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conicalscientist

@ conicalscientist @lemmy.world

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12 mo. ago

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    Have Americans always been this stupid?

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  • There was definitely a time when people were smarter. I read a comment on r/xennials that stuck with me. They were lamenting the loss of a the culture of their youth. I'm not sure I can rephrase it as well as they said it.

    Basically they were describing how it used to be about how we questioned things. Like the show The X-Files. It was about seeking the truth. They noted how that show was reflective of how reality was. There was this common mindset that the answers are out there. That we can work together even to seek the answers and we will find them inevitably.

    You see that doesn't make much sense in 2025 because everyone has the answer to anything and everything. Except it's their own answer. Not the answer. More than ever their answer is one which is derived from their internet / social media bubble.

    There is no longer some big unknown out there full of mysteries to unravel. Not anymore. The zeitgeist right now is that I have my own world view and that's the one. I know how the system works. I know the way. It's the way I see the world. So why doesn't everyone else come join my world view??? Are they stupid?

    In the past we didn't know everything. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had any illusion that they did. Nor could they whip out their pocket rectangle and find answers immediately.

    In the past people had to be more open minded. They had to be honest about not knowing. Without modern media they had to be seekers of knowledge. As opposed to over confident purveyors relying on a quick internet search (these days a simple GPT query). The modern zeitgeist is one where everybody talks. Nobody listens. 8 billion deaf ears listening and learning nothing. Just waiting for their turn to talk. Everyone learned everything and they're so damn sure of it.

    Stupid people think they know it all. Smarter people are unsure of what they know. Of course there were stupid people before. But they knew they were stupid. Today the stupids can mask it by repeating words from the podcast, the tiktoks, the youtube videos they just watched.

    It's not uniquely an American problem. The American symptoms are quite a sight to beheld though.

  • DUI hiring just works

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  • The gift code means a subscriber is sharing access to the content.

    Though I don't doubt the sites use this as a double purpose for tracking.

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  • Failing through life with great success.

  • Brian Eno: “The biggest problem about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people”

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  • Attaching "tech" to everything makes it more palatable. Desirable even. It masks the fact that feudal lords are reinventing everything but with "tech".

  • Internet forums are disappearing because now everything is Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying.

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  • Forums were micromanaged far more than modern social platforms. Reddit is one of the "free speech absolutist" sites like its sibling 4chan. These were opposing paradigms to forums.

    I've long contended that modern social media users would absolutely hate the old style forums. If people think subreddit mods and reddit content mods suck. They haven't met the admin of Joe Bobs phpbb forum hosted from his garage. Joe Bob doesn't suffer fools gladly.

    I don't think it's a free speech problem. I think people have not only been conditioned to be content junkies. They've become addicted to being Greater Fuckwads.

    Maybe nobody cares what you think and whatever your words are they aren't that important. Social media has devoured peoples egos turning them into the Greatest Fuckwads. With social media everyone has a podium and everyone has very important words with billions of doomscrollers as an audience. Don't you dare steppy my freedoms!!1!

    Anyways I think the real test is whether people can handle a small forum with strict moderation and focused discussion. That will reveal who has half a brain apart from the fuckwads. I've seen people come to what are now basically private forums acting like a garden variety social media user only to get smacked down real quick. A sobering dose of reality for them.

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  • He has a few hundred thousand excess COVID deaths.

  • Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich urges global boycott of travel to U.S. to protest Trump

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  • Trump administration cancels grant allowing Illinois schools to buy from local farmers.

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  • The first administration fucked over farmers with tariffs and then bailed them out. Trillions of dollars are being grifted to rich. They'll chip in a few meager billions to farmers again.

    Besides they hated when Obama tried to give kids healthy meals. I'm sure they be overjoyed that kids don't have to eat the woke fresh foods.

  • Human Intelligence Sharply Declining

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  • Tech companies hire psychologists to behavior modify us to be engagement zombies. That alone must have done a number on intelligence.

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  • This is the one area where blockchain could have been useful instead of greater-fool money schemes. A system where people can verify provenance of images or videos pertaining to matters of importance such as news stories. All reputable journalism already attributes their photos anyways. Cryptographic signing is just taking it to a logical conclusion. But of course the scary word 'china' is involved here therefore we must only contrarian post.

