I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.

I made an alt two months ago when Kbin would never connect. I have barely been back since, so it is now my main. I hoped Kbin would come out if its slump but... that seems unlikely at this point. I'm actually quite happy on Lemmy, especially after the v0.19 upgrade allows blocking of an entire instance. I personally virtually never see any spam (maybe one comment per month) and while connection issues do occur, they are like a handful per week rather than handful per hour (it varies a lot though, sometimes it does get bad for a day or two and then weeks go by without a hitch).

I avoided the initial hurdle of making a Lemmy account for so long and, while it was super annoying, in retrospect it wasn't that bad, compared to all the other problems here and still having to go through all that, eventually.

If anyone is thinking about switching: don't worry unduly about it, just make an account and see if you like it, but you can always keep your Kbin active too, assuming Kbin remains alive.

Also, you may need to try out a few places before you find one that fits you best. But that reduces your anxiety bc you know more and don't need to worry about having to do it again in a worst-case scenario.

Probably b/c if they can't monetize your data, then they choose to profit from you in other ways. :-(

por queue no los dos? :-P

Too many people treat drinking like it's some kind of contest imho - like, if you don't enjoy the flavor, then why drink it, and if you do, then why ... ah... quaff it?

He was...thirsty

Do I really want to know what "quaff" is?

he quaffed pint after pint of good, good juice.

No, methinks I doth prefer mine earlier ignorance. :-P

Thank you! It was https://youtu.be/hsxukOPEdgg?si=bHZrY9n2qSygpBPf, especially starting about 6-7 minutes in but really the whole episode talks about the topic of the OP. The sandwiches comment is at ~7:45. Enjoy!:-)

Who doesn't enjoy our annual, third of a year long Christmas-gasm!?

No don't answer that, I know what you mean:-P.

Northeastern USA is extremely cold compared to temperate Europe.

Though that is nothing compared to north midwestern states, brrr... did you know that at some point, the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales converge? :-P

Always has been.:-)

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even the CEO has acknowledged this. They serve you what makes THEM the most profits, not what YOU wanted, ever.

For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add "Reddit" to the search. But then Reddit imploded as well, chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

And Twitter/X likewise is now chasing profits over the needs of its customers, causing many to flee.

As too is happening in so many other places, such as Stack overflow, and most of Hollywood itself was on strike for months, bc they have been chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

Managers think they know better than customers what you want, or at least what you are willing to put up with.

And now they are pushing AI to the rescue, to put even above the SEO results, but soon they'll have to think about actually monetizing those answers, and the cycle will repeat at the level of SEO'd AI answers.

DuckDuckGo works, for now. Maybe one day there will be a hostile takeover and it won't anymore.

Btw this phenomenon is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification of the internet - yes that's the official term afaik!!:-)

Similarly, Mac OSX is POSIX compliant and therefore more truly UNIX than Linux is, fight me. :-P

Silly you, thinking that women are "people". :-P (/s) "Fearing for your life", according to those who "tell it like it is", is actually code for gentrified white men, though going to college may remove from you this privileged status.

it’s just that the only one that survived long enough to survive to the present day is the really good advice

Okay but... I thought that was basically the point, in that if the advice survived for that long, then it is worth paying attention to at least, to consider if it might apply to a particular situation? e.g. chicken soup really is good for a cold, whether we knew the precise reasons why or not.

It knows...

::: spoiler spoiler
that at some points during the pandemic, TP was more valuable than fucking gold or diamonds.
:::

They do it simply b/c they can.

OMG why does this remind me of this old video? :-P

It's b/c 40 s in, the phrase: "Raw rhymes stronger than my jaw line when I spit a phrase"

Oh great, 2020 part 5, wonderful.

They would if it makes their food tastier. Yum... infants.:-)

Well, hopefully not that shocked.

Not true. They voted, and THAT legacy will be with us for a LONG time...

And sadly, I don't even mean DT - there's Ted Cruz, Moscow Mitch, the whole cohort - along with all the international agreements that we've already pulled out of and so on.

See, they left us something after all?! :-P This economy, lack of access to healthcare, and so much more!?

Btw, I don't know about you, but I have a retirement plan for my old age. I plan to die. :-P

In fairness, it is less that they are "selfish" and more that they are "clueless" (to the point of obstinacy, outright refusing to open their eyes) - b/c as you said, your mother didn't inherit anything, and yet THEY are fine, so why wouldn't you be, with nothing left to you either? (remember as you think this through to remove all of the actual "facts" first, and add the layer of Faux News Nostalgia factor)

I don't follow you. They are BOTH the capitalist party, though not equally so. Also, voting for one side vs. the other does not mean that you agree with EVERYTHING that they do - in fact it is more common these days to vote against the other side and ignore what your own might plan or actually do. Nor is it true that avoiding voting - e.g. for mental or physical health reasons - means that someone does not care at all about what happens as a result of the election. Plus, a rather ENORMOUS fraction of people in the USA could skip a particular vote and it would not make the tiniest iota of difference, due to the electoral college system, though that heavily depends on where you live, and also trends to be more true the larger the region impacted (federal > state > county), whereas local elections could turn on a dime and also make a huge impact regardless of what goes on in upper levels - e.g. federal sends monies to help people but locals turn that aid away b/c "reasons".

Unpopular opinion alert: I dare to say that many people who should NOT be voting - especially those who do little to no research beforehand - would vastly improve the outcome of elections by NOT voting, and thereby contribute more that way than they do now, by actually voting, where they tend to just magnify the votes of whatever the TV & radio talk show people (or more recently, pastors behind the pulpit) tell them to do. The latter makes the USA even more of a plutocracy than later, when the votes get ignored and the rich get whatever they want regardless of who got elected does.

