Jim Jones, of the Jonestown Massacre. The cult leader who we got the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” from (though they actually were too poor to get Kool-Aid and they laced Flavor-Aid, the off brand version, with cyanide instead). When he started out, he was actually a very influential Civil Rights activist who is responsible for the policies that would later become the foundation of the civil rights laws in his home city. But he later became a crazy cult leader and by the time of the cult’s mass suicide, he ranted like Trump does today.

As for how anybody could believe that Trump’s a good businessman, many people only know him as that guy from The Apprentice, not the businessman who has bankrupted multiple casinos, an airline company (and beauty pageant for young girls who he flew around the country with in his private plane - just him, the girls, and a man by the name of Epstein), and who couldn’t even sell steaks to Americans.

2016 Trump ran on the idea of being the good businessman who was going to clean up the swamp and get this company’s country’s act together. Just like any other CEO selling to investors. I have friends who, halfway into his campaign, were like, “I kinda like this Trump guy, he tells it like it is,” and by the time of the election they had completely 180’d on him because of the details of what he was promising.

One of these friends is super into cults and true crime, and he says that listening to Trump is eerie because he sounds exactly like Jim Jones. Then, and now. Back then he sounded like Jim Jones in his prime (and read Hitler’s speeches as bedtime stories according to an ex-wife, which would explain why all his campaign promises match up with Hitler’s). Today, he sounds like Jim Jones making his death speeches while you can hear them forcing the cultists to drink the Flavor-Aid and gasping, choking, and dying in the background of the recordings.

The people who liked Trump the first time and didn’t change their minds then were never going to change their minds the second time. They’ve already bought into the cult. And that’s what Trump is - a cult leader. He promises them a solution to their misery by giving them an obvious target to take their aggression out on, and people eat it up because they want a simple solution that absolves them of any blame.

Don’t forget to inscribe transgender ideology on it like “0w0 what’s this notices bulge” and “hey fascist, catch! ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️”

Ironically, Windows users have generally felt that way with every new Windows version after 7. Vista was painful for a lot of people and 7 was basically Vista but with the problems finally fixed, and every version since then people have complained that the newest version feels unfinished.

And in a lot of ways they have been. In 10, there are at least 2 different UIs for navigating the system and settings. Some options have been migrated over to the newer one, some only exist there, and some still only exist in the old version of the settings. And then 11 made it even worse by moving a number of frequently used options in the right-click menu into a second menu that you have to open after you right click.

People hated 10 at first, too, but by now they’ve gotten used to it and Microsoft has ironed off most of the rough edges people hated. But it’s been building for years and this pattern has seemingly hit some kind of breaking point with the present-day circumstances.

It’s not about taking the high road but about accepting the fact that the worst monsters to ever walk on this planet have all been humans. By accepting this and being aware that these monsters can come from anywhere, we can better make sure that “never again” actually means Never Again.

It always is. They always jump to blaming liberals, minorities, etc. long before there’s any information.

Attacks on Jews tripled in the days after 9/11. The hatred is the point.

Kirk certainly knows what it’s like when the blood’s pumping.

So it’s always had a negative connotation to it? Because that’s what I’m saying. That Google is using the word by its correct definition, but adding to the original definition a subtext that side loading is a bad thing. Hence, they’re twisting it from its original meaning to a negative connotation to the average person (who has never heard the word before).

It’s like Windows’ UAC popping up with a warning when you try to install just about anything. To the average computer illiterate person, they’re going to second guess whatever they’re installing as “dangerous” while the rest of us are like “shut up Windows, of course I want to install the Nvidia drivers, that’s why I clicked on the damn thing.”

America has been a third world country for decades now. The only reason that it hasn’t felt like it is because there’s so much money still circulating in our economy from helping the world rebuild after WW2 and selling military equipment and culture during the Cold War (plus the whole American Empire thing, can’t forget that). By all the metrics that are used to rate the quality of health of a country - things like infrastructure quality, wealth inequality, healthcare costs and CoL vs income - the US is much closer to third world countries than to comparable European countries.

As somebody once said, America is a third world country in a Prada belt.

