4grams

Exactly, early social media was tons of fun. It was like the early internet but easier since anyone could make a profile with any info.

Then it had to be monetized. They had to glue eyeballs via attention, no matter what kind. Now it’s all rent seeking, innovation is 100% about what can produce an immediate return, no care for the long term. The grift economy…

It was not social media, that was about the people. It’s what the social media companies did in search of dollars that did it in. Greed. Full stop.

Why do we need celebrity owned cell carriers? This article makes it sound like a bad thing Ryan Reynolds’s exited Mint, but at least the stars of arrested development still have a cell provider.

I mean WTF, I like that there is competition but what the fuck is wrong with us that we prefer celebrity endorsement to actual features, value, longevity, etc.

I know it’s a bigger question than what I’m asking but this is all part of the rot that our economy is experiencing. All vibes, all promises, all scams, this country runs on nothing but grift.

I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.

So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.

Bummer.

Oh, that makes it so much better…

There are so many flags right now it’s just a sea of red undulations. Done by design, so that we don’t notice the death of democracy.

this is how he operates… he denies, then jokes, then encourages others to joke, then when they do he gets serious, then act like everyone was always serious.

this man will NEVER willingly give up a shred of power.

I hate going there these days. I’m not sure if it was a frog boil or what but the site now is a shadow of the one I left during the big mod exodus. It’s terrible now, so much less info, user base has devolved, riddled with ads.

I imagine if I was still there all the crap would feel normal but having left, every time I visit now and see what huge changes have been made. Every time i visit the quality of the site has tanked even more.

Feel like these days it’s “do unto others what you imagine others would to do unto you.”

America, by far, and that’s from someone living here. I’ve been to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Iceland, Mexico, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Canada, and probably a couple others I can’t remember. I’ve been treated nothing but friendly, with genuine curiosity, even when I shouldn’t have been.

Every day in the US, someone swears at me.

I’m building services out for my family as things enshittify. Moved the family over to an immich instance, run a family blog on Wordpress (working on rolling my own since it’s over complicated and with all the Wordpress shenanigans…), plex (lifetime account, works for now). I have a number of self-built projects as well, a “momboard” like system that is integrated with my Wordpress blog for access and control, a pi based backup server that lives at my friends house and nails a VPN connection to my router and I’m playing with Meshtastic as an offline communication system for my kids scout troop when we’re camping without cell signal. Lots of home automation with home assistant as well.

I host it all on Debian servers, raspberry pi’s and esp32 devices (Meshtastic and home automation). I used to run kubernoodles but it was more complicated than needed and for my use case, docker, ansible and bash scripts manage it all just fine.

the very same day…

I’m using it as shorthand for all the obvious criminality of the man. To elaborate, he’s a rapist, a 34 time convicted felon who steals from charity, cheats students, stiffs everyone he owes, a man who stole our national secrets, salutes and uplifts dictators, has expressed his desire to be one multiple times on the campaign trail, cages children and ran campaign focused solely on retribution and outright lies about immigrants, women and minorities.

This was an argument that could have been made during his first run; but this time, we all knew exactly what we were voting for.

friend, you and I are saying the same thing.

You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.

I totally understand why it happened, and yeah, I agree it was economic issues, and inflation and so forth. And I even agree it’s not an America thing. This is just a human thing, and humans by and large are kinda awful.

this is because people want easy, quick answers that make them feel good. An old comment of mine from this site sums it up:

as I have climbed higher in the corporate world, this is becoming clearer and clearer. people respond far better to a confident idiot than they do a pensive expert.

Enough were fine with it.

Right, so enough wanted the rapist, the rest were just ok with it. Lovely country, beautiful people.

Glad you still have faith in the system. I don’t, doesn’t matter what the dems put forward, people are lazy and stupid and will not do any research. I mean, take a look at all the morons who are googling “what’s a tariff” now that he’s been elected.

Pissed is one thing, but we just did the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the head instead of taking a Tylenol for a headache.

People are stupid, lazy and selfish, they want the easy solutions, they want the one weird trick, they want the fix now instead of realizing that change is long and gradual. Well, we’re about to get drastic change, best of luck everyone. I’m not fan of dems, but we had the ability to pressure them, got Biden to drop out. Do you think for a second that trump will be able to be pressured into anything that isn’t his own self interest.

I was with you for the first election, but every last person who voted for him, or who felt like it wasn’t worth getting off the couch to prevent trump is responsible for this, full stop. I’m so goddamned tired of people acting like not a single person had any agency in this, like we had two equal but opposite choices. No, this one was easy and obvious and we just showed the world our true colors.

God I am so tired of the post-mortems already. everyone is so obsessed to find the one little things that they did wrong. What was the one weird trick that could have shown america the correct path.

This time it was beyond obvious. This country simply wanted a rapist, a criminal, they wanted a man who praises dictators and has proclaimed that he is going to be one (good luck with that 1 day thing). Enough Americans looked at the two choices and the majority of this country decided to give fascism a try.

No point in hiding for 4 years, shits not going to be the same when you come out. The only thing we can do is get the fuck out or stay and fight. Shit’s gone get real bad if we all just hide. Pretty much what caused the issue since I feel like we all have been since Covid.

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turnip is turnip, just because he doesn’t exactly display the hallmarks of a previous person, doesn’t mean he’s not also a thing. he’s populist because he’s running an empty campaign with no actual plans. there’s nothing behind any of the things he’s promising, he’s just promising them because he thinks it can get him elected.

I mean, he’s promised no income tax, tax breaks, no tax on tips, etc. none of it is backed by any policies, only, “trust me, it’s gonna be great”. when I talk populist, I mean specifically this sort of behavior, I don’t think for one second that he actually cares about enacting any of it short of doing things that will make people like him. I honestly believe that once the rubber meets the road, and he either does his mass deportations and the nation suddenly realizes why it’s a terrible idea or he doesn’t because it’s such a stupid idea and his mouthbreathing supporters turn on him. repeat ad nauseam for any of the other insane things that he’s promising.

the same argument can be made that he’s not a fascist, he’s not doing exactly the same things as previous fascist regimes right?

so we may be getting hung up on semantics here, I’m not always the best with smart brain words.