Hehe, nothing to see here, these are not the stories you are looking for, move along :-P

I mean, not directly no - we boiled it first - but you gotta drink something, sometime.

What worried me more is not when the screw-up is so easily detectable, but when it goes unnoticed, like the permanent damage done to the residents of Flint, MI, or all those toxic chemicals caused by the multiple train derailments, where the company men tried to pay/threaten/whatever people to say that they were not sick.

Company profits >>>> human health & safety.

Only if you like more mundane (yet accurate) explanations:-P.

Be careful - sometimes they can bite.

Yup, sounds about wrong.

"Midnight Mass" on Netflix, I'm just saying...

Nothing I have ever seen will ever top this image describing the year: https://daysuntilspring.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/81321947_3096760897007337_1939866200221679616_n.jpg

If you will allow me, I beg to differ: violence is the APPROPRIATE response, sometimes - rarely but not never. e.g., if you had a child who was being mauled by a dog, wouldn't you go to their aid, and strike the dog to get it to go away? Of course you would - any sane, responsible person would.

These people are being brainwashed into thinking that by rising up, they are protecting the "true America". Their heartfelt desire to protect things is GOOD. Their willingness to rise up and actually do something is GOOD. They are not complacent - they are literal heroes, in their own minds at least, but also called thus by those they respect, on the television, in the radio, in the "news" sources they choose to read, etc.

That is what is so twisted about the whole thing - it is not their badness or weaknesses that are being exploited (greed, lust, laziness, etc.), so much as their STRENGTHS, which are being re-directed towards an end that those who employ violence have not bothered to think through and understand. There IS a weakness involved, probably several (crowd mentality, giving up your agency to another rather than questioning everything - e.g. I Thessalonians 5:21 commands, though many preachers, especially evangelical Christianity, behind the pulpits in the Heartland of America do not teach that anymore... and instead are laying out the exact opposite message), but I do not think these people are themselves insane, so much as they are merely "normal".

Which is not to say that the overall effect is not insanity, ofc.

And yeah I suspect the "Americans first" thing would be more the previous generation, like during WWI & II, when people had to stand together regardless of political affiliation, against an outside aggressor. Whereas today, that outside aggressor has patiently lain in wait for so long that the call (for violence) is now coming from inside our own house... even if its' true origin derives from outside of it, e.g. Faux News dictating the talking points that Americans should follow, even if those came originally from Russia. Even if the latter country were to cease to exist literally today, the damage has already been done, and people in the USA now think how they wanted them to; but conversely even if the Republican party were to cease to exist today, those outside forces would continue to push for their desired ends... It is pressure from outside, and yet people today do not see it as that, and willingly go along with it.

I take issue with your wording: "crimes" are the things that the OTHER side does, while when WE do it, it is ah... something else. (I am also being facetious, but only a little, unfortunately)

This should make us all very very afraid of what that water is doing to US!

(Especially if/when it is colored - last year my water became orange and started giving everyone I knew that drank it mouth soreness, I only wish I was kidding, and ofc it was traced to a corporation found illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the water reclamation systems, thus exposing the entire city to those effects. No, they never faced any legal consequences beyond the slightest slap on the wrist iirc, why would they? That is what finally tipped the scales and helped me realize: the USA is not a first-world nation anymore.)

If only...

Wait, those actually exist, but do get hella expensive.

In the wild, it is rare to see a predator before it strikes. Have you ever seen one of those games where there is a picture and you are supposed to find it... but you can't, even zooming in and scanning every section, and then even when the answer is shown you can barely make it out? In the wild, prey aren't supposed to evade death - the entire food chain is predicated on that fact. Ofc the predator still has to cross the distance between it and the prey, but lulling it into a sense of complacency is the first part of its successful strategy, then it waits for the prey to turn its head, and only THEN does it pounce. Sorry if this is upsetting but it's very relevant I promise you, and in no way shippable for this conversation.

So in the wild, if I ever were to see this large fat orange buffoon, bumbling around while making wild hooting noises, actively trying to get noticed by saying whatever manages to get the most reaction from everyone around, I think I would be wisest to run away. Crucially though, not from the orange thing - which has no obvious teeth or claws or anything at all harmful - but from whatever it is that may be following it (whether the orange thing has any knowledge of that or not), waiting to take advantage of the distraction that it provides.

Whether any particular person wins the next election or not, there are always more willing to step up in their place - more Republicans, more Democrats, etc. - and a smart predator is ready to take advantage of whichever side wins in order to get what they want.

Sorry if you thought I was building up to some point worth knowing about - I have found no solutions, only more layers of problems the further deep you dig into these matters.:-( I will say that often when you meet Trump supporters irl, they can be very kind people - they are mislead, but aren't we all? It is the system that is broken, not solely them (obviously outliers exist, on both sides, and no they are not remotely close to being equal <cough>KKK<cough>, but nor is the problem uniquely on one side vs. the other either, plus the whole division between "sides" is working out VERY well to Putin's benefit, hence making me question just how much involvement his agencies have with the recent Civil War style divisionist thinking that is currently fashionable).

I think all we can do is question what we see, and compare it against what we KNOW to be true. Which not everyone is capable of - e.g. who has the luxury of that kind of time? A great place to start, imho, is to recommend watching https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs.

Counterpoint: the rich want to get richer, and the lapdogs want their bribes, and the lazy folks in the middle can only be motivated by fear (not even greed works anymore, e.g. for retirees who already got theirs), so to break out of this cycle would take... ... ...

I have no clue.

On the bright side, Kbin is showing a picture of absolutely gorgeous cherry blossoms 🌸 in the snow for this post. :-P

Human is stressed out bc of the implications the numbers show to the real world (maybe they are trying to solve climate change?).

AI just laughs regardless of what nonsense it spits out - it was built to resemble the form of answers, not actually make them. :-P