We’re in the process of switching images to a new host, as our old one is shutting down.

I got most images transferred over (we have > 150 GB of images), but they pulled the old image host a month before I was expecting it. I don’t know if (or how long) it will take to restore the old one and transfer the rest of the images.

If your profile pictures or other important images are missing, re-upload them for the time being, since I don’t know if our old host will accomodate us.

Sorry about this everyone.

I’ll do this in a few hours, just wanting to give everyone a heads up.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:

Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto

If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.

Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.

Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.

Donate

We’re now on the newest version of lemmy, 0.19.4 . Be sure to open up any bugs / issues on either https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy or https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui .

Much thanks to @ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml for helping with this upgrade.

(pic unrelated)

Be China

British, French, and other European empires invade, make your weak and cowardly monarchy into a puppet, force opium upon the entire population turning them to addicts, and becoming literal slaves to the West.

Repeated attempts by the Chinese to fight off this oppression result in hostility and brutality and massacres from the invading empires, and brutal crackdowns on the opium addled population.

British decide that they need a more prominent port city, to maintain naval presence, but more importantly to steal China’s labour and resources.

British decide that Hong Kong belongs to them now, and that they will rule over it. China protests, and manages to negotiate England into a “99 year lease” for Hong Kong, despite this awful situation being literally forced upon them at gunpoint.

China under Mao manage to fight back the west and western-allied governments, providing a liberation from the yoke of imperialism, and allowing China to have autonomy and self-determination of a nation once again.

China has literally millions of soldiers ready to march, could send them all into Hong Kong and take their city back by force at any time, the same way it was taken from them.

Instead, China fully agrees to play by the rules. It was a 99 year lease - so they let the British continue to lease it for the remainder of those 99 years.

During this century of wealth extraction from mainland China, and using Hong Kong as a British port to facilitate this has grown the wealth of Hong Kong with the trade and tariff of the stolen assets of mainland China.

Hong Kong citizens have been re-trained and re-educated in a British imperial system, and now make up a much wealthier strata than mainland Chinese, forming a middle management and heavily fictionalized sector.

99 year lease finally ends. China says, “Okay, we played by all the rules, even through they were nonsense and forced upon us at gunpoint - we played by them anyway. Now we do not wish to continue this lease, and would like our city back.”

British throw in phony last minute elections during the final moments before the lease officially ends. “BuT yOU wIlL bE rUiNInG HoNG kOnG deMoCRaCy!!”

China officially gets their city back, despite the whining and flailing and crying and complaining of the insufferable British Empire.

China realizes that Hong Kong is operating under a very different political system. Rather than bring in the mainland China political system - which they have every right to do - the same rules that apply to Beijing citizens or Chengdu citizens should apply to all Chinese, including Hong Kong.

But the Chinese government decides to be totally reasonable and install the “two systems, one country” to allow Hong Kong to keep many of their British-imposed traditions and customs.

China finally says “great, now our Chinese citizens can return to our city of Hong Kong and live there.” Mainland Chinese begin to move to live in Hong Kong.

Much wealthier Hong Kong class repulsed by this influx of much poorer, much less wealthy, filthy mainland population coming to take their jobs and bring Chinese traditions back to the Chinese city.

Chinese taxes are considerably higher on the mainland than on Hong Kong. China plans to take part of the plundered wealth and assets of rich Hong Kongers and use it to improve conditions and lives of poorest people on the mainland (remember that China is the world leader in ending poverty).

Hong Kongers see poor immigrants and higher taxes and start freaking out.

A rich multi-millionaire literally murders his girlfriend, and flees the country. Protesters come out of the woodwork en masse in Hong Kong in support of the murdering multi-millionaire!

The West sees their opportunity. Sends government specialists, agents, media crews to Hong Kong. Brings in Hong Kong pro-murderer protest leaders for training. Supplies protesters and encourages them to take the streets and escalate the situation.

Western News Media: “ChIna iS oPprESsiNg HonG koNg!!!”

China sighs, “How the fuck is anyone falling for this bullshit.”