Yup. I’m old enough to remember when the selling point of cable TV was that it was ad-free. Then, of course, they started adding ads. And then they sold us premium channels that didn’t have ads. Now those have ads, too. You just can’t get away from them.
I find it fascinating how media companies evolved their usage of ads over time. Used to be that the purpose of showing someone an ad was to get them to buy your product. Now, though, the companies who make the ads are paying to have them put on media networks who use the ads to annoy you into paying for a premium membership so you don’t have to see them. It’s double dipping.
Not sure how I would feel if I made an ad, and YouTube was saying to their users: “Yeah, you like that fucking ad? Super annoying, isn’t it? If you don’t pay me more money, I’m going to cram that annoying bullshit down your throat every time you want to watch a video. I’m going to put ads at the beginning of videos. I’m going to sprinkle them throughout the middle. Hell, I’m even going to make you watch ads after the video ends! You like that, you little bitch??”
From Reddit itself, just the large userbase. It meant that even niche interests had lively and active communities.
From Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES): the ability to resize images just by cliking and dragging, the ability to tag users in custom ways so you can tell at a glance if they’re someone who past-you thought was an idiot, and endless scrolling.
What I don’t miss: everything else. Comparing the two userbases, Reddit is far more right-wing on average than Lemmy is. It’s nice not having to deal with so many garbage takes here.
Man, Ivan. You really suck at your job. You must be new here. You’re way too obvious about it.
It’d be wasted breath, really. Trump will never step down, because he’s trying to remain out of prison. If he loses, then there goes any chance he had at pardoning himself for his numerous crimes. So he’s not only the far and away favorite Republican candidate, but he’s also highly motivated to stay in the race for personal reasons. No appeal to his sense of patriotism will work to get him to step down because he has no patriotism. He’s in it for himself and himself only.
Biden, on the other hand, is just the default Democrat guy because he’s the incumbent, and the party figured that’d be enough to win, and so haven’t been trying very hard. And that has everybody terrified, because if he loses, then we get another 4 years of Trump, and probably never get to vote again. Basically, people are calling for Biden to step down because the stakes are way too high to fuck around.
I think you’re severely overestimating the average intelligence of the population.
True, the weather was really bad in that area, but he was traveling in a 3-helicopter convoy, and only his helicopter crashed. Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible, or even improbable that it was an accident, but we can’t really rule out sabotage at this point, especially considering how big of a target he had on his head from both the US and Israel. Personally, I really hope it was an accident. I mean, I shed no tears for that son of a bitch, but the ramifications if this was an assassination are unsettling.
I occasionally forget mine, too, but I was fortunate in that I was born in 1970, so it’s really easy to calculate it on the fly.
Oh hey - catturd2; isn’t that that sycophantic piece of shit who fawns all over Elon Musk every chance he gets? Maybe it’s a different catturd2 on bluesky.
Edit: Actually, yeah; it does look like it’s a different person entirely:
Unfortunately, it’s often not easy to do. Women have a notoriously difficult time convincing fertility doctors to sterilize them because “well what if you change your mind some time in the future?” or “well what if you eventually meet a man who wants kids?”. Yeah. Basically, your wants and desires take back-seat to some hypothetical future you, or some hypothetical future man’s wants and desires. Unfortunately, even some of my blue state friends have faced major road blocks in this quest. It’s a disease that’s only going to get worse if the Republicans take over the executive. :(
Well, the first thing I’m going to do is drink myself into a coma. After that, I don’t know. I keep hoping to wake up rich so I can have a lot more options, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Harsh, but fair.
Can’t jump, can’t dance, but I’m ok at swimming.
I recently read Neil Stephenson’s book called “Fall”, in which a significant chunk of the novel is set about 30 years in the future. At that point in time, large swathes of America are referred to as “Ameristan”, because they are break-away territories ruled by evangelical warlords. It feels surprisingly prescient.
Ah, a fellow “Cracking the Cryptic” lover, I see.
I think if I hadn’t dropped Netflix when they did a 180 on their stance on password sharing, I would drop them now.
And nothing of value was lost.
“X” isn’t publicly traded. When he bought it, he took it private, so you can’t short it. The ticker symbol X is for the United States Steel Corporation. You could definitely short that, though; it’s entirely possible that it’ll tank just the same because people confuse it with Xitter. Like when that Chinese company that had the ticker symbol ZOOM shot to the moon at the start of the pandemic because people thought it was the video conferencing app (whose symbol was ZM).
God, imagine living in a retirement community that has a Hot Topic.