I think this might fall under “cruel and unusual punishment” for his cellmate. Imagine having to live in a tiny room with this blowhard.

What was this from? I know the reference but can’t place it. I could obviously search for it but, hey, I’m trying to be social here.

I’m pressing X to doubt.

We need to revise that for Lemmy.

“Lemmy: Where men are men, and men are women, and women are men, and I think we’ve got a few women who were born women, and also there’s a whole bunch of new genders as well, and no genders at all, and that’s all cool with most of us.”

It’s a mouthful and might not read well on a t-shirt, but we can workshop it.

That’s a very good question as it sure doesn’t feel like misinformation has declined much in this timespan. My guess would be that the traffic is finding its way to smaller websites, like those used in astroturfing campaigns, though the article speculates that Facebook’s algorithm changes may have lessened the flow of traffic to rightwing sites, and I’d guess that’d include these one-offs. Maybe X is picking up the slack there? They’ve certainly gotten fully unhinged and pandering to this crowd.

Could YouTube be another possibility? I think the algorithm is going strong there in favor of extremist content. My disabled dad, for example, spends his days jumping between watching shows like Cops, and watching YouTube videos of sovereign-citizen types harrassing cops. That’s mixed in with all the other garbage his algorithm throws at him. Over the years he’s gone from economically centre-left to fully buying into the Trump bandwagon (and we’re not even American).

Whatever the answer, I think people are still getting this info from somewhere and apparently in droves.

Now I’m no American, but something smells FBIish about that address.

I’m kinda shocked that the Trump campaign would agree to this. These rules seem directly in response to his debate style.

For all Biden’s many faults, having to share a stage with him in a civilized manner is almost certain to work against Trump. Especially when his campaign is consistently trying to paint Biden as mentally unwell and out of touch.

I’m glad it’s happening, just shocked that it’s happening under these conditions. I fully expected the Trump campaign to find a reason to back out leading up to this, and any of those rules would likely be a justification for that that his base would be fine with.

ICQ was my first foray into meeting girls online, back when that was a really weird thing to do.

Post a/s/l to pay respects.

That’s the way to do it. I used a broken laptop like that as my daily driver for a few years after losing my desktop and being unable to replace it.

I assume she’s using a separate keyboard/mouse, right? Though I’m enjoying the mental picture of someone trying to touch type on a vertical keyboard.

No hard feelings at all. I made a well-intentioned but dumb joke that wasn’t well-received and you had the guts to call me out on why people were reacting so badly. I respect that, and am always open to changing my perspective in the face of new evidence.

For what it’s worth, it sounds like we’re largely on the same side here. With Lemmy being such a small place, I even recognize your user name as someone I’m pretty sure I’ve come across before and thought, “this sounds like a smart person.”

Perceptions are also easily swayed because we’ve been on an unusually long objectively (not relative) downward slope.

I’m definitely with you here. I used to buy into the liberal notion that the world is objectively getting better (liberal as in the classic/European meaning, not how it’s typically used here in North America). I think that was largely true for a long time since WWII, and it’s probably still true in several metrics. Overall though, it feels we’re on a major downward trend in many places where it really matters such as the climate, wealth inequality, global strife, etc. I’ll admit that’s had me pretty demoralized but then I have some good interactions with folks in here that helps me see a little light in all the misery, so thanks for that.

Well, while I was also mostly joking with that second comment, respect for calling me out on it. For the record, I do know that people have always been this stupid and that much of the US is ridiculously gerrymandered. If anything I was maybe projecting a bit as I suspect I got COVID a few years back and my short-term memory has been off ever since. It’s been a point of concern for me as, I admit, it’s made me feel more stupid.

I do think people are getting worse, but in reality I blame misinformation campaigns for that.

The one thing I will (politely) disagree with in your comment is your characterization of pot smokers being hard left or disengaged with politics. I think it’s much more universal across the spectrum than you’re suggesting. Now that it’s legal in Canada it seems like everyone uses it to some degree. That’s an exaggeration but I’m continually shocked by some of the people I know coming out of the woodwork as users, and many are not even close to hard left (and are engaged in following news and voting for the party I loathe).

Anyway, respect again for sharing your opinion and I’m truly sorry if I offended anyone with my earlier comment. I’ll leave it up for the sake of posterity.

Oh, I know. I was being facetious in my earlier comment. For the record, I’m vastly in favor of legal weed and occasionally partake in it myself.

True. I literally think of that most days when I see older folks irrationally freak out at the smallest inconvenience. Not that this happens to most old folks, it’s just really remarkable when you do witness it. It’s really sad that they can’t control it, just too bad about the ones who gained power and used it to fuck everyone else over.

Why not both? Yeah, dams cause continued ecological damage and I don’t think we should be building more of them, but let’s leave them in place until they can be replaced with proper renewables.

But yeah, you’re 100% correct that that shit should have been nationalized yesterday. Unfortunately all it takes is a conservative-majority (low-c conservative for an international audience) to re-privatize it and let their buddies buy it at a discount. That seems to be what’s happening globally. I’m starting to think the best way forward for most things related to the common good are the formation of non-profits or worker’s co-ops but that’s a non-starter in something as large-scale as baseline power generation.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could legal weed have been a bad thing? That brand of fuckery is getting increasingly popular here in Canada too.

Slightly more seriously, I wonder if Long COVID really is messing up people’s brains to this extent. People who would have been on the fence about voting for someone like her before COVID were also the most likely to intentionally avoid protecting themselves from it. Are future historians going to look to that as the catalyst that collectively broke our brains?

Edit: to clarify my initial joking comment about legal weed, I’m super in favor of it and have been for a very very long time. The “brand of fuckery” I refer to as getting more popular in Canada is a reference to the Boebert/Trump-style populism that’s been invading our country over the last decade and to which our almost definite next prime minister subscribes. I was merely joking that perhaps Coloradans are smoking too much, leading to decisions like re-electing Boebert, and perhaps that’s also why we Canadians are making poor choices in this regard.

I don’t care about the downvotes for my vague post - just want to set the record straight that I think weed is good, and putting people in jail for using it is bad.

I’m sure your question was rhetorical, but for those listening from the back: Decades of intentionally under-funding public education, for a start.

Yeah. I don’t want to say I’m disappointed, because that would suck even more for the guy, but I will say I’m a little underwhelmed.

Also, what’s with that insane autoplay video in the article using stock video footage to tell the story? Have we sunk so low?

I absolutely know how you feel. I’ll typically go 6 to 12 months at a time without playing because of that. I then strategically find a window between patches where most of my favorite mods are all up to date. It typically takes a solid 4 hours of work to fix up my modlist, and I then play obsessively for several weeks. Despite these huge breaks, I’m at almost 3500 hours in the game, though I’ve been playing since release.

My second fave game is Rimworld, and I follow a similar pattern there, though modding for that game seems much more resilient in the face of certain updates. Plus, Ludeon isn’t DLC-crazy like Paradox.

Something I sometimes do for a more relaxed game is lower the number of empires from default for map size, and bump up the number of pre-FTL so some of them will later turn into empires. I usually also turn up the number of advanced empires.

You end up with a few superpowers, a few insignificant empires who are pawns in their games, and a little more early-game breathing room.

To be honest, I also generally peak at the map in observe mode to ensure I have a fun/interesting start position. I play with like 200 mods, usually create several of my own rival empires, and generally play it as a story generator rather than a game to “win.”