  • Was anybody else just burned by the Tor Browser flatpak?

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  • I wasn't making a political statement about Flatpaks.

  • Why Lemmy is so superior to Reddit: No Karma, Just Value Content

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  • That's how it is anywhere that doesn't have any real moderation. There are those actively seek to harass anyone who isn't right leaning cis hetero white male. Lemmy like every other modern social platform is an open air forum available to the entire 7 billion population of the world. Moderators don't see 99% of the posts. And 99% of what they do see, they don't take for than a few seconds to consider. The nefarious abusers are almost always more subtle than moderators give thought to. This allows harassment to run rampant. This is a fundamental issue with social media. As as I'm concerned it's an intractable problem (brought you by free speech absolutist libertarian bros).

    That's as opposed to the traditional internet boards where posting was orders of magnitude lower volume. Site administrators and moderators cared about fostering a good community. Moderators saw a not insignificant portion of the content posted. Not just reports. Forum members used one pseudonym. No throwaways like the reddit/lemmy paradigm. What you posted was attached to you as a person. Therefore there was consequences to being an asshole. In other words deterrence.

    Also I find it kind of amusing how they out themselves for their simpleton world view. I've noticed a pattern where they take superficial readings of a post to identify keywords/phrases. Then assign identity to that user. Then engage in harassment based on that.

    For example say I posted something that was sympathetic to women. Ergo they assume I am a woman. And they engage the usual framework of belligerent replies appropriate to that assumed identity. I know for certain the key words in the second sentence of this comment already has triggered someone for sure.

    Edit: The prior replies are just chefs kiss. I can't tell if they're being intentional or if they're just that dumb. I guess that's part of the fun isn't it.

  • Self-Driving Tesla Crashes into Wall Painted to Look Like a Road… Just Months Before Planned Robotaxi Launch

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  • Anyone with half a brain could tell you plain cameras is a non-starter. This is nearly a Juicero level blunder. Tesla is not a serious car company nor tech company. If markets were rational it would have been the end for Tesla.

  • Was anybody else just burned by the Tor Browser flatpak?

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  • I downloaded the tor browser binary which runs standalone. Why does it need to be a flatpak?

  • Reddit Is Restricting Luigi Mangione Discourse—but It’s Even Weirder Than That

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  • Reddit is historically US tech workers. When the userbase was younger they were still some what anti-establishment. They have gotten more institutionalized as the years have gone by. They support big tech. They support the tech bro oligarchs. Their livelihood is tied to the fate of the US oligarchs. They are the sycophants. The yes-men.

    Anyone who has been around before the tech oligarch era can attest to how different things are. What we have today isn't anywhere close to the type of anarchist, anti-establishment type of nerds of the older internet eras. Today those types of people are all but extinct.

    As you said, nobody actually talks critically about the tech industry. It's certainly not in the way people used to. The term "walled garden" has long ago fallen out of the internet lexicon. The tech monopoly took root. The dominant narrative became of those in support of single closed ecosystems.

    The tech nerd sycophants took over. There haven't been competitors so long. There's only one reddit. Only one twitter. Only one facebook. Only one youtube. And the prevailing mindset of tech is in support of this. Nobody speaks out against it. These companies have written the paychecks and funded the retirement of all those nerds.

  • Tech Execs Are Pushing Trump to Build ‘Freedom Cities’ Run by Corporations

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  • DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous

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  • Make solutions in search of problems while collecting big tech premiums. If anyone accuses you of wasteful spending call them science illiterate to turn the public against them to divert the attention away from yourself.

  • Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content

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  • It means accounts that consistently upvote posts that end up being banned.

    The naive take is that this will remove bot/brigade swarms that are collaboratively boosting content that breaks site wide rules. You can derive ulterior motives from this if you want but I'm pretty sure that's the basic premise.

    I have no doubt this will be leveraged by the far-right to sow more discord. They already have a history of raiding subreddits with false flag attacks to get them sanctioned until it escalates into full blown subreddit ban. This is all but formalizing the mechanism.

  • CEO of Brave rants about "lefties," "glowies," George Soros

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  • Brave browser is a litmus test.

  • Nobody Wants a Nazi Electric Car

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  • So capitalism.