait for Digg to resurrect itself when Lemmy is already right here.

Protests are effective at establishing support for progressive reforms and at restraining governments from taking unpopular actions, even if the protesters don't achieve all their goals as quickly as they would like.

See: Why protest if it doesn't make a difference?

Protests do work

This is surprising, given that we constantly see examples where protest has made a difference. We have, already in 2024, seen blockades and protests by French farmers prompt the government to offer concessions. Likewise, in India, the renewed farmers movement marching towards Delhi has already prompted an offer from the government of improved prices for crops.

Mass street protests over a child sex abuse scandal in Budapest recently led Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to introduce legislation to address the scandal. Late last year, mass protests and street blockades in Panama led to the government closing one of the world’s largest copper mines.

Academic research also shows that protest can be influential. Workers’ protest and strike action was crucial in prompting Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as part of the creation of the US welfare state. And disruptive protests have also slowed down the adoption of the austerity measures which have eroded welfare states across the high-income democracies for the past 40 years.

Colonialism was met with ongoing resistance and protest in almost every instance, including Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent civil disobedience, as well as more militant campaigns. This grew throughout the 20th century, until maintaining occupation ultimately proved unmanageable for the colonial powers.

Suggestion #1 (voting for candidates who support pro-environment legislation) results in the sweeping systemic changes that you're looking for.

Not necessarily a happy ending.

From the comments:

So did Dr. Baxter end up waiving the right of inspection repairs? A proper remedy in this case should include, at a minimum, the seller paying for any identified repairs (given that Dr. Baxter was in a poor position to negotiate due to the seller's illegal behavior) and any legal costs Dr. Baxter has incurred.

If the seller's (and, frankly, the buyer's) agents want to show they take this seriously, they should act to make sure that, one way or another, none of those costs are incurred by Dr. Baxter.

@Matt Thanks for reading and commenting. She did waive the right of inspection repairs, yes. She says it's a decision that she now regrets but at the time she was scared of the entire sale falling through.

Who's "we"? Sounds like a proportionate response to me.

Britannica is headquartered in the US (Chicago) and most Wikipedia editors are not from the US, so I wouldn't count out Wikipedia so quickly.

Same flawed logic the Russian Orthodox Church used to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The text comes from this table.

The author claims to be vegan, but also says that they will "stick to eating eggs" (which are not a vegan food) because they consider starvation a form of (non-vegan) self-cannibalism, which is absurd.