People like Musk are cynical, attention-seeking manipulators and narcissists. They aren’t afraid that their way of life is being threatened, they’re using the fears of others to further their own ends, and consider themselves above it all.

That article was the most cogent take I have seen on this subject. I have a similar cultural background (rednecks and urban, religious Polish-Americans), but see myself as a science-literate atheist. I have seen this first-hand, but wasn’t able to articulate it as well.

Thank you for that!

I think I can say it now, except I keep wanting to put a Scottish “ch” at the end of Llangrannog instead of a “g” sound.

I just tried to pronounce the name of that place, and now my tongue hurts. Beautiful picture.

Never watched it because the characters all look creepy to me. I remember other kids watching “Speed Racer” back in the 70s, so I referred to as “that crappy Japanese animation style” until I learned the name for it when it really took off in the US after around 2000.

I know that makes me something of a Philistine. I’m aware that it has a rich history and millions (billions?) of devoted fans.

It still creeps me out, though.

… And that’s the same year I graduated high school…

The default is an enshittified feed that shows you algorithm-chosen content. To see the old version of facebook, tap the menu in the upper right corner, then select feeds, then select friends.

I’ve been going there less and less lately. They started putting ads in the notifications section as well.

Nor am I. I’m also not the sort of person who expresses their comments in absolute terms.

I can see your comment, and I don’t think that everybody on .ml is a troll. They just seem to have an awful lot of them, and I have no idea what the reason is. People arguing in bad faith, etc.

I enjoy reading the comments, but the top comments from most of the .ml-origin posts always seem to degenerate into name calling, and very quickly at that. The criticisms other people have called out further down in this thread sound accurate to me.

And clearly it isn’t just me seeing this, since somebody is downvotimg your perfectly polite posts in this thread. (It isn’t me.)

My suspicion is that there are a few instances either controlled by bad actors or indifferent to them. Blocking those can make lemmy a much better place if you aren’t interested in conflict on this platform.

And if you enjoy arguing or just want to hone your debate skills against trolls, you can do that, of course.

You can block entire instances. I blocked hexbear and lemmy.ml, and my feed became MUCH more pleasant to read. The vast majority of trolls seem to be on those instances.

So what I love about Lemmy now is that comment threads rarely turn toxic like they do on Reddit.

China just ignores violations of foreign copyright by their industries. They enforce Chinese copyrights.

This is a side effect of deregulation of both corporations and the stock market. I think that we’re going to see the pendulum swing towards more regulation and consumer-friendly policies here in the US. I don’t see that lasting for the long-term, though. There are too many vulnerabilities in the political system that allow asshole billionaires to manipulate it.

True. I just bought a 1-year-old 330i, and it’s less than my wife’s Kia SUV (We live in Michigan, have three kids and two dogs, so it makes sense for us to have one big bus that can go off-road, else we’d have something smaller and electric). The BMW also costs far less than a pickup truck of the same age and mileage. US manufacturers have been transitioning out of the business of making sedans for years, because they’re not popular here. It is just a sea of SUVs and pickup trucks.

I do have a subscription to all kinds of “connected car” crap for the first year, but I’m going to turn all of that junk off when I make some other modifications later this year. I think the subscription is actually pretty cheap, but I just don’t want a bunch of spyware reporting back my location and speed.

Every morning for the past 20 years. Mostly TWIM, but only for 20 minutes as a formal sit. Lots of short meditation breaks during the day, though. It has made me way less of an asshole, and a happier person.

Same

Yep. I didn’t see anything posted. Maybe my client didn’t refresh correctly.

Pluto was discovered because the orbit of Neptune didn’t match predictions, so astronomers decided that there must be a ninth planet out there. It was very close to where the math predicted it would be.

It turned out later that Pluto was much, much smaller than at first thought, and couldn’t be the 9th planet. It then turned out that the mass of Neptune was greater than expected, and the orbit actually matched expectations without the need for a 9th planet.

As a kid in Detroit? Distant gunfire, most summer nights.

Now as an adult in the suburbs? Usually a fan, because my wife prefers that and I don’t mind.

Enough that I can code in pretty much anything. I think the typing point was when I coded professionally in my 4th or 5th language some time in the early 90s.

I have been told (by my attorney) that arbitration is sometimes more expensive than filing suit. IIRC, the rationale is that arbitration can have very high fees and involve a large number of people. It was in the context of drawing up a boilerplate nda, but it has been awhile and I don’t remember the details.