CIWS-30

Wait until the population declines further and the CCP tightens its grip even more over Hong Kong. I doubt this’ll last. It’s just how authoritarian communist regimes work. Look at Putin and co. for examples.

Thanks for sharing that, even despite the uncontrollable facepalm that resulted. What’s terrible is that despite the fact that this artist is so crazy and racist, his art is actually pretty good.

Maybe for now, but as soon as more people switch to Windows 11 or Microsoft apps that constantly show you ads and are basically spam / adware themselves, Linux will get more appealing.

Microsoft is unfortunately learning from social media companies. Not only do you PAY for the product, you are also the product, and get your personal info stolen and get served ads even while you pay.

It’s getting to the point where I’m seriously eyeballing Mint again, or Kubuntu. And I’m the kind of person that’s generally too lazy to even dual boot anymore.

Only thing shocking about this is that it took this long. Any drone capable of carrying a weapon was going to get one. I mean, look at Ukraine right now. Consumer drones with soda bottle improvised explosives and cardboard drones. I can see a future where most warfare is drone vs drone, to see who can hit the other’s supply lines / storage first.

The way Russia’s turtling with illegal mines, drones are basically one of the only ways to attack without taking massive losses while also moving slowly and being sitting ducks for artillery.

Honestly, while I don’t like what these guys do. I definitely think they have some mental illness issues that should be treated, and some of them may be neurodivergent or have some physical issues with their brains or bodies that might make them unhinged that could be possibly treated with medication.

Dead serious here. People this bad generally have been abused / brainwashed when they were young, and some of them seem to have certain disabilities. Not saying they don’t act like total trash, just that there’s probably reasons behind it for at least some of these people. Plus, nowadays there are online cults waiting to pick them up and brainwash them when they’re vulnerable. Used to be you had to go in person to a cult in the past.

Honestly, probably the only way to save the Environment and Democracy. Too much power in the hands of the few leads to perpetual effective monarchy. It’s why the Founding Fathers were against large amounts of inherited wealth, particularly inherited wealth that creates dynasties in perpetuity.

I know people don’t like the Founding Fathers that much lately, and I see why, but conservatives really don’t understand them, and deliberately misrepresent them, because not doing so would undercut all conservative “policies”.

World’s a mess because of inequality and the concentration of almost all wealth and power into the hands of a small amount of sociopaths. I honestly think the only way to solve this permanently is to cap the amount of wealth and power any individual or family can have.

Yes, you are the GOAT!

The C is the grade those kids on got in “Temperature Understanding Class” because they’re almost failing.

Also correct if he’s thinking about cute dogs / cats / other animals that have more than 1 female in the group.

Same. I stay away from #Explore and just keep to my feed of people I actually follow. And I make sure to unfollow those who are too stressful to hear from constantly.

I agree with almost all the of all politics all the time people who constantly post negative things, but it’s too tiring to read them, especially since knowing about it does me no good and I can’t do anything about it anyway. I already vote and donate as much as I can, and I live in a Blue state so anything outside of my area’s just not possible for me to influence.

I’ve found it’s better just to ignore it and focus on positive things that make my life better.

This is also why I stopped going to Mastodon. In addition to negative ragebait politics being almost the only thing that’s trending (and I have too much of that in my life already) there’s no real nuance or tolerance for anything outside the echo chamber.

You DO get called a racist nazi transphobe for stepping outside the box or trying to support people, ideas or places that might not be 100% perfect or pass the strictest ideological purity test. I thought Liberal Twitter was pretty exclusionary and echo-chamber-y, but Mastodon’s a lot worse.

Kind of, but more “slightly amusing” than funny.

Sad news, but isn’t the Doge in the picture Kabosu rather than Balltze?

Yep, watermarked memes (and watermarked most things in general) are a scourge on the internet. I stopped following a Youtube channel that’s mostly playthrough’s of old fighting games because he suddenly decided one day to add an annoying (and ugly) watermark to the corner of ALL of his videos including the old ones.

Luckily, I’d found a similar one who was actually better at playing the fighting games themselves. I switched to that dude instead.

This crap has sent me back to physical stores. If they have it in stock, I don’t have to wait for it to ship, I just drive there and pick it up. Same with returns too, and exchanges. Same day.

Plus, I can trust that the company itself has probably looked at and tested the products, and has a real product and not a fake. I doubt I’m the only one going back to brick and mortar as well.

Not so fast, Kaiba?

To be fair, it’s one of the old school Republicans that would cross the aisle and vote for something Democrats made that are now Extinct in modern Politics. They died with John McCain, honestly. Better Manchin than Sinema or an actual modern Republican.

If I had to vote in 5-10 more Joe Manchin style “Democrats” to kick the same number of Republicans out of office in Red States, I would. Especially if it gave us 60 Democrats and the ability to have a filibuster-proof majority. Even if they were like “Immigrants are bad” or “All guns are good” or “We have to stop being woke about gays and trans and pronouns.” or whatever, as long as they weren’t all of that at once (and preferably only ONE of those at once) I’d vote them in, so long as they voted to do something about climate change, and also hopefully to reform the economy so all the money and power’s not in the hands of the big megacorps and billionaires.

People won’t stop being stupid and bigoted, so we have to take the wins we can. Everyone complains that Republicans keep trotting out “God, Guns, and Gays” every time they campaign, but what they’re not addressing is that Republicans keep WINNING with the 3 G’s and also immigration. They hold the house and have enough of the senate to filibuster everything. They’ve also used their control of the house and senate (and Presidency, when they have it) to pack the Supreme Court too.

I honestly want Democrats and liberal ideological purists to start being realistic now that the world is burning down around us and see that we’ve run out of time and need to start winning now, or else we won’t have a future. The fact that young Republicans believe in and want to do something about climate change is also a good thing. Reality is about power and consensus, it’s not about ideals.

Makes me think of the Privateer / Elite style X spaceship games, but that’s probably because of my personal bias towards games like that.

Everyone else would probably think Porn or the X-games first.

Not so sure about that, I feel like average people are waking up to technological bullshit like this more and more every year. Yeah there’ll still be an overly high amount of idiots, but I’ve learned that even older people can change and question things like this.

You can only get so many “We’re giving you 2 free years of identity theft protection because we got hacked and your personal information got stolen.” from big companies like your cell phone company, credit check company, etc. before you’re like “Hey, anything I put online can get stolen by criminals…”

Even if you’re a tech-unsavvy type. At some point the light bulbs turns on and you put 2 and 2 together.

Shit like this is why monopolies and oliglopolies don’t work. I hope people complain AND jump ship in big enough droves for this to change. Self-hosting and the old fashioned “buy your own music permanently” option are good too.

I don’t use streaming services, I just buy MP3’s (or AAC’s on iTunes or whatever they’re using nowadays, it’s been a while) and keep them locally and on the cloud. Never liked most Streaming Services’ recommendations anyway.