By justifying getting rid of it as “security concerns”. This is the first time the average user will have heard the term, so it will be linked in their head to this and therefore as risky/dangerous and they won’t question why Google would want to make it harder, if not impossible, for people to install apps or other software without Google’s explicit permission.

The walls around the garden get taller, and those inside won’t question why there aren’t any doors.

Fingers crossed. I’ve been waiting a long time to get back into VR and replace my OG Vive.

Google is twisting the word to justify their purpose of preventing people from installing anything that isn’t from their walled garden. So anything that sounds even close to support for that motive is going to be met with pushback, even if it is a word that existed before Google’s use of it. Google’s implicitly saying that installing something from anywhere other than their store is something nefarious or otherwise bad/risky. Google is trying to perform the same kind of security theatre as the US with the NSA at airports.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me where you install an app from because you’re simply installing it. Whether that’s from Google’s storefront, Apple’s, or somewhere else, you’re installing an app. The circumstances where I’d need a term to specifically say that I’m installing an app from outside the default app store would also be covered by simply saying “I got it from GitHub (or wherever).” It takes the same energy to answer the question of where you got it from regardless of whether you say that you installed it or you side loaded it.

They mean a physical Target store, not a phone app. Target can track customers walking in and out the door and what they buy, how long they stay, etc. but they can’t track anything about you if you just go to a different store, especially something like a small business which isn’t hooked into the ad data sponge.

The issue people have with making the distinction is that Google is trying to spin the narrative and make side loading seem like a dangerous and bad thing to the average user base who don’t know any better.

They’re taking umbrage with you agreeing that quantitative usage of a storefront makes something simply installing vs side loading a program. Because it helps Google’s narrative in a way.

There have been leaks about the Deckard 2 for years now and people always say that Valve will announce it any day now. I’ll believe it when I see it at this point.

And all the big “innovations” have been in venture capitalist bubbles like AI, NFTs, etc. or soured by the companies and people behind them. I hear SpaceX has been doing some cool stuff, but all I can see is Musk making a flying Cyber Truck for his ego on NASA’s dollar. One of the reactors at 3 Mile Island is coming back online, the first US nuclear power project in who knows how many years…in order to fuel Microsoft’s AI data centers.

Advancements in tech used to be about pushing the boundaries of what we’re capable of. Now, it’s all about pushing the boundaries of how much money the oligarchs can stuff into a single pocket.

Facebook is the best and worst thing to have happened to VR. The Quest is an affordable headset that basically killed all competition and innovation in VR for years. Still holding out hope that the next Valve headset will come out eventually and shake up the scene again.

I honestly have no idea, that would be going much farther back in Reddit’s history than I was on the platform for. It reminds me of Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, though. It’s true until somebody realizes that there’s a lot of money to be made doing the thing that you said you wouldn’t do.

Most likely because they care less about the idea of federated platforms and more about “not Reddit” and “not Twitter.” I’m one of those users personally (not that I don’t care about the idea, it’s good to have a return of what is effectively 3rd places of the internet). Most of them, like me, probably came here during the Reddit migration and moved to BlueSky when that took off in popularity.

If I didn’t dislike the Twitter format as much, I’d probably spend more time on BlueSky than forgetting about it until one of these threads appears, and I’d probably be on Tumblr still if I didn’t only use social media from my phone and Tumblr didn’t have such a horrible app.

People are going to go where the people are, for better or worse, until something pisses them off enough to go somewhere else. I originally created a Twitter account to follow a bunch of artists I followed who left Tumblr during the porn ban. I didn’t care for the platform (I hate the tweet format) but that was where all the artists went so I followed. Similarly, when the 3rd party api fiasco hit Reddit, I left and immediately went looking for where the people from the subs I read by “newest posts first” went - except the communities fractured and disappeared. It was the possibility of them reforming here that made me go through a GitHub to figure out how to make an account (spoiler: they never really did reform). I had no idea what a federated platform was supposed to be or do.

The fact that Lemmy is so niche is its biggest advantage and its biggest curse. You either love how small it is, like Reddit back in the day, or you suffer the lack of population for the things that you’re into, and the very nature of the federated platform makes it that much harder to centralize enough people in one niche to form a community (there we go again - centralization). Lemmy is the Wild West frontier town to the big social media giants’ company towns.